Month: December 2007

Wrapping up 2007

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A little under eight hours left to go in the year, and as I look back, most of what stands out in my mind is just how incredibly busy this past year has been, for Prairie and for myself. That’s not to say it’s been a bad year — it hasn’t been at all, and in fact, overall I’d say it was quite a bit better than the year prior — but we just never seemed to stop moving. I was balancing a 12-credit load at school and two part-time jobs, Prairie was handling a number of teaching and tutoring positions at NSCC, and it seemed like any ‘free time’ we had was immediately filled with everything that we couldn’t get done otherwise.

Still, as things wrap up, life is looking pretty promising for the future. Still busy, to be sure, but busy for some very good reasons. I’m down to my final two quarters before graduating from NSCC with my Associate of Arts degree, and Prairie’s getting started with her new job at CWU Des Moines. We have rough plans to take a road trip this summer for some ‘just-us’ vacation time, and come next fall, I should have transferred into UW to go on towards getting my master’s degree.

Lots behind us, and lots coming up, but it’s all looking pretty good from here on out.

Happy New Year!

Other bits:

  • Prairie’s posted her year-end thoughts as well.
  • Over 2007, I posted 2,394 photos (an average of 6.5 photos per day, though it’s obvious from the calendar that I wasn’t posting anywhere near daily), and pushed my total uploaded photo count on Flickr to 11,104.

The Ratings Game #1

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Some time within the past couple years, it seems to have become standard (whether voluntarily or by decree, I don’t know) for all new DVDs to flash the MPAA rating on screen for a few moments just before the movie begins. Additionally, for the past few years the MPAA has been including a brief description underneath the rating of why the movie in question has received its particular rating.

I’m constantly amused by these little blurbs and their attempt to rationalize, in fifteen words or less, what prompted the MPAA to assign the rating it did to each movie. So, I thought we could try a little game: every so often (whenever I get around to it, hopefully no less than once a week), I’ll post the MPAA rating and rationalization. Your goal is to try to guess the film, based solely on the MPAA’s rating and their description of its faults. I’ll post the answer either after someone guesses it correctly, or later on if it has remained a mystery.

Number one, then…any guesses?

Ratings Game 0001

Kynt and Vyxsin

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A Q-and-A from the Gothic Charm School (sort of a Goth Miss Manners):

The other thing that was recently brought to the Lady of the Manners’ attention is the fact that there’s apparently a gothy couple on The Amazing Race. (The Lady of the Manners had to have The Amazing Race explained to her. The Lady of the Manners watches TV by viewing complete seasons of shows on DVD, and so is somewhat behind on current pop culture and reality shows.) One reader (who asked not to be named) queried:

I don’t know if you watch reality television, but I have some questions about the self-styled “Gothic” team Kynt and Vyxsin from The Amazing Race. I get that they wear weird makeup and fishnet T-shirts, but they seem to be way too happy (not to mention wearing way too much pink) to really be Goths. Surely no self-respecting Goth would be this interested about running around in the scorching heat in Africa, grinning from ear-to-ear with hot pink hair! Can you settle once and for all on whether these two are the biggest posers since Gumby, or is hot pink as Goth as Hot Topic?

Oh dear oh dear. People aren’t really still clinging to the false notions that Goths can never be cheerful, or never wear pink? Good heavens, the Lady of the Manners thought those cliches were put to rest ages ago! Yes, Goths can, and frequently are, very happy and cheerful. Goth is about appreciating the off-kilter, the darkly humorous, the (as the sainted Lydia from Beetlejuice said) “strange and unusual”. Goth is not about maintaining a seamless facade of woe and gloom, and never has been. Goth is more about embracing a dark and decadent aesthetic while simultaneously being able to laugh at oneself for sitting around wearing black velvet and reading Dracula by candlelight.

As to the “wearing way too much pink” comment: hot pink has been a wonderful accent color for black Gothwear since the early days of Deathrock and Batcave. (The Lady of the Manners personally prefers cupcake pink, but to each their own.) Goth fashion, while predominately black-hued, frequently dabbles in other colors. The Lady of the Manners thinks that the hot pink and black color scheme that Kynt and Vyxsin have adopted is striking, and also makes them slightly more approachable than an all-black wardrobe would. Which is a very clever move on their part, since they will need every advantage they can get to go forth and win this race thing.

Prairie got me hooked on The Amazing Race last year, and we’ve been having a lot of fun watching this season. The season started with a lot of teams that we liked, and while we’ve been a bit frustrated that we’ve lost some good teams while others that we’d like to see go keep hanging on, we’re thrilled that ‘the hippies‘ and ‘the goths’ are still part, and we’re really rooting for one of those two teams to win.

One of the things we’ve really noticed about both TK and Rachel and Kynt and Vyxsin is how markedly more mature their relationships are — with both teams, even when they’re behind, stuck somewhere, risking losing their spot, tired, hungry, or frustrated, they rarely if ever take it out on each other. They’ll express their frustration and anger, sure, but they don’t turn on each other and attack the other player. Even Kynt and Vyxsin’s ‘meltdown’ on last Sunday’s episode was worlds away from the regular abuse that Nate and Jennifer heap on each other in their good moments.

While sure, I’ll admit that part of the ‘drama’ of reality programming is the relationships (good and bad, but often bad) between the contestants, it’s been nice to see that at least two of the final five teams in this race actually treat each other like people should be treated — and it’s more than a little thrilling that it’s the two ‘counter-culture’ teams that have the best relationships.

