Celebrate 48 -- The Seahawks Victory Parade

I started writing here the last time the Seahawks were in the Superbowl.  For someone who really does not follow the sport it seem strange that two of my earliest posts were about the Seahawks:

• Seattle has Seahawks fever. Or at least a minor cold.
• A letter from the lawyers

Things felt very different this year. The 12th Man really came into its own over the past couple of years, and the enthusiasm for the team was at an all time high.  How high?

For the welcome home parade (really more of a processional) for the Superbowl 48 Champions, 700,000 people lined 4th AVE through downtown Seattle.

700,000.

That's astounding.  There are only 630,000 people that live in Seattle.

And it was cold. Not in the way that a Seattle winter is cold and dreary. It was legitimately cold (sure, it's no Polar Vortex, but still...).  And people waited for hours. Some camped out the the night before. And did I mention it was cold?

This was all to get a glimpse of the team as the rode down the street in Ride-The-Duck vehicles and Humvees. The Seattle PI has more details here.

It was only a short walk so I headed down there to be part of the experience. Here are some photos I captured from my little scrap of asphalt at 4th AVE and University.

The parade got off to a late start, but this fan made productive use of her time.

Children and some adults scaled trees for a chance to see the team and would occasionally be chased down by the authorities.

This gentleman had some struggled to shimmy up the tree, but the crowd noticed and began cheering, "Climb! Climb! Climb!" He made it. I'm not sure how he got down.

Many members of the crowd got annoyed when the first vehicles came through. There were tour buses with tinted windows, and, of course you couldn't see inside. Apparently that was front office staff, though, rather than players. And even they didn't like the buses as the climbed out the emergency exits to ride on the roofs of the buses through the streets.

Marshawn Lynch rode the hood of the Seagals Duck and through Skittles at the crowd.

The rest of the team followed in other vehicles.

And if you look really carefully through hundreds of arms and between all the other cameras, you can even catch a glimpse of the Heisman Trophy.

It was pretty amazing to be surrounded by that much positive energy. The parade ended with not fights and no arrests.  That's 700,000 well behaved, very cold, well-caffeinated, high energy fans who caused no major trouble.

How often does that happen?

More pictures are available here.

"I don't want to go on the cart," said Cromely's World

Today marks 8 years since I first started my blog.  I hesitate to call it a blogaversary this year because I don’t really think 2 posts in a year let’s me count it as a strong continuing effort.  No matter, I am not one to leave well enough alone and let beloved projects die. The blog may have a DNR in place, but I’m going to toss that aside like on some crazed medical procedural show, and scream, “Live DAMMIT” as a pound away at its chest with a Shatner-style two-handed punch.  

Anyway, here are my thoughts on closing out 2013 and launching into 2014 (I didn't say it was a timely Shatner-style two-handed punch).

2013 was a different kind of year.  I managed to have a lot of fun and do some awesome stuff (often accompanied by The Shoebox Chef), but it still feels mostly like it was a year of preparation. It’s almost like I was building a foundation from which bigger things can happen.

This past year saw my workload and professional life change dramatically, my office layout finally start to make sense, and several years’ backlog of posters jump onto my walls.  There were some lowlights, but there were more highlights. Some of them include:

1. A fun CES wrapped up with a great night at 5 O’clock Somewhere
2. My first cruise in February as part of the awesome JoCo Cruise Crazy program
3. A very pleasant chat with Walter Koenig at Emerald City Comicon
4. Seeing the Doubleclicks live on at least 3 separate occasions
5. Seeing Chris Hardwick perform twice
6. Travelling to Bend, OR, to see Cake and Sigur Ros perform and enjoy some amazing microbrews over a long weekend
7. Standing under an actual Saturn V rocket
8. Guesting on the Caffeinated Comics podcast several times
9. Combining a work trip to check check out a Blake Shelton concert with a weekend getaway in San Francisco and experiencing the Tonga Room in all its Tiki glory.
10. Some conversations with recruiters about my  earning potential
11. My first ever Star Trek convention where I got to chat with George Takei and Gary Graham and briefly meet Gates McFadden, Robert Picardo, Kate Mulgrew, Avery Brooks, and, of course, William Shatner
12. Finally dealing with a busted Keurig
13. Attending the premiere of Joss Whedon’s “Much Ado About Nothing” and catching the panel discussion
14. Learning basic audio editing
15. An appearance on air on QVC
16. Seeing Macklemore perform
17. Seeing John Hodgeman perform
18. Upgrading the TV
19. Meeting Marian Call
20. Learning to appreciate Scotch, Whiskey,and Bourbon

And that’s the funny thing about the brain. That list of 20 items probably represents at least 45 days of awesome things that happened, since many were multi-day. That meant that something awesome was happening almost every week. That makes for a pretty exciting year.  And I need 2014 to be even better? Is that greedy?

No. It’s not. Unless the singularity happens in the coming decades, I’ve only got another 150-200 years on this planet to look forward to. There are so many things I want to do that I’ll never have time to get to.  But I’m going to try. And each subsequent year needs to be just a little bit better than the one before.

I do believe my brain is lying to me about 2013 and other years being dull and having nothing happen. It’s interesting how blogging impacts that. For years I had an intense chronicle of the things I was thinking/doing.  Those hundreds of posts stared back at me as a stark reminder of what I’d done and thought.  

The past couple years, it got away from me. I posted less text. I uploaded fewer pictures.  A lot of what I was doing made it’s way over to Facebook in an abbreviated form. Many others made it to the drafts folder.

In general, I wrote less. I think major changes at work, and an increase in workload sapped more of my energy away from personal writing.  Will work have less of an impact as I settle into the new normal? I have my doubts.

As is often the case, I became my own impediment to creating content. The more I blogged, the better I had to be at it. Writing simple, short posts was no longer cutting it. Doing it right mattered, but there was no time and no energy for that.

And that brings us to today, 8 years since I started this project. Perhaps I’ll finish off those drafts this year.  Perhaps I’ll just throw more stuff up here more quickly.

Or maybe I’ll just be too busy having adventures to chronicle them all.