Remmy passed away this morning after she stopped eating and began to stop moving as much. I had to water her by hand last night as I propped her mouth open and this morning as I was freaking out trying to figure out what to do, she stopped moving completely.

Remmy, originally Remmington, lived a good life with lots of people friends.  She was at first thought to be a boy, but in the last couple months I found out he was actually a she.

She sadly didn’t have any other reptiles to hang out with, but definitely made me and many others happy.  I loved that lizard and was so glad to share the last almost three years with her.  Hopefully those who have been able to meet her will remember her for being a happy and loving (as much as a scaly lizard could be) pet.

Remmy, you’ll truly be missed!

Love you,

Jason

Vegas!

My trip to Vegas was just a few days from the 10th-13th as I needed to get back to host a couple parties that weekend. I met up with one of my best friends, Brant and we stayed in a two-bed suite in the Hard Rock Hotel.  Brant, like myself, has been to Vegas a number of times before so we kept this trip pretty low key.  Avoided the clubs, wondering around the strip and expensive shows and instead just played the table games, laid on “the beach” and watched some baseball.

I always enjoy gambling with Brant cause he is great to learn from when it comes to the games. He also usually gambles with more money than I do so his strategy tends to be different and enjoyable to watch too. This trip was relaxing and fun. I did get to enjoy one show while I was there called “X Burlesque.”  The show was a modern day show that has been on the strip since last year.  It was quite a good time.  Full of laughter and lots of girls

I also Ended up trying a couple good restaurants while I was there. Check them out on the artofforking.com.

The trip was also profitable as I walked away winning a few hundred bucks playing blackjack and betting on some baseball. Always great to leave Vegas a winner.

Denver and Boulder, Colorado

My trip to Colorado has been most excellent. I left on the 24th and am in the Seattle airport writing this entry now heading back to Portland on the morning of the 29th. This trip was just me traveling, but I met up with a number of friends along the way and made new ones while exploring the area. The main reason for going to Colorado in the first place was to see some couch surfers I hosted at the end of the year. A couple Turkish girls who are living in Denver.

The timing of the trip was perfect as Hande was leaving on the 27th back to Turkey.  I was able to hang out with her a few times before her departure. She will truly be missed. The other reason to go was that  I’d never been to Colorado and I like to explore new places. Most of my time was spent in Denver as this was where the Turkish girls lived and where I was being hosted by an awesome couch surfing host, Scott.  Scott is a software developer like myself and works from home or wherever he has his computer on the project Triple Jack Poker.  Being able to work remotely wherever I am is definitely something I want to try doing one of these days with my time.

Scott and the girls gave me a great overview of Denver and Boulder.  We went to a number of restaurants and fantastic locations while I was in the cities. I was able to see and enjoy the following:

• Dinner with a great view of the city skyline
• The Red Rocks Amphitheater
• Biking around Denver on the amazing bike paths they have
• Enjoying a pint in downtown Denver while watching some baseball
• Dinner with a bunch of people including my friend Lenay, creator of Whim And Fancy.
• Coors Brewery Tour in Golden
• Poker, craps, blackjack and roulette winning $150 in a casino in Black Hawk
• Enjoying the awesome atmosphere of a Denver speak easy called Green Russell
• Making use of the Denver/Boulder transit system by taking the buses and light rail from Denver to Boulder
• Meeting up and drinking most of the day with my friend Anthony and his roommate Jerrad
• Hanging out around the Pearl Mall area of Boulder until late in the night
• Hiking up Mt. Sanitas which is part of the Rocky Mountains
• Going to a Rockies baseball game – though they lost
• Hanging out with some amazing people while I was there adventuring around Colorado

The trip was fantastic and I couldn’t have asked for more amazing people to make my trip awesome.  I didn’t get to see some people while I was there: my friend Cameron, and my cousins Jeremy and Chad, but I’ll see you all again later down the road.

Thanks to Hande, Duysal, Scott, Julia, Anthony, Jerrad, and everyone else I had the pleasure of spending my time with and meeting up with while I was in town.  You guys made my trip soooooooooo amazing.

Until my next adventure – coming up – Sasquatch at the Gorge Amphitheater in Washington coming Memorial Day Weekend.
Keep up the adventures! – Jason

Come this Friday (March 23rd), I’ll be having my last day at Coaxis Inc./Viewpoint Construction Software.  I’ve had a great couple of years at this company and quite sad about leaving.  The people have been the best part and how the company treats the people there is fantastic.

The reason I’m leaving is I’ve been given an opportunity to join another company in the Portland area.  The company is Urban Robotics.  A company that I’ve considered looking into for some time.  My buddy Bobby works there and told me so many good things about the place.  The biggest reason I even considered applying was seeing his positive attitude when it came to the work he has been doing at UR.  I could clearly see that he enjoyed what he is doing and I miss having that joy.

