Woodland Park Zoo and Rose Garden

August 28, 2009

I’m not currently at my computer, and may not be able to get to it before Friday is over, so I’ll make a quick post right now and then add to it tomorrow.  Thankfully, I had uploaded a few pictures earlier this week, so this post will not just be filled with boring ol’ words.  Last weekend I went to the zoo!  I love zoos.  They’re great.  Woodland Park Zoo is about five blocks away from my house and I’m a memeber, so I go fairly often.  However, this was my first visit since receiving my fancy new camera, and cute animals make excellent subjects photographs.  I also stopped by the rose garden, which is located next to the zoo to snap some photos of a few flowers.  The following are my favorites.

This is… a rose.  It’s quite amazing that I was able to capture such an elusive flower, especially in a rose garden.  I know that you’re impressed.  I really like this photograph because the darker background contrasts wonderfully with the bloom allowing the pink hues to radiate in a most please manner.

Pink Rose

Here is a bee.  He was kind enough to take a break from his lunch in order to buzz around and provide me with a spiffy action shot.

Bee & Orange Flower

Once inisde of the zoo there are animals that aren’t insects.  Like this one.  Kitty!  Ocelot, to be exact.  I think she’s looking at a big bug that was flying around in her exhibit.  And what a nice exhibit it is; the cement wall in the back is definitely modeled off of something that you’d find in her natural habitat.

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Alright, I’ll grab more pictures to throw up here and improve this post later.  Promise.

See y’all soon.

Posted in: Personal, Photos – 1 Comment

Book Survey

August 26, 2009

Since last week, I’ve finished The Truth About Celia and read Ship of Fools.  With The Truth About Celia, Brockmeier was a true master of his craft; the tale was poignant and whimsical and wholly engaging.  Go read it.  Ship of Fools, on the other hand, was a rather middling science fiction story.  It introduced some interesting ideas but failed to really climax, which was a bit of a disappointment.  I don’t really want to talk about books in detail today… so I’ll steal (and modify) a book survey from one of my favorite interneters.  Thanks Hayely.  I know you guys are super excited to read all of my wonderfully insightful, thought-provoking responses, so I won’t make you wait any longer.

And go!

1. What author do you own the most books by?

Probably either Anne McCaffery or Brian Jacques.  There was a wonderful used book store near my house when I was younger and I read (and bought) all of the Pern and Redwall books that I could find.  Definitely a pair of great series for fostering an appreciation of fantasy.

2. What book do you own the most copies of?

The Hobbit.  I have two paperback copies (one is part of an old boxed set) and I also have an annotated hardcover version with lots of awesome, old-timey sketches.  This was my favorite book for a large period of my life.  In addition to the three books, I also checked out the “books on tape” version from the library and made a copy of it when I was in middle school.  I listened to it as I feel asleep for quite a few years. <3 J.R.R.

3. What fictional character are you secretly in love with?

Atticus Finch.  What’s not to love?  The man is truly remarkable.

4. What book have you read the most times in your life?

I’m not a big re-reader of books.  There are sooooooooo many different titles to pick from – I feel like it’s a bit of a waste to reread something when you could be reading something new instead.  That being said, I have re-read the first eight books of The Wheel of Time three times because it’s impossible to remember everything that happens in that ridiculous story and I got so damn excited every time a new volume came out and couldn’t help but want to continue reading the series immediately.   I’ve since learned my lesson.  I refuse to touch any of those books until it’s FINALLY (pseudo)completed… probably around the year 2025.

5. What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.  Mark Twain is the greatest American author of all time.  Seriously.

6. What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year?

If Minds Had Toes by Lucy Eyre.  This book sounds like it’s going to be so neat, but it has zero plot and zero interesting characters and was zero fun.  Maybe it wasn’t the worst book I’ve read in the past year, but it was certainly the most disappointing because it sounded like it had such potential.  I feel perfectly justified in putting it here.  Blech.

7. What is the best book you’ve read in the past year?

This is difficult.  “Best” could mean quite a few different things.  Best at making me laugh?  Best at making me think?  Best at making me feel?  Anything by Kevin Brockmeier could certainly qualify as “best”.  So could Wuthering Heights or The Road.  Take your pick!

