Ladies and gentlemen, the almost-first African-American U.S. Presidential candidate (1988), the Reverend Jesse Jackson.

My leadership program group ran into him at O’Hare in Chicago and he was gracious enough to pose for a picture with my friend Tony and me.

The family went to the Museum of Flight in Tukwila (south of Seattle) yesterday, which was a pretty cool place. My favorite shot of the day is this one of Ray adopting a famous presidential pose as he boards Air Force One.

You can see the rest of the photo set here.

The University of Washington recently purchased and took possession of the 22-story former Safeco Tower near the UW campus. My organization, which currently has its staff scattered across campus in five different locations, is planning to move into the newly-dubbed “UW Tower” this summer.

Or, rather, we are moving into the “UW Tower Properties”.

We’re not actually moving into the tower itself; we’re moving into one of the 3-story “outbuildings” that encircle the tower much as medieval villagers’ huts encircled their Lord’s castle.

The views from the upper floors of the Tower cover the entire region, including the downtown skyline, Lake Union, Lake Washington, and both sets of our mountains.

The view from our section includes a dentist’s office and a gas station.

But I’m not complaining. Really. It’s going to be nice to finally have everyone in my office located under one roof, and I’m looking forward to interacting with my co-workers more regularly. I’ve worked in far, far less attractive spaces in my day, and I honestly don’t have any issues of status caught up in the location of my office.

I got to take a tour of the UW Tower today. Only a few groups have moved in and there’s a ton of work left to be done to the interior to prepare for new tenants. I thought some of the fields of stacked furniture we encountered in our future workspace made for interesting geometric patterns, so I snapped a few photos. Enjoy.

Somewhere around Pier 39 in San Francisco is the Musée Mécanique, one of the world’s largest collections of antique coin-operated arcade machines. Within those machines lurks a veritable army of the most horrifying miniature creatures I have ever encountered.

I have previously written about my fear of clowns, which some might term “irrational” but which I know to be both well-grounded and justifiable (as a textbook ENTP, I don’t do irrational, dammit!)

Along those same lines, but to a less acute degree, is my fear of mechanized creatures.

Perhaps this stems from the scene in Blade Runner in which Harrison Ford searches through J. F. Sebastian’s menagerie of automatons and eventually finds Daryl Hannah, who kicks his ass.

Wandering through this arcade of horrors I felt very much like Ford/Deckard and wondered to myself “Which one of these is going to be the one to try to break my neck?” Will it be the terrifying “Laffing Sal”? Or maybe the entire team of miniature baseball players? I can see the headlines now: “Tourist Slain by Tiny Honus Wagner.”

I bravely documented my journey just so you can see what I’m talking about. Bone-chillingly freaky, right?

Let’s cleanse the palate with a relevant tune by the Dresden Dolls.

The other night, I showed Amy’s extended family my infamous ugly baby photo (see also “Ugliest Baby Picture”). After they got over their initial shock and awe, someone asked if this was, indeed, the ugliest baby picture.

What better way to determine that than to search Google?

It turns out, as of today, I’m number 5 if you search for “world’s ugliest baby photo,” and three of the first four are jokes. The only semi-legitimate competitor is this guy (girl?) who clearly does not hold a candle to me.

So, I need your help. Go to Flickr and add my photo as a favorite. Add a link to “”World’s Ugliest Baby Picture” to your blog/website. Increase my Page Rank. Spread the ugliness! It craves to be seen!!

Ray and I drove around Seattle tonight looking for the best vantage point from which to view the lunar eclipse. Only after we got home did we discover that the best view was from our driveway, which is from where this photo was taken.

Of course, I explained to Ray that what was happening was that the god Seth was stealing the Moon Eye of Horus during one of their great battles. I figured this was just as believable of a story as a talking bush or an old man saving two of every species of animal during a worldwide flood.

Yesterday, I arrived at the Dean’s office a few minutes early for a meeting so I ducked into an empty cubicle to inhale some lunch. I found the pictured stack of books on the cubicle’s desk.

(click for a larger version)

For those photographically-challenged amongst you, the titles of the books I found were:

Chairing the Academic Department
The Academic Chairperson’s Handbook
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

What the hell kind of College are they running, anyway!?

Coincidently, one of the topics at the meeting I was going to concerned training new academic department chairs. I mentioned the pile of research I had spied in the cubicle, which drew a big laugh. I then suggested that perhaps basing our mission on, say, Brave New World instead would be more effective. The room was in stitches. I owned that audience.

Later, I recalled that the drug from Brave new World was called “soma,” which was also the last name of our former Acting Dean. If only that had occurred to me at the meeting I could have scored a legendary comedic triple play. Oh well.

As we were exploring Vashon Island the other day, we came across this intriguing sight:

According to the Roadside America website, the “Bicycle Eaten by Tree” is apparently the inspiration for Berkeley Breathed’s book Red Ranger Came Calling.

Google Map to the bike.

There is a long and honorable tradition of fathers introducing their sons to immorality and vice in the absence of a mother’s protective embrace. From Bill Cosby nutritionally damaging his kids with chocolate cake for breakfast, to the almost archetypal father-son trip to the brothel on the latter’s eighteenth birthday, paternal corruption has a long and storied past.

In the footsteps of those who walked before me, today I led my son into his first den of vice — the horserace track.

