Westlake Christmas Tree Lighting

On Black Friday I opted out of shopping (I've served my time in retail). In years past I've gone to the Holiday parade, but this time, the idea of sleeping late was just too appealing.  Besides, I've taken lots of pictures of the parade over the years:

• 2009
• 2008
• 2007
• 2006
• 2005

Normally it's rainy and on TV anyway.

This year, that turned out not to be the best solution.  It was oddly bright and sunny, and for some reason, no one saw fit to broadcast it on TV this year.

Despite the rough start, the day got better and the GF and I went to the tree lighting in Westlake Plaza. We were just two people among the 15,000 who turned out for the event.

The tree and the Macy's star were all set up and ready for the evening to start.






After and hour of sun setting, crowd plowing, musical renditions, a mayoral greeting (of course people boo'ed the Mayor), the finally lit the tree, carousel, and Macy's star. Then the fireworks started:




And then the cell phones came out. It's amusing how any major event these days is surrounded and captured by dozens or hundreds of cell phones, many of which are likely to do a poor job preserving the event. But they still come out.










The other iconic element of any major Seattle event remain the infamous pile of Starbucks cups. They tower on top of trash cans for miles around as a beacon for the Ghosts of Coffee Consumed.




But don't worry. It's okay. We recycle, tool.




Cell phones and Starbucks are not the only Holiday traditions we have in Seattle.  The season would be nothing without annual protesters.  Elements of our city were objecting to consumers and corporate dominance long before Occupy Wall Street made is cool.




Overall it was a fun evening and a swell day. It was a great way to green-light the rest of the Christmas season.




You can see a few more pictures of the event here.

How was your Christmas?

I'm quite lucky, this year, for a number of reasons.  To begin with, it looks like we are facing massive flight disruption in the Northeast due to snow on Sunday.  I booked my return flight for Wednesday, so I shouldn't have to worry too much about snow (though I think Seattle may get some from a separate storm).

I got to see a bunch of relatives this week, and I even figured out how many of them are actually related to me, which, given the crowds of cousins of assorted flavors can be a bigger puzzle than you might think.

And I got some cool toys, including a new Macro lens, a portable scanner, the Bladerunner DVD set, a number of books (yes, you will be subject to more of my book reviews), an updated, electronic Rubiks' cube, a gnome and mug from Germany, and more.  And I realize now, I'll be using all of it to, in one way or another, generate additional digital content.





How was your Christmas?

Patience with Traffic

I used to be one of those people who did all his Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve.  There are a lots of practical reasons for that, I suppose, but part of me enjoyed it.  I did that for several years before tiring of it.

I would remember leaving the Green Acres mall at about closing time on Christmas Eve, having accomplished most of my shopping, and trying to leave the parking lot.  It's a big parking lot, and on a normal day it would take 5-10 minutes to drive out.  Christmas Eve, it would take 90-120 minutes.  It's frustrating for some people.  I could tell by looking in their windows.  It wasn't for me, however.

I was perfectly happy to turn on Z100's 24 hours of Christmas on the car radio, roll down the window, and inch along the lanes. I'd smile and gradually merge with the more annoyed shoppers as I enjoyed this solitary Christmas tradition.  I knew what to expect from the traffic.  I prepared for it ahead of time.  And as a result, it didn't bother me.  It was fun in its own kind of twisted way.

I suppose it's all about knowing what to expect -- plan for that traffic and relish the moments it gives you. Let the music flow, and enjoy those traditions no matter how crazy they make you look.  Afterall, it's the Holidays.

Merry Christmas.

CSI: Seattle Center

The GF and I checked out the Seattle Center in December and stumbled on a grisly scene. The Christmas Village in the Center House was the scene of ... a murder!

One person killed and another injured and hauled away to the hospital in a wheel barrow.

The police began questioning their suspects, and, as they usually do, went right to the Iceman.

After getting into an extended argument about profiling, the police finally realized he hadn't done it, because another victim was killed while they were interviewing the Iceman.

It was the boy's father.

The boy's father didn't suffer much. Probably because his BAC was .24

The carnage continued, with the boy's aunt next on the list.  She was brought down in the street, outside of where she worked.

The police were stumped at first, until they go the initial reports from the Medical Examiner's office.  The reports described the wound.  With that information, police quickly identified the murder weapon.

After doing some electronic research, the discovered that the boy and his father had been targeted for some time.  Two weeks earlier, someone broke into their home, stole all their eggs, and left a threatening note on the refrigerator.  Police, finally taking the complaint seriously, went back to the break in to look for fingerprints.  The found the window had already been replaced.

Local business leaders called on the police to handle the matter as discreetly as possible so as not to chase away tourists.

While the police tried to figure out who had been harrassing the family, then turned to their next normal suspect -- the Artist.  He wasn't like everyone else; he always looked at things differently, and the police "knew" how weird and dangerous they could be.