8. If you could force everyone to read one book, what would it be?

Man, I’d love it if I could just force everyone to read any one book.  Reading is seriously one of the best ways to spend your time.  It’s fun and it makes you think and it improves your vocabulary and it educates you and even if you read a clunker, you’ve still improved yourself in some way when you’ve finished.  What else does all of these things?   Nothing!  We’re indebted to all of the authors out there.  Famous or not, you guys are awesome.  But, uh… go read A Confederacy of Dunces.  It’s funny.

9. What book would you most like to see made into a movie?

Hmmm.  Most book-movies are terribly disappointing.  Children’s books seem to have a much easier time making this transition, so maybe a film based on The Great Brain books?  That could be very cool.

10. What book would you least like to see made into a movie?

Anything that would make a casting director even consider calling in Paris Hilton.  Yuck-o.

11. Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.

Sadly, I am the worst dream-rememberer EVER.  I know, I’m such a disappointment.  I am positive that in forgetting my dreams I’m missing out on an integral part of the human experience, and I should definitely remedy this somehow.  Are there ways to improve dream-memory?  I’ll have to investigate this…

12. What is the most lowbrow book you’ve read as an adult?

Lowbrow… I’m going to assume this means vulgar?  Not the biggest fan of things most people would label as being lowbrow… I suppose that Sock by Penn Jillette (of Penn and Teller) had a pretty uncultured flavor to it.  That guy is crazy.

13. What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read?

I really struggled with The Scarlet Letter.  I never got excited about it and failed to put in the requisite effort in order to enjoy and benefit from it.  I’ll try again sometime when it’s not required reading for school… maybe that will help.

14. What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you’ve seen?

I believe that I have only seen Twelfth Night and Othello. Neither of those is obscure in the least.  For shame.

15. What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?

Seems like you can’t have any single area well covered without leaving large holes everywhere else.  I’m positive that I haven’t read 99% of what many scholars would consider “classics”.  Maybe someday I’ll be a true literati.

16. What is your favorite novel?

Bah.  Too hard.  Cat’s Cradle is really good.

17. Play?

Something by Neil Simon.  I’ll take a comedy over a tragedy any day.

18. Poem?

Most things by Robert Frost are beautiful and simple and amazing, but If by Kipling might be my favorite.

19. Work of non-fiction?

I recently read Yes Man.  That was quite superb.  I’m also very fond of nature writings… Thoreau is amazing.

20. Who is your favorite writer?

Hmmm.  Bill Watterson.  The man never let me down (aside from the fact that he stopped writing).

21. Who is the most overrated writer alive today?

Maybe Dan Brown?  This assumes overratedness correlates to the number of copies sold and accompanying commercial success as opposed to undeserved praise from critics.  That being said, I’ve only read excerpts of his work so this assessment is not the most founded.

22. What is your desert island book?

I’d probably cheat and grab some sort of anthology.  This would be a good one to have. Or maybe something like this. Seems like the latter might help you appreciate the wilderness aspect of being on a desert island, thereby decreasing the likelihood of you going nuts.  That would certainly be a plus.

23. And… what are you reading right now?

I’ve just started Celestial Matters by Richard Garfinkle.

Obviously I didn’t spend a ton of time thinking about these answers, so don’t judge me too much.  I’m sick of being in front of my computer… I think I’ll go grab a snack and READ.  You should, too (nothing complements reading quite like Cheez-Its).

See y’all soon.

Books read in 2009: 51

2009 pace: 79 books

Follow my progress. I update whenever I start a new book.

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Random Songs and Thoughts and Such

August 24, 2009

Right now my music library is made up of 4,983 songs composed by 450 artists, spread over 628 different albums.  This is equivalent to 15 days of non-stop tunes.  Woo!  I’m sure that these numbers are dwarfed by many of the music libraries out there, but this is still a substantial amount of music.  Because I’ve no idea what to talk about today and it’s getting late, I’ve decided to simply let my library play on shuffle for an hour and then record the songs that play and whatever thoughts occur to me while I give ‘em a listen.  I will faithfully record all the songs that I encounter and promise not to skip about to make myself look good – hopefully nothing too embarrassing plays.  Also, I’m not sure how sophisticated the “shuffle” feature is with Rhythmbox (I’m currently using Ubuntu as my OS because I don’t want to pay for Windows), but hopefully this provides a good mix of kind of stuff I like to listen to.

