No Snivelling

Arrived in New York City today, and Danders quickly had me out for $2 McSorley's Ales and one of the best burgers in my life, at the Corner Bistro in the West Village. For a non New Yorker, it was great to experience life away from downtown skyscraper-ville; golly gee, if there are more places like this in New York, I might have to change my opinion of the town :-)

Today, we took advantage of a wonderful Christmas present we received this year -- a gift certificate for massages and dinner at Salish Lodge, near Snoqualmie Falls. I always forget how close Snoqualmie Falls really is... maybe took us 35-40 minutes to get there, and the day was fantastic (hot, even!). We had 'River Rock' massages, with both of us in the same room, and then enjoyed a dip in the whirlpool before changing for dinner.

Now, for the review. I want to be careful here, because the gift was a fantastic idea. But, to be honest, I wasn't very impressed with Salish Lodge. It has all the potential in the world, but for a premiere locatioon (as it bills itself), they really dropped the ball in many of the little things. At dinner, our wine came out too warm. Then, the room was warm, so they plugged in a room fan (straight out of all of our childhoods) right next to us and cranked it on its highest setting. All of the people in our section (4 tables) were complaining about one thing or another (in fact, the first two tables left, the next two parties were quickly not happy either!). Finally, when we were waiting for dessert to arrive, one of the waiters brought us our check and asked "so you don't have room for dessert?"... we responsed, "actually we ordered it awhile ago and haven't seen anyone lately..."

The food was actually nice... but, the little things were missed, which I feel is what you're really paying for when you splurge. All in all, I wouldn't recommend Salish Lodge -- I think you can do much better with other choices.

We attended the UW EEU (Experimental Education Unit) Charity Auction last evening -- it was the first large-scale charity auction that I've ever been to, and it was a lot of fun. We picked up some small items in the wave of silent auctions before the dinner/live auction event, hobnobbed with the jet set (including an action-packed Seattle Sonics discussion with the Groz (Dave Grosby, from 950 KJR-AM Sports Radio in Seattle -- note that he looked EXACTLY like what I'd have expected!) over beers), and then enjoyed the frenetic bidding at the live event.

Our table was well represented -- Some Table 41 highlights:
* One hour lunch with Intel's Craig Barrett goes for >$5,000
* Gorgeous golden retriever puppy named Starbeamer... then Blossom... then "Rosie" fetches premium price -- ain't she cute?



Rosie and Zach in the classic struggle between good and evil, young and old...

Karen enlisted me to go on my first tree-tagging expedition today (tree-tagging is something that landscape architects do... basically, they go to nurseries and hand-select trees that they will later install at jobs they are working on) -- I admit that I wasn't very excited about it, but a walk in the woods sounded like a good enough reason to tag along (bad pun intended). We drove north of Seattle for approximately 40 minutes and arrived at a nursery owned and operated by a landscape architecture legend, Rich Haag. Rich's most famous projects are probably Gas Works Park (Video), in Seattle, and the Bloedel Reserve, on Bainbridge Island.

He was a fantastic host -- we quickly got our of our car and hopped into his Subaru Outback, and for good reason -- the property is more of a passion/hobby than what you'd think of as a for-profit nursery. Basically, the property is in a flood plain and at certain times of the year will be well submerged (5-10 feet of water?!?), but on this day, it was merely 'moist' throughout -- we crisscrossed the property to find trees that fit Karen's needs, along the way discussing the lives of slugs (which I'm particularly interested in, actually), the histories of the different plants, and the fact that he's owned the ~70 acres for more than 40 years.

All in all, a fantastic day -- it was really great meeting Rich. Also reminded us both that we'd really like to invest in some property -- the idea of heading out of the city each weekend to 'play' in the woods, is enchanting, no?

We had an extremely pleasant surprise today. Our friend, Karen Cho, had her first day of business for Urchin, her new store, at 1922 1st Avenue in downtown Seattle. The store really is beautiful, and the product selection is impressive. We are truly in awe of you, Karen - we love you!

Many of you may have already heard, but I returned to work today! I accepted an offer from Unitus to be VP Marketing and Communications! I have a lot to learn about the microfinance industry, but from what I've seen of the Unitus team and what they've accomplished to date, I'm excited to jump in, start learning, and help them accomplish even more great things.

So, you'll probably start to see some more microfinance-oriented blog entries -- not sure if that means I should start up a fresh/new blog or not, but I don't think I will -- will try to continue to keep this for overall life experiences.

For my friends who ask "What does Unitus do", here goes:
* Unitus is a microfinance accelerator -- for those unfamiliar with the term microfinance, you can think of it as 'banking services for the poor'
* That is, we work to identify the highest-potential microfinance institutions around the world, and then if our interests are aligned, we partner with them and invest capital and capacity-building consulting to help them achieve exponential growth
* So, we serve a function very similar to venture capital firms or top-tier business schools -- we try to find the best, and then make them even better

Please check out the website to learn more, and please send ideas -- one of my first tasks is to do some site/search-engine optimization work -- will take a few weeks for changes (meta data, dmoz categorization, etc) to take effect and populate through the web :-)

Kristin (my sister-in-law), her two boys and I decided to play hooky and headed to the San Juan Islands on Wednesday for a quick 5-day vacation. Karen and Greg joined us on Friday (they caught a sea plane up from Lake Union... landed right in Friday Harbor). Spending a few days in the San Juan's is so refreshing -- I love getting away from all the noise and traffic, walking through the fields of grass near American Camp, watching the rabbits, eagles, fox, deer and more. Really refreshing. The many bottles of wine also don't hurt :-)

Our friend, Peter Han, had a book reading/signing at the University Village Barnes & Noble this eveing, and it was really fantastic. The name of the book is Nobodies to Somebodies: How 100 Great Careers Got Their Start (the official site is here), and he's been touring the country promoting it. He spoke with the crowd for ~45 minutes, and talked about his motivation for writing the book (he and his best friend both felt confused about how they'd make their dreams a reality), the process he went through to get the book's contributors (ranging from Senator Bill Bradley to the CEO of Best Buy, Brad Anderson) to offer their stories and advice (he essential cold-emailed a massive number of people and worked his way tenaciously through the response rate!).

It was very compelling for a number of reasons:
1) Peter is an incredibly busy full time employee at a local software company, and he found the time to not only pull of this book, but also has been filming and producing an upcoming film, called What It Takes, covering world-class triathletes -- where does he find the time?!?
2) The book's topic is a very solid one -- many younger people wonder how, or even if, they'll make the transition to greatness. Peter's approach yielded very concrete advice and stories from people -- I think this will be an inspiration for young readers.
3) His list of contributors was so impressive... included Fortune 1000 CEOs, Nobel Prize-Winning Scientists, Senators, Governors & Cabinet Members, Emmy, Tony, Oscar & Grammy-Winning Artists, Pulitzer Prize-Winning & Best-Selling Writers, and Non-Profit Leaders

Also (a late addition), he also got coverage on NPR -- check it out!

I was at my parent's house this week and they asked me to clean out some stuff from the basement... funny what you find in basements... was amused to find this 'dancing flower'... it moves to the sound of music... very endearing :-)