eclecticism

So last night, about 5:30pm, as I’m working in Aperture, the power dies. Odd. Just us? Nope, the hallway lights were out too, so it was at least our whole building. I had to drop off the rent check anyway, so I grabbed it and wandered over to the manger’s office. On the way, I peeked in the front door of one of the other buildings and saw that their hallway lights were on, so it looked like it was just our building that had lost power.

When I got to the office, the on-site manager was trying to get a call in to City Light to let them know, but couldn’t get a chance, as her phone kept ringing with calls from people across the complex. These buildings are so old that they’re apparently wired semi-randomly across two city circuits, so while our entire building was out, the other buildings were half-out — one had power in the halls but not in the apartments, the one with the manager’s office had power in the office, but none in the halls, and so on. Prairie and I had actually run into this a couple years back in our original apartment here, when we lost power in half of our apartment. Weird stuff.

In any case, since they were calling City Light to figure out what was going on, I wandered back to the apartment and puttered around for a bit. I cleaned off my desk, went through my desk drawers and filled a garbage bag with old crap that I don’t need to move. Since the apartment was starting to get pretty muggy (no power means no fans), I wandered out to the pool to take a dip and cool off while waiting for the power to come back. After a while, though I was nicely waterlogged, nothing else had changed, so I got out and went to ask the managers if they had any word. “The only word you’ll get is when the power comes on,” they told me. “Is City Light even around?” I asked. “Around here? Naah. I think they’re poking around down in Lake City somewhere.” Great. Not encouraging.

Since the day was getting on, and Prairie normally e-mails me to let me know when she’s leaving work, I figured it’d be a good idea to let her know what was going on. I originally planned on walking down to the Panera at the Northgate Mall to use their WiFi, but then remembered that there was a Starbucks in the QFC a few blocks closer. I walked down there and stood outside to see if I could pick up a signal on my iPod, but while I couldn’t see one for Starbucks, there was an open network called ‘ampm’. Really? I tried to connect, but the signal was too weak. Curious, I went across the street to the AM/PM gas station, tried again…and connected! So, I sat my butt down underneath their sign, e-mailed Prairie, sent Ping.fm a note to update Twitter, LJ, and all other such things, and marveled at AM/PM having free open-access WiFi. Just in case you need to check your e-mail while you’re filling your tank, I guess. Weird. Weird, but very appreciated. On the walk home, I got caught in a thundershower — I’d been hearing occasional rumbles echoing across the sky, but just happened to be out when the rain started coming down. Big ol’ fat raindrops, too, so I as soaked as when I got out of the pool by the time I got home.

When Prairie came home, there still wasn’t power. We dug out our flashlights so they’d be ready when the evening got too dark to see and headed out to eat at Claire’s Pantry in Lake City (short review: good food, hit-and-miss service). When we got home, there were four City Light trucks in various places around our house, with at least one parked next to an open manhole cover, so it was obvious that they still hadn’t figured out what was going on. So, we lit a bunch of candles, each grabbed a book and a piece of chocolate fudge cake that we’d picked up on the way home, and had a very nice evening of dessert and reading by candlelight, listening as the thunder rolled across the sky from time to time. A bit before eleven, we decided it was time to crash. I put my book down, grabbed a flashlight, leaned over, blew out a candle…and the fan next to me spun up, the refrigerator motor kicked in, and the light in the office turned on. Just in time for bed!

What’s fascinating me is that the thunderstorm that started yesterday afternoon is still going on. I had to get up to use the restroom about forty minutes ago, and when I laid back down, there was a good sized thunderclap. A few moments later, I caught a flash of light through my eyelids, and just a few seconds later, another thunderclap hit — this one loud enough to wake Prairie up, too. She went back to sleep, but when the third thunderclap hit a few moments later, I realized that I was a bit too awake to get back to sleep (growing up in Anchorage, thunderstorms are a very rare event, so I get pretty exited by them). So here I am — it’s 6:15 in the morning, and I’m awake and blogging. Rain’s coming down outside the window, and the thunder is still coming in every couple minutes. Pretty cool.

