Sounders vs. Houston Dynamo

I thought we weren't going to be able to go to a Sounders game this season.  Between moving, unpacking, going through our stuff, game nights, holidays, birthdays and both being on probation at work, it was tough to plan time for a game.  We watched them on TV when we had the chance but we pretty much wrote off actually going to a game since it was so late in the season. 

I saw Shauna post on Facebook that she had some Sounders tickets for free if anyone wanted them.  The only problem was that the game was on Wednesday.  It is so hard for me to get up in the morning as it is let alone getting home late and getting up early the next day.  Ben had Wednesday off so we could just head up to Seattle when I was done from work.  We picked up the tickets on Saturday when we headed out for international earthcache day out by Eatonville.

I went to work on Wednesday and Ben decided to go help Walt and Wendy with the haunted house in Puyallup.  He said to meet him there after work.  I worked my normal hours but stayed after to have lunch with Suzanne.  I had all of my stuff with me already so I didn't have to go home.  I stopped at the bank to get money for parking.  I did end up stopping at the Hawks Prairie Bust Buy to see if they had my CD I was looking for.  They didn't but I did have the clerk look up the album to see if any other Best Buy had any copies.  The one in Puyallup did and I was driving past it.  I thanked him for looking it up for me and headed to the freeway.

Traffic wasn't terrible which was nice.  I got to Puyallup in less than an hour and made my way to the Best Buy.  I found the CD section and there it was!  My copy of Yellowcard's last album!  Eeeeee!  I paid for it, chatted with the check out people and headed to Walt and Wendy's house. 

When I got there the house painters were working on the front of the house.  I found out that these people weren't licensed and they were doing a very crappy job.  Then the guy complained that his paint gun wasn't working and that he couldn't finish the job.  Wendy told them they better finish the job today or she isn't going to pay them.  She waited months for them to come out and paint and they were going to bail.  It's a longer story but this was the short version.  She plans on reporting them.

We hung out for about an hour and decided to leave around 4.  We watched Ellen until then.  I left my car in the street and drove Ben's car to Seattle.  Traffic still wasn't that bad.  We parked at the same lot we usually park in.  This time parking was $15 instead of $40.  I paid for parking.  We made the trek to the west side of the stadium and headed towards Pyramid.  We were suppose to meet Devon and his daughter for dinner but they got a late start and ended up eating on the way up. 

We ordered some beers and food.  I had the pulled pork and Ben got a burger. 

Then we headed into the stadium and ran into one of Ben's friends from the ECS.  We chatted with him for a while.  They showed us some of the freebees that were being given out.  We walked into the team shop and looked around for a bit and made our way over to the free area.  We got some player head cut outs and Ben got a free 76 scarf.  We both spun the wheel and got a power pack and sunglasses.  I was sad that I didn't get a free Sounders beanie because we weren't at the right gate when we got in.

We made our way to our seats.  Ben wasn't thrilled with our seats and I had to remind him that they were free.  I know he would rather sit with the ECS on the south side of the stadium.  We will have to get tickets next season for that section.  The view really wasn't that bad but Ben wanted to dance, chant and pogo.

We had several chances to score a goal.  We just needed one goal to clinch a playoff spot.  Houston wasn't all that great so we had a good chance to beat them.  We had at least 15 corner kicks and several free kicks.  I have no idea why none of them went into the goal.  We kept them scoreless as well.  It was quite a boring soccer game.

After the game we wandered over to the ECS area and met up with Devon and the rest of the people.  We got a picture taken with the group and then followed everyone outside chatting as we went.  I reminded Ben that we had to go home as soon as we could because we still had to make a detour to get the Escape in Puyallup.  Ugh.  We were going to go to bed late.  I decided against taking a shower and just going to bed when we got home.  We got home around 11:30 and I got ready for bed as soon as I could and just as I guessed, we went to bed around midnight.  Tomorrow was going to suck!

Next Adventure:  "Epic" Wind Storm, Clothes Drive and Brandon and Victoria's Wedding

International Earthcache Day: Lake Kapowsin, La Grande and Eatonville

I wanted to go get some of the Rainier100 caches and an earthcache for international earthcache day.  I am so glad I decided to save the earthcache out by Lake Kapowsin so I had one close by to do.  Earthcaches aren't that plentiful in my area around Olympia.  There were maybe four in the immediate surroundings but other than that you had to drive a ways to get one.  Lately they have been popping up around Mount Rainier because of the geotour.

