Superman never made any money for saving the world from Solomon Grundy

Sunday, December 30, 2018

Penultimate day: looking backwards


Coco loves to play with photo editors - I really liked this one.

So, it was a good year, overall.

Work consumed a lot of the year. I was named Interim Vice President of Instruction at my college on January 1, and was selected as permanent Vice President of Academic Affairs & Student Learning in June (same job, just a different title). I have to say (and have said) that for the first six months of 2018 I worked more and harder, and was further behind than I can remember being at any job in the past twenty years. Thankfully, summer gave me the opportunity to regroup, and fall has been less crazed - I have new deans and will be starting 2019 with a full complement of administrators, so things should be a bit more manageable. It's a great gig - I have said that I want it to be my last, best job, and I think we're still on that trajectory.

A day in the life

The next big item was the house. This was the year of Home Ownership Ascendant: new dining room set, new Smart TV, new kitchen appliances, new hardwood (bamboo) floors on the upper floor. Lots of fuss & feathers, and lots of do-re-mi out the door, but it seems to have been worth it.

Floors
 
I also did a lot of health care - started off the year with a colonoscopy and have been going to the doctor (as well as the dentist) routinely now. I am up to six pills in the morning: one for high blood pressure, one for thyroid, one for allergies, two vitamins the doctor told me to take, and a probiotic that Coco says I should take. As the saying goes, if I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.

And politics... well, the less said the better. High hopes for January and some checks on the madness.

But still, we had good times.

I played a lot of D&D; not enough, but a lot. I had to quit one game, a couple of others were strictly short-term, one long-term campaign ended, and I'm in one monthly now. The logistics can be challenging when half my gaming peeps are down in Seattle. I even took a manic weekend trip to Boston to play in annual weekend retreat game as guest of my friend Lyle - I was honored to have been invited and had a great time, but one weekend a year ain't gonna do the trick.

My current character, Just Joa

We had visitors - the selfsame Lyle (once alone and once with family); Diane (for Pride); Karmin; Jackie & Jeff (technically, we met in the middle); Erin & Tim; Margaret; and Jason & Emma & Sky.

I took a drawing class and made some pictures.

We got up to White Rock and Vancouver several times and of course we topped the year off with Palm Springs.


Click to embiggen and panoramacize the view of Joshua Tree National Park


And of course, I got to spend the whole year with this wonderful family:

Coco the Adorable:


Here she is in disguise as a Fly Girl:


And the bully-boy, Selkie:


And one last shot of me, participating in Turban Awareness Day at the College. The fellow who wrapped me said I have the perfect head for turban-wearing, and someone who should know said I looked like many of the older men in Northern India. What can I say? It's headwear.


I hope that looking back 2018 been as kind to you as it has to me.  Onward!


Tuesday, December 25, 2018

Season's Greetings

So, with that most generic of holiday salutations, here is my annual wish of goodwill toward all. I expressed it last year in a somewhat more lengthy post:
But frankly, right now couldn't we use even the hokiest reminders that kindness and caring are important and that we should all demonstrate a little compassion and generosity in our personal, professional, and public lives? 
So whatever you celebrate at this time of year, from whatever source your goodwill springs, I wish you peace and joy, and I ask you to spread love and hope wherever you can.
And of course, since Coco and I are in Palm Springs for winter break this year, no holiday greeting would be complete without the Three Kings Three Drag Queens.

Sunday, December 23, 2018

Up and down The Ten

So, the vacation continues!

In a perhaps surprising choice, Coco and I went on an honest-to-goodness hike on Friday. Not just our usual two-to-three mile walk around a neighborhood, but a drive out to Tahquitz Canyon and a two-mile loop through the desert terrain, up to the fall and back. Dang, you'd think we were from Bellingham or something.

 Coco took the opportunity to play with her real camera.

The falls were almost totally dry this year, but still quite lovely.

This item from the visitor's guide caught my attention:


 I mean, I may be a city boy, but even I know desert canyons don't have water fountains...