I’m not positive everything I’ll be doing, but I’ll be doing C++ development on 2D/3D image processing software primarily for the department of defense involved around aerial photography.  What all it entails, I’m not totally sure, but I know I’ll be challenged and using some skills I haven’t used in some time, so I’m truly excited and nervous about the change.  I’ll also get to work on new hardware and cool software.  Always good things!

My start date at UR is May 1st, so I’ll be enjoying a nice break between jobs.  During this time I’m focusing really hard on finishing up my pilots license, taking a couple trips, and doing a lot of stuff in the outdoors.  Should be a great break!

Here’s to whatever the future holds!  I’m so excited for my next adventure!

Jason ¬_¬

I love traveling – getting away to far places seeing what the world holds.  This last week I had another chance to get out in the world this year and went down to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.  What a trip!  Full of excitement and fun being with some of my favorite people.  There wasn’t a lot I would have changed about this trip, but I did learn a few things.

Lessons Learned From Traveling
 

I’ve got on a few trips this year, and I’ve found that when you travel and you stay at a resort, it is much better to go with someone to be romantic with than with a bud.  Not that I didn’t have a blast with my friend Lewis, it was just that we would have had a much better time staying at a hostle with him than at a resort.  These are meant for couples or families.  Quite easy to tell this by the people we saw.

When I do travel with a group, much easier to have everyone be single or all in relationships than be a single with a couple.  Not that you can’t have fun together, just means that they’re going to want to have their alone time.  Also, when you are together at a beautiful place like Puerto Vallarta, it gets you really thinking about how single you really are.  :)

Another thing about traveling with one or more friends – be sure you know up front where you stand.  This mainly comes into play when a guy is traveling with a lady.  Without knowing where things stand – easy to assume one way and have it be the other.  This isn’t related to this trip, but good to state.

Puerto Vallarta Adventures
 

I’m not listing everything I did in Mexico and I’m also not going into a ton of detail because there is too much to say.  I will say however that Puerto Vallarta was beautiful and a place I’ll definitely go back to, but not for a while.  I’ve got many more places to go to first.  Here are a number of things that I partook in while traveling around:

• Walked on the beach
• Swam in the ocean
• Swam in the resort pool
• Ate lots of food
• Drank lots of booze
• Haggled with the locals
• Smoked Cuban cigars
• Went to clubs
• Explored the city
• Enjoyed the board walk
• Went boating
• Snorkeling
• Zip lining
• Rappelling
• Rode a mule
• And much more!

I’d be happy to share more of my adventures in more detail if you’d like.  Just message me or meet up with me in person!

Below are pictures from my trip!

I got home Monday night (October 10th) from a nice 14 hours of flying back from Europe (actually is was cramped at tiring, but part of traveling) where I spent two weeks traveling with a good friend from high school, Janel, and had an amazing adventure.

Rather than splitting up my trip into three parts; one for Munich, one for Paris, and one for South Ireland, or writing a bunch of daily posts on how it all went, I’ve decided to just give a summary of my trip and allow for people to ask questions.  The pictures included in the post will be more useful than anything else.  Hopefully you can find the info if not enjoyable, perhaps useful!

Now to start talking about my trip…

Munich, Germany

Getting to Munich was the first part.  We left at Portland, had a layover in Amsterdam, and arrived Munich on the 28th around 2pm.  We settled into our host’s place (a coworker’s brother’s place) and went out to explore the town.

Munich was an awesome place with a lot to offer.  Though bustling with people, it never really felt too busy unless we were trying to get in/out of Oktoberfest; which meant I saw a lot of people since I went to Oktoberfest three of the four nights I was in Munich.  Not all my time was spent at Oktoberfest, most of it was spent in the city and around the area.  Just the evenings were mostly spent there enjoying this worldly popular German drinking festival.  Though most people know of it as a drinking festival, there are also a lot of rides and other carnival type events at the fest; however most of my time was spent partaking in the popular event – drinking.  We wandered into some of the huge Bulvarian tents, but sadly never found seating so we made our way into the “garden” (seating around the tent for those slackers who didn’t reserve a table early – like me).  This was an exceptional place to enjoy the fest since the weather was wonderful.  We met a number of locals and had a killer time – fining around 10 liters of beer over the three evenings at the fest – good times!

Other than Oktoberfest, we enjoyed BMW World, the center of the city around the town hall, went to Olympic Park and made it up the tower overlooking most all of Munich, and three castles/palaces!

The castles were probably my favorite part of my trip.  In order of my least favorite to most:

• Nymphenburg Palace – Huge palace very close to Munich
• Linderhof Palace – Beautiful palace where Ludwig II spent most of his time living.  Note: There is over 5Kg of gold leafed throughout this palace.
• Neuschwanstein Castle – One of the most amazing sites I’ve ever had the pleasure of visiting.  This place is beautiful.  It was remarkable walking up the path to this castle and seeing how big it truly is; completely breathtaking!

