Its been almost 6 months now since I was introduced to “new” frozen yogurt while on a recruiting trip for work in southern California.  This is the most unbelievably delicious treat you could ever imagine, usually its “tart” soft-serve style frozen yogurt (tastes similar to plain yogurt, but slightly sweeter) topped with fresh fruit, or other fun toppings.  Sometimes there will be a green tea, or a rasberry flavored yogurt, but generally its just plain, so your variety comes from what you top it with.

Its not hard at all in southern California to find one of these trendy yogurt shops either in a storefront of its own, or at a kiosk/booth at almost every local mall (larger chains like pinkberry, ce fiore, and red mango make it pretty easy) ….. in western washington or other places however, its a lot harder to find a yogurt “taste oasis” that it should be.

I found a shop in the Ballard area called “Moo Berry” its a small locally owned yogurt place that tasted very good on a hot day.  Secondly, “Bliss” in the Federal Way mall is another local retailer that hadn’t been open very long when Lydia and I stumbled upon it during our first trip to that mall in many years.  I asked how long they had been open and the cashier said “ohhh…. two days? yeah, yesterday was our first day, we gave out samples before that”. I haven’t been there yet, but is sounds like even the stupidmall, SuperMall has an independent tart-yogurt stand.

It seems like right now the mega chains from SoCal are slow to show up, and this new fad is being introduced by small independant shops.  When we were on our road trip a few months back we sought after these types of shops and didn’t have any problem finding them in the bay area, or Portland.

More yogurt is coming though, Red Mango, which many attribute to starting the craze down in LA (bringing the idea from Korea) has already opened stores at Pacific Place in downtown Seattle, Kirkland, and in just a few weeks will open a store in the new Southcenter Mall expansion, along with LA competitor Cie Fiore.  Pinkberry, perhaps the most popular SoCal yogurt shop received $27.5m from Howard Shultz’s venture investment firm to take the store’s concept nationwide.

With only a handful of calaries, and 0% fat…. this is one fad that I hope catches on soon….. and comes to Olympia as soon as possible!

So, I want to try something out and share links with you that I’ve found interesting over the last week or so. These are things that are more than just sites I’ve enjoyed visiting, but things I’ve ended up spending quite a bit of time thinking about afterwards.

Starbucks in Yelm and free wifi nation-wide:

Starbucks is finally rolling out free wireless across the country, but you have to have a registered Starbucks gift card. While I know some people aren’t very forgiving about the lack of breakfast sandwhiches, free internet will come in handy at the brand new (first) Starbucks in Yelm that opened this week.

Jeff Dye on “Last Comic Standing”

Its not to often that someone you went to High School with ends up on a competition reality show, and even more rarely is it rumored they make it into the finals. Kentwood Alum and co-former Kent Area Young Life volunteer Jeff Dye’s Last Comic Standing audition just aired on thursday, and websites report that he goes far.

Draft Governor Sarah Palin for Vice-President

It turns out that there are a handful of people out there who think Alaska Governor Sarah Palin would make a great addition to John McCain’s ticket in November. As the first female Alaska governor, and with a over 90% approval rating, Palin could be a fresh addition to the national republican party. I’m still trying to figure out who I’m going to support for President, and you can bet that the running mate choices will speak volumes about each candidates’ political philosophy.

Apple WWDC to begin monday, June 9th

Rumored to appear at Apple’s annual developers conference during Steve Job’s opening Keynote address: 3G Second-Generation iPhone, Tablet MacBook, a large tablet iPod Touch, a re-branding of the .mac online service, and a preview of the next operating system due out next year. Thats a lot of speculation, and a lot of products for a developers conference…

Mystery Science Theater 3000 lives on with RiffTrax

So, I guess its not news, but it was news to me when I found out that MST3K alum Mike Nelson (along with Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbet and others) offer a service where you can download a mp3 of them making fun of a movie and play it along with a DVD that you own or have rented. For the first time I’m looking forward to watching Batman & Robin, Battlefield Earth, and Road House.

When working at camp during the middle of a busy summer, it can be a fun personal challenge to find the best ways of using my little time off. Along with sitting in a Starbucks and goofing around online, catching late night weekend movies was something that became a fairly regular habit last year. From “The Bourne Ultimatum” to “The Simpsons Movie” heading over to Yelm Cinemas became one of my favorite hobbies of the summer. I did some homework last month in preparation for the upcoming movie season and found a nice long list of movies that look pretty good. I’ll update this list as I see movies and add to it films not listed, and perhaps chime in any extraordinary thoughts that I have to share.