That evening we switched gears and went out to the Fantasy Springs Casino & Special Event Center to see the Brian Setzer Orchestra. It was great fun; I have no pics, just two observations: 
  • smoky casinos are pretty yucky
  • rockabilly can be pretty damn great

On Saturday we got a little crazy, jumped in the car and sped/crawled down the San Bernadino Freeway to make a visit to L.A. The first stop was more of a pilgrimage: the L.A. City Hall building stood in for the Daily Planet in the old Adventures of Superman TV series, and I wanted to get a look at it in person.


Even though the area around it has gotten a it congested, it did not disappoint.

The next stop was the La Brea Tar Pits and Page Museum - I guess I have more of an affinity for the older, classic attractions than for new-fangled stuff. I really wanted to see the spot that appeared on the the movie The Two Jakes (which I cannot find a still of online!) but if my memory of that scene serves, it appears that spot actually never existed outside the film - at least I couldn't find anything remotely resembling it, except a utilities deck on the museum. It was a great visit nonetheless.

A favorite Pleistocene mammal, many of which met their end in La Brea

And since we were already in L.A., we decided to jaunt out to make sure the ocean was still there and dropped down to Ocean Park in Santa Monica. The tide was too far out for easy toe-wiggling, but we took a long walk down to Venice Beach and back. It was a great walk marred only by the poor air quality - an unhealthy 161!

We broke up the ride home with a stop in Claremont to have dinner with Coco's California cousins, and capped the activities for the sixth consecutive day with a dip in the hot tub that is mere steps from our room.

It's good to be back in the desert.

Friday, December 21, 2018

Desert time

So, in the past, I have blogged daily from vacations, or even started a whole separate blog just dedicated to a particular vacation. For this winter holiday getaway to Sunny California, not so much, eh?

I recently came across this article, and while it's not top shelf, it did resonate with me:

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vbanny/we-should-replace-facebook-with-personal-websites

Click the image to read the article - and be sure to click through to his GeoCities site!

Since I have abandoned Facebook and I guess still have the urge to post about my life online, another outlet would be welcome. I have been on the Twitters a bunch, and have ruminated on that recently, but when it comes down to it, I agree with the main thrust of this fellow's argument: that the heyday of social media was that time when there was a vibrant ecosystem of personal blogs, each unique, each demonstrating style and personality and positioning in ways far beyond simply choosing your own header on your Facebook page or your own handle on Twitter.

Okay.

So here's some vacation tidbits on day five of our eleven-day excursion to Pam Springs, Hollywood's Waiting Room for Heaven.*

This is less an adventure and more of a relaxication, and we found a tiny nine-unit "resort" that fits the bill perfectly.


We did make a trip out to Coachella Valley Nature Reserve to experience the Thousand Palms Oasis - right on the San Andreas fault line in the middle of the desert. Pretty amazing to walk through what was essentially a palm forest with pools of water.



Despite intervening years of increasingly intrusive human habitation, the sense of what the oasis must have felt like way back when was still palpable.


But it hasn't all been spiritual-connection-to-nature stuff, of course. We have gone to a big band show, checked out the art museum, have tickets for a Brian Setzer concert tonight and a drag show brunch on Sunday, and went to the Wild Lights at the zoo and the downtown street fair last night.

Wild Lights is the name for the zoo's holiday lights extravaganza, which would have been way cooler if we hadn't been thinking all the time about how annoyed the animals must be with all the distracting lights and music while they were trying to sleep, and if the crowds had been a tiny bit more respectful of them. (Zoos are problematical.) Anyway, the lights were fun.


The downtown street fair was an elaborate affair, with several blocks closed off for food vendors, entertainment, activity stations, craft booths, public agencies, and suchlike. There was even some merchandise that we actually wanted to buy, and Coco did get a t-shirt.