The other day my friend Shauna offered some Sounders tickets on Facebook for the first come first served.  I saw it immediately and asked Ben if he wanted to go.  He said sure.  I hopped on it fast.  She called me a little while later to arrange a pick up date.  I told her we would be in the area tomorrow and we can just stop by.  She said she would be at work but she can put them in the UPS/FedEx box.  I told her that would be fine. 

We got up somewhat early and got ready to go.  We had some cereal and I decided on a route for the day.  We would be getting at least five of the Rainier100 caches and one that wasn't part of the series.  We stopped by Shauna's and picked up the tickets.  We waved to her mom and BJ as we drove by.  I also needed to stop by grandma's house to feed her cats.

From there we were on our way to Rainier100 4:  Lake Kapowsin (GC6QWMP) for our souvenir and another code to our passports.  When we got there, I told Ben about the last time I was here.  I was with Bob and Bev and we brought our rafts to paddle over to the island to get that cache.  And of course the one up by the gate in the parking lot.  That was a few years ago now.  There were some people fishing off the dock and we tried hurrying so we wouldn't disturb them or have them ask what we were doing.  I really didn't want to talk to anyone today because we had a mission we had to get done before it rained or got dark.  The cache had us ponder why the lake was relatively new.  It celebrated its 500th birthday back in 2002.  We had to find traces of evidence on why that was true.  We also had to determine what kind of flow from the mountain created the lake and if there were pieces of a certain kind of rock left behind.  We sealed our answers with a picture of us and the lake.  We were probably there for maybe 10 minutes.

When we got home that evening after our adventure I logged our finds and I was congratulated for finding an earthcache!  Wooo!

I had Ben find some along the way to Eatonville because we were right here and he hadn't found these ones yet.  He ended up with 16 total finds this afternoon.  Here is Ben at Moooooo! (GC5J8N5).  He was so excited.

We got closer to Eatonville and found a few for Ben and then he decided he wanted some coffee.  I told him about this little bakery/coffee place in Eatonville that Shauna talks about.  He said let's go try it out.  We rolled up to the Cottage Café and Bakery just off of the main road near the high school when you first get into town.  We went in and there were a lot of delicious items to choose from.  I was really eyeballing that doughnut with sprinkles.  Ben got the snickerdoodle flavored coffee and a layered chocolate treat and I gave in and got the doughnut.  I was telling the girls who were working there, we stopped by here because I have a friend who is a cop in town that told me a while back that this place was good.  They both go, Oh Shauna?  I said yeah.  Small world or that she comes in very often.  Haha.  P.S. the doughnut was very tasty.

We grabbed a few more caches in town so Ben could get them.  The next geotour cache on my list was Rainier100 4:  The Eatonville Rock Festival (GC6R768).  A few months back I think my mom, dad and I walked out to where the field is they talked about on this cache page while we were seeing the Mashel River waterfalls in July.  It makes me giggle that Eatonville had its version of Woodstock.  To Ben and I's disappointment this was the first geotour cache that was hidden very poorly.  I know once you get to the area and see there really isn't a spot to hide it but it was a guardrail cache.

It still wasn't raining and we were heading out towards Alder to get onto Hwy 7.  I asked Ben if he remembers trying to find Tom's Cache (GCMRB6) two Junes ago with mom, the island one?  He said yeah.  Well we haven't found it yet and we are driving right past it.  Do you wanna get it?  He said sure.  When we got to the junction, I noticed the area was still dry and walkable.

During parts of the year it is covered in water and you have to access the cache via boat.  We didn't need a boat today.  This blasted cache has been on my list for years.  The gate was closed due to it being close to the winter season so we parked outside and walked in.  We followed the trail down to the "swimming" area and along the high spot to the island.  We noticed a lot of animal tracks in the dry mud.  We got to the island and started looking.  Last time we didn't go far enough into the brush.

I followed by phone's GPS and it took me almost to the other side of the island and I was still 40 feet off.  It could be anywhere with the coords bouncing all over the place.  No wonder we had such a hard time last time.  There were lots of sticker bushes and really sad looking trees.  I wandered off while Ben did some searching of his own.  A few minutes later I heard "FOUND IT!"  I thought to myself, YESSSS! It's been finally found!  I headed off to his direction and there it was.  The stupid container we couldn't find the last time we were here.  Glad to have this one off the list!

