At the beach

A ten minute drive from our house is the beach at Golden Gardens park. It's one of my favorite places in Seattle, and I've posted pictures taken there a number of times. This set from today features our first trip there with Oliver. We discovered that he isn't afraid of the water (even if it's very cold) and that he loves to hunt sea gulls (even if he's too slow to actually catch one).

Oliver

Anya's wanted a dog for a long time; on Valentine's Day she finally got her wish. We went to the Humane Society and adopted a 2-year old Terrier mix who came from California (apparently so many people adopt dogs in Seattle that the import them from other places).

The name they had for him was "Taco Bell," which is a terrible name for a dog on several levels. He didn't seem to respond to that name much anyway, so we decided to change it and go with "Oliver" - partially after Oliver Cromwell (who was a pseudo-King of England) and partially after John Oliver (our favorite correspondent on the Daily Show).

He's a little weird looking with his lion's mane-like beard, but overall he's been a great dog: he's already house trained (whew), he's quiet (we didn't want a dog that barks or yips a lot), he has hair-like fur and doesn't shed much, and he's very affectionate. We left him at home today while we went skiing - a good test for when we're gone all day at work - and he didn't destroy anything or pee in our house. That's as good as you can hope for I guess...

Whistler

Seattle has been going through a dry spell for the last few weeks - it's been warm & sunny, but there's been no new snow in the mountains. The skiing has taken on a Midwestern-style iciness.

To celebrate Anya's birthday and attempt to escape these undesirable conditions, we took a last minute trip to Whistler last weekend. The skiing was decent and we had a fantastic getaway...pictures here. Several of the pics are from the new Peak to Peak gondola, this massive new lift they built to connect Whistler's two mountains.

(I've written about it before, but a refresher: Whistler is about 4.5 hours north of Seattle in British Columbia. It's the largest and arguably best ski resort in North America, and will co-host the 2010 Winter Olympics with Vancouver.)