We stated off the visit with art, though - our first stop was a create-your-own-acrylic-painting booth run by a sweet young woman who wrangled the (mostly) kids through the process with aplomb.

Coco in her element:


She always brings it:


As for me, well, I didn't go too far out of my comfort zone with this study of Arthur Curry:


More to come, I promise. We're restoring the ecosystem.

*Because old and ailing stars came here to die.

Tuesday, December 18, 2018

It's the thought that counts...

So, I was just reading Mark Evanier's excellent blog News from ME and since it was his blogaversary he allowed as he had blogged upwards of 26,000 posts since 12/18/2000, for an average of four times a day.

I started blogging on 3/1/2005, and I have posted a little over 1800 times, for an average just a shade better than once every three days.

I clearly need to up my game.

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Double-goer

So, much to the horror and chagrin of a dear friend and colleague who will cosplay at the drop of baldric, I am a bit of an Ebeneezer Boo-ooge when it comes to Halloween. I don't relish costume parties much*, don't do scary movies much, and haven't even mentioned Halloween much on the blog (go search).  In fact, as I was typing this, the doorbell rang and I ignored it because we don't have any candy in the house. Seriously: I could hear crabby children's voices through the open window.

At any rate, I have to mark the occasion of this particular Halloween because I was witness to - nay, party to, at least in a way - perhaps the greatest instance of an in-office costume I have ever encountered.

I am noted for my monochromatic wardrobe palette - generally all black, with perhaps a splash of color in the tie. I also commonly wear a hat - sometimes a porkpie, generally a beret. The wardrobe choice is just what I do to limit the number of decisons I need to make each day. The hat is to keep my bald head warm.

So today, this happened:


That's me on the right, of course. The taller, fitter doppelganger is a colleague from the building who had apparently been hatching this scheme for some time. He actually shaved his full beard to match mine as well as graying it from its natural dark brown; he found matching eyeglasses on the Internet; and of course he has the beret as well as the black shirt and jeans.

But the piece de resistance of his Walaka cosplay was this:


The sneaky so-and-so surreptitiously took pictures of me during meetings so he could even copy my tattoos!

On the one hand, I am flattered; on the other, I wonder if I should set up a secret code word with my assistant so she'll know it's really me.

All in all, in was a fun day around campus. The aforementioned pro-cosplayer came as a picture-perfect new Dr. Who, there was a gang of Pink Ladies in the business office and the entire Riverdale bunch in Registration. Our budget analyst was Medusa and my assistant was Abby from NCIS.

I wore black.

*Shortly after coming to Bellingham, I was invited to The Halloween Party hosted by my costume-crazy colleague. I was told the bar was high for costumes. I asked whether, if we fell short, we would be openly mocked; I was told no, just silently judged.


Sunday, October 14, 2018

Shouting down a well


So, I deleted my Facebook account the other day - not deactivated, suspended, or whatever but full-on deleted. It take thirty days to take effect, and if I log in it gets canceled (not a problem of that happening), but soon that facet of my social media identity will be no more. Good riddance to bad toxicity.

I am still active on Twitter. I think I have a decently curated feed that keeps me informed through links to important news stories and offers some decent analysis. I was looking at my profile the other day, and it said that I had all of 79 followers, so clearly I am much more a consumer of tweets than a provider.

I thought about what it would take to become a real Twitter celebrity with thousands of followers - how much to tweet, what to tweet so that you get retweeted - there must be a strategy - and then I asked myself why would you want to be a Twitter celebrity? I didn't have a good answer right away, and still don't. I think there's something about needing that affirmation if you're going to participate at all - I mean, why be one of the crowd when you can be one of the stars? But I don't think I really want to be a star, either.

About that same time, something on Titter caught my eye and I wanted to bring it to an internet buddy's attention, but I couldn't find him - no Twitter profile, no LinkedIn, his blogs shuttered. Another pal tipped me to his activity on GoodReads, so I went there and logged in (turns out I have had an account since 2012) just so I could message him. Looking at my newly-reactivated account I realized that it appeared as though I had been on the site for six years and had read only two books. That wouldn't do, so I spent about an hour culling through my old blog posts, marking off books I had read and linking to the reviews I had written until I had a decent library listed.