I’ve also listed a number of DVDs that I’m looking forward to coming out over the next few weeks and months.

In the Theaters:

√ Iron Man - May 2 (Rotten Tomatoes | Trailer)
Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian - May 16 (Rotten Tomatoes | Trailer)
√ Indiana Jones 4 - May 22 (Rotten Tomatoes | Trailer)
The Promotion - June 6 (Rotten Tomatoes | Trailer)
Get Smart - June 20 (Rotten Tomatoes | Trailer)
Hancock - July 2 (Rotten Tomatoes | Trailer)
Batman 2 - The Dark Knight - July 18th (Rotten Tomatoes | Trailer)
Step Brothers - July 25 (Rotten Tomatoes | Trailer)
Traitor - Aug 29 (Rotten Tomatoes | Trailer)

DVD
The Hammer - June 24 (Amazon.com | Rotten Tomatoes | Trailer)
John Adams - June 10 (Amazon.com | Trailer)
Recount (HBO.com | Trailer)
War, Inc - July 1 (Rotten Tomatoes | Trailer)
Noise (Rotten Tomatoes | Trailer)

Surprises so far….

Iron Man wasn’t a movie that I was planning on seeing but after hearing such amazing reviews, I saw it a few weeks ago and thought that it was really good. For the last few years these big summer blockbusters have been cleverly written, and haven’t been over the top. I’ve been looking forward to Mike Meyers’ new move “The Love Guru” for the last few years since I heard they were working on it, but after seeing the trailer its not making it onto my list this year. Also not quite making it onto my “must see” list is “The Rocker” staring Office star Rainn Wilson. There are a few other goofy comedies that look fairly funny, but there are plenty of other good movies out there, and you have to save something for fall DVD rentals.

You may notice the the new look here at northslope, along with the facelift I merged the blog with the front page.  You can find a past and future blog posts right here, along with photo updates and all the other usual fun northslope stuff!

There is nothing like a nice long road trip to make you never want to drive a car again…. I’m just kidding, I could have kept going for days if it wasn’t for the gas prices. We were gone for a week and logged just a little under 2,000 miles on our first major road trip since we’ve been married (and we picked the worst gas prices in the 5 years we’ve been married to attempt such a trip).

Our digital camera was being repaired during the adventure so all we had was our iPhone cameras, which turned out to be not that bad, and we were able to upload pictures to both the blog and flickr as we went!

Here is a recap of the main destinations:

• Santa Rosa, CA
• Dublin, CA (area)
• Stockton, CA
• San Fransisco, CA

Of course there were many other stops along the way, the most notable and fun being a stop in Ashland, OR on both the way down and the way back up!

(click here) for the photo gallery

(click here) for the northslope blog

San-Fran, originally uploaded by northslope.

Were spending a little over a day in San-Francisco today, after
leaving Stocktown this morning we headed to a few estate sales in the
city, which gave us a cool opportunity to see the inside of some very
old and very cool apartments/houses.

Right now were stuck on a cable car (seen behind me) in the middle of
Chinatown. There is a three cable car backup in the middle of the road!

Coffee Shops, originally uploaded by northslope.

We’re in ‘Pleasanton’ California right now, enjoying a nice long
morning of chocolate crossiants and free Tully’s WiFi. This isn’t the
first time we’ve hunkered down for a latte in between mini-trips and
its always fun to find a place to relax. Onto Stockton tonight to
spend some time with our friend Evan!

If you haven’t already figured out over the last 4 years since this blog began, much of its writtings are not for you the reader….unless you happen to be me.

Its hard for me to be a blogger, unless there is something going on that I want to document for the purpose of reading about later. I have gone as far as to print out the entire post history from our year in Alaska, and have it in book form sitting on our bookshelf. While I am aware that others are reading this (and that can sometimes be fun motivation to post) so far, everything we’ve written over the last few years continues to be fun to look back on. I hope that while we’re documenting some of this, that you as friends and family get some additional insight into Lydia and I….and you enjoy catching up on what we’re up to, and what is important to us.

So, I’m going to be journaling our current vacation for the next few days… its the first time in over 5 years of marriage that we’ve gone on a roadtrip together, and its been a very fun time.

I’ll have more detail later, but as I get ready for bed in our first destination of Santa Rosa, CA - here is the route we used to get here: