Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

It took a while, but I finally got my photos from the Puyallup Fair processed and uploaded. Prairie and I went on a whim late in the summer, and had a really good day wandering around the fairgrounds. We didn’t go on any rides, but did play some of the carny games, got some cotton candy, looked at exhibits, and had a blast watching the Mutton Bustin’!

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

( Read the rest of this entry » )

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

A few weekends ago, Prairie and I went down to visit family south of us: her mom and sister in Vancouver, WA; my brother and his family in Corvallis, OR; then Prairie’s dad and grandpa in Woodland, WA on our way back up to Seattle.

I’ve finally finished putting all the photos from the weekend up in a photoset. Here’s my nephews Paul and Noah to kick things off!

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

In happier news: first photos of the new apartment!

Here’s what you see when you walk in the front door. Bookshelves along the rear wall, the deck (which has become our favorite spot for breakfast and dinner, thanks to the patio furniture that Prairie’s dad gifted us with), our new couch and chair (brand-new furniture, right from a furniture store — we’re really turning into adults, aren’t we?), the fireplace, entertainment center, and dining room.

Another view of the living room, this time from the door to the deck. The three bookshelves on the right will gain a fourth as soon as we can add one, every shelf on those is double-stacked with books.

My office. In the last apartment, my office doubled as the guest room, but now it’s primarily just my office, only acting as a secondary guest room when we have enough guests to need it.

That’s because with a three-bedroom apartment, Prairie now gets an office of her own, instead of having to camp out in a corner of the living room, and her office is now the main guest room. It’s also very girly and pink, which is just the way she wanted it!

There’s also two bathrooms — but those are bathrooms, and not terribly exciting to take pictures of — and our bedroom, which we don’t feel needs to be broadcast to the world. That’s our room, after all.

We’re really enjoying this apartment. Lots of space, not nearly as cramped, and as we specified wanting a corner or end unit, we’ve got enough windows to get a good breeze keeping the place cool at all times. Since we’re on the third floor, the trees outside keep things nice and private, so we don’t have to worry about people peeking in the windows at us (a pretty common occurrence at our last complex). The deck looks over a small playground, so there’s almost always kids playing out back.

Joke all you want about living in Kent — and I’ve already heard more than a few cracks from Seattleites who don’t get why we’d want to be in the suburbs — but so far, we’re liking it a lot.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

No, mine aren’t ready yet (really, I’m about to get started on them, I promise), but here’s a nice group shot of the group in the truck by generalchaos.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Pride yesterday was a lot of fun. Every other year I’ve gone, I’ve shot from the sidelines, doing my best to get an overview of the entire parade and all the different groups. This year, I decided to try something different. A few weeks ago at the Mercury, dizzy88 recognized me from my Flickr account and suggested I ride along with the Goth Pride float and shoot for them this year. It sounded like a good plan to me, and definitely a different vantage point than I’d had before, so I decided to take that approach.

Prairie needed a day of rest, so she stayed home while I grabbed a bus downtown in the morning. Since the Goth Pride float was towards the end of the parade, I spent some time wandering up and down the staging area, grabbing shots of the various groups as they got ready to go. Once people near our group started moving, I hopped on board the truck, and rode the parade route from there, shooting the crowds to either side of the truck as we made our way along. Much fun, especially as the brakes on the truck were “either on or off,” so any acceleration or deceleration had a tendency to throw us all stumbling from one end of the truck bed to the other. No injuries, but a lot of laughs!

I’m a bit behind in my picture processing right now (I haven’t even gone through what I shot on Memorial Day yet), but I’m hoping to get to my shots later on this week sometime. In the meantime, midnytetragedy has posted her shots, and I’m sure other people will be posting theirs before too long.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

About a week and a half ago, six teams of people with dance in their souls — if not their soles — gathered together for a battle royale at Dance Off 2007.

If you were there, you know the pure awesomeness of the spectacle. If you weren’t there (foolish mortal), then at least I can offer this photographic record of the event.

Truly, such fleetfooted feats (feets?) shall never grace a stage again.

Until next year, of course.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Today marks the 34th birthday of Royce, whom I’ve known since 4th grade. He’s the one on the right, holding the robot that actually looks reasonably robot-ish, as does Cindy’s over there on the left. I’d be the one in the middle, doing my best ‘Kilroy Was Here’ over the (gargantuan) head of a robot that appears to be heavily inspired by ET.

Happy birthday, Royce!

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

During our Spring Break trip to Long Beach. Photo by Prairie’s dad, Lon.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

A bit of silliness on Flickr these days: if you add a note that says simply ‘ho ho ho hat’ to a photo, Flickr will add a Santa hat to the photo where the note is placed.

There’s a few people getting up in arms about the ‘defacement’ of their photos, but if you decide you don’t like this, you can simply delete the note. I see it as a harmless bit of holiday silliness.

And I like harmless silliness.

Yes, it's taking me forever to get through these. Still, at least they're showing up...eventually. I've named and tagged these as best I could (combining what little brain power I have with the thank you post), but corrections/additions would certainly be appreciated!

( A few shots of the Goth Pride section of the Pride Parade )

From the “only in Alaska” department…

( Oh, so you think your Humvee is cool, do ya? Do ya, punk? )

For the record, I’m not much of a truck person, and I can’t stand Humvees (or just about any other form of SUV, for that matter), except in the extremely rare instances where there’s a reason to own and drive a beast that huge. Needless to say, your average overpaid suburbanite doesn’t really have a reason.

This truck, though…ya gotta admit, for most people, that’s going to trigger at least some small amount of testosterone. Treads. TREADS! Heh.