Who was I doing that for? No one on GoodReads was going to go looking for my account to judge me, at least no one I knew or cared about. But there was something compelling about the very context of the site - why be there at all if you weren't posting about books you have read?

Why be on Facebook if you aren't going to get likes?

Why be on Twitter if you aren't going to have followers?

For that matter, why write a blog post when your pageviews per day rarely break double digits?

I'm not sure I have the answer, but when I was going through old blog posts to find those book reviews, I realized something: I did a lot of writing back when were all blogging regularly, and some of it was pretty darn good - from the readers' perspective, that is. From the writer's perspective, all of it was worthwhile, at least for the exercise in composition.

So maybe I'll give up the social media sites completely and stick with a blog aggregator for my news - with just BBC and Al Jazeera English, I'm halfway there.

And maybe I'll keep writing this blog, even if I am shouting down a well.

Friday, September 14, 2018

It was thirty years ago today...

So, the fact that I worked as a police officer back in the eighties still seems to engage folks' imaginations. I still get a lot of questions about quasi-legal stuff, I still wind up on safety committees or in emergency planning, and people still attribute certain of my behaviors - my awareness or surroundings, for example - to "that's right, you used to be a cop."

Well, it's true, I did used to be a cop - patrol officer and detective - back in the day. And it's true, that experience has probably shaped me in some ways. But seriously, I quit the cops thirty years ago this month, and there has been a lot of water under the bridge since then. Neither police work nor I exist in the same form as we did back then.

I am not sure of my exact separation date, but today does mark the anniversary of my last big case. Take a look at the Issaquah Press from Wednesday, September 14, 1988:



Yep, that was thief-catcher me way back when the Holiday Inn had a salmon barbecue for $9.95, you could get a dozen roses for under twenty bucks, and it took a lot of tack to add up to ten grand. And I was off the force before the end of that month (and on my way to North Carolina, but that's a whole 'nother story).

And what kind of figure was that dashing detective who cracked this modern-day tack rustler? Why, take a look at him, captured here in the midst if another intense investigation earlier in 1988:


One look at the young fellow in that photo is all it takes for me to realize just how much time has passed since I was a commissioned law enforcement officer.

About nine years after this picture was taken I got my first job in one of the Washington State Community & Technical Colleges, and I have been in the system as an administrator or instructor ever since.

Yeah, I used to be cop. But I am an educator now.
 
(BTW, I did manage to reunite that grave marker  - actually a memorial bench - with its rightful owner. That reporter Peg Carver got a lot of ink outta me.)



Friday, July 13, 2018

The persistence of memory



So, about a year and a half ago, I had to go to Walla Walla* for a training session and statewide council meeting, and was there long enough to have to find two dinners on my own. Right smack in the nice** walkable little downtown, I encountered Sweet Basil Pizzeria, an unassuming little place with great New York style pizza, good salads, and a good selection of beer and wine. The people running the place were friendly, and I enjoyed my dinner sitting at the counter between the entry and the oven, sort-of reading a book and chatting with the staff.

I enjoyed the place so much, I came back the second night to have dinner there again instead of exploring and finding another eatery.

This week, I was back in Walla Walla for a different statewide commission meeting, and was only there long enough to have to find dinner on my own once. I of course headed back to Sweet Basil; my colleagues were not surprised, given how much I had raved about it in the intervening months.

After I ordered, I said to the woman behind the counter "You probably don't remember me, but I was here from out of town over a year ago and I liked your pizza and your restaurant so much I came two nights in a row.  I am back in town now and back here again because it's that good."

She looked at me a second and said "Oh, yeah. You come from Bellingham. You sat right over there." And she pointed at the counter between the entry and the oven.

Holy moly!