I just hope I can get a nap before I head off to work this afternoon.

197, originally uploaded by generalchaos.

No, mine aren’t ready yet (really, I’m about to get started on them, I promise), but here’s a nice group shot of the group in the truck by generalchaos.

Pride yesterday was a lot of fun. Every other year I’ve gone, I’ve shot from the sidelines, doing my best to get an overview of the entire parade and all the different groups. This year, I decided to try something different. A few weeks ago at the Mercury, dizzy88 recognized me from my Flickr account and suggested I ride along with the Goth Pride float and shoot for them this year. It sounded like a good plan to me, and definitely a different vantage point than I’d had before, so I decided to take that approach.

Prairie needed a day of rest, so she stayed home while I grabbed a bus downtown in the morning. Since the Goth Pride float was towards the end of the parade, I spent some time wandering up and down the staging area, grabbing shots of the various groups as they got ready to go. Once people near our group started moving, I hopped on board the truck, and rode the parade route from there, shooting the crowds to either side of the truck as we made our way along. Much fun, especially as the brakes on the truck were “either on or off,” so any acceleration or deceleration had a tendency to throw us all stumbling from one end of the truck bed to the other. No injuries, but a lot of laughs!

I’m a bit behind in my picture processing right now (I haven’t even gone through what I shot on Memorial Day yet), but I’m hoping to get to my shots later on this week sometime. In the meantime, midnytetragedy has posted her shots, and I’m sure other people will be posting theirs before too long.

It’s official — Prairie and I have a new apartment! We’d been keeping an eye on Craigslist over the past few months as I got closer to graduation, looking for places in the Kent/Des Moines area that fit what we were looking for: two or three bedrooms, two bathrooms, reserved parking, washer and dryer, and if at all possible, a pool (we’ve gotten quite spoiled by having a pool available here during the summer months). By Friday, we had a list of four places we wanted to check out, and we headed off to see how they compared to their on-paper representations.

(I was quite proud of myself for getting us all organized: on Thursday, I’d called the places, set up appointments at each, printed out their Craigslist listings, Google Maps directions from each to the next in order, and a little sheet of questions we wanted to be sure to ask, and stapled them all together into individual packets. As anyone who knows me can attest, this is not normal behavior for me!)

The first apartment was nice, but not quite as close as we wanted; the second apartment had gorgeous grounds, but the 2-bedrooms were too small, the 3-bedrooms too expensive, and it was right off a street that was pretty seedy (think Aurora in Seattle, or Mt. View in Anchorage) and didn’t feel safe; the fourth had a gorgeous view of the Kent valley and was a huge 2-bedroom layout that would have been our pick if we hadn’t already been through the third.

The third place ended up hitting all our “gotta have it” qualifications (3 bed, 2 bath, nice layout, washer/dryer in unit, assigned parking space), our “would be nice if” qualifications (third floor corner apartment available, fireplace, deck, good storage, swimming pool in the complex, right on the bus lines), plus a bunch of other goodies that sold us (nice location next to a golf course and park with lots of bike paths to go walking/skating/riding on, right next to the Green River, about five minute drive from Prairie’s workplace and my future school, exercise room, indoor racquetball court, and a decent neighborhood). Plus, they had fresh-baked cookies still warm from the oven for us! It’s pretty hard to say no to fresh-baked cookies. Ingenious!

After looking at all four choices, we had lunch, then went back to our favorite and put in our application. They called back yesterday to confirm that we were approved, so Prairie will be running over there during her lunch break today to drop off the security deposit and get the final details (official address so I can initiate the moving process with Speakeasy, the actual move-in date, and so on).

One interesting side effect is that this means that after seven years, I’ll be moving out of Seattle. Admittedly, not very far out of Seattle — the Kent-to-Downtown-Seattle drive is only a few minutes longer than the Northgate-to-Downtown-Seattle drive — but still, I’ll no longer have a Seattle address. Something of a milestone there.

More details of the move and all will be posted as things progress, but we should be all moved over in roughly three weeks or so.

