Sunday Morning Photos
A couple shots off the front porch, and one downtown while waiting for the stores to open …
Megan’s first NBA game
We went to a Supersonics game tonight, and sat in some great seats (the 4th row) courtesy of my manager and our team at work. Megan snuck my D70 and the 18-200 lens in, and I got a bunch of pictures. Here’s a few I liked.
It was fun sitting in the fancy seats and sharing a lounge at halftime with other guys from Microsoft.
Wind Damage
Some of the scenes around town after last week’s windstorm have reminded me of the Katrina damage we saw in Mississippi last year: huge trees uprooted, buildings caved in, cars up-ended, that kind of stuff. But most of the worst damage I’ve seen was out around Duvall when I took a drive with Drinkboy to check on his construction project earlier this week, and I didn’t have my camera with me.
Then this morning we went over to our favorite breakfast spot, Susan’s 5100, and right there across the street is a house with a big tree that fell during the storm, tearing up their front yard, blocking their walkway (I missed the shot of an old man scrambling over the trunk to get into the house), and crushing their safe and sturdy Volvo parked out front. That block’s still closed a week after the storm, waiting on getting the tree cleared — it’s a great time to own a pickup truck and a chainsaw in the Seattle area, there’s way more tree-clearing work than the usual suspects can keep up with.
Astute observers will note that the photo on the right was not taken with a wide-angle lens. That’s the first telephoto shot I’ve posted since early October, when I broke my 18-200 lens and sent it to Nikon for repair. It was finally returned from the factory this week. Things are falling into place for a great Christmas. Now just have to find a present for the wife …
Simple Pleasures of Modern Times
After 6.5 days, the power is on. Megan’s rather happy about it, too, although her woo-wooing has traumatized the kitties a bit.
“An honest man can feel no pleasure in … power.”
- Thomas Jefferson (who never knew the joy of instant hot chocolate)
Warm Idiot
OK, I’m an idiot. But as my brother Ken just said, “yeah, but you’re warm, and that’s better than being smart and cold.”
The first day the power was out, I looked at this little fake fireplace we have downstairs, and I thought I saw an electrical conduit going into it. Hey, it was dark. And we’ve never used it — we never spend any time in that room.
Anyway, today (after all these nights of us shivering in the 30-something overnight lows) I discovered it’s not an electrical conduit. It’s a gas line. And the gas is on.
So we have heat in one room. Still no power (tomorrow’s day 7), but at least we can keep warm. Megan even set up a brand-new carbon monoxide detector, just in case her brilliant husband had anything set up wrong. So far, it hasn’t gone off.
Hey, speaking of the “carbon monoxide epidemic” in the Seattle area (as a Virginia Mason Hospital spokesman called it yesterday), check out today’s front page of the Seattle Times below.
That’s warnings about carbon monoxide and electrocution dangers, printed in five languages: English, Vietnamese, Russian, Spanish, and Somali. I find the choice of languages very interesting, as a guy who went to high school in Seattle and graduated in a class of over 300 that only included a handful of non-whites. Seattle has changed.
And we are warm!
We won!
Not much new to report around here. Day 5. Still no power. Just work. No life. Work, eat, sleep in the cold, get up, do it again.
Can’t wait for … spring. Just learned I’m going to Australia in February, so I can warm up then. That’s their summer, right?
Back in the 70s, I read a couple of Alexander Solzhenitsyn books. Mainly because Bruce did. They were cool, but a bit dreary. For example, here’s a quote from “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: How can you expect a man who’s warm to understand a man who’s cold?
Oh well, there is one silver lining this week: I was named Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year”! And so were you.
OK, enough cowardly procrastinating, time to go home and enjoy the evening. Megan, if you see this on your phone, leave a candle on in the window. Let’s go out for a drink as soon as I get home, while the truck’s still warm.
Final email of Mom’s Africa Trip
Mom is back in town, and now has power, so from her house (where I just took my first hot shower in five days) I can post this email she wrote yesterday, summarizing her Africa trip …
Hi,
I am home – but will send a final e-mail about the Egypt part of my trip. This time I am not typing against the clock, so it may become lengthy.
Friday, Dec. 13th was a “ travel” day. We flew from Nairobi, Kenya to Cairo, Egypt; then had a hotel room for a day before we caught an evening flight to Luxor where we spent the night in a hotel.
On Sat. Dec. 14th we were bussed to our ship (the “Nile Admiral”) where we spent the next four nights. On the way we stopped at the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens and the Karnak Temple and the Luxor Temple. The Valley of the Kings is where several kings have their tombs and the Queens and children under six have their tombs at the Valley of the Queens. The Muslims seem to segregate men and women—in life, in worship, and in death.
