Clearing 700 and Other Pointless Excuses for a Post

It's been a couple weeks, so time for a I'm-not-dead procrastination post.

Well, October has arrived far too early this year. I ought to check around the house to see if a few weeks fell behind the couch cushions or went through the wash in someone's pocket. With it has come our typical fall weather, with days of gray punctuated by random spots of sunshine.

Nothing much exciting has happened since my last post, except that I've unofficially cleared 700 book reviews; for the curious, it's DragonArt: Evolution (by J. "NeonDragon" Peffer), and it can be viewed at my book review blog. The October update, scheduled for later this month, will make it official. Can I make 800 by next year? No idea, but my reading backlog isn't getting any shorter...

Last weekend I wandered down to our local celebration of suicidal salmon. The usual crowds and the usual vendors, but it was nice to get out of the house.  This is where I saw the metal dragon photographed above (full body shot here, for scale.  No pun intended... not that I'll admit to, anyway.) Since then, I've been keeping an eye on our local stream. Just in case... (I know they're on a four-year cycle or so, but I can hope for another run.)

Well, that's about all I can come up with. I suppose I've procrastinated enough. As your reward for slogging through the preceding post, I'll throw in a couple video links.

NSFW humor, but danged if I didn't laugh out loud at this one... when I watched it, and at inappropriate moments during the day when I thought about it:
Why Nicholas Cage is in so many cruddy films

And a link my sister sent me, a 15-minute movie made entirely on open-source 3D animation software (Blender.) Things like this remind me why I want to get better at art, and why I find animation fascinating. (Rated PG, for mild violence/bloodshed.)
Sintel

Enjoy!

Sanding Tall

Not a typo, but a very lousy pun...

Today being the first decent day in a while, we ("we" being the immediate family and I) decided to head to a nearby city to view the World Championship of Sand Sculpting. This is the first-ever time the championship has been in America, and the first-ever time at this venue (actually an empty parking lot outside an empty Target building.) Their publicity has been, shall we say, a trifle pathetic; my grandfather and uncle went a week ago, and they were so desperate to get bodies in the door that they gave the pair deeply discounted tickets. Grandpa was so impressed that he actually called us on the phone to tell us about it - an act virtually unprecedented since his mental decline began a few years back.

Getting back to today...

The sunny weather made standing around on asphault a not-entirely-fun experience. Still, the sculptures were beyond amazing. I cannot conceive of how much labor and planning goes into the creation of these things. (They use a diluted glue solution after they're done, but that doesn't explain how they manage to sculpt sand in such impossible shapes to begin with.)

Yes, I brought my camera.

Yes, you're about to be treated to/tortured by a very extensive photo dump.

Click away now, or slog ahead...

Work in Progress
A sand sculptor works on a new project, from the top down. There were supposed to be more sculptors wandering about answering questions, but evidently many of them had already left. (It's an international competition, so it was inevitable, but we felt a bit gypped that there were only two pros on hand to talk to when it was implied that there would be more.)

Please note that many of the following titles are mine and mine alone: they weren't very well labeled, for one thing, and for another I just plain didn't see the names if they were there at all.

Spiritual Visions
A nice wolf-themed sculpture, the first one to greet visitors.

Abracadabra!
Two kids chance upon a wicked witch in a Halloween-themed sculpture.

The Vine Lady
From the back, her hair was extensively detailed, but I had to cull a few pictures here and there to keep Photobucket from pitching a fit... and myself from being prosecuted for mass murder by photo-link-induced boredom.

Facebook
Another with a lot more than I could cram into one frame...

The Face of the City
Absolutely amazing 3D sculpting, here... and also amazing, how many people had to have it explained to them...

The Bridge (side and detail)
A 360-degree work of amazement, full of little details from any angle viewed.

The Missing Links (detail, detail, detail, back, detail, and detail)
One of my personal favorites, and one of the largest sculpts on the grounds.

And now a word from our sponsors...
Part of a long wall honoring the sponsors of the championships.

Connected (and back)
Oddly enough, while the Facebook (earlier) scupture seemed fairly self-explanatory to most ages, many older visitors took a while to clue in to this one, despite the similar theme; I think it was the use of handheld devices as opposed to the "old fashioned" computer that did it.

Dreams
The line of figures continued through the hole at the bottom, wrapping around to the tail end (seen on the ground behind the main block of the sculpture.

Through the Door
I think that's the wrong door...

Open Mind
The damage on the hand was caused by rain in the previous week. Apparently, sand being porous, rain itself just drains through; only when it pools is there a problem. Since the competition was set up on a parking lot, some sculptures got puddles under them in heavy rains. Most of the sculptors had gone home, so those left behind repaired the ones they could and left the ones they couldn't. This was one of the latter, evidently. Still impressive, though.

Splitting Headache
Well, that would explain it...

The Impression
Odd little brain-warper...

Cranes with Origami
Cool.

Icarus II
Check out the details on those feather edges...

Sand Castle (with "facilities")
This is the one the photo at the top of the post came from.

