the frig blig

Suzan and I spent the night on Lummi island in a cozy B&B for some R&R. We walked on the beach, rented bicycles, and hot-tubbed too. Nice and relaxing. Saw this huge pile of kelp:
this starfish:
and this westerly view:
More pix in the gallery.

Two celebrities die in the same week and take up tons of printers’ ink and bandwidth. I wasn’t a huge fan of either but I’ll blog about both.

Re: Gerald Ford, I couldn’t recall what position he held before being appointed vice president after Spiro Agnew resigned. I asked a couple of friends who didn’t remember either, just that he once played football. He wasn’t secretary of state…so I looked it up. Prior to his appointment as VP Ford was Republican Minority Leader of the House of Representatives. The 25th amendment to the US constitution stipulates that whenever there is a vacancy in the office of Vice President, the President nominates a successor, who is confirmed by the majority vote of both houses of Congress. So there you have it.

I never forgave him for pardoning Nixon. But enough about Ford, it’s in all the papers.

Re: James Brown, I didn’t spend a lot of time moving to his groove. The closest I came to seeing JB was during my stint with Adivan, a Tallahassee band from the late 1980s. Our bass player Bob Barker had previously played in a band which was the warmup act for a JB tour, when ‘Say It Loud’ was JB’s big hit. And when I was in highschool, my friend Chuck liked to play ‘Doing the Duke’ at his parents house when we skipped school there. Nowadays I often sing ‘Get On Up’ to recalcitrant servers while waiting for them to finish rebooting.

Old friends Richard and Lily stayed with us in room 5 this holiday weekend, leaving about an hour ago. It was very pleasant. I chatted music and computers with Richard, enjoyed his guitar playing, and got to know Lily better. We made lasagna and after dinner watched ‘Being John Malkovich’ last night. This morning we walked to Volunteer Park from Stevens. The sun emerged, we browsed the conservatory and just as I was mentally gushing over the incredible variety of plant forms I felt a thorn in my finger — ow! That’s nature for ya.

I managed to find time (whilst everyone was napping) to debug phpslideshow’s mysterious thumbnail behavior on my blog…turns out it was calling a gd function to create the images, but gd wasn’t installed. That’ll do it. phpslideshow generates/displays thumbnails on my galleries pages now; hurray!

We don’t mean to sound callous to the thousands of local residents still without power, six days after the windstorm. But here at Blig Central, the lights never went out. I shutdown the server just in case we had a power surge on the line (we didn’t)…and ordered a UPS for a worriless future. As one coworker put it, “even God knows better than to mess with Ballard.”

The Seattle Go Center hosted the 5th annual Iwamoto Kids’ Team Tournament last Sunday, Dec. 10. I was team captain for the Stevens Elementary team, who came in 4th. The kids had a great time; it was their first tournament. Here’s a couple of pictures courtesy of photographer Brian Allen:

The Port of Seattle made big news when they removed the Christmas trees from Seatac Airport, and now put them back.

What interests me is not the tree removal or restoration, so much as the huge outpouring of public outrage.

Get a grip, folks…they’re friggin’ Christmas trees! They’re not even live trees! As if there aren’t enough Christmas trees already!?!

This morning’s NPR news show ‘weekend edition’ broadcast an interview with historian Michael Beschloss on the topic of congressional commissions in US history (the lead-in was the recently-released Iraq Study Group report). While discussing other commission reports from the past, Beschloss mentioned the Iran-Contra affair of former President Reagan (where the president secretly sold weapons to Iran and used the proceeds to fund the Contras fighting Nicaragua).

Beschloss called the Contras ‘freedom fighters’. In fact, the Contras were a militia killing people in order to overthrow the country’s government. Today in Iraq, militias killing people in order to overthrown the government are called ‘insurgents’, not ‘freedom fighters’ eh?

‘Freedom fighters’ vs ‘insurgents’, it’s like the good guys vs the bad guys. If we’re talking sports you choose your side and root, but unfortunately this isn’t sports…these teams are killing people and destroying families. It pisses me off to hear highfalutin historians spinning facts like this on publicly-funded airwaves. Grrrr…good morning!

What’s been playing in my head for THE PAST WEEK is ‘8 miles high’ by them byrds. I missed the actual release of this tune back in the 1960s, only discovering the band during my college years in the 1970s. The song got retriggered when I heard it at Zeitgeist a week ago and darn if it isn’t still firmly lodged in me head, playing incessantly. I don’t even remember the whole song, it’s just the beginning that keeps repeating. I guess you could say this tune has legs.

Makes me reflect that the tunes one hears during highschool and college years stick with you pretty much your whole life. And not just the ones you like either (luckily I like this one).

And the cabbage: Suzan cut open what appeared to be a normal green head of cabbage t’other nite only to discover an ingrown stem taking up most of the bottom portion, leaving only the top 20-30 percent packed full of leaves like a normal head. We were shocked.

I registered the Stevens Go Club to play in the upcoming Iwamoto School Team Tournament at the Seattle Go Center this coming Sunday. Our roster is:
1st Board: Dylan H
2nd Board: Isabel A
3rd Board: Elliot L
Alternate 1: Lewis C
Alternate 2: Hal V
Team Captain: Frank Brown

This will be the first tournament for all participants (except the team captain). The team is psyched, although the prospect of 5 hours is a bit daunting.

This morning I headed to Roxy’s instead of Lighthouse because I wanted a bagel. When I arrived, because I wasn’t alert, because I wasn’t awake, because I hadn’t had any coffee yet, I ordered lox on my bagel. After eating half of it, I suddenly realized what I was doing…by requesting this meal, the capitalist system was rewarding a person for killing a salmon. Yikes! But it was too late. Hail Mary, full of grace…