Happy Thanksgiving all! A lot to be thankful for this year. I'm sitting at the kitchen table enjoying the sunrise as it strikes the olympic mountains out my window. That’s one thing i'm thankful for - living in the NW! I'm getting paid for not being at work today - that’s another. My car is clean - man, i got a million of 'em!

I'm up early today to take John to the airport, plus i needed to make a couple pies and clean the place up a bit, since i'm hosting a small turkey day gathering here in a few hours. Figured as long as i'm waiting for the oven to heat up, and since i needed to take a break for breakfast, i'd say hi to everyone. Had lunch with Gabe and his mom yesterday - thanx again for lunch Mrs. B! - and had a great time. Should be able to get in some more time with Gabe before he heads back to frigid bozeman sunday. Talked to Danielle yesterday, too, as she was driving across montana, headed home. Hopefully next time she decides to drive 200 miles, she'll remember her wallet… ;) And Lindsay and i are going shopping downtown saturday - we started the downtown Christmas shopping tradition last year in chicago, this year Seattle’s our target - and this year we're dragging along her husband Adam to see if we can drive him completely crazy.

Well, Steph’s going to be here in 2 hours to start mashing potatoes, and i need to get this pumpkin pie in the oven. And i need to take a shower. And vacuum. So i should probably get to it. But at least the Christmas lights are already up! Have a great day everyone! Be thankful for someone today!

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Just a quick update to let you know that Van City was awesome, Importfest was sweet, had a blast with the guys, took a bunch of pix. Everything from historic Gastown to denny’s at 3am to waiting in line at the border crossing… overall, a sweet deal. And as an added bonus, i finally got the hoodie sweatshirt i ordered from NorthwestNissans like two months ago, and it’s super cool. Vince gave me a great tour of the show and introduced me to half of Vancouver, and we even ran into Forrest in a totally freak timing thing on I-5 north as he was headed to his dad’s. Random! All in all, a great time. Van City roadtrip rating: thumbs up!

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Another week gone by and me without a post! I'm terrible… That’s not all i'm terrible at, either - i forgot to buy a lotto ticket again this week. Guess i need an investing strategy that’s more automatic…

So it’s saturday morning, and i'm lying on the couch listening to Christmas music and surfing the web. The coffee’s brewing, and as soon as it’s done and i've had a cup or two, i'll have the energy to get off the couch and start packing to drive to canada for the weekend. Headed up there for a regional car show, in which a few of my friends are entered. That, and to party and hang out in vancouver! I really am excited for the trip, but i just haven't had my coffee yet so i'm not real jacked about packing… or about getting off the couch…

Had a good long chat with Robin last night, we're both kind of all over the place lately, but we're going to try and cross paths more often. While i'm driving to canada today, she’s driving to portland - kind of symbolic, huh? But she’s been a great friend, and i'm not about to lose track of her over something as silly as scheduling. Plus i already have her Christmas gift… :D

Well, coffee’s done perc'ing, so i guess i better go have breakfast and start packing. I'll take as many pix as possible of my international adventure for all you domestic types - although i'm thinking most of the digicam’s memory will be filled with pix of cars. ;) Regardless, i'll let you all know how the trip goes when i get back on sunday!

In career news, i've officially given up on the bellevue club and their disorganized hiring process. The person who interviewed me is now on pregnancy leave, and no one knows who’s doing her job while she’s gone, and i pretty much seem to have fallen thru the cracks. Not a big deal, there are plenty of part time jobs out there. This one was just easy cause i already knew what the deal was. So now i'm waiting until after new years, enjoying my holidays (in a very low-budget way) and will look for something else come the first of the year. So now i get a vacation for a month or so! Kinda disturbing, that i think of working 50 hours a week as “having a vacation"…

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I am officially a Seattleite now - i have become dependent on coffee. It’s not the alarm clock that wakes me up in the morning, nor is it the sun coming thru the blinds. It’s not the bedroom light or the sounds of my neighbors, or even the bus outside my window. It’s the sound of the percolating and the smell of the brew when my coffee pot kicks in on a timer that truly gets me out of bed in the morning. And usually it takes at least half of what’s in that pot just to get me into the shower…

Had a nice weekend, despite a somewhat dreary weather forecast. Hmm, i think that’s not the last time i'll say that before may. Anyway, had a good time out for Annie’s bday saturday nite, and an enjoyable dinner with Lindsay and Adam on friday (can't go wrong with chinese food and dairy queen :). Speaking of them, i added a link under the “features" tab directing you to my friends' sites, so go poke around in there and cruise the neighborhood. Given a few days, i'm sure Annie will have a run-down on her 25th birthday experience posted, so be sure to look for that. Breakfast with Jason and Julia down on Alki sunday morning was a great way to start the day, and then off to a Nissan meet sunday in redmond - always a wild time, especially when 35 of us show up together at a pizza place (each in our own cars, of course). I took a few pix that aren't up yet, but once i get a chance, they'll be at maxima.schuss.net. I really need to win that lottery, cause there’s so much stuff i want to do to my car, but alas, i forgot to buy a ticket friday. But there’s always this week!

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I'm surprised i can actually still type today, although it is getting better since yesterday. What with all the bruises and scratches, and several bandaids, i keep missing keys or hitting two, which can be pretty difficult in my profession. Thankfully, most of my coworkers are one-finger typers, so i'm still doing ok at work, even with my battered digits. What exactly have i been doing? Well, although it feels like i slammed my hands in a car door, i actually spent wednesday night helping Patrick finish his leather seat install. He had the rear bench done; i helped with the front seats and the headrests. It involved a great deal of hogrings, pliers, and sharp edges. Those seats were wicked! They look super cool, tho, and for the extra cost of a pro install… well, i'm not sure if either of us would do it ourselves again, now that we know how much work it was! Someday i might do that myself, when i have the $$, but there’s a lot of other things i'd like to do more (like get a recalibration of the transmission valve body - man, oh, man, do i wanna do that!).

