There’s a little carnival in the parking lot south of the Northgate Mall right now. Not sure why it’s there, but we went down to wander around for a few minutes a couple days ago.
Life
General ramblings connected to my personal life and activities.
Norwescon 29 Photo Extravaganza
One or two (or three or four…hundred…) photos
Well, not only did I survive my first Norwescon (didn’t even get auctioned off, either, once some kind soul told me that I probably shouldn’t be admitting that it was my first time), but I did it camera in hand. And, since I’m a complete and total photo whore, there’s a few pictures to be seen.
Just a few.
I was only there for Friday and Saturday, but still managed to come home with almost 1,600 photos. I’ve distilled the most presentable 441 into this photoset, and I’ll spend a little time further distilling things down and putting “the best of the best” into the Norwescon group‘s photo pool.
In the meantime, though, in addition to the big monster set, I can also give a few pointers to certain themes, such as…
- The graffiti wall. I had fun stopping by from time to time to see what additions had been made, and overheard a few people commenting that they were glad someone was documenting it.
(The Doubletree was partially under renovation, including the hallway that housed the Norwescon office and the Hospitality rooms. Since the walls were simple unfinished temporary drywall, they became an impromptu graffiti wall. Fen…er…fun with markers!)
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Friday night’s Stardance — specifically, the “most evil” pageant before the floor was opened up to the general public.
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While I didn’t actually make it into the Masquerade, I did grab a good spot in the photo pool for the costume gallery photoshoot. Lots of incredible costumes!
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The Rasputin during the Saturday Night Hoedown.
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Star Wars vs. Star Trek: While there were Klingons and Federation representatives, there were far more Jedi, Stormtroopers and bounty hunters making their presence known. I guess that galaxy far, far away is a bit more interesting than our own (of course, given how Jabba dresses his slave girls, I can’t say that I’m surprised…)!
And those are the major themes. I had a blast, and I’m looking forward to doing it all over again next year.
(X-posted to my LJ, Norwescon, and my website.)
“Majestic” by Orb, The from the album U.F. Orb (1992, 11:06).
Off at Norwescon
I’m spending the weekend at Norwescon, so I’ve already missed my one-photo-a-day posting goal. Heh. No big surprise.
Here’s one from yesterday at the con, though…
There’s 109 more of Friday in this photoset, with photos from today to be added to the set later (sometime tomorrow, most likely).
“I Took Your Name” by R.E.M. from the album Monster (1994, 4:03).
Mystery Flower
Since I’m not babbling much at the moment (work and school keep me busy, I’m behind in my reading and keeping up with news, and I’m spending a lot of my free time either with Prairie or taking pictures), I figure I can at least (try to) post a picture a night before I go to bed.
We’ll see how long I manage to do this regularly. ;)
“Spybreak!” by Propellerheads from the album Decksandrumsandrockandroll (1998, 6:58).
New Toy: Nikon D70s
Thanks to some very kind assistance in the mysterious and tricky realms of credit and financing by the best girl in the world, I’ve got a new toy to play with for my birthday:
- Nikon D70s
- Nikkor 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5 G (the kit lens included with the D70s)
- Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 D
- Quantaray 28mm f/2.8
- Quantaray 70-210mm f/4-5.6 One Touch
So. Many. Happydances.
This is only one half of a deal, though. See, while I’m working on rebuilding my credit after doing a rather impressive job of digging a financial hole for myself some time back, it’s still in pretty sad shape. So while I’m at a point where making payments on a setup like this is quite reasonable, there was no way my current credit score would allow me to finance this.
The deal, then, is simply this: in return for helping me with the credit end of things, I quit smoking and apply the money I’ve been throwing away on smoking towards making the payments for the camera. It’s all a matter of priorities: what’s more important to me? Continuing to throw money away at something that will do nothing except make me sick later in life? Or better my health while putting the money towards improving my photography?
Really, not a very hard choice to make.
So, while I may have a rough few days or couple of weeks ahead of me, I’ll just pick up the camera every time I have the urge to pick up a cigarette. It should make the transition from smoker to non-smoker far easier to deal with.
Now…it’s time to go play!
“Do You Remember the First Time?” by Pulp from the album Hits (2003, 4:20).
Clan Hamilton
I’m a day late on this (April 6th is Tartan Day), but…
According to our family genealogical charts, six generations ago my ancestor Robert Hamilton was born in Bansbridge Down, Ireland on the 16th of May, 1760. This makes me 1/128th Irish (that we know of), and according to Tartankilts.com, this is the Hamilton clan tartan (though, admittedly, that’s probably the Scottish Hamilton Clan…I have no real idea if there was/is an Irish Hamilton Clan, or whether they have a tartan).
Maybe one of these days, I’ll spring for a “real” tartan kilt. For now, though, the Utilikilts will do me just fine. At least I know I have a tartan in my background, even if it’s pretty far back there.
“Succumber (Remix)” by Spahn Ranch from the album Industrial Revolution, 2nd Edition (1992, 4:58).
Happy Birthday Mum!
