Of Mountain Vistas and Hospital Dramas

Prairie and Deer

The trip to Mt. Rainier was wonderful. Really cloudy the first two days, to the point where we couldn’t even see the mountain, but we got to spend the days hiking and exploring some of the trails. We even had some close encounters with lots of chipmunks and Stellar Jays, a few deer, and two Hoary Marmots (the whoriest marmots in the entire park, you should have seen the brazen way they winked at us). The weather cleared up on Thursday morning, so we were able to get some views of the mountain before we had to head back up to Seattle.

Here’s all the photos from the weekend.


Over the past couple days, Xebeth‘s been going through another round of treatments. It’s been intense and rather frightening at times, but, true to form, she’s still putting up a fight — matter of fact, for this girl, merely knocking on death’s door wasn’t enough. She had to knock, push the door open, and take a look around the other side for a few minutes before finally deciding that it wasn’t quite time to step through just yet and turn back around.

Personally, I think she’s just getting a little lonely in that big ol’ hospital bed, and is determined to give the rest of us heart attacks so we can all be lined up in a row on either side of her to keep her company.

Things are improving now, thankfully. She’s got her family and close friends around her there, and as much mojo as Prairie and I can send from Seattle heading her way. Between that and the girl having a stubborn streak a mile wide, we’ll be keeping her around for as long as we can — and relishing every last little moment of it.

Conversation

Conversation

90’s rock group Soul Asylum gave a free show at the Pike Place market on Thursday morning, and Prairie and I headed down to see them. While we were waiting for the show to start I took a few random people shots around the gathering crowd. This shot is by far my favorite of the morning (the rest are here).

iTunesComfortably Numb (ATOC Extended Edit)” by Scissor Sisters from the album Comfortably Numb, Pts. 1 & 2 – Single (2003, 5:39).

The M&M Army

The two best forms of candy in the world (or, at least, in my world) are candy corn and M&Ms. Candy Corn is more often becoming available year-round, with the addition of various holiday themes other than Halloween (Reindeer Corn for Christmas, Cupid Corn for Valentine’s Day, and Bunny Corn for Easter), but they’re still primarily a holiday treat, lacking the year-round goodness of M&Ms.

Not long after we started dating, Prairie picked up on my M&Ms fixation, and got me a silly little M&Ms character. Since then, we’ve gotten into the habit of keeping an eye out for cute M&M goodies, from the seasonal figures to plush toys to…well, whatever looks fun. I’ve been meaning to document the growing collection for some time now, and finally got around to it today, after spending a few minutes and fifty cents assembling a DIY lightbox (inspired by this post on Strobist).

Click on this lil’ guy to see the M&M Army as it stands to date.

Green Christmas

I’m really impressed with how well the lightbox setup works. It’s incredibly simple: just a cardboard box with three sides cut out and covered with white tissue paper. Slip posterboard into the box for a backdrop, set a flash unit (or lamps of some sort) outside the sides of the box, and fire away. Simple, effective — and at $0.50 for the posterboard, with the rest of the supplies scrounged from around the house, much more cost effective than a pre-assembled $100 kit that does the same thing!

iTunesRules” by K.M.F.D.M. from the album XTORT (1996, 4:07).