Well, it’s official (aside from actually receiving the certificate in the mail): I can now, if I wish, sign my name ‘Michael Hanscom, AA’. It’s a little silly to do so, so I’m not going to, but I can.

Short updates have been appearing semi-regularly on…well, everywhere, if you happen to be following me on the web (Twitter, Plurk, LiveJournal, and a number of others, thanks to the multi-site-update magic of Ping.com), but let’s see if I can back up a bit and fill in a few more details (photos from each day’s festivities are linked to on the day’s name).

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Oh, by the way…I graduate this Friday. I’ll be marking the end of my tenure at NSCC and receiving my Associate of Arts transfer degree. My parents are driving down from Anchorage to Seattle, should be about midway through the trip by now, and are expecting to show up in Seattle sometime on Thursday or Friday morning…we think.

While this has been mentioned briefly here and there, I figured I might as well take a moment to make it explicit. I’m graduating!

After class this morning, I wandered across the street to the bus stop. I was a little annoyed at myself for leaving my bus pass at home, but since I had a few ones, it didn’t matter too much. I got on the 75 and picked up a transfer, rode to the Northgate Transit Center, waited there for about ten minutes, and then took the 41 to our apartment. As I waited for the bus to roll to a stop, I peeked out the windows and scanned our parking lot for the car to see if Prairie was back from her morning jaunt with Hope. The car wasn’t in the lot…

…oh, wait. Crap.

I drove to school this morning.

Prairie hasn’t been able to stop giggling for the past half hour.

On the bright side, I didn’t have to catch the bus back to school, as Prairie was able to call Hope and have her drive us up to the school to rescue the car. Which I’d forgotten. Left behind.

I am such a dork.

My Desk with my New Toy, originally uploaded by djwudi.

When Prairie asked me what I wanted for my birthday this year, I just couldn’t come up with an answer. There really wasn’t anything that was jumping to mind — I’ve got tons of music, tons of books, a good selection of work and school clothing…. We batted ideas around for a while, until I mentioned that I’d occasionally dreamed about updating my little Wacom Graphire2 (actually, I think it was an Artz, the progenitor to the Graphire line) 3.5x5 tablet.

I’ve never been a big fan of mice. In rough order from least preferred to most preferred, my choice of input device is somewhere along the lines of

TrackPoint < trackpad < mouse < trackball < tablet

Upgrading from the smaller 4x5 tablet to the larger 6x11 widescreen tablet is so nice! There’s more space to work with, so fine details are easier and more precise, and since the tablet matches the widescreen format of the screen, there’s no horizontal compression further affecting the pointer mapping. Plus, it’s quiet — which may sound odd, but between using a different material for the higher end tablets and including a better quality pen (the old pen rattles a bit), it’s gone from really quiet to near silent.

Definitely a worthwhile upgrade (and I can’t even draw, this is entirely a input device/Photoshop photo editing tool…a “real” artist would love these even more)!

White carnation, originally uploaded by play4smee.

There’s a fun little history of Mother’s Day article that Prairie found with some fun details about how it all got started…

On this 100th anniversary of Mother’s Day, the woman credited with creating one of the world’s most celebrated holidays probably wouldn’t be pleased with all the flowers, candy or gifts.

Anna Jarvis would want us to give mothers a white carnation — she felt it signified the purity of a mother’s love.

Jarvis, who never married and never had children, got the Mother’s Day idea after her mother said it would be nice if someone created a memorial to mothers.

Three years after her mother died in 1905, she organized the first official mother’s day service at a church where her mother had spent more than 20 years teaching Sunday school.

[…] West Virginia became the first state to recognize Mother’s Day in 1910. President Woodrow Wilson approved a resolution in 1914 marking the second Sunday in May a nationwide observance.

[…] Jarvis became increasingly disturbed as the celebration turned into an excuse to sell greeting cards, candy, flowers and other items.

Jarvis became known for scathing letters in which she would berate people who purchased greeting cards, saying they were too lazy to write personal letters “to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world.”

Before she died in 1948, she protested at a Mother’s Day celebration in New York, and was arrested for disturbing the peace.

