Photos

Photos, usually taken by me. May be mirrored or imported from other services.

The M&M Army

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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!

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

My Father’s Eyes

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Me, Feb. 2005:

Prairie, Grayland, WA

Dad, early ’70s’:

Berta Contemplates Lake Huron

Me, Oct. 2004:

Seattle Arboretum, Seattle, WA

Dad, early ’70’s:

Stone Steps Near Lake Michigan

Me, Aug. 2003:

Bumbershoot, Seattle, WA

Dad, early 70’s:

Child Feeding Gulls

The more I see of my dad’s photography as he scans in old slides and posts them to his Flickr pages, the more it becomes clear to me where my eye for photography came from. Few exact matches, but lots of similarities in the compositions and subjects that we like.

Thanks, Dad!

iTunes “Oh, Lady Be Good! (From the musical “Lady Be Good”)” by Finck, David/Previn, André from the album Panorama: George Gershwin (1998, 4:20).

Missing: One Pink Monkey

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At some point over the past few days, it appears that someone ducked into our car after we’d forgotten to lock the doors. Thankfully, they didn’t take much — what they did take was this cute little monkey.

Monkey, Woodland, WA

She’d been the mascot for the car for the last year and a half, so it was a bummer to see that she’d gone missing (though a relief that nothing else was taken). Our best bet is that some kid saw us getting out, ducked in, and grabbed the cute lil’ monkey, but didn’t want to take the time to go through the rest of the car.

So — should anyone in the Seattle area happen to see some nefarious monkeynapper with our lil’ monkey, feel free to kick them. Hard. In the shin.

(If the guilty party happens to read this, Prairie would like you to at least please remember to pet the monkey’s nose. She likes that.)

iTunes “I Am Streched On Your Grave” by O’Connor, Sinéad from the album So Far…The Best of Sinéad O’Connor (1990, 5:35).