I've been in Seattle since Friday afternoon and I've pretty much ignored SQL Server. And it's been nice!

I came up early with my son, Delaney, who turns 10 next week. Every year I've just made it home for his birthday, with the PASS conference that typically is a week earlier than it is this year. Or it seems to fall that way. This year when I saw that the conference overlapped his birthday, I knew I needed to do something special.

He's a lucky kid, and doesn't need material stuff for a present, but he likes the military and planes. I've wanted to bring him up to Seattle, but since this is a long week for me, I've avoided it most years. This year I decided to change that and so we planned this trip in the summer and he came up with me Friday, going home Monday morning. We've gone to the Museum of Flight, the Pacific Science Museum, been through an Underground tour, which was interesting for me. We drove around Seattle, enjoyed some good food and jammed out at the Experience Music Project. We made a Seahawks game and rode the monorail downtown. It's been a fun weekend, and I'm ready to head back to work.

Sure I did a little, send newsletters, answered a few questions while Delaney was watching TV, and checked email tonight. And I'm writing this, but overall, it's been a fairly unwired weekend, which was needed and deserved before a very, very busy week for me.