1, 2, 3… go!

1. 3rd Planet by Modest Mouse on The Moon and Antarctica

Yes!  This is a great way to start off.  Modest Mouse is definitely one of my top ten favorite bands and this is definitely their best album.  It’s also one of the first CDs that I ever bought.  I listened to it almost constantly during the summer between 8th and 9th grade and it’s continued to be one of my favorites.  Gravity Rides Everything is my favorite song off of this album, but this one is quite good, too.

2. Wrecking Ball by Mother Mother on O My Heart

This song is a fairly new addition to my library; I added it just over a month ago.  I was browsing upcoming shows around Seattle online and saw that this band was playing at the High Dive at the beginning of August.  I visited their Myspace page and liked quite a few of their songs.  This was one of them.  Although I didn’t end up getting to see them live, I did download their album and have enjoyed multiple listenings.

3. Skeleton Key by Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s on The Dust of Retreat

Again, I saw that an interesting looking band that I’d heard about was playing locally and again I downloaded some songs to give ‘em a listen and again I didn’t actually attend the show.   Damn.  I wish that I had.  I wouldn’t say that this song is one of their best, but it is quite enjoyable.  The up-tempo beat, mildly haunting vocals, and depressing lyrics combine to form a song that is catchy, yet melancholy, which is a bit unusual.

4. Welcome, Ghosts by Explosions in the Sky on All of A Sudden I Miss Everyone

Win.  I love this band.  I tend to enjoy the “post-rock” genre in it’s entirety, but this band is probably my favorite of the bunch.  I’ll admit that some other bands, most notably Sigur Rós, have moments where the sheer power and emotion of their music are more awesome, but I still like EitS best.  This selection is a bit arbitrary because I can’t quite explain why I’m so fond of their music, but it has the ability to evoke a wide variety of positive feelings inside of me whenver I listen to it.  I’d say that the above track is fairly pedestrian… if I had my choice of songs by these guys, I’d go with Your Hand in Mine… definitely my favorite.

5. Northwestern Girls by Say Hi on The Wishes and the Glitch

Here’s a song that I’d forgotten about.  Last year I went on a big Seattle-band download binge and grabbed as many songs as I could by up and coming bands in the Seattle area.  The idea was to find lots of great local bands and then get to go see them live, for cheap, before they got big and famous.  This strategy fizzled in the preliminary phases when I decided there were too many bands and too much music to complete an adequate investigation (upon further review, I think that I’ll revisit this plan in the future).  However, I did get a slew of new music, some of which is quite listenable.  This is a solid song and makes me want to go and listen to more by Say Hi when I’ve finished with this  entry.

6.  Throw Away Your Television by Red Hot Chili Peppers on By The Way

This song reminds me of the summertime.  Maybe it’s the hoppin’ beat or the zippy lyrics or maybe it’s the fact that I listened to this album for an entire road trip/vacation to the Outer Banks during the summer of ‘03.  Either way, it’s a groovy song.

I’ve been so positive about the songs I’ve encountered so far, it’s a bit crazy.  There really are quite a few songs in my library that I don’t like.  I’ve been very lucky so far, I guess.  Hopefully this trend continues.  I’m also getting pretty snoozy, so I would anticipate a decline in comments for the remainder of the songs.

7.  Poster of a Girl by Metric on Live It Out

It is a fair assessment to say that I generally favor male vocalists over their female counterparts.  However, this trend is severely overruled when it comes to Metric.  Emily Haines is such an excellent performer and I think she’s super-awesome.  Woo.  Although this is my least favorite album by Metric, it’s definitely no clunker.

8. People, the Vehicles by Maritime on We, the Vehicles

Another quality song.  I feel like there are no real weak points on this album.  Definitely worth repeated listens.

9. Change for You by The Midway State on Holes

Yes.  If the sole reason that a particular artist is a part of your library is their inclusion in an episode of The O.C., you know that’s a good sign.  But that’s okay.  It’s fine.  I love Adam Brody and think that The O.C. is a wonderfully entertaining show.  But really, The O.C. featured quite a few darn good bands (Modest Mouse, The Killers) and I’d say that The Midway State, while not the same caliber as the aforementioned bands, is a legitimately decent group.  The vocals are rich and the piano (A+) is highlighted in many of their songs.

