Saturday was our last day in Washington State, and after doing a bit of shopping myself and Mark decided to go and get a burger before going to the airport.
I said I’d never been to a drive through restaurant, so we decided to go to Burgermaster, which is famous in Microsoft circles as being Bill Gates’s favorite place to eat.
It was really old fashioned, as you drive in and park, and then attract the serving staff by leaving your car lights on. There is a big poster of the menu in each parking bay, and when they bring the food it’s on a tray that can clip onto the car window.
The food was pretty good, the veggie burger being OK but the onions and fries were nice. I’m really glad I’ve finally been in as I’ve driven past Burgermaster loads of times in the past. No sign of Bill though :-(
As I’ve moaned about already, this week has been a very busy one, so by 4pm Friday I was starting to flag. I decided to treat myself to a can of something fizzy from the fridge, and I had some Seagrams Ginger Beer, something I hadn’t had before.
It was OK but a little tame compared to the occasional ginger beer I’ve had before. Not sure why US food always seems a little bland? A waste of a treat really, but another day ticked off.
Most misleading post title of the year I’m afraid.
It’s been an insanely busy week at Bing HQ in Bellevue, so haven’t had chance to do much other than work and eat. However we went to the cinema on Thursday evening, and went to see Moneyball, which was a pretty good way of dramatising the excellent book.
The most memorable part for me was when Brad Pitt was at Fenway Park, and at one point he stood exactly next to where I sat once for a Red Sox game. About 4 years apart, but in a temporal sense I can now say I’ve stood in the same place as him, which I couldn’t have done before.
I decided to try some porridge for breakfast yesterday. I’ve not been a big fan before, but there was some pumpking flavoured stuff in the Bing Cafe that looked interesting and new so I gave it a go.
I think what I’d not done before in my porridge eating was add in any sugar or extra milk, and that actually made it quite nice. May experiment again today to see if it was the pumpkin flavour or the toppings I liked.
Other interesting fact was that Qi Lu, Microsoft’s Head of Online Services was getting some porridge at the same time as me and Mark, so we had a brief porridge related chat that was almost certainly more memorable for me than it was for him :-)
Out at the Taphouse Grill in Bellevue after work, which was good for a new thing at it has a vast list of different beers available.
I went for a Big Sky Scape Goat Ale, which was fine but the most distinctive thing about it was it’s name.
It was good to catch up with Craig and Jack, and we had a good old fashioned Microsoft vs. Google who’s-the-worst showdown :-)
Breakfast in the Bing cafeteria, and I was looking for a Cheerios-like cereal. Unfortunately the nearest thing I could see was something called Froot Loops, which I hadn’t had before.
They are the most artificial tasting thing I’ve ever had, despite the protestations of having healthy, natural flavours on the packaging. Very strange, and not particularly nice. Won’t be trying again.
Spent Sunday in Seattle (Bellevue really) mostly eating a big breakfast, drinking beer and watching football (US style) on TV. However in-between all that I watched my first full length film on YouTube - the excellent Life In a Day.
You’ve probably heard of the movie, which is made up of lots of ordinary user’s videos of one day last year. If you haven’t seen it, it’s really good - superb editing makes the ordinary seem very profound and at times beautiful. Very highly recommended.
My main excitement of my trip to Seattle for work was getting upgraded to business on the way out.
Travelling companion Neil had already been upgraded, and he kindly pleaded on my behalf that I should be upgraded too as we needed to “work together”. Unbelieveably that worked, and the big benefit - apart from the much better seats - was we could go in the lounge and watch the first half of Newcastle vs. Everton.
The new thing? Well I’d never been in the South Lounge before at Terminal 5. I’d always thought it was for First Class only and so always gone in the North Lounge. Turns out if you go up another level you can get in with the right privileges - a rare event now for me now I’ve lost my Silver Card as I don’t fly as much any more.
Not so much doing something new, but watching something I’ve never seen before all day.
The house across the road have been having lots of building work done, but for most of the day two builders were having to drill into a mysterious 4ft pile of cement that was sitting in the driveway.
It didn’t make any sense, so the only theory we had was that the day before it had been delivered and just dumped, but the heavy overnight rain had somehow made it set solid.
In any case, the builders didn’t seem very happy and they’d already filled a skip worth of drilled out hardened cement by the end of the day with still 2 feet left to go!
It was a bit of a pain having the drilling going on all day when I was working at home, but the entertainment partly made up for it.
First time writing using the thing I’m posting about, as I’m trying out the on train Wi-fi from East Coast on the journey home.
I usually use my mobile broadband, but decided to burn 50 frequent traveller points on using the train’s connection. However, to be honest it’s not great. The wifi has dropped maybe 5 times in the 2.5 hours I’ve been on here, and when it is connected it’s no faster than my 3G connection.
Oh well, worth a try and I got a new thing out of it.
