The Adventures of Lorie and Brian Groth

Only in the Northwest would you see this!

		London 2012 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Here are a few photos from the recent trip to London. It consisted mostly of work, so there’s not too many photos or stories. However, one interesting one is when I ate a sandwich outside of the Somerset House and watched a mouse running around so I tossed it part of my sandwich. It seemed quite happy about that!

The hills of Berkeley have a variety of large rocks in small parks. Busby mastered this one.

Tonight at the Everyman theater in London, I was able to enjoy a martini while watching the new James Bond movie. I’ve decided it’s the best way to watch a Bond movie and highly recommend it.

In 2005, I received a patent cube, which is what Microsoft gives an employee for having a patent submitted. Now, I am proud to say that patent number 8243897, “Automatic Detection and Notification of Proximity of Persons of Interest” is now an official United States patent and I am listed as the inventor. Upon a patent being accepted, Microsoft gives the employee a plaque honoring the occasion, which is what I have pictured here. 

		Busby and Luna Play VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Luna is a our friends’ Portuguese Water Dog and Busby is our poodle. They were almost the same size a few months ago, but now at around 7 months, Busby is quite a bit taller. I think Luna is the dominant one when they play though; or at least she gets the toys most of the time.

The photos here are at the off-leash dog area at Denny Park in Seattle.

Over the last two weeks, I have been in New York City, San Francisco, Berkeley and Santa Monica. I attended parties at Advertising Week in NYC, learned a bit about what Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others are doing in the online advertising space. Lorie and I also got a chance to meet up with friends just about every evening and meet a few new folks too. In the bay area, we again met up with friends and family, as I trained some fellow Microsoftees on some ad sales topics, which is what I did in Santa Monica too.
Photos include me on a big screen in NY (under the woman’s leg), pillows at a LinkedIn party, wood working art projects at Facebook (I was visiting a friend), the Santa Monica pier at night, and the Los Angeles airport.

None of all that seems too exciting, but it was mostly all work from morning to night. I’m ready for a break and some Busby-walking exercise. :-)

Items from the movie Avatar were recently at the EMP/SFM museum in Seattle, but now the exhibit goes on tour with its first stop in Ontario, Canada. While walking Busby today, we saw them packing up the items for the walker/robot thing from the movie.

What we saw packaged up	What it looks like put together

The warehouse and offices for EMP/SFM are a block from our loft, so we always see something interesting in the windows, but this was the first time we saw museum pieces being loaded onto a truck.

		Surf Kayaking–Sept 2012 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Once again this year, my friend Paul and I went out to the area in Washington called Neah Bay, but specifically to the beach called Makah Bay.
 

The great thing about this beach is that it is mostly a surfer community that comes together on the weekends. Everyone’s friendly to talk when you approach them and they’re more than willing to walk over and introduce themselves, including the whales.

Yes, even the MASSIVE whales want to say hi.

We were taking a break from riding the surf in our kayaks and were out near the entrance of the bay watching some whale spouts off in the distance. We even saw the back of one come out of the water as it swam by parallel to us, but about 200 yards away. Then very quickly, it came out of the water again, but was about 150 yards away and heading straight towards us. It was wider than a bus and looked longer than one too – and that’s just the small part that was out of the water. I immediately put the camera down and headed towards the beach while Paul paddled backwards towards the beach, since he didn’t want to take the time to turn his kayak around.

Thankfully the whale didn’t come up again since it certainly traveled faster than us and would have had to only bump us to send us flying. From what I can find, it was either a humpback whale or a fin whale. Whichever it was, it was huge. I have a short video of my thoughts after having “escaped” the whale.

The kayak surfing was a blast, the short hike up to Cape Flattery was nice, and we had sunshine all weekend long except a bit of fog in the morning. I tried to get a video of me crashing through some waves as I paddle out to sea, but it’s tough to do when both hands need to be on the paddle.

The last night, we pooled our resources of firewood and dessert with our neighboring campers who spend every weekend of the year at the beach. They are avid surfers, got married at the beach last month, drive from Seattle every weekend and sleep in their new Ford cargo van. They are surfers to the core, and made great company for an evening around the campfire.