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It’s a miracle! Alex toasted a tortilla and the face of Jesus appeared!

It’s pretty obvious this is a message from the Lord. Or perhaps Che Guevera is channeling himself through Mexican food.

It’s always a little awkward when someone texts you and clearly knows who you are, but you have no idea who it is.

I don’t recognize the number (although these days, who memorizes phone numbers?) and since it’s not coming up in my contact list, it must be someone who I either don’t have a cell phone number for, or who I just didn’t add to my phone’s contact list.

In any case, I texted back a generic “Thanks!” and hoped for the best.

So if whoever texted that message is reading this, I’m sorry…

Today it was an unseasonable 60 degrees and sunny, so of course to celebrate my birthday I figured I should play some ultimate. The wind was gusting around 20+ mph which made for an interesting game, but I was pleased to see that even on the 17th anniversary of my 25th birthday, I can still run around with the fast kids.

Ahh, Windows, you’re so easy to mock.

I’m logged into a remote server that’s running Windows 7, and I just finished what I was doing so I clicked “log off”. Much to my surprise, I wasn’t able to log off because the system couldn’t play the log off sound. Yeah, really.

After waiting a moment for Windows to figure out how to play the sound, I finally clicked the dangerous-looking Force log off button. I was asked if I was sure, because it might cause system instability, and I took a big risk and proceeded. Heaven knows if the server is even running now.

My new toy came today: a Canon S110 camera. Per Thom’s suggestion, I decided to get a slightly more “serious” camera for my photography work. I always feel a little self-conscious when Thom and I are backpacking somewhere and he pulls out his massive Canon MegaShot SuperCam 2000X or whatever, and I whip out my little silver Canon ELPH point-and-shoot. Although I really like that camera and it’s certainly easy to use, it has a fairly limited feature set.

I chose the S110 for three reasons, really:

1) It’s compact– basically the same size as my old Canon, so it’s not ten pounds of high-tech magic to lug around.

2) It’s cheap– only $200 on eBay, compared with at least $400-600 for a serious DSLR sort of camera.

3) It shoots in RAW mode– Thom and others say that’s the only “true” way to take pictures because it allows for a great deal of post-processing.

After charging the battery, I took a few exploratory pictures. The quality is noticeably better than my old camera (as it should be, I suppose). Here’s an example of a quick point-and-shoot of Laralee’s Valentine’s rose:

Wow!

I completely understand that buying a fancier camera doesn’t mean I’m going to suddenly transform into a fantastic photographer. But it’s my hope that with some better tools at my disposal, I’ll at least be able to take my work up a notch.

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?