Michael Hanscom
A Kiss for Mom
More photos of Noah, Kevin, and Emily can be found in Saturday’s photos, and a few of Prairie and her mom are in Sunday’s photos.
An Alaskan Adventure
When you travel to Alaska, don’t forget your bug spray. The mosquitos are something else! ;)
All images taken by Benjamin See Tong Chew in 1940, probably in Alaska, and uploaded to Flickr by Bret Arnett.
“Italian Concerto in F – Andante” by Steuerman, Jean Louis from the album Bach for Book Lovers (1997, 4:34).
The Importance of Education
I’ve been a fan of Dan Piraro‘s Bizarro comic for years, but this one gave me a really good laugh this morning. Definitely one of my favorites.
“Concerto for piano and orchestra No. 1 in B flat major op. 23: II. Andantino semplice – Presto – Tempo I” by Toperczer, Peter/Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra (Bystrik Rezucha) from the album Classic Gold: Peter Iljitch Tchaikovsky (1993, 7:06).
Back Home
We’re back. Family and friends were visited, many photos were taken, fun was had. I’m starting to get photos uploaded to Flickr, though so far I’ve just taken care of Friday’s shots. The rest (including many cute shots of my nephew) will have to wait ’til I’m home from school tomorrow.
In the meantime, here’s my girl at our hotel in Corvallis…
“You’ve Got A Friend In Me” by English Chamber Orchestra (Donald Fraser) from the album Bibbidi Bobbidi Bach (1996, 4:06).
Meme: Watch These Movies
Again with the Kottke-derived movie memes. Watch these movies…
Film critic Jim Emerson recently compiled a list of 102 movies that you should see before you can consider yourself movie literate:
…they [are] the movies you just kind of figure everybody ought to have seen in order to have any sort of informed discussion about movies. They’re the common cultural currency of our time, the basic cinematic texts that everyone should know, at minimum, to be somewhat “movie-literate.”
The list is after the jump…
Out for the Weekend
Prairie has an educators’ conference of some sort (she knows the details, and there’s a good chance she filled me in on them at some point…) down in Corvallis this weekend, so we’re going to be gone for the next few days. We’ll be driving down to Corvallis tomorrow, getting a hotel, and then visiting with Prairie’s friend Barbara; Saturday I’ll have the day free while Prairie’s busy to visit with my brother, sister-in-law and nephew, and we’ll have dinner with them Saturday evening; Sunday will be the drive back up to Seattle with a stop off in Vancouver (the Washingtonian one, that is) to visit with Prairie’s mom and sister.
Should be quite nice — we haven’t run away for a weekend since August (which was also a trip to Corvallis).
Back in a few days….
“An American in Paris” by San Francisco Symphony Orchestra (Seiji Ozawa) from the album Panorama: George Gershwin (1977, 18:01).
Winnie the Pooh and Syphilis Too
On the way home from school, Prairie and I stopped off at Toys ‘R’ Us to pick out a present for my nephew Noah, who we’ll be seeing this weekend. As we were walking out we passed a coin-operated Winnie the Pooh ‘horsey’-style ride that was playing the Winnie the Pooh theme. Prairie didn’t hear it at first until I started humming along.
As we were driving home, she suddenly turned to me. “Damn you! Winnie the Pooh is stuck in my head!”
I laughed. “It’s not my fault…it was the machine!”
“I didn’t hear the machine. It’s your fault.”
“I had to share the pain,” I protested.
“Some things shouldn’t be shared,” she explained. “The Winnie the Pooh theme is one. It’s a lot like syphilis.”
“Variations on “I Got Rhythm” for Piano and Orchestra” by Orchestre National de l’Opera de Monte Carlo (Edo de Waart) from the album Panorama: George Gershwin (1971, 8:32).
A bit of a pickle…
Last time I visited my parents in Anchorage, I was going through some of the various boxes of “me” stuff scattered around their house. Opening one up, I was amused and surprised to find a stack of notes from high school that I had saved. I don’t know why I saved them, but there they were: page after page of teenage ramblings that I’d tossed into a box instead of into a trash can.
Many of the notes were from Xebeth, since we were dating back then, and so one of the more amusing bits of entertainment on Monday evening was handing her the stack. When Xebeth could distract herself from threatening me with bodily harm for having held on to these, we got a lot of laughs out of flipping through them.
Apparently, pickles were on her mind at one point…
PICKLES! I ♥ PICKLES! Give me a pickle and I’ll love you forever & ever & 2 weeks!
…which confused her adult self more than a little, as she’s not really that fond of pickles, and doesn’t ever remember being that fond of pickles. So it was decided that, since these little tasty snacks are not only obviously phallic, but also can apparently be used as currency for the barter of sexual favors (as implied by the above quote), Xebeth was going to start a new anti-pickle group.
Parents Against Pickles.
PAP.
And, of course, since word must get out about how dangerous these insidious green treats are, a letter-writing smear campaign must begin as soon as possible.
Bingo.
A PAP smear.
I like my friends.