Guest Artist: Sarah
My niece Sarah doodled this Horrible (this was her first one). She also titled it and went strong with the fart joke. I don't have the courage to go that strong.
I'm coming up from a light depression. I didn't even realize I was down until this morning. Work has been rather blah lately, and it took me until this morning to realize it was me. (I sometimes forget everything is about me.)
Julie's sister arrives tomorrow, followed by her other sister and parents this weekend. Lots more family adventures.
After Sarah doodled the latest Horrible, Rachel added her own beautiful work.
Sometimes the word "crap" isn't strong enough. I doodled this during a drought (a creative not water one). I was happy to put anything on the digital screen. Looking back, the monster reminds me of my earlier monster-doodling days.
We're getting back into our routine after our NY vacation. The weather has finally taken a turn for the better (albeit a bit unseasonably dark and cool this morning). I'm still slightly tanned--although that seems to be fading quickly. Except for brief moments standing in the ocean at the beach, like true Seattlites, in the Hamptons we both hid from the sun most of the time.
I was playing with the zoom function of my browser, and after zooming all the way to 10%, I realized how long my front page looked even at this magnification. It was somehow soothing. I snipped it (because of my new philosophy: if I do not record it, it did not happen):
I did a bit of skipping to pull up this doozy. I drew this after my last long break from doodling back in April. I'm finishing up another break because of my computer problems. During the vacation, my new bios chip arrived from the Netherlands, and I plugged it in yesterday and watched as the beautiful bios logo appeared on the screen. I'm back in business.
While I had a good time on my vacation and took lots of photographs, I didn't accomplish much for NEQID: I brought a large stack of books, of which I read half a book; except for a brief doodle on the airplane, I didn't open my computer; which means I also didn't write a word. I did think about writing. That and a can of beans will get me lots of gas.
We visited Julie's sisters and Steven in NYC, and then went for a weekend in the Hamptons with my family. We celebrated my mother's 60th birthday, and spent much of the time at the beach and pool.
There are lots of photographs. With six nieces, I found most of the photographs too cute to delete.
This happened back in the Castle days. We were sleeping when Julie heard a noise. She got out of bed and went to the window and saw a kid rummaging through our mailbox. He took our Netflix and a few envelopes we left for the mailperson, and took off as Julie banged on the window. She somehow resisted running after him--although she seriously considered it. Me? I turned over and continued to sleep. I'm no brave hero, especially when it comes to Netflix envelopes. I doodled this to document the occassion.
We're heading to NYC tomorrow for our Hamptons vacation. I've only been to the Hamptons once: during my summer internship at the law firm, they took us to a partner's estate for dinner. It was large and grassy. They were trying to show us the good life that working 100 hour weeks for forty years would get us. I somehow resisted that good life, but I did enjoy the freshly shucked oysters and overloaded trays of shrimp. That was pre-Kosher days (also pre-Julie days).
I'm not looking forward to the flight early tomorrow morning. The less I travel, the less I want to travel. It will be nice to see my family and nieces. I expect much doodling and photograph taking. We've decided not to bring the video camera, so no Sagamore-esque video. It's probably for the best.
Ah, the Button! Here's the original photo. That grass is rather terrible. At least Button is cute. I haven't drawn the iggies in a long while.
Come to think of it, I haven't drawn anything in a while. Oh, yeah, now I remember why: I broke my computer again. I was trying to fix an issue I was having with Vista sleeping properly, and I attempted to flash the bios. This would have been fine if the WinFlash tool supported Vista 64-bit, which it didn't. I tried it anyway and it blue screened. This is not a good sign when flashing a bios. When I rebooted, the black screen stared at me. I had scrambled the bios and it would no longer POST. (The bios is rather important as it initializes the motherboard and devices and starts the boot process. Without it, no boot.)
I've done some research on Hot Flashing in which you swap the broken bios into a working machine and reflash it. Regretably, of the five or so computers at home, none of them have the same bios chip. One would think it would have been standardized by now. I plan to order a replacement bios from the internets today. Hopefully I'll be up and running sometime next week.
If you didn't notice (or read this thing through the fancy RSS feeder), my Little Guys are holding an umbrella this morning. It thunderstormed here this morning. During our bicycle commute last night, we also hit a short thunderstorm. I don't want to raise any undue alarms, but the sky may be falling, and the apocalypse can't be too far away.
Before we moved to the Villa, we started playing tennis at a local center near the Castle. Julie had played tennis for many years when she was younger, and I had never owned a tennis racket. We went a handful of times before we moved to the Villa. We purchased tennis rackets (mine a bit fancier than Julie's to handicap her), and a few cylinders of balls, all of which now sit in the garage awaiting a tennis revival. I'm noticing a scared theme in these competitve doodles. Do you remember the scared chess one? (As I looked through my old doodles, I'm not sure I can call two doodles a theme.)
I'm a very competitive person. Lately, I've not put myself in many competitive situations. I used to have basketball and driving. I had to give up my road-rage-inspired driving after realizing how ridiculous and dangerous it was. And basketball fell by the wayside when it became inconvenient to play. Bicycling and weight-lifting (which I haven't done in over a year) are fun but not competitive since there's no winning. Work at times is competitive, when there are contentious issues being discussed; although this is much rarer than it should be. Even video games have grown less competitive as I mostly play co-operatively with Julie and Steven.
Tennis did provide a short release of competitive energy. While it isn't as competitive as basketball--mostly because I don't get the opportunity to wrestle for rebounds or push myself into the box--I refused to lose to Julie. I'm quicker than her on the court (thanks to my long skinny legs), and I am able to get to the ball faster. I'm also nastier, sending lots of short balls barely over the net for easy points. I won all of our games (we may have tied and ran out of time during the last few games we played). Whenever it looked bad for me, my competitive juices would churn and I would focus intently and begin dinking the balls, scoring easy points and tiring out the Julies. I miss these opportunities to play (and win!) competitive games.
