Wow... Wind and rain galore

Just got in from an interesting ride home due to the strong wind and hard rain in Seattle (check out the rolling incident report.)  I decided to leave the gym early for a few reasons, but one was they were planning to close the 520 bridge due to high winds.  On my way home I found out that the arboretum I usually drive through was flooded: Cars were abandoned, and it looked like a lake.  I went around the arboretum, and soon after was detoured around a recent accident where a huge tree had fallen onto a van in the middle of the road.  As I detoured around that accident I had to take a third detour when a set of busses sat abandoned in my way.  It was pretty strange.  You can watch the Komo 4 Video, or the Kiro 7 coverage for more info.

Apparently the winds are supposed to get a bit worse before they get better.  I've been hearing sirens fairly consistently, so it sounds like the police are working overtime tonight.

A win and a loss, bodies and scrolls

I play in a few weekly volleyball leagues: One in Kirkland on Wednesdays, and one at Ingrahm High on Sundays.  Since we're nearing the end of the year we had our end of league tournaments for both leagues this week.

We won the Kirkland league.  Since we were ranked top in the league we were expected to win, but the team really played well together - better than usual.  The team we played in the finals was much better than us technically in my opinion, and we managed to power through and take the win from them in straight sets.

On the other hand, we lost the Ingrahm league.  Not only did we lose, but we didn't come close.  We won this league three seasons in a row, but this time we lost our first game which was very unexpected.  Since we were ranked third in the league we played the thirteenth ranked team which should have been a cakewalk, but everything went wrong, and we fell apart somehow.  Ah well.

Tis the time of year for holiday parties, and we managed to make it out to one last night.  A friend of ours from Waterloo recently accepted a job at Amazon, so he moved to Seattle, and invited us over for his housewarming/Christmas party.  The food and wine were amazing, and the company was pretty good too :)  We had 5 people there from my graduating class which is pretty impressive since our class was only 70 to start with. 

And, I spent a few days going to exhibits. 

The first was the controversial bodies exhibit in which new preservation techniques have been used to display real dead people including the body's nerves, arteries, and musculature.  I have to say, that although it was worth the price of admission, by the time I was done I really didn't want to see anymore bodies.

The second (and less controversial) exhibit we saw was The Dead Sea Scrolls.  I was hoping the exhibit would focus somewhat on the new knowledge found within the dead sea scrolls (you know, what we actually learned that we didn't already know)...  But instead it focused a lot on the discovery, preservation, and display of the scrolls as well as what was going on at the time.  Which is fine too, but I'd already seen the discovery channel's specials on them :)  With that, and given I can't read Hebrew, there's only so much you can get from looking at them.  On the other hand, I did enjoy reading the translations from the texts on display, and it was impressive to see how well preserved the psalms scroll was in particular.  Of course the end of the exhibit throws you out at the gift shop where you can buy everything from a dead sea scrolls baseball cap, to scroll Christmas ornaments.  Gift shops always remind you that it's all about the money, so it ruins the mood a bit.

Next weekend I'm heading up to Vancouver for a few more Xmas parties, and hopefully some more snow in the mountains. 

Until next time, have fun!