I stopped a few more times to let Ben get some of the caches I have gotten over the years.  I didn't realize there were this many along this road.  We were on our way to Rainier100 4:  Power to the People (GC6Q02T). I actually thought this cache was more near LaGrande by the power boxes.  Nope, it was at a pullout off of Hwy 7 at a scenic viewpoint of the dam.  It was really foggy and you could barely make out the dam.  The cache was down below next to an old stump.  This hide was also kinda lame but at least it wasn't a guard rail like we originally thought when we stopped.

The last one, Rainier100 4:  La Grande (GC6P68G), on the list was in the small town of, yeah you guessed it, La Grande, Wash.  The only memorable spot here was the old post office that was built in 1910.  I was kinda sad it wasn't located at the post office but about 100 feet away near some brush in a flower bed.  Oh well.  It still brought us to a cool location.

Ben picked up a few more as we followed Hwy 7 to the 702 junction to McKenna.  We decided to stop at the store to pick up a few things on the way home.  We were going to make home made bbq pulled chicken.  We got home and started making dinner.  We had beans with it as we watched Sunday night football with the Packers vs. the Giants.  Packers won.  We were sad that the Seahawks were on a bye but it meant that we got to have an adventure outside of the house today.  I am going to try and get a few more of the geotour before the weather really sets in.

Next Adventure:  Sounders vs. Houston Dynamo

Weekend of Fun: Karaoke, Crafting and a Mariner's Game

September 30th

Friday was a long long day.  I had been working full days for a week now.  One of the girls I work with had surgery and was on light duty for two weeks.  So I was working 6 to 2:30 and she was working 7-11.  I definitely loved getting more money especially with the holidays coming up soon.

I had stopped by Human Resources the day before to talk to Linda and she was in with Melanie talking about work stuff.  I felt weird interrupting but I had a question and they were fine with me coming in.  Melanie suggested that we are due for another karaoke night.  Then she added that Linda won't be going to Issaquah this next weekend and that we should do it this Friday!  Sure, I'm in!  We were going to meet at Nickleby's in Tumwater at 8:30.

Work on Friday was a nightmare.  So many people were gone and there was a lot of work to do between five people.  We should have had the bills people come down and knock out the 69's.  I had three floor runs, two in the morning and one in the afternoon, that floor run was the first floor and it takes the entire half hour.  I have never picked up so much mail ever and I've been in the mailroom for almost six months.  I leave at 2:30 so I basically had to abandon my cart for someone else to put everything away.  I hate doing that but it's the policy, we can not work past our scheduled eight hours.

I left and headed to the Starbucks near the Fred Meyer to meet up with Nichole, the relay for life person in charge, to talk about the social media coordinator position.  We talked for about a hour and a half.  I wrote down as much information as I could since I was brand new at the leadership positions.  For the past three years all I did was do fundraisers with my mom and during the day of the event walk around the track as much as I could.  She thanked me for stepping up do to it because she didn't have enough time anymore to do it.

I went home and grabbed the recycle and headed over towards home to meet up with mom and her recycle. I stayed for a little bit talking about work and stuff.  I told her I had to go and meet up with Ben before I went to karaoke with my co-workers.  I got home, chilled for a few minutes, ate a sandwich and Ben ended up deciding not to go.  It was cool.  He had some stuff he had to do and wanted a chill night in.  Around 8ish I headed to Tumwater for the second time today.

I met Laura out in the parking lot.  Melanie came soon after and Linda and Tim were late...they had been at the Red Wind casino.  Melanie ordered us drinks, vodka cranberries.  I had at least 4 of these before it was time to head home.  I even had a shot that tasted like Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies.  Tim had ordered at least three rounds of appetizer's, chicken strips, onion rings, mozzarella sticks etc.  I spend most of the time talking to Laura and Linda.  We spend a lot of  time laughing...to the point where my face hurt.  Linda and Tim danced, Melanie sang at least 10 songs and somehow they got me to sing a song, Another One Bites the Dust by Queen.  I had a great time.  I left around midnight because I couldn't stand the smoke anymore.  The left the door open and it wafted into the building.

I got home, took a shower, got ready for bed and passed out.  I was so tired.

October 1st

The next day I got up around 9:15 to go meet Suzanne at the Hawks Prairie Restaurant for breakfast and then to do crafts afterwards.  Ben went over to Wendy's house to start working on the haunted house.  I was still really tired.  I wore sweatpants, lol.  There were a lot of people but we didn't have to wait that long.  We talked about work stuff, crafts and other random things that came up in conversation.  She had the biscuits and gravy and I had eggs, hash browns, sausage and toast.  We paid for our meals and then headed over to her house. 