We had a fun reunion, and the pizza was every bit as good as I had remembered.

So, if you ever find yourself in Walla Walla at dinnertime, head over to to Sweet Basil. Ask for Lindsay, and tell her Walter sent ya.

She'll remember.

And you'll have some great pizza.



* The town so nice they named it twice.

**  See what I mean?

Wednesday, July 4, 2018

July 4

So, I am at a loss to express how I feel this Independence Day; here are some words and images kiped from here and there on the internet.









 

'nuff said. Let's get to work.

Tuesday, July 3, 2018

Grand Hotel writ small


So, I just watched a small, overlooked, and poorly-reviewed movie for 2017 called Table 19, and I  liked it a lot.

It's kind of a rom-com, but just a little. Mostly, it's in the genre with Grand Hotel, Stagecoach, and Lifeboat - and The Breakfast Club. You know, a disparate group of people, who would otherwise not find themselves associated, are thrown together in unusual circumstances and Things Happen. In this case, the unusual circumstance is created by all the characters having been seated at the least appealing, least involved table at a wedding reception, based on their relationship - or lack of it - with the bride and groom. Nonetheless, they manage to connect and help each other with their struggles.

While the movie wears a lot of the traditional rom-com trappings, it manages to subvert many of them in some surprising ways. Characters that you think are cardboard cutouts have a little more complexity than expected, and meet-cute doesn't lead where you expect it to. While it could have been even edgier, it has enough grit to distinguish it from the pack for me.

Th performances are excellent - Anna Kendrick is always fun to watch, and Lisa Kudrow gets better every time I see her. Steven Merchant puts a spin on his gentle giant shtick that is quite affecting, and 89-year-old June Squibb was a delight. Drama, wry humor, and just a bit of slapstick - the cast delivers it all.

The movie starts with very little backstory, and drops us right into the reception from the get-go, letting us discover the characters as the evening progresses, and only gives the briefest of codas. In fact, the first half is so tight that I thought the film might have been adapted from a stage play, but that is not the case. The setting does broaden out midstream, but the film never loses its focus on the table group.

If you've got an hour and a half to spare some night, check this hidden gem out.

Wednesday, June 27, 2018

Staycation Daze 3: Now that's more like it

So, balancing out the Mt. Baker misadventure on Monday, Coco and I had a nice excursion to Orcas Island in the San Juans on Tuesday. It was a bit of a sampler tour, as we took in Eastsound, Moran State Park, and Doe Bay in our little day trip. The weather cooperated, so the ferry rides to and from were as pleasant a part of the adventure as any thing else.

The highlight of the day was climbing the lookout tower on Mt. Constitution - at 2400 feet, we weren't half as high as Artist Point on Baker, but man what a view!


We could see our house from here! Well, almost - there were trees in the way. But using borrowed binoculars, I did clearly identify the senior housing a block or two away from our place.

Here's a bit closer look:



Coco was kind of a tour guide, as she had visited the island most recently - like, 15 years ago. Surprisingly, not much had changed. Besides looking out into the wild blue yonder, we had a good meal at a little hippie restaurant she remembered and which was still there, and walked through Doe Day Resort, where she had once vacationed in a yurt and which we bookmarked for a future weekend getaway. Coco bought some nice-smelling lavender stuff and I got a new pair of clip-on, flip-up sunglasses, and we both ate ice cream cones in the sunshine.
 
All in all, a great trip, marred only by some nagging work details that I couldn't quite shake out of my consciousness. I'm trying to get my head into full vacation mode, but it doesn't seem to be working.

Blah, blah, boo-hoo, poor me. Still a heckuva great day with my sweetie.

Monday, June 25, 2018

Staycation daze 2: The Long and Winding Road

So, Coco had a burst of spontaneity this afternoon and suggested that we make sandwiches, drive to Artist Point on Mount Baker, and eat dinner while taking in the vista. Mt. Baker is right in our backyard, so to speak, so I readily agreed. After her acupuncture appointment, we threw together some hoagies, jumped in the Scion, and headed out.