10. ‘Til Kingdom Come by Coldplay on X & Y

Everybody likes Coldplay, right?  Their record sales seem to be very supportive of this statement.  The simple elegance of this “hidden” track is what makes it so beautiful, but maybe I’m just a sucker for songs with acoustic guitar.   I’ve included this one on multiple versions of my sleepy-time mixes.

Alright, I said an hour, but this post is getting really long and I think ten songs is plenty.  Besides, it seems rather fitting to end with this one.  I would say that the above ten songs present a fairly representative sample of the kind of music that I listen to.  Hopefully you’ve enjoyed this post.

See y’all soon.

Posted in: Music, Personal – No Comments

Lacustrine Photography

August 21, 2009

Last weekend I took some pictures as I was walking around Green Lake.  The lake, about a half mile north of my house, is surrounded by a lovely park.  There is a paved trail that gently follows the water, totalling about three miles in length, and on warm summer afternoons there are many smiling bodies drifting about, serenely imbibing the golden sunshine.  Trees line the walkway, enabling a trek through alternating realms of bright, prickling heat and cool  shadow as strides are slowly made along the dappled path.  Lots of folks bring their canine companions along with them, so there is lots of cute, cute, cute to complement the natural beauty of the park.  I usually go up for a stroll at least once a week; I really enjoy it.  Anyway, on Sunday I brought my camera along and I mostly just played around with the aperture setting and tried to take advantage of the macro feature.  I don’t think that I got any super fabulous shots, but I’ve got to put something up because it’s Friday, so here are some pictures.

Bug!  Crouching down in some mucky mud while inching forward ever so slowly so as not to incur the wrath of an insect which could maybe take out your eyes if it wanted to (it is named after a fierce fire-breathing lizard, afterall) and maintaining a precarious semblance of balance, even when a large dog comes and investigates your backside is soooo easy.  And then when you do it, you get this picture.

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Berries.  Blackberries, to be exact.  These make delicious pies and preserves and jams and ice cream toppings and I’ve heard they’re also good at texting and making phone calls.  Some of these aren’t ripe yet, so they might be sour.  Be careful!

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Bug!  I was trying to take pictures of the flowers but these damn moths/butterflies kept flying into the frame and stealing the autfocus, so I let the universe have its way and went ahead and took another bug-picture.  I do like it, though.

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Berries.  Orangish-red berries, to be exact.  I imagine that if you ate these, you might expire soon thereafter.  Or at least have some severe gurglin’ in your stomach.  They sure are pretty though, providing a severe contrast with the surrounding foliage.  Hence, the photograph.

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Bug!  I know that none of these have been actual bugs, but it’d kill the alliteration if I said their real names, and one must embrace alliteration, not shy away from it.  Anyway, this little bee was a real stinker and wouldn’t hold still long enough for me to get a decent shot where he was in focus.  That being said, I’m not completely opposed to the “action-shot!” feel that the blurriness brings to the photograph.

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So there you have it.  I hope that I have whetted your appetite for images of bugs and berries.  Hopefully I’ll get a chance this weekend to go out and take a bajillion pictures thereby increasing the chances that I’ll have something phenomenal for you next week.

See y’all soon.

Posted in: Personal, Photos – No Comments

[Heaven is] an endless succession of long winter nights on which we get paid a fair wage to sit in a warm room and read all the books ever written.

August 19, 2009

Since last week, I have done quite a bit of reading. Woo! I finished Child of the Prophecy, read Only Begotten Daughter and Yes Man in their entirety, and also started reading The Truth About Celia. Normally I don’t read quite this much, but Leslie has been out of town, so I’ve had a little more time to myself.  I guess I’ll briefly summarize my feelings toward each of these books and then see whether or not I feel like writing about anything else.

Away we go!

