Here are two videos of Northwood and Bucky playing with brake cleaner and fire. I will not say this is wise. I will not say this is safe. I will say, however, that it’s pretty awesome. One and two.
Month: December 2005
Many Days
Here’s two photo updates for my zero regular readers: the crossbow Bucky and Wilmbo made (Eve, for now), and a whole bunch of other stuff, including roosters in Seattle and a night of beer, duct tape, and dominoes, including these five videos: One, two, three, four, and five.
As you can see from the linked pictures, KrisDi and I played some dominoes. I don’t remember who ended up winning, but it was a remarkably close game, considering KrisDi got 350 points behind in the first round. Then we made domino things and knocked them down, as you can see in the videos. We drank beer while doing it. And there are pictures of the beers. KrisDi got bored, though, which was tragic. I guess dominoes wasn’t what she wanted to do on a Saturday night.
Then I went to Bremerton for work. Tuesday the 4th, I got to work at 2:30 AM. Wednesday, I got to work at about 1:00 AM. Both days I got off work later than 6:00 PM. So that was pretty tiring. Monday and Thursday I got the chance to go to Seattle to visit people. I visited Alessan, another old college roommate, and the Pope of Djibouti (and his beleaguered wife — imagine trying to study confections [or was it conduction?] while the aforementioned three are animatedly discussing nothing within ten feet). Alessan’s got a great looking dog, Belle. The Pope’s still the Pope. I got a glimpse of the popemobile. Since he went out hatless, apparently the the popemobile and his security forces were unnecessary. Phoenix was remarkably unforthcoming with contact information for the Pope. I tried to call him several times, but apparently he tends to keep his cell phone off. Eventually, after paying to find out that Information didn’t know the Pope’s number, we paid to find Phoenix’s home number, and then asked for the Pope’s number. By this time, it was past the dinner hour, so Alessan and I made the Pope watch us eat.
When it was all over, I went up to visit Mom. We stopped at an Ethiopian restaurant called Abyssinia Restaurant (here’s part of the menu. I love the “Foul” breakfast. Also, the coked and scarmbled eggs). We ordered an apparently huge amount of food. It was incredibly good. I was under the impression that Ethiopians had no food. I later found them on some list of Seattle’s filthiest restaurants!
Several Things
Since the last time I’ve put anything in the Reviews section, I’ve read, listened to, and watched a bunch of stuff. Let’s see what I can remember.
Most recently, I watched The Wizard of Oz. I had never seen it before. Indeed, so many people disbelieved me when I told them I hadn’t seen it, that I started to think that maybe I had seen it and just forgotten most of it. But, after seeing the whole thing through, I definitely never saw it before. It was a really good movie though! Quirky and strange (and I loved the fact that all of the Munchkins and whatnot got a single line in the credits: The Singer Midgets as the Munchkins). I hate Dorothy. She’s stupid and annoying. The Cowardly Lion is awesome. And I loved this quote from the Wizard: “Why, anybody can have a brain. That’s a very mediocre commodity. Every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the Earth or slinks through slimy seas has a brain. Back where I come from, we have universities, seats of great learning, where men go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. But they have one thing you haven’t got: a diploma.”
KrisDi and I also watched Tron recently. It was probably the first time I watched it all the way through. Truth be told, it was horrible, but I enjoyed it anyway. It did inspire a new drinking game though: Drink once for every hardware reference. Twice for every incorrect hardware reference. Three times whenever software shows emotion or ambition or any other human trait not attributable to computers (yet).
We also watched Life is Beautiful, an Italian film by Roberto Benigni. He does a great job of making you like all the characters. I was leery about a movie where the director was also the leading man, but it worked out very well. It was a very good movie.
I just finished re-reading the first three Earthsea books by Ursula K. Le Guin. They were just as enchanting the second time. I reread them because since the first time I read them, three more books have been released in the series. I have them now, and will get to reading them soon. Anyway, my prognosis on Earthsea is “excellent.”
I’m now reading Blind Man’s Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage. It’s not particularly well-written, but the subject matter is really interesting. It might help that I’m pretty familiar with Navy stuff in general, and that my dad served on one of the ships (USS Seawolf) mentioned periodically in the book. I’m not done with it yet, but I found it worth reading. I’m a little surprised to report that, since it’s non-fiction, which is a bit of departure from my normal fare, if you hadn’t noticed.