Food & Toys

From Five Guys Burgers and Fries

So Joyce was excited to tell me about the first Five Guys Burgers and Fries to hit Washington. Apparently it's an east coast thing....similar to how In-N-Out Burger is famous on the west coast. It's in Renton, so we decided to drive all the way there just for a burger; okay, it's not that far I guess.

From Five Guys Burgers and Fries

It was tasty! I thought the burgers were awesome....even BETTER than In-N-Out burger in California. I love that the menu is very simple. There's only a few burgers to choose from, and then ALL the toppings are FREE, including things like grilled mushrooms & grilled onions. I decided not to try the sauces like chili sauce and barbecue sauce cause I didn't want the flavors of the meat to be drowned out. The meat was super tasty and juicy....which is to be expected since the meat is fresh everyday, and never frozen. While the burgers can be ranked similarly to In-N-Out Burger, it is the fries that sets them apart. I LOVE the way they do their fries. Maybe it's the peanut oil they use, but they were super tasty, and not too oily. They reminded me a lot of New York Fries in Canada which I crave. Anyways, totally looking forward to going again soon!

Another exciting thing around the house lately is my home networking router upgrade. I upgraded to a RangeMax Wireless-N Gigabit Router with an AirPort Express. Totally sweet. I LOVE being able to stream my music anywhere in the house wirelessly while expanding and strengthening my network signal at the same time. I looked at other devices like the Logitech Squeezebox (~$300+) and the Sonos Bundles (~$1000+) and thought to myself, WTF. I then proceeded to go with a brand new AirPort Express for $65. Basically does all the same stuff. Out of the box, only streams from iTunes, but there's plenty of apps to expand the streaming to beyond that. Plus, I love iTunes so that's basically all I use anyways. I can stream the Last.fm and Pandora stuff, but I don't usually listen to that stuff anyways. But here's the kicker: I only pulled the trigger because I have an iPod Touch. If you have an iPod Touch, there is a free application that turns it into a full featured remote control for your Airport Express! You get absolute full functionality of all the songs, albums, playlists, etc. with no restrictions. It's so sweet to be able to walk around the house and use your iPod Touch wirelessly to control what is playing, and in which rooms. I can't believe how easy it is to operate too....absolutely love it.

Lastly, got another toy this week....my first BBQ!

From My First BBQ

We used it for the first time yesterday and it works great! I can't wait to have all the friends over this summer for some fun BBQs! Grills can get pretty pricey, and I think it's pretty fair to say that you get what you pay for. I opted for a lower end one just because I didn't want to spend very much. It's pretty decent, and it was on sale PLUS I used a coupon ;) I would have loved to get a Weber grill, but they are just TOO expensive. You can totally tell that Weber grills are built really nice though....impressive quality for sure.

Well, that's it for now. I'm looking forward to a pretty relaxing weekend....

Project Time

What's a blog again? Man, haven't done this in a while! Sorry, just been busy ya know?

Well I thought I'd change the template up just a tad bit....give it somewhat of a fresh look?

Summer is here! I went on an awesome bike ride the other day and discovered a TON of trails right by my house! The cool part is that I can BIKE THERE from my house. No need to mount the bike rack on the car and load up....although it's really not that much of a hassle anyways.

Well now that summer is here, I can finally start to tackle my list of projects. It's really not a drag though, I'm pretty pumped to do things that will not only improve the house, but also be an educational experience. I think construction/remodeling would make for a pretty cool hobby in my opinion.

From Staining/Sealing Deck

Today I finished working on my deck! It was actually some pretty serious labor, but I'm pretty happy with the results. It involved some cleaning, rinsing, scrubbing, staining, and sealing.

It actually took a lot longer than I thought it would. The main deck part isn't that bad, it's the railing that kills you! All in all, very happy with the semi-transparent color that we picked.

All this work on the deck has definitely got us thinking about getting a grill/bbq pretty soon! Can't wait to host some yummy bbq get-togethers!

Anyways, I think I will start work on the kitchen cabinets in the next few days....so stay tuned for updates on that!

Weekend in Cali

Well my fun week off has finally come to an end, and it's back to the office today :(

I spent the week in California with Joyce and the weather was awesome!

From Trip to California

It all started with the rental car. I'd never gone through FOX Rent A Car before, but it was the cheapest option I could find. Just like any other car rental place, they try to sell you absolutely EVERYTHING when you get to the counter to pick up your car. They're even sneaky enough to try and sell you something that you might be able to get for free! They kept trying to get us to upgrade to a convertible by paying extra. After we turned that down a couple of times, we ended up getting a convertible anyways because that was all they had! Anyways, it was the first time I'd ever driven a convertible, and it was super fun! We lucked out with the weather too....pretty warm and sunny the whole time we were there. I don't think I'd ever actually buy a convertible, but renting one was pretty cool.

On Saturday we decided to take a day trip to Napa Valley for some wine tasting. We'd been there before, so we kind of just played it by ear and visited about six vineyards that looked good to us. I always LOVE Napa. It's so peaceful and relaxing. We were just cruising through the vineyards with the top down on the car.

From Trip to California

The vineyards are just gorgeous. We ended up meeting some of Joyce's friends at a nice little restaurant up there for dinner as well.

On Sunday we went to a wedding at Byington Vineyard & Winery.

From Trip to California

This was my first time attending a wedding at a vineyard. It was super beautiful. There was a short hike up a hill next to the winery where the ceremony took place looking over the vineyard down below. Everything about the wedding was really nice.

On Monday we decided to take a morning trip up to Berkeley to check out the Crate and Barrel Outlet. It was a lot smaller than I expected....maybe even smaller than a retail store. We found a few items, but as a whole it wasn't anything spectacular really.

From Trip to California

Afterwards, we drove back to Mountain View to meet my friend for lunch at Google. I hadn't seen my friend Jared in a while, but I'm glad that he's doing well working in California. Up until now, I'd only ever heard the rumors of working at Google, and all the nice perks you get. All I can say now....is that they're ALL TRUE.

From Trip to California

We met up and decided to eat first since it was lunch time. I almost immediately felt like I was on a university campus again. We had options to go to all these different places to eat. Once we got there, I was expecting to either have to pay or maybe my friend would have to swipe his employee pass or something. Nope, it's totally FREE FOR ALL. You just go in and eat, drink, and eat some more. The food was really yummy, and there's a big selection of food, fresh cookies, soups, salads, basically everything. And then they've got coolers filled with unlimited drinks such as the normal soft drinks, Vitamin Water, etc....but then also some other stuff too like Naked Juice, Honest Tea, etc. And they basically have food/drinks available ALL OVER the campus. I don't know how I could stop eating/drinking if I worked there!

From Trip to California

They even have random arcade rooms and ping pong tables everywhere for you to take a break from all the "work" you're doing. Heck, when I met my friend he said he had just come from a dodgeball tournament! We even saw this one guy typing code while on a treadmill!

From Trip to California

Man, would I love to work at Google....*sigh*. There's probably a lot of coolness-factor to the job once you get it, but I bet all the free food, drinks, and games wear off on you after a while....you just get used to it I'm sure. Either way, it still seems like it would be a lot of fun to work there.

From Trip to California

All in all, a really good long weekend in the San Jose/San Francisco area. It would be nice to be able to enjoy that weather all the time in the future....maybe when I retire ;)