Author: cosmo

Zack finally had a chance to use the Dairy Queen gift card from Aunt Kari today!

Yesterday, on a whim, I decided to make some cupcakes. The great thing about being an adult is you can do stuff like that. Kids have to wait for their birthdays or whatever.

When I took them out of the oven, they’d all imploded. I don’t mean they’d been all puffy in the oven and then slowly crumpled as they cooled– they were all completely dented-in from the start.

How is this even possible? Is it some kind of divine commentary on my cooking abilities? The recipe is about as simple as it gets: mix eggs, oil, and some magical brown powder from a bag, and pour it into cupcake pans.

Fortunately, when I frosted them I was able to “level out” the tops so the finished cupcakes look pretty normal. And that means the middle bites are pretty awesome because they have a half-inch of frosting.

I’m flying home from Seattle this morning, and I had an experience at the TSA security checkpoint that can only be described as magical.

I didn’t have to remove my shoes.
I didn’t have to take my laptop out of my bag.
I didn’t have to empty my pockets.
I didn’t have to opt out of the full-body scanner.
I didn’t have to be subjected to a full-body groping.

The reason? I don’t actually know. Seatac has the full-body scanners, and many passengers were being routed through them, so I’d already steeled myself for the exciting experience of explaining that I don’t want to go through them, and being pulled aside for an embarrassing and ultimately pointless pat-down.

Maybe I was routed to an “express lane” or something like that. Regardless, it was really nice to breeze through a metal detector, grab my bags, and go.

Upon reflection, the tragedy in all of this is the fact that something so simple can change my travel experience for the day. I despise air travel, mostly because the TSA treats everyone like criminals, but also because the airlines seem to do their very best to make flights uncomfortable, remove even the tiniest perks, and charge for literally everything. Everyone– including the TSA itself– knows that the current state of airport security is nothing more than theater. Why can’t we all just use a metal detector for passengers and an x-ray machine for bags, and call it a day?

Today we headed up to Crystal Mountain, which is one of maybe a handful of ski resorts in Washington state. I joined Thom and Julian there about a year ago, when the two of them were first learning to ski. I’ve been skiing since I moved to Colorado eighteen years ago, but in the last year both Thom and Julian have probably gone out as many times as I did in eighteen years, and now both of them are far better skiiers than I am.

Here’s a picture of Julian as we got started. Or, perhaps, it’s some random kid– it’s kind of hard to tell.

Here are Katie and Thom at the top of a lift:

And Julian and Thom on the lift ride up the hill:

Julian shot off a few jumps and I managed to catch him in mid-air:

I also took some opportunities to capture a few shots of the trees and snow.

The wind was blowing pretty hard, and with temperatures in the 20’s it was really chilly. After lunch it started to snow, and by the end of the day it was really coming down. The icy hard-packed spots were gradually covered with powder, and as the wind died down late in the day it seemed a bit warmer. Strangely, the conditions at the end of the day were better than earlier, although we were all pretty tired and cold. We called it a day and chalked it up as another successful ski trip.

Last night there was a light dusting of snow in the Seattle area– and I mean light— it wasn’t even a quarter-inch. This morning, schools were delayed for two hours for who-knows-why. It was thirty-something degrees and the snow had already melted off the roads, but apparently there’s hardly ever any snow in this area so it was a big deal. I mentioned to Julian (who was able to sleep in an extra hour) that back in Denver, we have a foot of snow on the ground and it’s been ten below zero in the morning, but our kids are still walking to school. Both ways!

Anyway, the day was pretty laid back. Thom and I hit The Hut for some lunchtime pizza, continuing our tradition, although I forgot to snap a traditional photo of him giving a thumbs-up to the standard pepperoni and beef. After that we decided to spend the afternoon wandering around downtown Tacoma.

We started at a place called the Tacoma Sound Spot, which is a little spot just off the main sidewalk where you can stand and face Puget Sound, and if you talk you can hear a cool echo. Apparently it has to do with the layout of the surrounding buildings. Some experimentation showed that if you step even a few feet from the spot, or face a different direction, the effect is lost. Pretty cool stuff.