Go weirdoes! ;)

Christmas Eve Nostalgia

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Just about everyone has their own favorite Christmas album. Prairie got a copy of her family’s traditional music and started playing it today — Peter, Paul and Mary’s ‘A Holiday Celebration’ — and it got me thinking about my own, long-lost personal favorite. For years, there was one particular album that I’d dig out every Christmas and put on the record player…however, it’s been ages since I’ve heard it, and while I would occasionally get snippets of the songs floating through my head, or brief flashes of the cover art, I haven’t been able to pull the actual title of the album out of my brain in years.

Chatting with Prairie tonight about it, though, the word ‘sunshine’ popped out of my head, which seemed to jibe with the hazy memory of a rising sun on the cover, so I tossed ‘sunshine christmas album’ at Google. I wasn’t really expecting to get a useful hit, but lo and behold, the third major link caught my eye — an (apparently unauthorized) bootleg of ‘Sunshine and Snowflakes: 40 Kids Singing at Christmas‘. Bingo — the right title, the right cover art, and the titles of the songs looked right….

This was promising, but it still didn’t let me actually listen to the album. So, one more trip to Google, now that I actually had the official title…and once again, success! A 2004 weblog post by the Mad Philosopher had the entire album posted as .mp3 files, complete with cover art. Immediately I downloaded the files, tossed them into iTunes, and called Prairie into the room to listen.

Sunshine and Snowflakes coverFinally being able to hear this again is great. Prairie’s been enjoying it, and I’m amazed at just how much I’m remembering, almost as if it was just last Christmas that I was pulling the record out of its sleeve, putting it on dad’s record player, and carefully lowering the needle onto the vinyl. And while I’m sure there’s a lot of nostalgia wrapped up in this, the music is fun — a very, very 70’s funk/rock medley of traditional songs on side one, and five original tracks, three of which are nice and pretty, but two of which are the two that I really remember being fond of (“Wise Men Still Adore Him” and “Happy Birthday, Baby Jesus”).

So for me, this is a perfect Christmas Eve present. I get to revisit part of my childhood with some good old music, Prairie’s enjoying hearing the songs (and watching me bounce around as I remember bits and pieces of them), and I get some more good Christmas music to add to our collection.

Now, off to bed. After all, if I don’t go to bed, Santa won’t stop by…and that would be a sad, sad thing indeed!

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Merry Solstice…pick your holiday, call it what you will, just have a good one!

An Early Christmas

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As I briefly hinted at earlier today, Christmas came a little early for us this year. Prairie has all of the details over on Domesticism, but in her own words…

…and as of about 12:15 this afternoon, I’m the new CWU Des Moines writing consultant. I’m THE person to go to with writing questions on that little campus. It’s my job to get this new writing center off the ground and flying. I’ll be the entire writing center for the first few quarters, but as the center grows I’ll be training new tutors to help me. I can’t even begin to try to explain how ecstatic and excited I am (or how close to being in complete shock).

I am so happy for my girl, and we’re both really excited about this opportunity. She’s just finished calling all of her family to let them know, so now it’s all official!

The current future plan, then, is for us to kick around here in North Seattle for the next six months or so until I get my AA in June. Once I’ve graduated, we’ll move down to the South Seattle area, and I’ll commute to UW (or wherever I end up) instead of making Prairie commute from North Seattle to Des Moines any longer than absolutely necessary.

(On that note: any local Seattleites who can give us any sorts of tips or pointers about good towns, districts, or neighborhoods in the general Des Moines area, we’d really appreciate it over the next few months. Best case scenario, we’re hoping to be able to find a little house that we could rent, to avoid the neighbors-stomping-on-our-heads and other side effects of apartment living.)

So there’s the big news. Hooray, and many congratulations to my girl!

Done with Hawaii

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I was beginning to doubt that I’d ever find the time to finish this project, but I’m finally done with the pictures from our trip to Hawaii last summer!

Four-month turnaround really isn’t my preferred methodology, but at least I have good excuses for the delay (sudden unplanned moves, a busy school quarter and so on). If I can get the Thanksgiving photos taken care of in the next week and a half, that’ll bring me down to about one-month turnaround…

Finally, More Photos!

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Pana'ewa Rainforest Zoo

Pana’ewa Rainforest Zoo, originally uploaded by djwudi.

I actually had a day off today. No school, no work, nothing. So, I spent the day working on getting caught up on some of my photographic backlog. I started by processing a set of shots of Club V that I’d been asked to take, then dove back into the vacation photos from this summer. Lots of photos of the Pana’ewa Rainforest Zoo just outside of Hilo (one of which ended up being my 11,000th photo uploaded to Flickr!), plus some more snorkeling.

I’m still not quite done with the vacation photos, but the end is in sight. Yay!

Pet Dreams

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glowkittens.jpg

These people need to get together with these people so that Prairie and I can get a hypoallergenic glow in the dark kitten.

South Korean scientists have cloned cats by manipulating a fluorescent protein gene, a procedure which could help develop treatments for human genetic diseases, officials said Wednesday.

In a side-effect, the cloned cats glow in the dark when exposed to ultraviolet beams.

Seriously.

This should happen.

Expressiveness

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I think a short passage in this Reuters Photographers blog may have nailed one of the reasons why my interest in sports is limited to football (real football, that is — most of you know this as ‘soccer’):

…there appear to be few sporting images more emotional or exuberant than those “jubo” moments of soccer players celebrating after scoring a goal. The expressions of American football and icehockey players are all too frequently obscured by facemasks. Basketball players seem to err on the side of mean and moody and baseball players appear to be almost permanently underwhelmed. It might be a cultural thing or perhaps just a result of the way those sports are broadcast or sponsored. There certainly isn’t a lack of passion because tempers do fray and fights and arguments are frequent, but there doesn’t seem to be any of the theatricality we see from soccer players, at least not during the game.