Then they began to learn the whole story.  The Artist would never hurt the boy.  Afterall, he was the boy's father! Yes, he took the eggs, but he needed them for his new piece and show.  He suggested they check out the boy's mother.  Lately she hadn't been happy with the way things went several years ago.  She was having second thoughts about putting the boy up for adoption.  She told the Artist she knew the courts would never give him back to her because of her job.  The boy never knew who she was, or that the Artist was his father.  They kept the secret from the boy -- the secret that the Artist met the mother at her place of business -- the brothel!

When police got there, she was already gone.  They tried to stop the trains before she could leave town.

But they were too late. The train was already gone.

They radioed ahead to the next town, and the local Sherriff stopped and personally searched the train.  She was no where to be found.  How had she escaped?  While the police searched the ground, she took to the air, off to reign terror on another town.

Christmas music on my iPod

It's time once again for my pre-CES ritual.  It's time to remove the Christmas music from my iPod.

About 80% of my iPod listening time is for podcasts, but during the remaining 20%, I often just set it on on full shuffle and have it go through all 8,000 music tracks and individual tracks of the Lord of the Rings audio books. 

I don't need to have Christmas music popping up in August when I'm not shopping at Crazy Eddie.  It goes on the iPod in early November and comes off in early January.

I realized last night that I haven't listed to much of it this year.  With various travels and other adventures I just haven't played through that genre all that much.  I feel like I let my iPod down somehow.

So now I'm binging on Christmas music while I sleep.  I just let the iPod shuffle through those 250 tracks while my head hits the pillows.

And for some reason I find visions of sugar plumbs dancing in my head.

Resolution Problems

I had a post all ready to go with some musing on the pointlessness of New Year's resolutions.  But the more I thought about it, the less I believed it. 

And while I haven't come up with a resolution is both big enough and realistic enough for me to achieve this year, I know many people have.  And some of those people will succeed with it.

 It's an exciting time filled with potential.  And now it's time to turn that potential into execution. So I wish everyone good luck with the plans for the new year. And in the words of the narrator from Dragon's Lair, "The adventure awaits."

My Keurig coffee maker

Yesterday wasn’t the only Christmas I had. Before the GF headed to California for the Holidays, we had our own Christmas around a very cute Christmas tree.

Among the things I got was a Keurig coffee maker. The Keurig uses prepackaged pods of coffee, and a reservoir you fill with water. When you want a cup of coffee, you drop in a pod, put your cup under the spout, and press the “brew” button. In less than a minute you have a cup of coffee.

The great thing is that it requires virtually no maintenance. Unlike a regular coffee maker, you don’t have to clean it each day. The pods don’t make a mess. Each pod is good for one cup, then you throw it away and put in a new pod. I don’t have to deal with a separate grinder, the kitchen sink, the stove, the 15 parts of my other coffee maker, or any of those things.

It’s perfect for those times and days when I just want to drink my coffee and don’t want to think about it or strategically plan my consumption.

This is important, because as we all know, the most difficult part of making that first cup of coffee can be making that first cup of coffee before drinking the first cup of coffee. The Keurig makes the process as simple as pressing a button, which even the most caffeine deprived can manage.

It’s clean. It’s fast. It’s easy. It’s simple. But how does the Keurig coffee taste?

Not bad. It’s a little weak or watery compared to my French Press or my Cuisinart coffee maker. Overall, I’d rate the coffee quality as “adequate.”

The pods come in a variety of flavors, and I’ve tried a bunch. These are pretty good:

• Tully’s French Roast
• Timothy’s Colombian Blend
• Caribou Blend

These are not so good:

• Green Mountain Nantucket Blend
• Coffee People Organic

And this is just awful:

• Van Houtte Café French Vanilla

For my day-to-day coffee needs, the Keurig is just right. For lazy Sunday afternoons with the newspaper, when I want really good coffee, I’ll still break out the French Press. It’s still the best way to make coffee when you are willing to take a little time and care, and you are willing to do a few dishes.

The Cuisinart still has the most pieces and is the biggest hassle to clean. But it does have an automatic grinder and timer. And a 10-cup thermal carafe. When I want to make a larger quantity of coffee at once, the Cuisinart is that way to go.

But for when I realize I have a conference call in 5 minutes, the Keurig can’t be beat.

Presents to keep me busy

It was a swell Christmas this year.  We had great food and the cats didn't object too strongly to being randomly pelted with wrapping paper.  I think they were too stoned from their catnip mice to even notice.

I've got a few things to keep me busy this year, including:

• Books (1,918 pages total):
• The Mote in God's Eye (Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle)
• Lucifer's Hammer (Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle)
• Little Brother (Cory Doctrow)
• The Graveyard Book (Neil Gaiman)
• New York Then and Now (Marcia Reiss)
• A lovely marble trivet (with an Irish blessing)
  
• A luggage scale (great for minimizing fees)
• Rosetta Stone Japanese Level 1 (in case I can make that trip to Japan work this year)
• Pentax DA Fish-eye 10-17mm F3.5-4.5 ED (IF) lens (great for wide angle views and cool fisheye effects)

I did not receive the cat for Christmas (though sometimes I think my mother wouldn't mind shipping her off to Seattle).  And I didn't even pose her.  But Crash just can't seem to miss an opportunity to show off.

