If I had lunch with a famous person...

So I had a random thought the other day while I was watching Big Brother and I was thinking... What famous person would I have lunch with if I could?  It happened that the person was staring right at me from my TV screen... It would be Julie Chen.  Why Julie you ask?  Well, she is pretty awesome.  She hosts one of my favorite shows and despite her small role within the show, she has a big impact. All I can say is that the Chenbot rules!

As the host of CBS's Big Brother, Julie gets to see the ins and outs of the show.  She gets to know the characters better than we do and she has a backstage pass to all of the action.  What makes me love Julie so much on Big Brother is that you can tell that she is just as much of a fan as the rest of us are.  She gets excited when she meets the evicted house guests and likes to tease the house guests with some thought provoking questions (giving Jeff a hard time about Jordan).  She also plays along with them when they throw questions back at her (Dan when he calls her Mrs. Chen).  You can tell which house guests she likes if you pay attention to how she greets the person as they walk out the front door. To see an example of Julie's love for the game, click here.

In her 12 years of hosting, she has developed a bit of a reputation as being a little stiff at times.  Some would say robotic.  This comes from her background of being a journalist and trying to be objective (which is a part of her formal training).  Given this stiffness, she was nicknamed "Chenbot".  Some people would be offended by such a nickname, but Julie has embraced it and even makes fun of herself by using the nickname "Chenbot".  See related story here.

If I had lunch with Julie, I would ask her all sorts of questions:

Who is your favorite house guest?
Did Brenchel annoy you as much as they did the rest of us?
If you were a house guest, what season would you like to have played in?
Chilltown or the Brigade?
What did you think of Boogie and Will playing the women in BB All-Stars?

Overall, I think that Julie would make a great lunch date and would be really fun to chat with.  I would love to pick her brain about the game and get her take on the show and it's various characters.  She is the ultimate expert in the game and it would be totally fun to nerd out with her.

Julie, if you see this, give me a call! You pick the place and I'll get the tab.

It's days like today when I wish that I lived in Seattle

This is a photo from my visit in March 2010 on the
I- 90 Floating Bridge towards Mercer Island

It is hot! Really hot.  The current temperature in Denton is 104 degrees.  Despite the fact that I am off of work today, I have spent all of it inside because of the temperature.  I did venture outside to run some errands and piddle around the Square, but beyond that, I have been inside.  Currently in Seattle, it is 76 degrees.  Tomorrow, they will be under a heat advisory with their high temperature of 86 degrees.  If only we could stay at 86.

I say this because I really like Seattle.  It reminds me a lot of Denton but just bigger, skinnier, and more people.  It helps that it is in a different climate zone and is outside the state of Texas.  I have only been to Seattle once, but that was all it took to get me excited about the Emerald City.

Like Denton, the locals are pretty laid back and are fond of shopping local, enjoying the outdoors, and being eco-friendly.  It also helps that Seattle is just gorgeous.  There are a lot of trees, the air is fresh, and they have these things called mountains.  Fellow Texans can appreciate my lack of knowledge about these things called mountains as we do not have any here in the Lone Star State.  We have plateaus (and beautiful ones in the High Plains region) and hills; none of this mountain business.

Who knows if a move to Seattle will ever happen, but maybe it will one day.  Justin recently found a fellow blogger that wrote about their experience moving from DFW to Seattle: Our Move to Seattle.  I was glad to see that other Metroplex dwellers were able to do it and that I could do it too.