[…] In the end, Mason said Jarvis was bitter about what the observance had become and “wished she would have never started the day because it became so out of control …”

“But when you look at Mother’s Day as being her baby of sorts, you can understand her protectiveness of it.”

See? My year-after-year failure to do anything big for Mother’s Day wasn’t being inconsiderate, absentminded or forgetful — I was just respecting the wishes of the woman who started the whole thing in the first place!

(Think that’ll fly?)

(Yeah, me neither.)

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! And, of course, to any other mothers that might read or find their way here.

Birthday Presents!, originally uploaded by djwudi.

A couple of birthday presents showed up in the mail today. Cool! Thanks to Phil for Mark Twain’s Roughing It and to Fernando for the sci-fi anthology The Starry Rift!

Once again, we are reminded that the true celebration on this day isn’t Cinco de Mayo, but rather Royce’s birthday. Too many people get that mixed up. I have no idea why.

As always, my brother is just a day and three years behind me, so today marked his 32nd birthday. I hope it was a good one!

As of today, I’m officially old enough to be elected President of the United States — 35. I believe this is my last age-related milestone before official senior citizen status, though there may be something I’m not remembering.

Any birthday festivities are being delayed, though, for a few reasons. Firstly, I’m spending part of the day shooting a wedding for a friend’s daughter. They asked me to be their photographer last year sometime, I agreed, and then later on when they told me the finalized date…well, I didn’t want to back out and disappoint them, and it’ll still be a fun way to spend the afternoon. Prairie and I just figured that we’d do our own little celebration here at home in the evening (though probably saving birthday cake for a later day, as there’ll likely be wedding cake during the day).

Unfortunately, Prairie’s grandmother passed away earlier this week, and Prairie flew down to California to be with her family for the funeral — which is today as well. She says that she’s enjoying the trip, as even though it’s for a funeral, it’s also the first time in years that that entire clan has assembled (they had dinner for 28 people last night). She’s also taken a ton of pictures of everything, and says there’s a chance she might actually fill the 1Gb card we keep in her camera — a major event, as she tends to take about one picture for every 50-100 that I do (I’m so proud of her)!

So, definitely not a Worst Birthday EVAR, but not a Best Birthday EVAR either. Prairie comes back in to Seattle tomorrow afternoon, so we’ll probably go out to lunch somewhere and then come home to let her crash out. We’ll find a time for birthday celebrations and cake later on, perhaps next weekend.

In the meantime, if anyone feels sorry for me has too much money and wants to spend some on me is overly generous feels benevolent and wants to get me a present, I have a couple wishlists available through Wishlistr or Amazon. Hey, it’s my birthday, I’m allowed to do this, right?

It’s been a while since I’ve actually said anything on here, hasn’t it? So it goes, sometimes. This past school quarter was a rather unpleasant one, and online babbling became a pretty low priority for me. So, some random updates on the world around me…

School: Ugh. Glad that this last quarter is done with. Had one absolutely hellish class (Spanish 102, with insane amounts of homework and frequently unpleasant classroom experiences) that pretty much took over my life, and to very little positive end result, as the 2.3 final grade will attest to. On the bright side, I passed, but it was really frustrating (especially as this is the first quarter that I’ve been taking a full 12-credit load and didn’t end up with a high enough GPA to be on the Dean’s List) — and resulted in my re-thinking my schedule, dropping Spanish 103 (as it’s taught by the same teacher as this last quarter’s 102 class) and entirely rejiggering my last quarter. I’m now lined up for POL230 International Relations, WMN200 Intro to Women’s Studies, and DRA121 Acting. Should make for a decent senior quarter, and then I graduate in the spring with my AA. Yay!

Work: Proceeds as ever. I’m still selling cameras for the Ritz empire, and still enjoying it. We’ve got a pretty good team and a good little store, and lots of fun toys to play with. Of course, there is the constant good-natured one-upmanship when one or another of us gets a new toy, and I think I’ve fallen behind (I got my Nikon D70s about a year and a half back, then Ns got a Nikon D50 and later upgraded to a Nikon D80, R got a Nikon D40, L got a Pentax K10d, and now Ng just got a Canon 40D — I think we’ve just looped around back to me, anyone want to toss me $1800 for a D300?), but that’s all just part of the fun. In all honesty, for a ‘mall retail job,’ I do enjoy this one.

