Dahlin Family

Yesterday I turned 33 years old.  Ooofda, I am getting up there.  I had a great birthday.  Alison and I met up with Newman and Mollie at the Veranda Lounge for a drink then headed to Holly Ball.

This was our first time going to the Holly Ball.  I really didn’t know what to expect.  All I knew was this was the towns event of the year and I bought a 3 piece suit for it.  Alison also bought a beautiful dress for it.  We had tickets for the appetizers and dance portion of the event.  From what I hear the dinner is pretty amazing, but we weren’t up for spending that much. We showed up at about 8:00.  It seemed many people were leaving when we were getting there apparently only there for the dinner.

We checked the coats in and headed into the event.  I was pretty hungry since I hadn’t ate any dinner.  From what I heard there appis were awesome and enough there to make a meal out of it.  We went in bought a drink and found some food.  They had a very small slice of prime rib you could get, bread, shrimp, and then they had a veggie/potato martini bar.  I came to found out you were suppose to get your veggies or potatoes in a martini glass.  I was given a bit of an odd look when I told them to just throw them on my plate with the prime rib and bread.  Whoops.  

The civic center was really decorated nicely.  You would have never guessed you were at the civic center.  It must have taken them a long time to do all the decorating.

I felt a bit out of my element at first, but it got better.  We ran into a few friends and Alison ran into some colleagues of hers.  Newman and Mollie then showed up.  I like it better when we had another couple to hang out with.  We socialized and ate for quite a while. 

One thing I like was they had two bands so when one wasn’t playing the other one was.  There was never a break in the music which I thought was great.  Both bands were really great.  Later in the evening we migrated to the dance floor to have a little fun.  Great music and good times on the dance floor made for a great end of the night.  They ended up playing until about 12:30.

It was a great night with fun to be had by all that attended.  Alison and I hope to go back next year.

Congrats to Newman and Mollie.  He popped the question last night and she said YES. Stretch made sure to raise a toast in honor of them at the end of the night.

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I ran the Jingle Bell 5k for the first time a couple weeks back.  The weather was great, about 50 degrees.  I didn’t train much for this run, not that I really ever do for any runs though.  Finished with a time of about 27mins 19seconds.  I didn’t break any records but it was fun.  The breakfast at Jimmy’s afterwards was a good time too. I think this will be an annual run here on out.

I’ve had a Zune Pass for about 4 months now and I can say I absolutely love it. 

For $14.99 a month I get access to basically any music I want to hear.  I think I have ran into maybe 3 artists where I couldn’t get their music, but 95% of everything I’ve wanted I could get.

Not only do they have a massive library to choose from but I find it nice because I can subscribe to my podcasts using it and it manages them for me and keeps them in synch with my Zune.

Another great feature Alison just showed me where “Channels”.  Just so happens two of my favorite radio stations, KROQ and KEXP, have Channels.  They’re basically a playlist that the radio station updates weekly.

I also like that they don’t auto charge my credit card.  So if I do want to take a month off I don’t have to pay for it.  Thought I’ve renewed every month so far.

On top of access to all the great music you get to keep 10 songs every month for your own collection that you own.  That is pretty much a CD a month.  SO in the end I am buying one CD a month and getting all the other music for free.  Such a sweet deal.

If you have a Zune I highly recommend getting a Zune Pass.

I’ve started a Pic of the Day photo set on Flickr if you’re interested. I did pretty good the first month, most of the days have a pic. We’ll see how long I can keep it up, but I think it works as a quick way to document her firsts too.

Here’s the rss feed url if you want to subscribe: http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photoset.gne?set=72157620971212655&nsid=35628723@N00&lang=en-us

Sabrina finished finished her first class tonight.   We’ve been going to a Early Childhood Development course with her for the past 5 weeks.  It really was fun to go.  There were 3 other classmates she was with and the instructor.  We basically just learned about things we should be working on with Sabrina and tips on how to do stuff like how to get Sabrina to start eating on her own.

It was nice to hear all the other parents talk about their kids and what they were experiencing. All her classmates were older so we knew what to expect with Sabrina after talking to them.  Most of the time Sabrina ended up doing exactly what her classmates were doing.  We said she was picking up bad habits at class.

The class was nice though and we hope to go again in the fall.