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New White Stripes

Holy Shit! Two posts in one day. Jesus christ how fucking drunk is this guy? No No No... i'm just bored as shit.

So i've been listening to the new White Stripes album, Icky Thump. I gotta say, it's pretty damn good. So first off you really should be a fan before you pick up this album.

If you don't own any of their other albums buy them first.

But here are top 3 favorite songs so far.

1.)Little Cream Soda
2.) Rag and Bone
3.) Icky Thump

Let me know what you think if you've heard the album. If you haven't heard it go out and buy their older shit... listen to it for 2 months and then go buy their new album!

We're Moving

Holy fuck it's been a long time since I last put something up here. And you know what... i seem to be tipsy everytime i do put something up here. So fuck you if you are going to bitch about my grammar.


So yeah as you might have guessed from the title we are moving. Shari and I decided that we wanted to move back to NC. It's been great living in Seattle, but damn I hate to admit it but NC is home.

I'm really excitted to get back there. I miss so much about it, and I'm sure I'll miss so much about Seattle. I think Seattle is a great vacation city, but i'm not sure it's a place where you would want to raise some kids. I guess I should make a top ten list of shit I'll miss about Seattle.

1.) BEER. My god it's fucking good out here.
2.) Music. Sure I didn't get to see all the shows I wanted, but man there is always something good playing.
3.) Being close to Portland. You know if i really had it my way thats where i would have ended up! Portland is the shit.
4.)Being close to Canada. Say what you will about Canadians, but when the shit goes down here in America thanks to dick head bush I wouldn't mind being closer to the border.
5.)Seattle Friends. I really have made some great friends here in Seattle. I tend to think of Seattleites as being M&M's but instead of a soft candy coating they have a titanium coating!
6.)Public Transportation. It's better than Raleighs at least.
7.) Food. Oh man there are some great restaurants here!
8.)The Mountains. This should actually be closer to 3 or 4. The mountains out here are beautiful, when you can see them.
9.)... hum drawing a blank here, obviously i enter 10 before 9.
10.)Plants... Yeah they are nice and greeeeen out here.

Twin Cities Hilarity

So i'm in Minneapolis training one of my clients, UMN. So I decided to head over to the restaurant adjacent to my hotel. It's called Grandma's. So anyway I' have a great meal, a decent beer and I'm getting ready to leave when these two teenagers are sat in the booth behind mine. So yeah it's valentines day and I'm stuck in fucking cold ass Minneapolis but seriously the conversation i'm going to relay to you really almost made not being in Seattle with Shari worthwhile. So here it is. I hope you enjoy it.



Boy : You're gonna love Brian

Girl : Oh, Brian so and so.

Boy: No, Brian such and such.

Boy: Yeah he's gay, But he knows that being gay is wrong and he's trying to change. Yeah I roomed with him last year. My mom was really pissed that I wanted to room with a gay guy. But if you were a homophobe and you met Brian you wouldn't be a homophobe anymore.... Are you a homophobe?



Boy: Yeah Janet Jackson is too muscular. Girls aren't supposed to have that much muscles, then they aren't girly anymore.



Boy: You know Britney Spears is really gross now. I heard she was a lesbian.

Girl: No she is Bi.

Boy: OH, Bi.



Now the girl is ordering after they just got finished talking about going to the gym.

Girl: Yeah i'll take a small chicken salad.



Girl: So we all went out the other night and I ate a ton of candy bars. Yeah all the fat went to the same place.

Boy: To your stomach.

Girl: Yeah.... to my stomach.



Boy: So who do you think is the cutest guy in such and such building.

Girl: Phelps.

Boy: Yeah there are alot of odd looking guys in this other building. If i were a girl I would say so and so was really cute.




So maybe these conversations aren't that funny to you. But jesus I stayed 30 minutes later after I had payed my bill just so I could listen to these two kids talk. Remember this is valentines day... so I'm kinda assuming that this guy was taking this girl out to dinner. I just couldn't help but laugh to myself at what these two kids were talking about.

Happy Holidays

This was our first holiday season away from our families. We decided to stay in the Pacific Northwest rather than paying the gouging airlines for tickets home. We had an enjoyable, happy holidays here, celebrating with great friends and their families.





The season kicked off with a lovely trip down to Portland for Thanksgiving. We spent several days with Andy, Jen and their cute pets Koby (hyper pup) and Vega (meow). Koby was smitten by Noah. See the cute pic of the two.











About 18 of us "transplants" who didn't go home for Thanksgiving got together at our friend Lorra's house to cook dinner. Noah made up a delish turkey, the showpiece and main event. It was tasty as usual (some thanks needs to go to our friend Alton Brown), whereas my pecan pies were a little sorry. Boo to runny, goopy pie filling.





Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we had a Mid-Holiday Feast at our house. The plan was to make up another feast on our own since we didn't bring any leftover turkey home with us the first time around. Noah did it up big again; however, a flood of biblical proportions dampened our dinner plans.





If you'll recall, Seattle experienced heavy, torrential rains at the end of November that flooded many areas of the city. Our street saw some pretty bad flooding. Noah was trying to help clean the storm drains on the street, and the water came up to his thighs. I'd never seen so much rain in my life! Noah carried me to our house because the water was somewhat high around the townhouses (and I didn't want to mess up my shoes). Luckily, the water never made it into our house, just a little bit in our garage. The rest of the houses toward the end of our street weren't so lucky. Their basements were flooded, and the tenants that lived in the lower levels had to move out. The street was pretty disgusting.