There are two types of temples:
– “cult” temples—which were for the “living”—and where all the festivals and celebrations were held.
– the “mortuary” or burial temples –where the royals were buried with their belongings, to help them in the after life.
Both tombs and temples seem to have four parts.
1) The inner most part called the sanctuary.
2) The vestibule—the area around the sanctuary.
3) The hypostyles—an area of large columns and hieroglyphics on the wall around the vestibule.
4) The open courtyard—a flat open area outside the hypostyles. Since there is no vegetation, this is usually just a flat sandy/rocky area.
Tombs and temples seemed of equal importance to the early Egyptians. As soon as someone ascended the throne, they began construction of their tomb. It was important to have it ready when they died. Both the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens contain mortuary temples (tombs). Karnak and Luxor were both cult temples.
Some trivia on Egypt:
Egyptians do not consider themselves Arabs. They think of themselves as a race unto themselves. But they are linked to Arabs by language and religion similarities.
Sunday Dec. 10th was the only day on this trip that we did not have a wake-up call. We had a leisurely day on the ship—or going ashore for shopping—and there was Bingo in the evening.
Dec. 11th, Monday we toured the the Horus Temple in Edfu and sailed from Edfu to KomOmbo where we visited the Temple of Kom Ombo.
We sailed overnight from Kom Ombo to Awan.
Dec. 12th we visited the High Dam and the Philae temple in the morning . In the afternoon, we had a delightful and relaxing time on a “felucca”, which is an old and small two masted sailing vessel, on Lake Nassar. The weather was wonderful and we were well entertained by our captain and his son (who had us up dancing and singing and clapping our hands). Other boats came alongside selling their souvenir wares, and one little boy about 10 to 12 came alongside and serenaded us.
That evening we had a party with the captain and crew of the Nile Admiral. Most people had purchased local garb to wear this evening. Cari had a black, gold-sequined Cleopatra dress that was very becoming on her. My brother and I only splurged on the head-dress. (Jim looked like Arafat himself.) After dinner there was dancing and games. It was fun.
Dec. 13th Wed. Most of us left early for a flight to Abu Simbel. This is where those carvings were moved 200 feet upward and 600 feet back to save them from being submerged by the waters of Lake Nassar when the Awan Dam was built. It was considered one of the engineering feats of the 20th century (preserving these huge monuments). The small airfield at Abu Simbel seems to exist solely to enable tourists to see this wonder.
After seeing Abu Simbel, we flew back to Aswan to catch our flight to Cairo.
Dec. 14th Thursday We visited the pyramids and the Sphinx this morning—which was a lot of walking over very rough terrain. We stopped at Sakara—the oldest of Egypt’s 97 pyramids—and the first to be built of stone. Before this pyramids were built of mud bricks.
We also toured a carpet factory and a papyrus factory. In the evening I went with a group to a Sound and Light Show near the Sphinx. The show was interesting, but equally interesting to me was walking around this small town –off the tourist areas—and watching the local people on an ordinary evening. The kids playing in the street, riding horseback, and the men sitting outside shops smoking their hookah pipes and playing games like backgammon. We had our tour director with us plus a plain dressed policeman with a gun (I was told every American tour bus has their own guard furnished by the local police force.)
Dec. 15th Friday We spent this final day in Cairo. Visiting the Egyptian Museum in the morning, and in the afternoon I went on a “Spiritual Cairo” tour where we visited a couple of Muslim Mosques (one being the Citadel) and two Orthodox Christian churches and one Jewish Synagogue. We ended at a Bazaar, where we connected with my niece, Cari. She had taken a taxi from the hotel by herself and then rode home on the bus with us. I was sure glad when I saw her! The thought of this young, attractive, Caucasian girl on the streets of Cairo alone scared me. (not her though.)
I tried a snack of liver and brains and greens in a pita bread—and liked it.
Our final dinner was tonight—on the top floor of the Ramses Hilton where we were staying. The restaurant was named “The Windows of the World” and was a beautiful view of Cairo. A good dinner and some roasting of our tour director, Chris, and a poem by him about our group—plus a poem about our whole trip by one of the women in the group. We seemed reluctant to say our good-byes –this will be the last time some of us will see each other as tomorrow some will be returning home and some will be going on to Jordan for a post-trip. I left first as I had much packing to do.
The trip home was fairly uneventful—just long and tiring. Our wake-up call was at 4:30 am in Cairo and it would be almost 30 hours before I would be in a bed again. We cleared customs in New York, but one of my bags was missing at Sea-Tac.