Child of the Prophecy by Juliet Marillier

This is the final instalment of a trilogy and takes place in Ireland during the 9th century, touching on the ongoing battle between the indigenous Celts and the invading Britons.  However, this conflict is really just a backdrop for a mildly epic love story.   There are sorcerers and bandits and war lords and all that fun stuff, but the main conflicts were internal as the story is told from the first person perspective of a young woman.  The main story arc generally resembles the following: I LOVE HIM, I CAN’T BE NEAR HIM, HE’LL GET HURT, I LOVE HIM, NOW I’M NEAR HIM BUT I CAN’T STOP MYSELF!, HE GOT HURT, I’M GOING TO BERATE MYSELF FOR BEING WEAK.  This may seem like I am being critical, but I did really enjoy the book.  The story is definitely well written and doesn’t drag at all, but it does lack some of the more fantastic plot points that generally make fantasy so fun to read.  If you’re the type of person that tends to shy away from the genre of fantasy, this trilogy would definitely be a good way to slowly immerse yourself into all of the excitement and whimsy that you’re missing out on.  Rating: B+

Only Begotten Daughter by James Morrow (this post’s title is taken from this book)

Satirical SciFi/Fantasy about a second virgin birth in contemporary New Jersey where  Julie (Jesus’s younger half-sister) is fathered by an old Jewish hermit and mothered by God.  Julie’s life turns out to be quite hard.  Apparently being a deity while growing up in the Garden State ain’t no walk in the park.  This story is far from cheery and has a tendency to dwell on the dangers inherent in religious fervor.  Morrow is critical of organized religion and seems to favor the idea that uncertainty is good, even necessary, unless you want to turn into an absolute nutter.  Personally, I agree with this philosophy and really enjoyed this novel.  I hadn’t heard of Morrow ’til recently and was excited to find out that he’s written several novels in the same vein.  I intend to read more by him.  Rating: A-

Yes Man by Danny Wallace

A few months ago, an obnoxious looking film by the same name, that seemed to be little more than a Jim Carrey vehicle (despite this, I kind of wanted to go see it because Zooey Deschanel is in it, and she’s the cutest, most awesome actress and I love her), was released in theatres.  Apparently, it was “based” (I read the summary of the film, it sounds awful and nothing like the book) on this book, except while the movie is doubtlessly stupid and ridiculous, the novel is super entertaining and chronicles what actually happens to Wallace when he vows to say only “Yes!” for a six month period of his life.  The book is basically a really long anecdote and is filled with optimism and happy times.  It makes you want to seize every opportunity and travel the globe and try new things and just have fun, fun, fun.  Woo.  Maybe I just have a deep-seated, heavily repressed wanderlust, but this book seemed surprisingly powerful.  Either way, I’d recommend it; it really makes you think about what you’re up to. Rating: A-

The Truth About Celia by Kevin Brockmeier

I just started this book, so I don’t want to pass judgement on it yet, but it’s about a family whose 7 year old daughter disappears and is never found, so I don’t expect it will be much of an “upper”.  I purchased a different Brockmeier novel earlier this year (for $1) because it had an interesting title, and I really, really liked it.  I’ve also read his two collections of short stories this year, and his style of writing is so simple and emotive and heartfelt and descriptive and it just seems like his words on the page kind of glow sometimes.  He’s definitely become one of my favorite authors.  For the longest time, I was not a fan of short stories, but I’ve been able to get pretty excited about them recently and I would say that Brockmeier is largely responsible.  If I were asked to recommend a book to someone, it would probably be one written by him.  Hopefully this book will be just as good as his others.


Blech.  That took much longer than I thought it would.  And I don’t even like this entry… In the future I’ll have to think of a different format to talk about books.  Hmmmm.  Let me know if you have any suggestions.  Thanks for readin’.

See y’all soon.

Follow my progress. I update whenever I start a new book.

Currently reading: The Truth About Celia by Kevin Brockmeier

Books read in 2009: 49

2009 pace: 77 books

Posted in: Books, Personal – 1 Comment

Musical Histories

August 17, 2009

Lots of folks find it helpful to have some kind of ambient noise present when they’re attempting to fall asleep.  Some employ a small fan to generate this noise, while others prefer the dulcet tones of karaokeing whales.  I prefer to listen to music.  Back in high school, before I had an iPod with external speakers or a computer in my room, I had to rely on CD’s and my trusty ol’ boom box if I wanted music playing as I fell asleep.