Today’s theme was architecture– I thought I’d take some shots of interesting buildings, both old and new. Here are some selections:

Also, it may not be architecture, but near the Museum of Glass (who knew there was such a thing?) were these huge pillars that look like oversize pneumatic tubes:

The highlight of the day for me was stopping in at a quirky little store called Tinkertopia. These guys have the craziest mix of, well, junk. It’s stuff you’d only need if you’re working on a weird craft project or opening one of those restaurants whose walls are covered with random retro kitsch. But the bins and shelf displays are clever and hilarious. For example, consider whether you may ever need some “super holy” organ keys, hundreds of little cardboard circles, or maybe a handful of doozer sticks!

For those who don’t know quite what to get for their sweetheart on the upcoming Valentine’s Day, maybe something from the Collage Box of Miscellaneous Awesome would be appropriate:

My favorite one of all? A box full of honest-to-goodness vacuum tubes:

I don’t know where else on the planet you could buy vacuum tubes, except maybe Amazon.

The store owner was a cool guy, and I spent a few minutes talking to him… partly because Thom and I were the only customers, and I felt a little bad for walking around the store taking pictures of the bins and chuckling, but not actually buying anything. Still, what a great little place.

For dinner, Julian chose Red Robin. We had a great time chowing down on some burgers.

Afterward, we scored an extra special Red Robin platinum club membership! How cool is that?

After a long delay on my flight, I managed to get up to Seattle for a few days with Thom. Day 1 was a lot of fun.

We had some lunch and then went to the flagship REI store (REI headquarters are in Seattle) to pick up a few things. While there, Thom pointed out the wall-sized photo of Mount Formidable near the checkout lanes. He took the picture– pretty cool to see it on a wall in a retail store!

There’s also a slightly smaller shot of Mount Baker that REI licensed from him and used on an endcap for gift cards:

We had about an hour to kill in downtown Seattle so we went (where else?) to a little coffee shop. I think the ratio of coffee shops to people is about 1:4 in this town.

Then we headed to the Youth in Focus class that Thom was leading that day. It’s a program designed for at-risk high school kids, teaching them about photography and helping them develop (get it?) skills to express their creativity. Today happened to be the “field trip” class where they were scheduled to head outside for some photography work, instead of sitting in a classroom environment learning about how to edit their pictures.

The class is led by a grizzled photographer named Zorn (awesome name!) and has about a dozen teens. Only eight of them showed up, so we bundled up and headed out into the cold. It was about 25 degrees– unseasonably cold for Seattle, even in February– and early evening with grey skies, so the light wasn’t great. Nonetheless, we were encouraged to take some pictures based on a “theme”. It was sort of a rough, industrial area of town, so I latched on to that and took a few close-ups that I felt expressed the industrial nature of the area. Here are a few of them:

There were a few cool neon signs shining in the fading dusk, and Thom thought this one was totally a cliche stock-art shot:

We ducked into a pizza place where the kids bought a few slices for a quick bite (and also to get out of the cold for a minute):

The side of a food truck had a flat silver surface reminiscent of a funhouse mirror:

After a little over an hour, it was getting too dark and cold, so we hopped on a city bus to go back to the classroom. Here’s a shot of our little group:

In the front, that’s Violet, Kamaya, Enya, Zorn, Pearl, Istahil, and Madi; the back row is me, Antoine, Ethan (hiding), and Thom.

It was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed hanging out with these great kids.

My wife’s awesome.

Alex is a happy camper today. He went to the orthodontist to have his braces removed. Woo hoo!

Before:

And after:

It was a wee bit chilly driving this morning.

What the heck is this, Boulder County?

I don’t use Windows, and I certainly don’t use Internet Explorer– both of which are required for Silverlight to work. With the sort of web technology available today, it’s shameful that a government organization (or any organization, for that matter) should limit their web site to a limited audience. This goes against what the web is all about.

Harumph.