I had two scrapbook pages I wanted to get done.  I only got one done but I did get to learn how to make cards.  One was the scraps of some she was making and another was created around my pumpkin stickers.  When they were done I was pretty stoked.

We went to Office Max to price out a paper cutter.  They were going for about $30.  I will ask for one for my birthday or Christmas.  Then we went over to Panara Bread because she was hungry again.  I asked her, how are you still hungry?  We had a giant breakfast.  She was.  She got half a sandwich, mac and cheese and a cookie.  We went back to the house and preceded to finish up the rest of our paper crafts we were working on. 

I headed home shortly after and got home around 7ish.  Just in time for the Cougar game against the Ducks.  We dominated the entire game.  Ben was home and I worked on the rest of my page while we watched the game.  The Cougs beat the Ducks for the second straight year, 51-33.

I was tired, took a shower, got my stuff ready for tomorrow and headed to bed.  I had to get up the next day before nine to go with mom to the Mariner game.

October 2nd

The alarm went off and I really didn't want to get up.  Mom received Mariner tickets from Dr. Smith on Friday afternoon for any of the games during the weekend.  I chose to go on Sunday because Friday was too short of notice and I was busy on Saturday.  I said wouldn't it be cool if we went on the night where they clinched the wildcard spot?  Well they would have had to win on Saturday night to stay alive...they didn't.  So going to the Sunday game probably wasn't worth it and we had to miss the Seahawks game.

I had mom meet me at my house and we took my car up to Seattle.  It really didn't take us long to get there.  We talked about some stuff and listened to the Seahawks game.  We took a couple of detours trying to find a place to take a picture of the SODO sign.  We eventually figured out how to do it but we decided to save it for another day.  We would have to park the car and walk to it.  We parked where we always did, 6th and Massachusetts, near the Metro bus depot.  We hid all of our valuables and grabbed the things we might need at the game.  We walked the three blocks and around the pedestrian bridge to the stadium. We entered through the centerfield gate and saw they were giving out Moose posters and piggy banks.  I wanted one but they were for kids 14 and younger.  I saw someone give an older lady one.  That wasn't fair.  Mom tried to talk the person giving them away into giving her one.  They told her sorry.

We wandered around the stadium trying to figure out what we wanted for lunch.  I suggested Ivar's because that is what we always get when we come here.  I have Ivar's maybe twice a year if that.  Usually it's at Mariner games when I get to go.  Mom bought lunch because I drove.  I bought us drinks before we went to our seats.   Our seats were fantastic!  I've never sat that close to the field before.   We were on the left field line in prime foul ball territory.  Yes, I brought my mitt. 

We ate our food and watched the pregame activities.  There was a mascot race, the first pitch and the national anthem.  Because the Mariners didn't win the night before, they played a lot of guys I never heard of.  They played really flat compared to the rest of the week because it didn't matter any more.  They were eliminated from the playoffs.  It was sad.  I kept checking my phone to see if the Seahawks won or not.  They did 27-17.  During the 9th inning Segar hit a foul ball that came directly toward us.  It was a grounder that was hit hard.  It skipped up and went into the crowd.  The effing little girl in front of me got the ball.  I had no chance to get it since it didn't come up another row.  If it would have you can bet your ass I would have been on that ball like a fat kid on a cupcake.  I was so distraught!  I've never gotten a foul ball ever and I've been coming to the games since 1995!  Ughhhh!

We lost 3-2.  I guess we will have to wait until next year for another chance at the playoffs. 

We walked back to the Escape and headed onto the freeway.  I wanted to stop in Federal Way at the Dick's sporting goods store to see if they had any lime green long sleeved shirts.  It surprised me that they didn't with all the lime green Seahawks stuff.  We walked down to the Target to see if they might have something.  They didn't as well.  It was so frustrating! 

Mom wanted some ice cream so we plugged in the nearest Dairy Queen into the Nuvi.  She took to one that didn't exist so we had to turn around and head to the one that I knew about near Slur's house past the King County Aquatic Center.  We both got blizzards.  They were delicious!

We got home and mom hung out for a bit and then went home.  Everyone had some stuff to do before work started on Monday.  We watched Sunday night football and did chores.  I got some clothes washed and the dishes done.  We relaxed, took showers and headed to bed.  It was going to be a very busy week.

Next Adventure:  International Earthcache Day:  Lake Kapowsin, La Grande and Eatonville