Mike and I have extremely different philosophies when it comes to travel and vacation.  I generally want to research and plan every possible split second available, and Mike wants to show up somewhere and just see what happens.  These differences are apparent not only in our own travels, but they also seem to materialize when other people come to visit us.  Poor Justin spent Saturday experiencing what happens when our worlds collide: we crammed a full day of activities into the first half of Saturday, and then we spent the other half being as lazy as possible.

Saturday started off with a monumentous occasion- a trip to OfficeMax, where Justin bought his FIRST DIGITAL CAMERA.  Yes, you read that correctly- it’s 2008, Justin is a 26 year old successful engineer, and he has never owned a digital camera before.

After the major electronics purchase, we had some really good pho at Pho Viet Anh, which was exciting because a) good pho is always a good thing, and b) it’s only a mile from our house- we have a local Vietnamese restaurant now!   This is some kind of milestone.  After we were full of noodle goodness, we made it to our first planned destination of the day: BrickCon.

What?  You’ve never heard of BrickCon, the premiere Lego(R) Fan Convention in the continental US?  Then you must be a loser.  I don’t know what you were doing Saturday at noon, but we saw stuff like this:

An actual Lego(R) Ambassador;

Legoville, USA;

A Halo Army (from the video game, Mike had to explain this to me);

Lego-fied art;

A model of the Titanic that was so big that we couldn’t get the entire thing in one shot.  And it was for sale, price upon request only.

After we had our fill of BrickCon, we headed downtown to the Seattle Aquarium.

We saw a gigantic octopus and watched it change colors.  I love that it got paler when it got closer to me.

Justin poked an anenome.

We hung out in the aquarium-dome.

And we saw the otters!  I LOVE otters!

The aquarium was even cooler thanks to Mike’s hefty Microsoft Employee discount.  It saved us more than 50%!  Score.

The rest of Saturday was spent visiting the world’s tiniest bike shop, eating a very late lunch, and then heading back to the house, where I took a nap.  Saturday had officially worn me out by 5:00 PM.  I must be getting old.