Looking through my mail today, I received an e-card from my mother. Until I opened it I couldn't figure out why she sent it. Today is our New York wedding anniversary. (I guess it's true what they say about men's ability to remember anniversaries.) As I mentioned in my last anniversary post, we are alternating our celebrations. For my mother (and, in reverse, Julie's mother), there is no alternating: we were married in New York on July 1st. We're okay with that.
We didn’t take photographs this weekend. This made Julie sad after she realized we wouldn’t have anything to post to document the weekend. To make up for that sadness I decided to write a short musing about our activities.
I don’t know when it happened but I’ve come to realize that photographs and musings make activities better. I used to be against photographing when we traveled; afraid that people would mistake me for a tourist if I carried a camera, even in situations where I clearly was a tourist. This always reminded me of the “Dune” prophecy (which I remember more from the movie than the book, as usual), “he shall know your ways as if born to them” (paraphrased). I enjoyed thinking of myself as that devout insider, someone who with little effort blended into a busy city or a rural countryside as if they belonged. This is quite strange when you consider how anti-social I am. I used to laugh at the Asian tourists who focused on obtaining the perfect photograph instead of enjoying what was around them. Now I find myself co-opting their approach by snapping a photograph or jotting down a well-turned phrase to remember the occasion. I turn what is enjoyable for a few moments into something that is enjoyable for a lifetime.
Enough throat clearing. We had dinner with two couples this weekend. On Friday night, we had Shabbos dinner with a couple that was introduced to us by the Rabbi at the local Shul. It was a blind couples date. They married about nine months ago and recently moved into a house in Kirkland. They cooked an excellent dinner of couscous and barbequed salmon and asparagus. I drank more than my share of the wine, and we had a good time getting to know each other. Jonathan is from South Africa, and Karen is from Boston. They convinced us that Friday night services at the Shul are worth attending. They’re much shorter than Saturday morning, and are a good way to end the week and meet new people. We’re going to try to go this week.
On Saturday night, we hosted Jeff and Mary. We visited them in their weekend home on Whidbey island (with the iggies!) a few months ago, and we finally got a chance to return the favor. I cooked a whole chicken, truffle oiled mashed potatoes, and baby bok choy. It was still a bit warm in the house from the day’s heat, but we had fun. I was feeling a bit less social after Friday’s activities. I’m not used to entertaining that many people in one weekend.
Speaking of the weather, it was hot this weekend. The days were unbearable, and we spent much of the time indoors and shopping. On Sunday we went to see a matinee movie, Wanted with Angelia Jolie. The action was good but the story was strained. They had a few good ideas in the mix, but lost them when they stirred too hard and fast. Watching as much anime as we do, I am learning how a good story comes together. When writing a science fiction or fantasy story, the world is the most interesting character. By giving away how the world works early in the movie, the story misses the opportunity to create mystery. The slow discovery followed by the ah hah! moment, such as found in the early twist of the “The Matrix,” makes for a more enjoyable experience. Probably the first time I saw this approach was in my reading of David Eddings's The Belgariad. Learning how the magic worked in the fantasy story (the thought and the word), was so exciting and long in coming that I read the series and its follow-up series many times over.
Yesterday afternoon we purchased a bicycle for Julie, and went for our first ride together to Noah’s Bagels on the island. After we returned home and showered, I remembered the camera. It was too late to change back into our biking outfits for the picture, which was why Julie was sad. I’ll let you picture the cute Julies, on her fancy new bicycle, with straight handlebars and a sparkling green frame, riding down our street and onto the bike path that would bring us to the center of the island.
We ended the day by taking the iggies to the dog park. With the weather so hot, that was the first time we took the iggies out during the weekend. They mostly stood around in the dog park, Ziggy not finding many dogs to play with in the heat. We settled down to an anime at night, cuddling with the dogs for fifteen minutes, before Button decided that she didn't like the couch. She's not used to being held, and always looks awkward. Hopefully she'll outgrow that.
I'm beginning to think that my mood is directly effected by the doodle I'm scheduled to post. If true, I need to start drawing happier doodles. I'm tired today after a nice bicycle ride home yesterday evening. I can't seem to focus and I'm wondering what I'm doing here.
Although the cloud guy above tells a different story, the weather has made a turn for the better in Seattle. It's almost time to figure out how the sprinkler system works in the Villa and start asprinkling.
I had to go deep into my queue to find this today. I drew the background in 2005, but never posted it. I rediscovered it a few months back and added the Horribles.
The reason today is special is because one year ago in Taiwan, Julie and I were married in the first of our two wedding ceremonies. In some ways, I can't believe it's been an entire year, and in other ways, I don't want to remember what it was like before I married the Julies. I can't understand how I survived so long without the Julies. I never realized how terrible I was on my own until Julie was there for me.
This has been the first in what will be many years together. Going into the marriage, I had little doubt that Julie was right for me. She is smart, kind, and beautiful, and even agreed to marry me even after I told her that I had lots of issues--I never articulated what the issues were, figuring it would be more fun to figure them out once we were married.
We are off to our favorite restaurant, La Medusa, near the Castle. We haven't been back since we moved, and we're looking forward to celebrating our anniversary there tonight. We're going to alternate our anniversary celebrations every year: next year we'll celebrate on July 1st, the date of our New York ceremony (Julie prefers to celebrate both dates, but it's way too much pressure for me).
