FYI

I am going to start an on-going list.

Situations Where You Should Tip Your Tour Guide Whether or Not You Enjoyed Your Tour Guide's Overly Sarcastic Tour of Seattle

• Your four-year-old pees on the floor of the tour vehicle

Numbers for 8/18/07

Total number of $2 bills I've received as tips so far this season: 3
Number of dollars I am considering donating to MoveOn.org to get a t-shirt that says "Karl Rove ruined my country and all I got was this lousy t-shirt": 25
Ratio of Subways to McDonalds in Seattle: 2:1
Height of the Space Needle (in feet): 605
Number of horsepower it takes to turn the revolving restaurant at the top of the Space Needle: 1
How many times I played "L.O.P.O (the Y.M.C.A. in German)" today: 4
The amount of pleasure this gave me: unquantifiable
The amount of fun that the average passenger on my Duck took from same experience (on a scale of 1-10*): 2.29
Number of hits to the non-blog since 31 Jan 2007: 2,139
Estimated percentage of those hits that were me checking for comments: 57%



*For reference, 1 is as much fun as you might have during an average root canal and 10 would be attending a free outdoor concert in Freeport, ME featuring Brandi Carlile and the Indigo Girls

Sunset

There was an amazing sunset tonight but I didn't have my camera with me as I walked down the hill to Blue Moon Burgers. My plan was to get a burger & beer and sit there and read for a while since I'd spent the past four nights hanging out in my room by myself and figured that if I was going to hang out by myself again tonight I needed to get out of the house at least.

The plan was going well. Like I mentioned before, I caught a glimpse of an awesome sunset. The cheeseburger was good, they had Sam Adams Summer Ale on tap, and I was sitting outside reading the Seattle Weekly when I saw that The Be Good Tanyas were playing at the Zoo (like a mile from my house) tonight. There was no showtime listed, and at this point it was 8:37 pm, but I thought if I ran home, jumped on my bike, I could make it for the second half at least. So I chug the rest of my beer, speedwalk home, look it up online and the zoo shows start at 6 pm and end "no later than 8:30 pm." Damn, now I am so disappointed about having missed it.

This photo is from camping trip #1 to Deception Pass.

Yet Another Employee Review

CAPT SPARROW (CECILIA)

AUGUST EVALUATION

8/8/07 WED 4:30PM

OVERALL:

Every tour of Capt Sparrow’s gets better and better. She did it again. In past tours, her strongest asset was her likeability and her weakness was a lack of levity. She has make great gains. She added a little more humor, cheerleading and music placement for clapping, dancing, etc. As her confidence grows, so does her tour. Very well done.

GOOD STUFF:

Info was accurate, complete and delivered in a fresh and interesting way. Her energy is going up and up. Her music placement is on the money as are her music choices. Good baseball bit. Dry, but funny humor throughout. Great interaction with child on the water.

Great recap near end. Strong close.

STUFF TO WORK ON:

The biggest thing is the open. It was humorous, but a little low energy. It should explode with energy and noise. No Underground info given in Pioneer Square. Probably an oversight.

ACTION PLAN:

• Concentrate on an energetic, fun and noisy open.
• Congratulate yourself on steady and effective progress. Well done.

Bumper Stickers

The other day I saw a white van with a bumper sticker on the back that said "One Less Fixed Gear." It was amazing.