These castles were intense!  Things I’ve always dreamed of seeing I was able to see and enjoy by walking around and hearing the history of these places.  Definitely a part of my trip I would like to do again!

Most of the rest of time spent at Munich was hanging out with my host and getting to know him.  He was awesome!  Thanks so much Hoang and his step-dad for hosting us!!!

Paris, France

After departing Munich by train we ended up in Paris, France.  Perhaps you’ve heard of it.  This popular city, though I really enjoyed it, was pretty overrated.  So many people say how poetic Paris is, and it has its high points (like seeing Paris when it is dark out is so beautiful), but during the day however it was just a busy tourist trap.  Perhaps that was my view of the place because most of our time was spent going to the common touristy spots.  Guess I’ll have to go back and spend my time doing other things before I can really say one way or the other.

Our host in Paris, an awesome guy I met off CouchSurfing.org named Faou, was great.  He gave us so many useful bits of information and a great way to tour the city.  He also was a lot of fun as we went out with him most every night we were there.  My favorite part of Paris was the first night and the last.  The first night Faou took us out, had us pick up some wine and bread, and we went to a Park near where we were staying which was full of hundreds of people just hang out enjoying the day.  No event was going on, just people taking in the sun and other comforts.  We ended up spending the evening drinking wine, eating bread and cheese, and just enjoying the music dancing in the park.  It was fantastic!  The last night was spent on the steps of Montmartre looking over the city enjoying the music of a brass instrument band.  These are what gave me the best view of what Paris has to offer and I loved it for that.

On top of picnicking around Paris we saw so much:

• Montmartre - huge church built due to a terrible war – people have been praying 24hrs a day for 125 years+
• Moulin Rouge – Didn’t see a show (100+ Euro) – but did see the windmill
• Trocadéro - beautiful view of the Eiffel Tower
• Eiffel Tower – got to cut through the lines to the top thanks to a newly-wed couple from Germany/Italy.
• Musée de l’Armée – War Museum – bunch of stuff of Napoleon’s
• The Lions – Paris bar where we had the weekly meetup – played my first experience of French billiards/pool
• Notre Dame – old church with huge bells!
• St. Michel Fountain – awesome!
• Luxembourg Gardens – beautiful park full of relaxation
• Canal tour of Paris sites – great tour of the city at night
• Catacombs of Paris – tons and tons and tons of bones!

So many sites in such a short amount of time in the area.  So many amazing people met along the way!

Next destination – Ireland!

Dublin, Ireland and the Southern Part of Ireland

We took a flight over from Paris to Dublin which didn’t cause many issues at all – thankfully!  Getting into Dublin itself from the airport was quite a pretty site.  The grass in Ireland is so green and lush – reminded me of home more than any of the other locations.  Unlike our time in Munich and Paris – where most of the time was spent in each city, our time in Dublin on the other hand was pretty short.  Most of our time was roaming the south part of the island on a tour with a bunch of Australians, Americans, and Canadians.  Most of them were Australian which was A-okay with me since they were a ton of fun and can hold their liquor! (I even got them to try a beer made in Oregon by Rogue Brewery – Dead Guy (a favorite of mine)  Their accents were also pretty awesome (probably my next big trip will be there).  Though Dublin had a lot to offer (Guinness, Jameson, etc., etc.) it wasn’t the highlight of what I wanted to see in Ireland.

Ireland is quite spread out and to see everything takes driving.  Since we didn’t want to spend a ton on renting a car, learning to drive on the wrong side of the car/road, we decided we just go on a bus tour.  It was a ton of fun though felt kinda rushed at times.  Saw a lot along the way though:

• Rock of Cashel – cool castle with a cross that was struck by lightning.
• Golden Vale
• Blarney Castle – yeah, I kissed the Blarney Stone!
• Killarney - great Irish city with a fun comedy show, live Irish musicians, and a night club – awesome times.
• Dingle Peninsula – they have a cool dolphin named Fungi
• Coumeennole Beach – left part of my soul here which I have to return and get before 20 years are up.
• County Clare
• Ennis - another fun city full of Irish pubs with local musicians
• Cliffs of Moher (Cliffs of Insanity from Princess Bride) – the one place I REALLY wanted to see in Ireland – it was one of the foggiest days ever – couldn’t see jack!
• Galway – fun city before we headed back to Dublin

Ireland was beautiful.  So many places to get lost in and see.  Sadly, the last part of our trip kept me from seeing some things I really wanted to see (Cliffs of Moher), but that just means I’ll have to go back.

—

My trip was a blast; not much could have made it a ton better.  There are just a few things I would have changed, but overall – it was an awesome experience.  If you would like to know more, then please write me in the comment section or get a hold of me some other way!

Here’s to my next adventure!