At first, it was exactly as we imagined: the glory of the natural world, bursting with beauty.

Pacific Northwest forests really are beautiful.

We neglected to consider two factors: (a) it is still very early in the season, mountain-wise, and (b) Artist Point is at about 5100 feet. Our sunny vacation day afternoon drive soon turned into... something else.


Yes, the road to Artist Point was clear, but there were still yards of snow on either side - toward the top, it was more like traversing a tunnel than enjoying a ride in country. What's more, we actually climbed up into the cloud layer, so visibility was about ten feet. The vista, when we finally reached the top, was, shall we say, limited.

On the other hand, parking was easy to find.

It was also about 40 degrees, and although the composting toilets were open, those and the trash cans were the extent of the accessible features.

Yes, there is a door to a restroom in there.

We changed our plans, turned around, and drove back down the mountain. Once we got below the cloud layer, it started to rain on us, a perfect cap to the expedition. We sped down the mountain to a brewery/pizzeria right on the edges of the civilized world: it gets great reviews and we have been meaning to try it, so this seemed like the time. I wish I could tell you that the pizza and the beer were great and made the whole misadventure worth it, but both were just okay.

What did make the whole trip worth it was getting to spend a few uninterrupted hours with my sweetie, listening to music, chatting, and laughing at our own damn crazy selves. That's what I call good times.


Sunday, June 24, 2018

Staycation daze

So, after six solid months of Interim VP duty and a transition to "permanent" VP, all of which involved a considerable number of twelve-hour days and of instances of working on weekends, graduation has come and gone and I am finally in a position to take vacation.

Or I guess it's what's now called a staycation - some familial responsibilities are keeping Coco in town, and a rare visit from an east-cost pal happens to coincide with my time off, so we're not leaving ton. (Coco is off on summer break, no teaching, so she's on a long staycation.)

Friday was technically my first day off, but it was more like a recovery day. We cleaned out the garage a bit, read a little, napped a lot, and we watched Justice League.

Saturday was supposed to be nice, so we grabbed the Nexus passes and headed up to B.C., intending to traverse the rope bridge at Capilano. The cloudy skies just a relatively few kilometers north weren't burning off, however, so we had to settle for a little shopping and some lunch at Chau Veggie Express, our new go-to for vegetarian pan-Asian food. While at IKEA, we saw a sign that coincidentally mirrored our quest:

 

Our cleaning spree had inspired Coco to address the growing disorder in her art-studio corner of the garage, so this seemed awfully timely. And while we didn't find anything to do the trick at IKEA, or even in Canada, we did score some shelving at the local Lowe's - more below.

That night, we watched Hello, My Name is Doris - no review forthcoming, but it was a sweet, quirky little movie that a well worth catching.

This morning, Sunday, we assembled the shelving we had picked up on Saturday that was meant to tame Coco's creative chaos; like a dam holding back a mighty river, only time will tell whether it is up to the task:


But this is supposed to be a staycation, not a workation, so after lunch Coco and I urban-hiked to the View Tower in the Sehome Hill Arboretum on the Western Washington University campus:


The whole trip comprised only a little over three miles, but you can see the elevation change.  The trip through the adjoining neighborhoods was uneventful, but as we entered the arboretum proper, we encountered something right out of a horror movie:


This message did not appear to be referencing the trail itself... but nothing creepy appeared.
 
In the end, the view was well worth it:


That's Canada way off on the horizon.

We thought our exertions merited some dinner, so we made our way down to a local brew pub. Along the way, we encountered this D&D-centric school:


I wondered if they have separate schools for halflings, dwarves, half-orcs, and so on. We made it to dinner without encountering any elves, whether Wood, Sun, or Deep. The food was good, and a brew pub wouldn't be a brew pub without brew, so:


Which of course led to this:


Not a bad start, I'd say.