Simply Genius

As an American with an Asian heritage, I've always been fascinated with the topic of dichotomy between East and West. Liu Yang's work beautifully presents the cultural, philosophical, and societal contrasts between East and West. The simplistic art forms speak to how she has powerfully distilled a complex topic into its essence.

Arriba a Roomba!

Helen finally convinced me that we should get a Roomba to automate our base elevation cleaning. Her research assured her the 5th generation sucking robotic mechanism doesn't...well, suck. Now we can just press a button and the little sucker comes to life and traipses around our rooms to hoover up all the stuff that loses out to gravity. The Roomba vectors its way around the entire room, crawling under places that we'd skip because it's too much of a pain to move that lamp or chair. We can even program it to run automatically at set times. After it's finished, it scurries back to its base to re-energize and wait for the next cleaning opportunity. Pretty neat.

We miss H&H Bagels

Since moving from New Yawk, we've missed our H&H Bagels (lox and cream cheese for Helen, cream cheese and jelly for me). Luckily for us there is a local bagel place near work that comes close. Blazing Bagels certainly aims to please - making fresh bagels every day in a wide and unique variety. Snickerdoodle, Jalepeno, French Toast, Cheddar & Chive, Asiago. They're even getting trendy introducing "healthy" bagels - their latest creation has ZERO fat...

I also love that they have a sense of humor.

The acrimony toward the Redmond city council stems from a legal battle. Unfortunately, Blazing Bagels is poorly located on a dead end street in a corner of Redmond that's full of small manufacturing and warehouse buildings, so the owner hired a guy to wear a giant sandwich board and wave at passing drivers on nearby, heavily trafficked SR-202. The city council issued a cease and desist order, which Blazing Bagels fought on the grounds that human signage advertising was allowed to other types of commerce and organizations - such as signs for open houses, car washes, and political candidacy. Needless to say, Blazing Bagels won their fight, and I imagine this sign over their door went up soon after.

Musical breaks out at the food court

Another great flash mob prank from Improv Everywhere.