But the big shock for me was what I came home to. Thursday night Seattle had a wind and Hail storm—the worst they have had n 200 years. I had looked forward to the “comforts of home” and found a cold house with no power and temperatures in the upper 20’s. I should have stayed in Africa—at least it was warm! Since I had seen no news for three weeks, I was totally unprepared for this. Thank goodness the power came on by 3 pm.
It was a wonderful but strenuous and exhausting trip. But I am very glad I went and glad to be home safely.
Love,
Mom/LaVonne
Added later: a few photos that Mom’s friends sent her after the trip …
Seattle power outage
This really sucks. The power has been out for much of the Seattle area since late Thursday night, due to a windstorm. When you work on a computer, power is sort of a big deal. And although my M4 has reasonable battery life, after the first day or two that becomes pretty irrelevant.
The highest clocked speed for gusts at Sea-Tac airport was 69mph, and since we’re up on a hill just a few miles away, I assume we experienced about the same. The blasts were really rocking our house, that was sort of interesting.
Thursday evening Megan walked out to her car in the carport and found that we had several inches of water standing there. Keep in mind, that’s at the top of a steep hill that our lot sits on. I don’t know the numbers, but we must have had a couple inches of rain Thursday, in addition to the high winds. Not far from our house, a woman drowned in a freak accident when her basement flooded rapidly. Geez.
Here’s the view from our house early Friday morning. Bellevue’s skyscrapers are lit, but other than that the only lights visible are the scattered people who have backup generators. (More of those in the high-income areas, I noticed.) The story in today’s newspaper says that Bellevue was one of the hardest-hit areas, with 80% of Bellevue without power “including downtown.” Not sure what to make of that — did downtown Bellevue, like Sea-Tac Airport, lose power later in the day Friday?
Friday morning I drove Megan to the airport, and — unexpectedly — her flight left right on time. (Later Friday they cancelled most of the flights out of Sea-Tac.) I drove past Mom’s neighborhood, and Mom you picked a good time to be in Africa. Lots of trees down around there, including this one over on 212th, and this one within a block of your house.
I drove around Friday trying to find power for my laptop. Finally found an available outlet at a Tully’s (the one at 1st & Pike, for future reference), and got some work done there. I tried to find a newspaper to learn more about the power outage, but Friday was the first time in 53 years that the PI didn’t publish at all, and the Times printed less than 5% of their usual Friday run because there was no power at their printing facility.
By the way, I walked over to the Pike Place Bar & Grill for lunch Friday (since there’s nothing open outside of downtown, it seems), and while I was sitting there reading Simon Robinson’s “Professional C#” the waitress tried to start a debate with me about whether C# is “just Microsoft’s version” of Java or a separate language in its own right. Since when do cocktail waitresses have opinions about this stuff? Does that happen outside Seattle?
Friday evening I played around on my laptop a bit by candlelight, and chugged the rest of the prescription cough medicine. (You can see the empty bottle there by the mousepad.) And as of Saturday morning, there was still no power anywhere east of Rainier Avenue. Hey, I thought moving to Leschi would put us at the top of the list for this kind of stuff!
Anyway, it’s Saturday and I’m at work, where the heat and lights work. The card readers didn’t work in the building, though, so I had to go in through a nearby building and get here by the internal walkways.
The poor cats are at home freezing (overnight low was around freezing), but I needed a break after 12 hours of being their carbon-powered electric blanket. No way to predict how soon the power will be back on at home, so Fish, if the power’s on and you’re surfing the net on Megan’s laptop, please IM me because I’d rather be home hanging out with you …
Jim Bakker’s son involved in non-scandal
Without comment, because we already have enough people fighting over religion on this planet:
Rediscovering bands and videos
I never actually owned a Violent Femmes CD, which is strange because I listened to so much NIN and other industrial stuff in the 90s. I had a couple of tracks on compilations that I liked, but never got around to really checking them out.
But now, my favorite song on YouTube is a Violent Femmes track, “Gone Daddy Gone.” Check it out.
I emailed that link to a friend I thought would like it (you know who you are) a few months ago, thinking it was too risqué for the blog, then forgot about it. Then today I rediscovered the same video.
Mom, this one isn’t for you. Although if you do watch, you have to admit it’s sort of catchy. Right?
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Doug's work blog- Publication of ISO/IEC 29500 (Office Open XML)
- Links for 11-17-2008
- ODF Interoperability and Conformance TC (OIC TC)
- Miscellaneous links for Halloween
- DII Workshop Recap
- Weeks of links for 10-20-2008
- SC 34 Plenary, Jeju, Korea
- DII workshop, October 23-24 in Redmond
- Open XML SDK, XMLSpy Standard Edition, and custom markup
- Patrick Tisseghem, one of a kind