Back to the dinner: Some friends actually braved the floods to have some of Noah's turkey. Loren, Russ, Mike Verk and Tad came over and feasted with us. Great fun!





One of the highlights of the holiday season is my company's holiday party. Open bar, dancing, fun with people who actually like each other. Definitely not your typical office party. This was the third PN holiday party for us, and it was probably the best one to date. Noah busted some moves on the dance floor with me, I won an iPod Shuffle and Noah walked away with some peppermint bark. Here's a pic of us all dolled up.











We didn't get a Christmas tree this year, but instead decorated a lamp with lights. You get the same effect...okay, not really. But it's still cool.











Here's a pic of sneaky little Boris trying to peek into his presents from Noah's sister, Anna. I like the crazy lights.











This was a big Christmas for all of us. Noah got a Nintendo DS and a bowling ball. I got an assortment of scarves and cool socks, as well as season 2 of "The Office" and a bad ass rain jacket. The kitties got a sweet Pet Sport club house from Anna. They looove it.











We spent Christmas day with our friend Loren and his family in Bremerton. We took the ferry over and had a fun day with the Halls. We enjoyed delicious ham and watched a drawn out, but fun, gift exchange. We appreciated the Halls opening up their home to us as they did :)





Noah and I also had a mini holiday with Loren and Sarah. We took off to Leavenworth, a small Bavarian village in the Cascades. The village was absolutely beautiful; everything was covered in snow. We stayed at a lovely inn with a cute loft.





We went snowboarding one day. I didn't bust my ass too much getting off the lift, but I did have a rough day. I took one hard tumble, but what did me in was a snowboarder plowed right into me. I have a gnarly bruise on my right leg, and you could see where the edge of his board slid across my leg. Otherwise, it was a fine day. Noah got some good runs in and broke in his spiffy new jacket.





We spent a good day piddling around the village. Here are some photos of the village and our friends (Noah's the silly one with his hat pulled over his eyes). It was a cold, foggy day, so it's hard to see the huge mountains in the back.











We left to return to Seattle on New Year's Eve. As we packed the car, Noah spotted the coolest thing. There was a little barn owl sitting in the snow outside of our cabin. Check out the owl and see if you see something "different" about the photo.











Do you see the legs sticking out from beneath the owl? That little owl had just killed a bird for breakfast. It was amazing how an owl killed something that was its own size. You kind of felt bad for the owl though, because he couldn't go anywhere with its kill. The poor thing was probably starving and went for something big (it's eyes were definitely bigger than it's stomach). We watched the owl for a while as it tried to fly away with its breakfast. After a while, it only got so far as 10 feet from where we originally saw it. We didn't stay around to see what the owl did, but I hope it got out okay and filled its belly.





Well, that was Holiday 2006 with the Beckers. We hope you all had a memorable one and got everything you wished for. We wish you the best in the New Year and hope to see you soon!

Bad Luck

So I planned on visiting my friends down in Portland this weekend. We were planning on heading out to Rockaway beach. This would have been an awesome weekend. Well besides the fact that Shari wasn't going to be able to make it down. So I decided that I should take the train down to Portland. It's about a 3.5 hr - 4 hr trip. Not too expensive and no stress. Well I checked for tickets this morning and everything was all sold out. At this time I was a little bummed but decided to drive down to the train station and ask if they had anything free up. When I got down there I was able to get a ticket with out any problems. I was to leave for Portland at 11:20 and get into Portland at around 3. This was perfect cause Andy in Portland would be able to pick me up and we could head out to the beach around 4. Ah to think that as I'm writing this post now I could be leaving Portland heading for the beach. So anyway... the train leaves right on time. We start making our way down to Portland. Everything was pretty uneventful just until we got into Tacoma. Tacoma is about an hour or an hour and half drive from Seattle. So we stop just about a mile shy of the train station in Tacoma. The conductor or some other train offical comes over the intercom and states that a train in front of ours had a car derail. So we waited there for about an hour and a half until Amtrak decided that we would turn around and head back to Seattle and then have busses waiting for us to take us onto whatever the destinations were. The hell if I was going to take the bus down to Portland. I wouldn't get in until late in the evening and I'm not sure if I would have had a ride out to the beach until Saturday. So I decided to just get a refund and come back home. I'm still not sure if I'll be able to head down there this weekend or not. We'll just have to see how my bad luck plays out.

Patio Project Part II

So I finally got the pavers that I ordered from Mutual Materials. I ordered like 700 pavers! So here is a picture of the patio portion completed.







Here is a picture of the left side of the patio.




And finally here is a picture of the walkway which is to be finished next.








I miscalculated the amount of sand I needed to finish the project so now I have to go get some more sand before I can complete the walkway. So far it's looking great. Once I have all the walkway pavers down I'll just need to sweep sand into all the joints and fill in the space around the pavers.

Photoshop Edit

As per Eddies request I have photoshopped the devil revealed picture. Please check the comment on the Devil Revealed post to ensure I'm not lying.

The Real Devil

I prefer this picture. I think it shows Eddies true side.