What a cute birthday girl!
Fresh Hare / All This and Rabbit Stew
Some days, it’s really surprising what you can get for a dollar. Prairie’s long been a dollar store shopper, as it’s a convenient and cheap way to pick up little bits and pieces for around the home. Last Christmas as part of my stack of presents, she picked up a good-sized stack of dollar store DVDs. None of this is high-quality stuff, but that’s not really the point: it’s fun stuff. Old, bad movies make up a lot of it (we had fun watching The Lady and the Highwayman, an old TV movie featuring Hugh Grant in a mullet), but she also picked up a lot of compilations of old cartoons: Betty Boop, Bugs Bunny, and quite a few others.
A couple of nights ago, we popped in Cartoon Craze presents: Bugs Bunny: Falling Hare, mostly a collection of Bugs Bunny cartoons, with a few other non-Bugs cartoons as well, and settled back for a fun evening of cartoon silliness.
What we didn’t expect to discover was that two of the cartoons on the disc are shorts that have been either edited or outright banned for many years due to racist content. They’re fascinating from a historical context, and I actually think it’s kind of neat to have them and be able to see them — but man was it a surprise when we weren’t expecting them to pop up!
2006 Emerald City Comicon
I spent a few hours wandering around this years’ Emerald City ComiCon today. Most of the pictures I’ve posted to Flickr are of the costume contest, but there’s quite a few from my wanders through the showcase floor as well.
Two things definitely stood out as I made my rounds.
First was coming across what appeared to be a mint condition, still in the box version of Jetfire, my all-time favorite Transformer toy. Probably only as good as it was because it was a pretty direct rip-off of the Robotech Valkyrie, but I never cared. I’d have loved to have grabbed this, but at $225, it was a bit out of my reach.
The second find was a copy of Shel Silverstein‘s ‘Different Dances‘, which I’d never heard of before. It’s definitely not one of the kids’ books that Shel is most famous for, as I quickly discovered when I started flipping through it and immediately found a four-page spread titled “The Deadly Weapon” (pages one and two, pages three and four, both Not Safe For Work if cartoon drawings of naked people fall into that category). While I couldn’t afford the $125 that the book was priced at, it turns out that Xebeth might have a copy that she could send my way. Neat!
The rest of the Con was pretty much as to be expected, with the usual Stormtroopers, Jedi, and other assorted oddities wandering around. Not at all a bad way to kill a few hours on a Saturday afternoon.
Close to Home
When Prairie came home last night, there were a couple police cars in our parking lot, along with a couple of large black SUVs. She wasn’t sure why they were there, but after an hour of them sitting in our parking lot, she got a little nervous and decided to come up and wander the mall until I got off of work.
Today, as more news about Saturday’s shooting in Capitol Hill was released, we found out why they were here.
A Seattle Police SWAT team and bomb squad raided a North Seattle apartment Saturday night looking for evidence that neighbors say is tied to the shooting on Capitol Hill that morning which left seven dead.
KOMO 4 News has learned that inside the apartment, police found guns, ammunition, and a hand grenade.
[…] Police came to search an apartment where twin brothers have lived for the past four or five years. When one of them came home, police put him in handcuffs and took him away.
“Well, they said it was in connection with the shootings down on Capitol Hill that happened,” said apartment manager Regina Gray.
The folks who run the apartments tell us police told them little else. But, we do know, officers evacuated the entire third floor of the complex where the brothers lived.
We’ve also been told, police collected weapons, numerous rounds of ammunition and a grenade out of the apartment.
Later in the day, more confirmation came out.
Seattle police believe the man responsible for Saturday’s Capitol Hill massacre is Kyle Aaron Huff, 28, who had lived in North Seattle since moving from Montana with his twin brother about four years ago.
The assistant manager at the Town and Country Apartments where the brothers lived said police told him that Huff was the suspected shooter.
Jeff Green, a dispatcher for the Whitefish, Mont., police also said that Seattle police contacted the department Saturday and told them Huff was the perpetrator of Seattle’s worst mass murder in 23 years. Huff previously lived in Whitefish.
[…] Police raided the apartment Huff shared with his twin Saturday evening. They arrived at the Town & Country Apartments in the 12300 block of Roosevelt Way Northeast with a battering ram and a shield, but they were apparently let in to the apartment by the suspected killer’s brother, said Jim Pickett, assistant manager of the apartment.
Police brought out three rifles and what appeared to be a grenade, Pickett said.
[…] During a news conference this afternoon at Seattle police headquarters, Whitcomb said police recovered a semi-automatic rifle, a machete and hundreds of rounds of ammunition from a Dodge Laramie pickup belonging to the suspect which was found near the Capitol Hill house where the shooting occurred.
[…] Pickett said the Huff brothers had never been a problem for him.
“They were very friendly, very friendly, very polite. They said ‘yes sir, no sir’ and they were always glad to help.”
So…yeah. It appears that the Capitol Hill shooter was a neighbor of mine. The next building over, and I don’t recognize him from the picture in the Times article, but still one of my neighbors.
Freaky.