Instead of simply listening to one of the albums that I owned, I would usually make a playlist on iTunes and burn it to a CD.  This imposed a time limit of 80 minutes onto each of my mixes, which led to some arduous “this or that” scenarios.  The only other restriction was that I could only pick one song per musical artist.  My selection method was mostly dictated by my mood and by which songs I happened to like best at the moment, but it was also affected in large part by the season; summer obviously calls for summery music, right?  I could generally listen to the same CD for somewhere between a week and a month without getting terribly sick of it, depending on the awesomeness of the songs that I had selected. I played the CD’s on “shuffle” mode to impart a bit of variety. When I got tired of a CD, it got coastered or stuck in the back of my massive CD wallet, and I’d go and make a new one.

I kept the old playlists on my computer titled as whatever their date of creation was, enabling me to go back and monitor how my musical tastes slowly changed over time.  Some songs/artists appeared fleetingly (a lot of these are at least mildly embarrassing), while others were repeated again and again (old favorites like Modest Mouse and R.E.M.).  However, when I went off to college, my computer was always within three feet of my bed, so I no longer needed to make CD’s.  My habit of making the aforementioned playlists also disappeared.  In retrospect, I regret this cessation.  Music is forceful, easily altering and heightening experiences and emotions.  Having a recorded timeline to chronicle musical preference seems like such a good idea.  Such a good idea!  It’s like a journal, but using audible acoustic waves in the place of graphemes to record those important thoughts and feelings.  Everyone should do this!

I will lead by example.  Compiled below are 19 songs (1 hour, 19 minutes, and 49 seconds worth of music) that I really enjoy right now.  They represent my current favorite songs by the artists that I’ve spent the most time listening to over the past few months.

Song Name Artist Album
Effigy Andrew Bird Noble Beast
Paint or Pollen Blind Pilot 3 Rounds and a Sound
Furr Blitzen Trapper Furr
Love Is All I Am Dawes North Hills
Diamond Rings 2007 Deer Tick War Elephant
Been A Drill Heligoats The End of All-Purpose
A Children’s Crusade on Acid Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s Animal!
Wet and Rusting Menomena Friend and Foe
Things Fall Apart Mercir Winchimes and Landmines
Waves (B-side) Metric Fantasies
Ghosting Mother Mother O My Heart
For Real Okkervil River Black Sheep Boy
Friend of Feeling Good Olin and the Moon The Secret EP
Suspended in Gaffa Ra Ra Riot The Rhumb Line
For The Widowers In Paradise… Sufjan Stevens Greetings From Michigan: The Great Lakes State
Deer Crossing The Picture Bluebirds
About to Walk Throw Me the Statue Moonbeams
The Lime Tree Trevor Hall The Rascals Have Returned
Colorshow The Avett Brothers Four Thieves Gone: The Robbinsville Sessions

There’s a good chance that a few of these songs will always remind me of this summer. Woo. Hopefully there’s at least one song on the above list that you like, too. This was fun. I’ll try and do it every few months or so to stay current. Good luck recording your own musical histories (assuming you want to be awesome like me).

See y’all soon.

Posted in: Music, Personal – No Comments

Golden Gardens Park

August 14, 2009

Happy Friday! As mentioned previously, Fridays will be the days when I share some pictures that I have taken over the previous week. Initially, I came up with this idea when the digital camera I had was a four year old clunker.  But now I have a Canon Rebel XS, so the pictures needn’t be crappy.  Hooray!

This being said, I would definitely rank my camera skills as “novice” and I haven’t had a chance to read the big ol’ manual for this bad boy yet, so for now the pictures are far from extraordinary.  Additionally, I’ve also only taken the camera out once and haven’t had much of a chance to experiment with it.  In the future, I may attempt some fancier photographs, but for now all I have are some simple portraits and landscapes to share.

On Sunday evening, Leslie and I went to Golden Garden Park over in Ballard.  This park is located right on Puget Sound facing west, and it’s really pretty.  We went around 7:30, so the light was starting to fade and the sky had gotten sick and tired of being blue, but there was still plenty of time for picture taking.

Although this park contains one of the few sandy beaches in Seattle, it’s certainly not the typical resort-style beach. The actual beach is fairly narrow, between 20 and 100 feet for the most part, and it’s flanked on the eastern side by shrubs and dunes and small copses of trees.