Home: As cute as our little apartment is, we’re both looking forward to this summer, as current plans have us moving down to the Des Moines area to be closer to Prairie’s job after I graduate. The apartment is in an old-ish (60’s-era?) building, and there are a number of little things that we’re not fond of: single-pane windows that don’t insulate well and rattle every time a car drives, slams its doors, or has music playing too loud; cracks in the plaster ceiling in the bathroom; and we think that there’s some mold or fungus somewhere that keeps both of us just over the line from being quite entirely healthy. We’ll be fine while we’re out and about, then come home and immediately start sniffling a bit…then once we leave the apartment again, we’re fine. Our favorite part, though, is the neighbors who have no concept of ‘inside voices’ or anything else that goes along with conscientious apartment living, and have a tendency to get into rather noisy fights (and we’re concerned about potential domestic violence). On top of that, our building managers, while very nice people, aren’t very effective people, and we’ve long since given up trying to get anything done short of an absolute emergency. We’re definitely ready to find something better.

Other: This past week’s been Spring Break, and I’ve been enjoying the chance to simply take a few days to relax and putter around without any big “gotta do” things hanging over my head. Of course, more than a few days without much of anything scheduled leaves me a little stir-crazy, so today I came out to Des Moines with Prairie to keep her company during her workday. It’s been nice to get a look at the Highline Community College campus where Central Washington University has the branch campus for which Prairie’s heading up the writing center. Tomorrow’s going to be my ‘get ready for spring quarter’ day, clearing out my notebook from last quarter and getting everything ready to go for the next round of classes.

Photos: I haven’t been doing much with my camera lately, unfortunately — that became another casualty of the Class from Hell. I did use a little bit of my tax refund to pick up a little pocket camera — a cute little Casio EX-Z77 that I keep with me so that I can get snapshots during those times when I don’t want to haul the big camera around, which has been helping. Still, I’m feeling a little photography-deprived…hopefully I’ll be able to change that this summer, if I don’t get a chance this spring. Since I needed to decompress (and spend some time with my girl) after last quarter, I decided to forego Norwescon this year (prior Norwescon photos are here, here and here) — a bit of a bummer, but a very necessary and good decision — and as I have to work this weekend, I won’t be able to check out Sakura-Con, so this spring is looking to be sadly devoid of costume-clad fanboys and fangirls. Such a pity! Maybe I’ll be able to swing by the Emerald City ComiCon in May to feed my geek voyeur tendencies (prior ComiCon photos are here and here).

And…once again, I think that pretty much catches everything up for now. Until later, then…

Generally speaking, I don’t get sick very often. The occasional sniffles or light cold, but not much more than that. I made up for it this weekend, though, when I managed to come down with some nasty 48-hour-ish flu bug. Saturday evening I had a little bit of a headache, but it wasn’t anywhere near enough to make me worry. Prairie and I had a good mexi-goo dinner (a bit of experimentation on her part, somewhere between enchilada and casserole), watched some Frasier, and went to bed. As the night wore on, though, I started feeling queasy…and then the bug hit. From 3am until 8am, I had nearly hourly trips to the restroom to puke, accompanied by cold sweats, and fever hovering around 100 degrees. Not fun in the least!

Sunday I ended up spending most of the day sleeping, trying to catch up on the sleep I’d missed Saturday night. We carefully fed me drinks (clear liquids only), crackers, and white bread, which stayed down most of the day…then one last puke session Sunday night brought it all back up again. Thankfully, the fever broke last night, and everything I’ve munched on today has stayed down. I was able to spend today in bed again (with a short run onto campus to turn in an assignment that had to be in today), and it looks like the worst is over. Still, while I hate missing two days of work and one of school, at least I don’t find bugs like this very often. It’s been years since I’ve had anything like this — here’s hoping it’s another good many years before another such bug gets me!