Carl's Jr - Vancouver WA

Every so often I get a reminder of how different city living is from the sticks. We were traveling to Oregon for Memorial Day weekend. Leilani and I have never been to a Carl's Jr before, and knew one existed down toward Portland. We were heading South on I-5, just north of Vancouver WA, when Leilani yelled "CARL'S JR!!!", so we caught the next exit and found it strategically located adjacent to the local Wal-Mart.

After placing our order the clerk asked us "for here or to go?", as they normally do. Leilani quickly chimed in "to go!" Well, I'd been driving for close to 3 hours already, and I wasn't going to settle for hopping back into the car, burger in lap / drink in hand, and continue unrested. So I inserted a "for here" to correct that misunderstanding.

We settled into our booth and proceeded to eat. As we were eating, I began to observe our fellow patrons. A family entered the restaurant. I think it was 4 girls and a little baby in a carrier, plus a dad and his dad. Everyone seemed to be sporting ponytails. The dad was wearing a tanktop, exposing shoulders furry enough to compete with Sonny Corleone from "The Godfather". While he ordered, he placed the baby in carrier on the counter with the other burgers and food on trays. His father was still shuffling in (he had a ponytail too and looked like Uncle Jessie).

Okay, so my point here is not to mock people who are different from me, but just to point out the differences and how I'm always surprised by how vast those differences are. The family settled in to a table for their meal as we headed into the restroom. When I emerged from the men's room, they were all holding hands in a circle and blessing our lord for the food they were about to receive. I found it humorous, yet inspiring at the same time. They didn't care how it appeared to others, and it was important to say grace, even if in the middle of the local Carl's Jr.

This event did, however, conjure up memories of my younger brother being in film class, and making a movie starring our father. He had my dad kneel down and pray before a giant fake cactus along the side of the highway. Also, he filmed him in Burger King, down on his knees again, praying before eating his meal. This time, my dad fell out of character and laughed as some kids almost ran into him while he was in this position. The film ended with my dad eating a burger with a Burger King crown on, and a song playing in the background... something about appreciating the songs of a bird.

Wine and Bibliographies

Last night was a gem. I have two weeks left to finish up all of my assignments for my Methods of Research course, then all of this will be a mere image in my rearviews. To my delight, MBH surprised me with a full course dinner of salmon marinated in curry sauce, brie and sourdough bread, and a nice bottle of Cloudline Pinot Noir. All of this with the understanding that we would enjoy dinner together and then move to our separate corners to get our work done. The bottle of Pinot got in the way.

After finishing dinner and the first glass, I decided that 8:00 would be a good time to get started with writing my annotated bibliography. All good, but then the first glass became the 2nd glass which then became the 3rd, and then we were staring at an empty bottle. In short, I wrote a very important assignment with 3 sheets facing the wind. I'm kind of afraid to go over what I wrote (and already sent to Elisabeth). Taking a quick glance at it this morning, I didn't see too many of MS Word's red underlines, except where it was acceptible. Hopefully a good sign.

Now we're moving straight toward another Memorial Day weekend. We're pondering another stay at Cascade Harbour Inn, on Orcas Island. I've been there twice now and both times treated me quite well, except for the 3-4 hour wait to catch a ferry on Monday morning. Maybe if we get up (uggghhh) early that morning, we can make short work of it.

Modes of Qualitative Research

Qual or Quant? What is you?

I'm here sitting in my second-to-last Research Methods class. The end is not coming soon enough. Tonight is the night where each student has paired up with another to present one of the following:

1. Grounded-Theory Research - theory that emerges from observation of a group (this was us)
2. Ethnographic Research - study an ethnography
3. Narrative Research - tell a story
4. Action Research -specific solutions to a specific problem

It's going fine. Lauren and I intelligently had a beer before class. Definitely softened the edges. We were the only pair who didn't use handouts (people throw them out anyway...). But I'd say this has been the most interesting class yet, mostly because it's discussion and not lecture. Also, Qualitative methods are more attractive to me than the Quantitative methods. More humanistic, I suppose.

Elisabeth gave us her opinion of contextual inquiries, saying that it was basically "pop" techniques, and could stand the influence of the methods from books by the authors below:

Corbin and Strauss
Spradley

Okay, more beer...

The Nitelite

After what was probably one of the craziest weeks I've had in a long time, I capped off my Friday with a reunion of sorts with the old crew at the Nitelite, in downtown Seattle. A little background about my week: I tried giving notice this week, as I've been hired for a new gig in downtown Seattle. The lack of commute would even out my life / work balance tenfold. I'd still be doing the work I do, albeit at a much less sexy level. Still, work is work, and being able to forget about it once I leave the office is hands down the better option than sitting in traffic for yet another hour.

So I gave said notice on Wednesday. I was called back in for a 2nd discussion at the end of day Friday. The boss was trying to negotiate 6 more weeks so that I may finish up a project. That's six weeks of sitting at my desk awkwardly, with everyone knowing that I'm just a ghost of my former self... I told him I'd put four weeks on the table for the hiring manager. Haven't heard back yet. This whole situation sucks.

So, that said, I hopped on my bus to get over the lake as fast as I could. With Mariners traffic, the commute clocked in at 1 hour and 15 minutes. Then I drank, and drank, and absorbed everyone's advice on the situation. Luckily, the whole thing is win-win for me, but somehow it doesn't feel that way. Anyway, the general concensus is that the time gained in not having to commute each day would make even the most painful job worth taking.

Giving this a shot...

I've given this whole blog idea a feeble attempt once, and gave up after maybe three or four posts that looked pretty much the same. I'm going to try it in earnest this time around. My goal is to give a report of the following topics:

• school experience
• thoughts on User Experience Design
• general observations and stories
• posting for my pics
• music I'm listening to
• movies I'm seeing

We'll see how well I can stick to it. Stay tuned.