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Dunes and sea grasses are fairly common, but I was surprised by these trees, growing right out of the sand.  They looked a little foreign, but they made for a nice photograph.

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There were lots of people out enjoying the sunset, taking advantage of the mild summer evening.  Kites are the coolest.

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There were also puppies.  Romping puppies.  Adorable romping puppies.  I want one.

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This is Leslie.  She provided the wonderful gift that enables me to take these photos.  Hooray.  And thank you.

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And this is me.

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Sunsets are probably the most photographed events ever. Please excuse my extreme lack of originality in subject matter, but come on. What is prettier than a sunset? Nothing! Those peaks you see are part of the Olympic Mountain range over on the peninsula.  They’re quite I majestic. I only wish the sky had been purpler.

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Anyway, the above images are my favorites that I took while we were down at the park. Hopefully they have not offended you or made you want to quit the Internet. I’ll try and take some better pictures over the next week so I have something super exciting to share next Friday.

See y’all soon.

Posted in: Personal, Photos – 1 Comment

Book Challenge

August 12, 2009

Wednesday!

Time for books!

This year, I’ve made  a real effort to set aside some time every night for book readin’.  I used to read tons and tons back in high school and earlier, but during my tenure at Alfred University, my bibliophilia waned distressingly.  Over the past year, I have done my best to address this unforgivable neglect and, with the help of the wonderful Half Price Books (with an excessive stockpile of $1 books) over in the U-district and the extensive collection possessed by the Seattle Public Library, reading has returned to its rightful prominence.  Who needs friends?  Books are better!

Not really.

But maybe…

Anyway, I started a book log back in September, and have been keeping track of the books I’ve read since then.  That made reading just that much more rewarding, knowing that at the completion of each book I’d get to swagger over to my computer and add a new entry to my list.  Those of you familiar with the incalculable joy that comes with checking something off of a list have experienced a feeling akin to this. Back in the beginning of January, I decided to establish a year long reading goal of fifty-two books.

Wow!  52!  That’s two every fortnight!

(For those of you unfamiliar with such classy vocabulary, a fortnight is simply 336 hours)

Initially, I wasn’t sure how feasible this goal was going to be. I’d previously witnessed the pseudo-failure of one of the best youtubers ever in her attempt to accomplish a similar challenge, so I was moderately concerned with my chances of success.  But then I read 6 books in January and have maintained that pace since.  NERD.   So while I may be a big ol’ loser who sits around and reads, reads, reads, at least I will win at this challenge.  And that’s what really matters.

Historically, I’ve been a big fan of fantasy and science fiction, but lately I’ve attempted to vary my interests. We’ll see how this goes. I was planning on talking about some specific books, but I’m getting kinda snoozy, so I’ll do that next week instead.

See y’all soon.

Currently reading: Child of the Prophecy by Juliet Marillier

Books read in 2009: 46

2009 pace: 76 books

Posted in: Books, Personal – No Comments

Music #1 (Dawes) and Birthday Fun

August 10, 2009

Here I am, as promised, ready to do some serious bloggin’. Due to my ardent stance on alliteration usage (pro!), I’ve decided that Mondays should be for “Music” and Fridays should be for “Photographs”. This pairs poor, alliterationless “Books” with Wednesdays.

Here we go!

Music.

I enjoy music. Quite a lot. I’ve got lots o’ gigabytes of it and a serviceable iPod touch enabling me to carry on my love affair with tunes wherever I go. However, I understand that an mp3 player paired with musical appreciation in no way makes me unique or special or fancy. It neither qualifies me as a musical expert with impeccable taste, nor does it imply that I’m an uber-with it hipster, who likes bands before you’ve ever heard of them. The point of these “Music” bits is to simply share a song/artist/album that I think is really super-awesome and that I think you will hopefully enjoy. No one likes a music snob. Blech! They’re the worst. I will attempt to avoid any and all forms of snobbery in my blog posts. Promise.

Anyway.

Music!

This week, I will talk about a band.  That band is Dawes.  If you’re lucky, clicking this link will result in vast amounts of good feelings and maybe even a modicum of absolute giddiness – I experienced both!  Dawes has put out one studio album to date: North Hills.  As of right now, its Amazon.com Sales Rank is #51,473 for MP3 Albums, so you know it has to be good.  All of the songs on the album rate at least “Pretty gosh darn good!”, but my favorites are When My Time Comes, Give Me Time, and Love is All I Am.  Give ‘er a listen if you’re up for it.