Here she is demonstrating the effects of my new lens.

I used the built-in flash on the Pentax K10d for this picture.  Your supposed to use external flash due to the extremely wide field of view with this lens.  At 10mm the built in flash turns into more of a spot light, but I like how it looks.

Looks like I'm going to be busy learning stuff, practicing stuff, reading stuff, weighing stuff, and putting down hot stuff.  It's going to be a fun year.

How was your holiday?

Christmas commercial

While the Lexus commercials do remind me that the Christmas season is here, they are not my favorite Christmas time commercials.  No, that title is reserved for this gem from Corona that's been running for years.:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xSrXpYGXCg

Have a wonderful Christmas.

Last minute Christmas Shopping

Back when I was in college, I'd come home for the holidays and do my last minute Christmas shopping on the 24th.  I'd borrow the car and head out to the Green Acres mall for a few hours.  Yeah, I was that guy.

The mall always provided ample shopping opportunities, and I could generally find everything I wanted/needed for the folks on my list.  It usually took a few hours, and contending with hordes of people was never fun, but it just seemed like the best way for me to accomplish my goals.

The real adventure came when it was time to leave.  The parking lot was, of course, a mess.  But I would slowly pull out of my space and into the lane of cars creeping slug-like to the exit. And the hour+ wait to get out of the parking lot never bothered me.  I played Christmas music from WHTZ on the car radio and relaxed in slow ooze of traffic.

I took some perverse delight in the aggravation other drivers seemed to experience.  Their frustration and shock at the pace of the cars made no sense. Seriously, what did they expect?  A quick in and out of the mall on Christmas Eve in the pre-internet shopping days?  That's just craziness.  Traffic was a nightmare and obscenely slow, but you know what? How else could it be? 

I guess experiences like those shopping expeditions were where I began forming some of my key beliefs about dealing with life.  Among them was the simple idea that when things go as I expect them to, then they are much easier to deal with, especially when I already expected them to go badly.

But really the key things is this:

There are only two types of things to stress about in this world -- thing I can change, and things I can't change.  If I can change them, there's no point in stressing about them when I can simply change them.  If I can't change them, then what's the point in stressing about it? 

I may not always live up to that, but it's a helpful frame of reference when I find myself getting anxious about the latest windmill I'm tilting at.

As for the Christmas Eve shopping expeditions, well, they've been supplanted Amazon.com.  And I no long spend Christmas Eve staring at the sullen faces of annoyed drivers.  Now that's a holiday upgrade.

2009 Seattle Macy's Holiday Parade

Once again, the GF and I trudged down the hill, bellys sloshing with last night's dinner, to the Seattle Macy's Holiday Parade.  Ours is the day after Thanksgiving, which I guess fits in well with the whole Black Friday - Shop Downtown thing.  The parade is mostly the same each year, but it's still fun.

Last year, I shot pictures with my Sigma 70mm - 300 mm lens on my Pentax K10d, but I wasn't satisfied with the result.  Too many images were either underexposed from the more limited aperture or blurry from the long shutter speed. This year, I used my Pentax 50mm f1.4.  I figured I could get the exposure right, I could always crop images to make up for the lack of focal length.  I last wrote about this lens here. The focus wasn't always ideal due to the shallow depth of field, but I'm satisfied with most of my results.

Of course each parade has its share of cheerleaders and school bands.

I'm not sure if this piece of candy has a cold ear or an important cell phone call.

Not everyone appeared thrilled to be marching.

The Connect All Stars put together a pretty impressive demo of tossing women.

 

 

 

 

 

Several of Seattle's professional sports teams were out on this chilly morning.

The Seagals rode on the front of a giant football helmet like the statues on the front of old ships.  But happier.

They led the Seahawk mascot Blitz and the Seahawk band through the streets of Seattle.

The Sounders, our professional soccer team also had a substantial presence, led my mascot Dopler, who was followed by their marching band.

The Mariners, befitting their current stature in Seattle, brought the Moose and a van.

Seattle is know for having more dogs than children, so even though the dog clubs may not yet out number the marching bands and drill teams, there were still plenty of dog clubs marching, celebrating St. Bernards, Scottish Terriers, Old English Sheep Dogs, and Dalmations.

 

 

People stuck in the snack world may be a metaphor for modern American culture, but they also make neat parade attractions.

 

The unicycle riders were impressive.

 

This rider is jumping rope on her cycle.

I'm not sure what's more interesting here.  The fact that these two riders trust their friend's skills so much, or the shocked and appalled looks on faces of those in the crowd.

We had dancers dressed as Poinsettias.

 

The fire department brought out the big ladder truck.  I lucked out with this shot.

Of course what parade would be complete without a snow globe prisoner.  I like how the downtown skyline reflects in her glass cell.

And lest there be any doubt, Santa Clause is, "Innovative. Real. Groundbreaking."

We followed up the parade with some piroshkies.  I'd call it a successful morning.

You can see more of my parade pictures here.