Continue reading "Old-Fashioned Father-Son Bonding" »

I asked someone recently if she liked baseball. She said she’d been to a game once but found it really boring. Her friends assured her, however, that it was an exception and that games are usually more exciting.

I told her they were wrong.

Continue reading "Saturday Night at Safeco" »

At every university I’ve attended or worked at, there are both myths and true tales regarding the network of steam tunnels under the campus. At Iowa, for example, a certain professor routinely disappeared after class in one building only to reappear in another building well ahead of us. We always assumed he held a coveted “tunnel key” and navigated the subterranean world to avoid the bitter cold on the surface. At Wisconsin, stories were told of “Tunnel Bob,” a six-foot-six homeless guy who lived in the tunnels and was once given a job changing light bulbs.

Now here, I finally managed to come up with a legitimate reason (and permission) to venture into the dungeons below the ground. While reorganizing our storage room, we came across a bunch of old coaxial and fiber-optic cable emerging from a hole in the middle of the floor. As we’re in the basement of the building, the origin of the cables was a bit of a mystery. When we shone a flashlight down the pipe, we discovered an entire room below the floor. The next question was: how do we get down there?

Continue reading "Urban Spelunking" »

Our house in Seattle is near the border of three neighborhoods: Ballard, Greenwood, and Crown Hill. Which one we’re technically “in” depends on which map you look at.

The business district is a mix of trendy condos and run-down buildings. Over the two years that we’ve lived here, I’ve taken note of several snigger-worthy shops and just plain weird buildings that I’ve decided to immortalize in digital photo glory.

Continue reading "These Are the Weird-Ass Places In Our Neighborhood" »

One of Amy’s and my favorite things to do is try new restaurants. With Ray’s bedtime ritual beginning at 6:00pm, however, we don’t get much of a chance to do that much anymore. Nevertheless, Amy never misses a “Seattle’s Best Restaurants” or “Dining Guide” issue of whatever newspaper or magazine we happen upon, and she carefully plots out our dining-out plans so we know where to go when we get a night off.

Amy’s mom is in town, so we were able to try out Flying Fish, a well-reviewed Belltown eatery, on Sunday night.

I’m no food photographer, and my cell phone takes really lousy pictures, but following the jump, you can take a look at the marvelously-constructed and super-tasty dishes we consumed on our night out.

Continue reading "Dinner at Flying Fish" »

On this lovely spring-like day, we took the bus to the Ravenna neighborhood and strolled around a bit taking in the sunshine and the scent of cherry blossoms.

I haven’t been inspired to write anything lately, so here are some photographs. Enjoy.

Continue reading "Volunteer Park Photos" »

Advertising that your hotel is “modern” is only risking obsolescence; proclaiming it to be “fireproof,” however, is just asking for trouble.

The Bush Hotel in the Internationsl District surrounded by 4 Seattle Fire trucks. 2/11/06

Apologies for the crappy cell phone photo….

The building I work in also houses a number of research labs. I’m not savvy to what goes on in them, but I can infer from some of the signs posted throughout the corridors that there’s some nasty stuff floating around.

Last summer, a chemical explosion in one lab forced an evacuation of our building. That incident, and the FEMA-like response to it, prompted the College to ramp up their lab safety awareness program.

Shortly thereafter, these rather cryptic signs appeared on every door in the building.

I can’t say that this made me feel particularly good about spending 8 hours a day in this building. The very existence of these signs implies that lab workers had been leaving their labs and touching door handles while still wearing their chemical- and bio-hazard-coated gloves! For how many years have building inhabitants been smearing toxic residue onto their hands (and other places) simply by going to the bathroom?

But the signs have also created some rather humerous moments. The other day, someone came to my office to meet with me and reported that, upon seeing the signs, she felt compelled to remove her winter gloves but didn’t quite understand why she had to.

A couple months ago, Ray picked up a green bean between his index and middle fingers and put it up to his lips like a cigarette. He was greatly amused by this, and, obviously, Amy and I were horrified. He said he was being like “that man,” and gestured across the street. I was pretty surprised as we have never called attention to anyone smoking, and he had never asked about it. But he apparently saw someone doing it in our neighborhood and it made enough of an impression on him that he easily mimicked the process of taking a drag.

I was reminded of that today when I saw this cheerful little nugget [from boing boing]: Photos of a three-year-old smoker

I wonder if he knows how to inhale.

the bonster from i hate peas posted an old photo of the two of us from, probably, 1989 or 1990. Check out the swooping hair and big hoop earring on that guy! Compare with this other old photo.

The distinctive blue and orange Fremont Bridge spans the Lake Washington Ship Canal in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle. The bridge opens an average of 35 times per day, making it the busiest drawbridge in the country.

We happened upon an opening today, on the nicest day in the last month.

Continue reading "The Fremont Bridge" »

This photo of me as a baby used to be up at our old family web site, but it’s been offline for a while now. After my last ultra-serious post, I thought this would liven things up around here a bit. (Click to enlarge…if you dare.)

This is one of the most stunning photographs I’ve ever seen. It takes a while to load, but it’s worth it.

Paris by night

Makes me want to go back … only this time, without an insane person…..

From atop one of the mountains near South Lake Tahoe, I snapped this rather nice panoramic shot of the lake. Click for a pan-able version (Java required).

Continue reading "A St. Patrick’s Day Rainbow" »