Mike Murry

Playing around with Animoto, I made a trailer for the Mexico pictures. Undecided if I want to spend $3 for a full length animation. Might be fun…

The second day was at sea, heading down to Mexico.  Calm blue water in every direction.

We explored much of the ship, some went rock climbing on the back of the boat.

That evening was the first formal night at dinner… followed by a stage production in the theater.

Our towel animal for the day was an elephant.

Overall a pretty quiet day, but thats exactly what I wanted!

What do you do when you are tired of the ice and cold? Why not spend a week in Mexico! Six of us decided to do just that on a week long cruise through Mexico.

The first day we flew down to Los Angeles and boarded the “Vision of the Seas”. There wasn’t a whole lot to do besides finding a spot up on deck and watch the Port of Los Angeles fade into the horizon.

I seem to be getting a knack for hearing about interesting activities as of late (i.e. cocktail party at a chocolate factory). Over the past year I have been reading a blog that tracks the condo scene in Seattle. Not that I am in the market to buy immediately… but I want to understand the market by time I am shopping. Anyway, the operators of this blog (called UrbnLivn… Urban Living in case you needed help with that one) organized a meet-up for the readers of the blog to get together and share their condo shopping, buying, or vague interest experiences. Hard to say no to free food and something fun to do after work. But what sold me on it was the fact that it was held on the 75th floor of the Columbia Tower in downtown Seattle (the highest point in the city). The meet-up with sponsored by the Columbia Tower Club… which is essentially a country club… $1500 initiation fee plus $150/month to get in the door. So how could you say no. I inticed a few of my co-workers to go with me to reduce the awkwardness factor. Here are some fun pictures of the event.

Also, the Women’s Bathroom in the Columbia Tower Club is rated the 6th highest restroom with the best view in America! I didn’t get to see it for obvious reasons but I sent my camera in for a look…

I also feel it should be noted that there is a Starbucks on the 40th floor of the Columbia Tower. P.S. I can see my building from this picture… can you…

I was hired by Sony to help run the Sony booth at the 3rd largest gaming convention in the nation!

It was essentially my job to hand out free gifts (bags, t-shirts, hats, demos, boxers, etc). I was in charge of all the free swag which is a major point for people to attend these expos. Over the three days I was averaging interacting with 5-10 people per minute… 12 hours X 60 minutes X 10 people X 3 days = 21,600 people. Day one it was fun. Day two… going good. Day three… I hate people.

We also had a big SingStar stage which is a game similar to Dance Dance Revolution but instead of dancing you sing. We had a whole range of performers from the awesome to the awesomely bad.

There was plenty of things to see… in fact there was everything to see. I can surely say that I have seen everything in the world after attending PAX… including dudes dressed up like Princess Peach (in a full pink prom dress).

So. Last night in Edinburgh. A bunch of us decide to go out and take a haunted ghost tour. So we go out to this cemetery, and our guide is telling us about how this cemetery inspired Frankenstein, Dracula, and Harry Potter. How there are over 500,000 people buried here, that it is currently 20 feet higher than it was back in the day because of all the bodies. And then our guide takes us inside a locked part where it is the most haunted. The place we are at now is one of the most haunted places in the world! Our tour guide gave us the disclaimer that if anyone has any problems, they cannot assume any health responsibilities. That you are on your own, but they will happily drag you out of the graveyard in case of death.

Ooo scary.

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Over Easter Break, my architecture class took a long weekend to visit Milan, Italy during the 2007 Design Fair.

We flew directly from Edinburgh to Milan. It was my first time to the Europe outside of the United Kingdom! We had fantastic views of the Alps from the plane.

Upon arrival, we had to catch a bus to the train station so we could get to Brescia where our hotel is. Due to the International Design Fair, every reasonable hostel/motel/hotel in Milan was booked. So we stayed in Brescia, about an hour train ride away.

When we got off the train, there was a large parade/demonstration immediately outside the train station. Not knowing Italian, we had no idea what it was for. But people were dancing, carrying torches, and singing so it was entertaining. Later we learned that it “might” have been a racist demonstration… singing songs about “send them back to Africa!”. We felt bad for not knowing what it was for. But we never found out exactly what it was.

We found our hotel and it was late, so we just visited the hotel bar and went to bed.

(Sorry for the delay. Life is crazy busy right now!)

For the next two days, we travelled all over the Isle of Skye. Climbed many hills, walked many paths, explored many castles. Be sure to check out my Flickr account for hundreds of photos from this trip.

Perhaps one of the greatest parts of the trip was that we got to visit (and touch!) Loch Ness! Alas it was just a lake (-ish thing… its not technically a lake… but for all intents here, it was) but the weather was great. One more world destination to mark off the list!

After Loch Ness we made the long trek back to Edinburgh where we decided our next destination would be St. Andrews… for the last day before Mom and Grandma flew home.

First stop on our three day tour of the Scottish Highlands was the city of Sterling… more specifically the William Wallace Memorial. In hindsight, this was my favorite stop on the whole tour! Grandma and I climbed to the top. The whole place was very Lord of the Rings - esque.

Next we moved up the road to a little gift show / cafe place where I had my first true Haggis meal. It was better than expected… assuming you don’t think about what you are eating. They also had a highland cow (hihlin’ coo’).

Back on the road… we made a few picture stops.

After we tackled much of Old Town yesterday, today was all about Prince’s Street. I had already been there many of times so I didn’t take many pictures. We did visit the National Gallery which was new for me but they didn’t allow photography inside so not much to see.

We then finished the part of Old Town we didn’t see yesterday. End of Day Two.