Month: February 2014

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.

I live in Denver, so I’m required by law to say Go Broncos!

But, well…

Funny because it’s true.

In what may be a new record for me, I’ve almost finished my personal taxes. And it’s only February 1!

Yesterday I spent the bulk of the day working on my corporate taxes. Usually it’s an exercise in frustration, figuring out where all of the numbers go, but since I took the time to organize all of the income and expenses to the penny, I knew I had all of the data I needed. Then it was a matter of finding the fields in the tax software. Unlike years past, once I found them I took notes so I can repeat the process next year without so much headache. (Why didn’t I do that ten years ago?)

With my corporate returns in hand, it was pretty straightforward to enter everything for my personal return today. I’m still sad that the IRS has tax rules so complex that an entire industry has risen to support them, but H&R Block’s Taxcut software helps tremendously by asking the right questions and walking me through the gazillions of forms and numbers.

I’m waiting for a few documents from various places so I can plug in mortgage interest and dividends and IRA contributions and whatnot, but I feel like I’m close… and it’s not April. Even better, it looks like Uncle Sam might owe me some money. For a change.