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).

On trying tapioca

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That was seriously one of the strangest things I’ve ever had in my mouth.

— Prairie, after I convinced her to try tapioca pudding.

She wasn’t impressed. Actually, she didn’t even get through more than two tiny little bites (she says they were spoonfulls, but she barely dented the top of the pudding cup).

Admittedly, it probably didn’t help that part of why she’d never had tapioca before was because her mom detests it, and would involuntarily shudder every time it was mentioned. And, my comparing it to frogs eggs, or holding up a spoon full, looking at it, and commenting that, “It’s like it’s looking at you, with lots of tiny little eyes,” likely wasn’t much in the way of constructive encouragement.

So no more tapioca for Prairie. That’s alright — it’s all the more for me (which in itself is more than a little odd, as I’m pretty picky about what I eat, and texture is an important part of why I like or dislike something, and as Prairie pointed out, from everything she’s seen me enjoy or turn my nose up at, I should be entirely squicked out by tapioca, and yet, I’m rather fond of it…we figure it’s because I’m a boy, and it’s a good “gross out food”).

iTunes “Renegade Soundwave (Leftfield)” by Renegade Soundwave from the album In to the Mix (1994, 7:51).

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

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Prairie and I went out to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie last night — one of the few movies coming out this summer that we were both excited about enough to head out on opening night. The reviews (which I avoided looking at until this morning) aren’t being terribly kind, but we had a lot of fun.

I’ll agree that it’s longer than it really needed to be (though Prairie doesn’t seem to think so), and there were a few moments when I found myself wishing that things would just slow down a little bit (particularly during the peak moments of the Kraken’s attacks). However, those small fumbles aside, the movie’s a perfect bit of popcorn summer fun: raucous, silly, over-the-top swashbuckling entertainment.

And I love, love, love Davy Jones and his crew! The effects work was incredible; even more so when, rather than pulling the standard effects-heavy movie trick of leaving the most complicated bad guy effects half-obscured in rain and night shots, they actually let Davy Jones and his crew go cavorting about in the light of day. What a treat — rainy nights are such an easy way to (attempt to) hide shoddy effects (Godzilla, anyone?), that it’s fun to see a movie with enough confidence in its work to let it be seen in all its glory.

So, iffy reviews aside, it was a winner in our book, and we’re looking forward to the next one.

iTunes “ToriMix v2” by Amos, Tori from the album Difficult Listening Hour (2001, 46:37).

Meez

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Check out this user's profile at Meez.com

Cute, huh? It’s from Meez, yet another in the “create a cute little avatar” series of sites that pop up from time to time. There’s a longer animation loop (see under the jump) where I actually take pictures, which gave Prairie some good giggles because she can peek up the kilt. Heh. Oops. :)

In other news:

  • Xebeth‘s visit was a blast. Much fun watching the Pride Parade (and many pictures taken…I’ve finally gotten through them all and have a huge photoset up on Flickr) on Sunday, and being touristy at the Underground Tour on Monday.

  • Work’s been rather insane lately — lots of drama, much of which I shouldn’t really get into publicly (and, truth to tell, much of which I just plain don’t really know), but which resulted in our store being temporarily manager-less. Everyone’s getting a few more hours, since we’re one person short, and we’re taking turns being “manager” for the day (taking seniority to the extreme — whoever on shift has been working the most consecutive days is “manager”). It’s been…interesting.

  • Prairie and I went out to see the fireworks at Gas Works Park on Tuesday. Nice day relaxing in the sun, then things went all esplodey in the evening. Not a bad day.

  • We’re planning a trip down to meet Xebeth in Vegas in early August. This’ll be my first time in Vegas. Should be fun — we’ll be staying at the Stratosphere, seeing a show, and whatever else Xebeth (who has spent far more time in Vegas than either Prairie or I) has planned for us.

And…that’s the basics so far. Busy busy days for me!

Update: I snagged the full Meez avatar animation loop, complete with under-the-kilt views. Woo!

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In brief…

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Another quick update:

  • Prairie’s back — yay! She came back Friday afternoon. Had a very good trip, took a bunch of pictures, and had a lot of fun.

  • Kevin stopped by on Friday as well, hanging out for a few hours before heading over to visit a friend.

  • Prairie and I are about to head out to the airport to pick Xebeth up, then drive downtown, see what we can find for parking, and enjoy the Pride parade.

Busy busy busy. Fun…but pretty non-stop. More eventually!

Stranger vs. Weekly in the Online World

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Seattle’s two alt-weeklys, The Stranger and the Seattle Weekly have been battling it out in this town for far longer than I’ve been around to witness it. In the time I’ve been here, though, I’ve pretty much settled on grabbing a copy of each when I’ve got time to read both; if I only have time to read or skim one, I’ll generally grab the Stranger (if for no other reason that it tends to be more entertainingly snarky).

Each paper has been re-vamping their respective websites over the past year or so. Last year sometime, the Stranger waded into the weblog world with Slog, which after a somewhat clumsy start has been running strong (and was doing the best reporting in town on the Capitol Hill shooting at the time). Not long afterwards came Line Out, focusing more on the local music scene.