I'm sitting up late watching blind date. I can't decide if it’s encouraging, because of the really pitiful people that still manage to find someone… or wait, if they can do it, but i'm single… or is it depressing, that the people on blind date are doing better than me… on the other hand, on my current budget a dinner date would have to involve maruchan noodles… so not sure if it matters that i have no social life, cause i can't really afford to have one. Just another thing on the list of stuff i can't afford. Ugh. Only like 40 days until Christmas. Tomorrow’s payday, but i spent it last month, so i guess i'm not going to start shopping just yet. And by shopping, i mean collecting condiment packets from fast food restaurants. :) Hope that was on your Christmas list…

In site news, you might notice the news page loads a bit faster. that’s cause it’s not loading a whole year at a time anymore. :) I've moved the news into the mysql database with the quotes and the music list (databases are neat!), so now i can filter it to just the most recent few. Don't worry, it’s all still there, and you can browse away to your little heart’s content with the navigation links at the bottom. Hope that works better for ya.

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Boy, that last post was a little loopy, wasn't it? I was smoking something cheap that day… Actually, i suppose it was the nitrous wearing off. The kind you breathe, that is, not the kind you have a tank of in the car. :)

Had a great weekend, spend saturday working on my car with Jason, Patrick, Forrest and John down at Jason’s parents' house in northern oregon. Okay, it’s just the extreme south end of puyallup, but still pretty far down there. I didn't have a lot of work to do on my car, since i don't have a lot of extra parts money right now (okay, none. zip. zero. zilch.) so i just painted some brackets, and rewired some lights, and misc stuff like that. I kinda ran around and watched Patrick and John paint their brake calipers, but mostly just carried tools around and cracked jokes. Go with what you're good at, right? Oh, and i finally figured out how to get to my other three spark plugs :) (thanks, Jason!) and pulled them, and they look just as ok as the first 3. Which is good, cause that means my engine is ok, too. To match my more-than-ok new rear bumper, which looks great! And the guy even finally broke down and actually paid for the repair, since his son was at fault and everything, i didn't think that was such an incredible demand. Long story short, it’s fixed, i'm happy, and it didn't cost me a dime. And Cameron at sonic collision is a hero on the scale of Spiderman. Okay, maybe not Spiderman (cause i think Cameron still has to walk to get places) but at least maybe the Green Lantern. Um, yeah. So anyway, finishing out the weekend… sunday Patrick and i cruised the seattle auto show downtown, drooling over all the beautiful new four-wheeled things and laughing at some of the really hideous ones (like the pt cruiser with woodgrain panels - augh!). Btw, if you've been looking for car pics in the photos section and can't find them, it’s cause i moved them. Yes, just to confuse you (bwah ha ha ha!). Check out http://maxima.schuss.net for any maxima-related stuff. For now, it’s just a separate photo gallery, but eventually i'll get a full-blown maxima site up there. I already have the soundtrack picked out, but that’s about as far as i've gotten on the design work… :D It is still linked off the site, but look under “features" for the link.

Oh, and this is the 5th week in a row that i haven't won the mega millions lottery, although i did fail to purchase a ticket one of those weeks. So far, my investment strategy isn't paying off. But i do get a fleeting moment of hope every week when i get that text message on my phone with the winning numbers in it. Cause one of these times, it could be me. And that brief ray of hope, no matter how ridiculous it may be, is worth the buck.

Just a quick late-nite update. I finished uploading the photos of the car show. They're ready for your viewing pleasure. I was kind of goofy when i wrote some of the captions…

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Just sitting here enjoying the view of I-90 and the fall foilage in south bellevue from my 4th floor office, while sipping water thru a straw, a process made possible by pinching my lips around the straw with my fingers. Yes, that’s right, i went to the dentist this morning. And now i've got a rubber face and a tendency to drool down my right cheek. Could i be more sexy?

It’s odd the things that cross your mind - and even stranger the parts of that you remember - when you're doped up on nitrous oxide, lying flat on your back. I had so many interesting things i wanted to jot down while i was drifting in and out of dreamland this morning, so many remarkably profound thoughts and grand new epiphanies. Sadly, all i truly remember now that i've crossed back thru the mirror and left wonderland, is just that; i thought of some neat things and wished i could write them down. Don't know what they were, just know i wanted to remember them. Kind of like tying a string around your finger so you won't forget something, and then forgetting what the string was supposed to remind you of. I've actually done that - not with a string, per-se. But i've set something out for myself, usually in a half-awake stupor: “i'll leave this pen on top of the alarm clock, so i remember to turn the oven off." And then the next morning, i'm like “why is there a pen balanced so oddly on my alarm clock? Oh! I was supposed to remember to do something. What was is supposed to do? Huh. Oh, well." Or something like that. Anyway, i guess you're just going to have to do without my mush-faced musings today, as i can't seem to remember anything provocative or witty or even an amusing anecdote. And why is there a pen balanced so oddly on my computer keyboard???

In other news, the Max is finally in the shop today (after several annoying delays), and i have my dark green maxima loaner. I should have my car back by thursday, friday at the latest, with a shiny new rear bumper. So no more parallel parking downtown… and i'm still not officially an employee at the bellevue club, but i hear thru the grapevine that they're figuring they're staffing out and will hopefully get back to me this week. In the meantime, i'm having ramen for lunch. What do you think - beef flavor today? That should be nice thru a straw…

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