Happy Birthday to Amanda Visell....

Happy Birthday to Amanda Visell....



http://www.vinylpulse.com/2008/03/amanda-pulse.html

Yay for Axe wielding elephants and baby eating crocs...

Marathon Training...

To complete a longstanding ambition (which I must admit to having never really worked towards in earnest before), Sunny and I will be running our first Marathon next year...

Neither of us are in particulariy good shape, but just a few weeks into the slow and steady training program and we are starting to show/see differences...

Track our progress on the new blog (which currently is mostly written by Sunny, but I will join in soon..)

http://sunnyandwilmarathon.blogspot.com/

Bub & Kiki make our house their home...

So the names are now settled, Bubble & Squeek (or Bub & Kiki for short.. Or if it's long you are looking for there was a little swaparound and she is Aristophanes Squeek and he is Herodotus Bubble... But Bub & Kiki fit them just fine...)

Housewarming Flowers

Our lovely flowers sent by my lovely parents half-way across the world; they arrived at the party at the same time as the first guest....

Our new Cats...

Is this the best headline ever...?

(not the equity one, obviously..)

"FBI tries to fight zombie hordes" - Yay... The story doesn't live up to the hype, with a headline like that what story could..?

This made me chuckle this morning...

This made me chuckle this morning... So I decided to take a couple of quick pictures, and share it with the world..

I have run out of breakfast bars, so I was making some popcorn for breakfast this morning (only 240 calories, and hardly any fat, for a full bag of the smartpop microwave stuff..) Standing next to the office microwave for two and a half minutes means that my eyes wander and for the first time I look at the poster on the wall of the office kitchette... The poster is a standard inspirational 'stress relief' sort of thing with a hundred different ways to relieve stress in a funky 80s font. I have attached it so that you can get an idea of the sort of thing (even if it's a bit too small to actually read.)

Well, as you can see, one of it's design traits is to have one big word followed by a few phrases which all associate to that word. Eg.

LOOK
(...at the big picture)
(...closely at a flower, leaf blade of grass or tree trunk)
(...off into the distance)

PUT
(...a cat in your lap)
(...on some music)
(...plants in your office)
(...your feet up)

all nice things but a bit new agey trying to be hip sort of thing, but to cynical early morning eyes quite nauseating.. Well I found out how much you can change one of them and skew it to the dark side by just adding a single simple word... Which makes me giggle even just thinking of it now... (bear in mind you have to lulled into that dreamy hippydippyish mode by reading the good intentions ones first..)

Someone has added just one simple word to one of the entries (which you will see on the second picture, here)

so now

TELL
(...someone "I love you")
(...a joke)

has turned into

TELL someone "I love you" as a joke...

I know it's mean which is why it makes tears of giggling joy flow down this ageing adolescent's face..

Today I went for a little walk…

I had been to the Seattle Centre (or Center as they seem to constantly misspell it) a few times before. A few Fridays ago we saw the Sonics play basketball (as guests of T-Mobile) at the Key Arena but that was at night. We’d been to the Space Needle (but as it was a cloudy day we neglected the visit to the top, that pleasure will come later in the summer when the new audio visual stuff has been put into place..)

More significantly, for me, were two places which we have already visited. The Experience Music Project (EMP) and the Sci Fi Museum (SFM). Again, these two museums were visited at night. So today I thought it might be a nice idea to go and have a little wander around the site during the day. The main reason for the wandering around was to see the glory of the building which houses both the EMP and the SFM. It is an amazing structure, which at night just looks a bit odd, but during the day the colours and the shapes are simply spellbinding.



The architect responsible for the building is Frank Gehry, who is, maybe, most famous for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. The EMP/SFM building takes on similar themes of construction, but adds colour. The central structure of the building is especially pretty as it is made from Purple colour changing material, so depending on where you stand the density of the purple changes and ripples. (it also confused the camera on my phone, to turn me green yay…) This picture from wikipedia seems to have captured it way better than my freebee phone could…



I didn’t go inside the EMP/SFM (as I mentioned we had already visited), along with many of Seattle’s Arts and Culture attractions there is a time when you can visit for free (the time for the EMP and SFM is the first Thursday of every month). This means that regardless of income everyone has the chance to experience..



The EMP (and SFM) were built by Paul Allen (the other Microsoft founder) and from what I was told were basically built to house and allow others to see his wonderful collection of music & film memorabilia. The main attraction is the largest collection of Jimi Hendrix stuff in existence. Jimi broke quite a few guitars in his time, and there are at least fragments of most of them here… It’s well worth a visit if you ever find yourself in Seattle (especially if it’s on the first Thursday of the month) The EMP provides funding for the rather KEXP radio station, listen to it online and enjoy...

The SFM does exactly what it says on the tin, there are lots and lots of props from various movies, including Darth Vader’s head from Empire, an Alien, Sebastian’s Clothes and the see through coat that Zhora dies in, along with the Gun Deckard used to shoot her (from Bladerunner). The only Doctor Who prop was a gun from the Happiness Patrol, but the curator informs me that they are trying to get more… Again a great place to visit (especially for free on the first Thursday of each month).

And as a curious little aside, the picture by the main entrance for the SciFi Museum heavily features the same moonface which graces the cover of one of my favorite albums from probably my favorite band...


And here's me being as tall as the Space Needle..

And there I was thinking I was quite a nice person...

You Are 66% Evil

You are very evil. And you're too evil to care. Those who love you probably also fear you. A lot.

How Evil Are You?

Living in America…

Well it seems that I have done the customary blogger thing and left months between posts, not good. But then when a life has been as action packed as mine has been for the last few months then it’s not surprising that I haven’t really found or made time to put fingers to tippy-tappy keyboard. Yet somehow I miss it, I’ve been keeping neither a public nor a private journal so have missed out on that nice mental reorganisation which writing seems to bring; so a new beginning I’ll say the same old thing that this time I will be back for good, this time I will be reliable, regular etcetera etcetera… (And maybe I will, but the reliability factor may revolve around the spurt of tippy tappy action followed by bout of apparent inaction.

So then, what’s been happening in this time which reportage could perceive as inactive? Well other than selling my house, quitting my job, moving to a new country (a new continent in fact) and finally starting to start life properly with my lovely lady wife not too much has been happening… actually that’s a lie, the aforementioned minor life changes have been punctuated by quite a few gigs, shows, events and experiences… So many things so little time…

In short life over the last few months has been good to me.

I left the UK on the 15^th of December 2006, which co-incidentally was also the day that my notice expired and I left the IT dept of HSBC, and the day that the sale of my house completed. The convergence of dates wasn’t entirely planned, they all just seemed to slot into place. Sadly the date slotting hadn’t occurred one month earlier, on Nov 15^th, our first Wedding Anniversary. That would have made things perfect.

(the plane which brought me to my new home..)

I left the UK at 14.05 (the house went through at 14.00) and by the miracle of time zones I landed in my new hometown of Seattle an hour and a half later. (9 and a half hour flight with a -8 hour time difference yay..)

Customs and immigration were a breeze, so helpful happy and friendly, the way things should be (throwing sharply into contrast then surly welcome I received in Minneapolis the last time I entered the States.. “Sir, do not smile at me Sir…” but that’s another story…)

So, after a year’s hiatus, life is starting to start properly, I’m in the early stages of applying for jobs, which is always fun and buying a house(more fun) will follow my successful re-entry into the working population.