The Seattle Weekly just stepped up to the plate today, going live with not just one but three blogs: The Daily Weekly (“News, Politics, Media”), Post Alley (“Seattle Arts & Culture”), and Mossblog (an online companion to Knute Berger’s ‘Mossback‘ column.

While things just went live, so it’s going to be a bit before they really settle in and get in the groove (they’re in the process of figuring out how to turn comments on), it’s a promising start.

One nice thing I noticed immediately, though, is going to end up making me more of a regular reader of the Weekly rather than the Stranger: easy to find, obvious RSS feeds for everything. Where the Stranger is only providing RSS feeds for their two blogs, the Weekly has RSS feeds embedded into every page (for easy auto-discovery by web browsers or feed readers), easy links on every page to specific RSS feeds for that section of the paper, and links on every page to their main RSS page, which lists all their available feeds — including one catchall feed for the entire current issue.

Admittedly, it’s not perfect — while the Daily Weekly gets a full-text feed (yay!), the main issue feed has only one-line summaries (boo!). While I can understand why they might not want to go for a full-text feed for their entire issue (after all, it is advertising dollars that fund the paper), I do wish they’d at least provide a better summary — a paragraph, whether hand-crafted or just one single opening paragraph lifted from the article. Single-sentence descriptions might catch my eye, but all too often, they just don’t give enough context or information to really grab my interest.

At the same time…even that single line description is a lot more information than the Stranger gives me when they get a new issue up. So kudos to the Weekly…and hey! Stranger! Step it up, will ya?

iTunes “Supernaut” by 1000 Homo DJs from the album Supernaut (1992, 6:42).

Bachelor Week So Far…

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  • Saturday:

    Got up at 3am to take Prairie to the airport. Came home, crashed, slept for a couple hours, then went to work. Insanely busy work day as all the procrastinators came through to find a suitably techy toy for the men in their life for Father’s Day. Came home, called Prairie and chatted, changed, went off to The Vogue for bouncing. Much fun bouncing around and flirting outrageously with friends. Closed out the club, came home, crashed.

  • Sunday:

    Work. Insanely busy again, as people brought the men in their life in to choose their own suitably techy toy. Came home, called Prairie and chatted, changed, went off to The Vogue for bouncing. Again. More fun bouncing around and flirting outrageously with friends. Closed out the club, came home, crashed (I haven’t closed out the club two nights in a row in a really long time…and wow, was I feeling it…).

  • Monday:

    No work! Puttered around the house in the morning. Postponed a photoshoot with Danielle (xementio) due to outfits still being in the laundry. Instead, we went wandering around Carkeek Park. Came home, called Prairie and chatted. Watched The Chronicles of Riddick. Not bad, though somewhat odd. While Pitch Black was a fun sci-fi/horror romp (essentially an Alien clone with Vin Diesel instead of Sigourney Weaver, TCoR — technically a sequel — feels very much like it was originally written as a 80’s-style fantasy flick (I found parts of it reminiscent of Krull) and retrofitted to include the character of Riddick. Entertaining enough, though, and while I’m not sure why Dame Judi Dench was slumming it in this film, it was fun to see her.

  • Tuesday:

    Work. Slower day, not terribly notable. Came home, dinked around on the ‘puter ’til Prairie called (as she and her dad are now working their way from Palm Springs, CA back to Seattle, I don’t have a number to call them at), then dinked around on the ‘puter more until…well, until now. Will be crashing soon.

Coming up over the next few days (in theory, at least)…

  • Wednesday:

    Work.

  • Thursday:

    No work! House cleaning and puttering in the morning. I need to see if I can find a way to rig up some form of backdrop to use for the photoshoot with Danielle, which should be happening Thursday afternoon. This will be an interesting experiment, as I’ve never done any sort of posed, modeling style work, and she’s never done any posing. We’ll both be improvising as we go. First improvisation is the aforementioned backdrop — since I’ve never done anything like this, I don’t have any sort of pseudo-studio, and the only backdrops are whatever happens to be in my apartment. We’ll see how this goes.

  • Friday:

    No work! Probably more housecleaning and puttering in the morning, since I’m a procrastinator. My brother will be in town in the afternoon on his way up to a party with a friend, as he’s in bachelor mode for a few days while Emily heads back East to visit family. Loose plans to hang out for the afternoon/evening. Possibly head out to The Vogue after hanging out with Kevin, as this will be my last day of bachelorhood.

  • Saturday:

    Work. Prairie and her father should appear at some point during the day. Evening will be spent here at home, doing cute couple-y things like cuddling.

  • Sunday:

    No work! Xebeth arrives in the morning to visit for a few days. Current tentative plans include the Pride Parade in the late morning/afternoon…all else is pretty much up in the air, to be improvised as we go.

  • Monday:

    No work! Entertaining Xebeth.

  • Tuesday:

    Xebeth leaves early in the morning, then I go to work. From here on out, life should be returning to some semblance of normality.

Whew! Thank goodness summer is here so we can spend some time kicking back and relaxing! ;)