While North Hills is quite good, this band is orders (at least three!) of magnitude better live.  I have been fortunate enough to see them perform twice.  The first time, back in May, they opened for Low vs Diamond and Ben Lee at Nectar in Fremont.  I’d definitely never heard of them before (they weren’t  listed on the tickets or Nectar’s website beforehand) but they were ridiculous.  Hearing really good music with no prior recommendations/expectations is a real treat.  They were so good that most of the obnoxious, “I’m going to insist on talking during the opening act” folks actually shut up and listened.  The lead singer/guitarist was quite the showman, animatedly dancing and hopping around on stage (in a good way) and the entire band’s performance was 100% entertaining and full of energy.  They played for about 45 minutes and I ran up and bought a copy of their CD as soon as they were finished.  <3

They came back to Seattle again in July, touring with Deer Tick, so OBVIOUSLY I went and saw them again.  Having listened to their album a bunch, they were even better the second time.  Very satisfying.  In the future, I plan on attending their shows whenever they’re in the Seattle area.  Anyway, they’re my favorite new band that I’ve given a listen to so far this year, so I figured it’d be prudent to give ‘em the old shout out and share them with whomever might stumble across this entry.  Hopefully you don’t think they suck!

In other news, today (assuming I publish this when it’s still August 10th)  is my birthday!  Hooray!  23!  Woooooo!  I celebrated mostly yesterday because I had to work today, thereby doubling the time over which birthday festivities occured.  It was great fun.  The highlights were eating at Ixtapa, my favorite restaurant ever (sorry Feve, you’re a very close second), and opening up one of my presents, only to discover that the red panda decorated wrapping paper was concealing a Canon Rebel XS 10.1MP Digital SLR Camera.  Win!  And it was totally a surprise, which made it that much better.  Now when I take and post photos, the only thing to blame their mediocrity on are my underwhelming photography “skills”.  So that’s fun.  My parents/family also sent me lots of nice presents and my housemates whipped up a delicious cake.  So, yes.  A good birthday.

See y’all soon.

Concerts attended in 2009: 9
Most recent: Throw Me the Statue & Blitzen Trapper @ the Mural Amphitheatre, 7/31/09
Next up: The Avett Brothers @ the Paramount Theatre, 8/28/2009

Posted in: Music, Personal – No Comments

Gonna Be Some Changes Made

August 6, 2009

      In order for me to be a successful blogger and reliably make entries in this damn thing, I’m going to need to adopt some kind of systematic writing technique. Once a person has gotten used to sitting down and typing up a bunch of crap about themselves to share with the faceless void that is the Internet, I have heard that this can actually be an enjoyable experience. But, until blogging has become a beloved habit, it seems entirely bothersome. To address my current lack of enthusiasm, I’ve decided that I’m going to try and establish themes to write about for every (week)day of the week (or every other week day, or whatever…). For example, I’m a big ol’ bibliophile, so I can devote my blogging quota every (Mon)day writing about books! Woo! This would give me a fairly direct topic to write about, while still allowing for plenty of wiggle room to throw in surprise twists and keep things interesting (an essential, needed to keep all you lovely reader(s) coming back for more). I could talk about a book that I’m currently reading or one that I want to read in the future or provide expert recommendations, suggesting absolutely thrilling books that you’ve never before heard of. Win.

      So that’s one of the “themes” I’ve decided that I would enjoy writing about. Another topic, in the same general vein, would be music (album, artist, song… whatever I feel like!). I could also post pictures that I’ve taken with my wonderfully advanced and sophisticated camera (ha) during the previous week and delight you with the undoubtedly witty and interesting anecdotes which accompany them.

Books. Music. Photos.

      So these are three ideas that I am confident I could run with, and have exciting, new material to share each and every week! I could do a Monday, Wednesday, Friday thing… that doesn’t sound too challenging, right? And then if anything else interesting happens to me that I feel like sharing, besides all the tomes and tunes and photography, I can just stick it in there wherever.

This is a good idea. I’ll start next Monday. August 10th. Which is also my birthday!

Posted in: Personal – 1 Comment
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