Swirlies
The level of detail on these things continued to astound me, and still astounds me in retrospect.

Welcome to 2065!
"It was just a bad dream", reads the caption.

Puzzle Head
Self-explanatory.

Noh Theater
Also self-explanatory.

Faces in the Wall
All in all, they're just bricks in the wall...

Rapunzel in Green
So, that new organic shampoo looks like it has a few side-effects...

Fantasea Castle
Looks like a happy place...

Sandflow
Not sure what to say about this one... I mean, it's cool and all, but I don't know what to say about it.

To Be Revealed
One of those sculptures that makes you forget you're looking at sand.

Trees with Orb
Love the little mousie on the log...

Mermaid
Striking.

Tribute to Freedom
A work-in-progress sculpt, from the form around the base, but already impressive.

There are more sculptures at the event itself, and I took scads of photos, but I figured any visitors have suffered enough already. In any event, if you're around the area before October 3 and are looking for something to do, I'd recommend it. (EDIT - Sounds like they may have extended it to October 10... if so, it's definitely worth a view!)

Now I suppose I ought to head off and do something even less productive with the rest of my evening...

The Web of Fall

The furnace has been kicking on in the mornings.

There's a bite in the shadows and a chill to the rain.

The sunlight has a sharper slant than it did a month ago.

The downtown trees are brushed with crimson, and the green of the hills is shading towards gold.

The spiders are spinning their webs.

Yep, it's fall again.

The last month has been fairly uneventful, hence the lull in posting. Mostly, we've been going through our storage sheds for the first time in too many years, getting rid of stuff we no longer need. So far, we've sent over 20 sacks to donation and more than that to the dump. (These are garbage-bag size sacks, not grocery-store size sacks.) It feels good to lighten the load a little, even though we have barely begun to scrape the surface of decades worth of accumulation.

I finished Draft 2 of last year's NaNoWriMo monstrosity, and I already know it'll need more tweaking for Draft 3 before the kinks in logic, character development, and plot continuity are sufficiently ironed out.  I've decided to let it marinate on the back burner for a while, and called up one of my unfinished stories to take its place. So far, I'm mostly skimming my backstories and chapters, getting my brain back into the feel of the universe. This time, I'm finishing a draft... and, fingers crossed, it'll be a draft worth chucking in the mail. Might have to take a break for NaNoWriMo 2010, but that's a month away; if I get my tail in gear, I can get the bones of the tale hammered out sufficiently before then.

Don't laugh... it could happen...

At work, the local library system is switching over to a new computer program to control everything. Because this switch knocks out the brains of the sorting system while it sets itself up, I had a day off today. My sister, my mother, and I took advantage of the sunshine to head up to a nearby trailhead (where the above web was photographed.) Then we grabbed lunch and ate at the lake, watching parasailers launch and land on the beach. (They were towed with a boat to get altitude; not sure if that would be easier or harder than jumping off a mountain, but danged if it doesn't look fun...) All in all, it was a pleasant day.

Well, I suppose that's about all that's worth updating. The blog looked a little lonely, so I figured I'd post to keep it company.

Big Wheel Keep On Turnin'...

We spent today (or a few hours of it, at any rate) playing tourists aboard the Queen of Seattle, a paddleboat on Lake Union.  Things got off to a bit of a rough start; the website failed to mention that construction had closed off most of the parking, and construction fences forced a further massive walking detour.  Then a local fluff-news crew stopped by, evidently with little warning, to do a "short" segment on the ship that ended up delaying departure for nearly half an hour (no compensation for the lost time for those of us standing around waiting to board.) Other than that, for the cost, it wasn't that bad, though I get the impression that the crew is still getting the hang of the whole "old-timey tourist boat and banter" part of things.  In addition to the narrated tour of the waterways, we were treated to the occasional steam calliope concert (with a steam calliope that could use a little work, as the notes would randomly not play... that, and the player was used to a piano keyboard and not the calliope controls, making for oft-mangled tunes.) On the way back to dock, they had a little cabaret show, which was just one gal singing Gold Rush era tunes and a guy playing the slightly-out-of-tune saloon piano while providing the aforementioned unpolished banter. The lady had a nice voice, at least...

Afterwards, we hit lunch and wound up visiting a little place we've been driving by forever but never managed to stop in at: Barone Gardens, whose cruddy website doesn't do justice to the zillions of statuary items, birdbaths, and fountains on site.  They're actually reasonably priced, too; not exactly bargain-basement, but not priced through the roof, either.

I'd post more pictures, of the paddleboat trip and the statuary, but my computer has decided to pitch a minor fit today: every time I try to play with graphics from the file folder where I stored these photos, the window locks up for upwards of a minute.  I've got a disc-check scheduled for my next bootup; since I just tested with another photo folder with no lockups, I'm hopeful it's just a bad sector. (I just copied the folder to a different part of My Pictures, and it works just fine there, too.) I know I'm pushing my luck insofar as age corrupting hard drives with this machine, but I'm really not in a fit financial state to consider a replacement at this point.

EDIT - Okay, got the pictures relocated to a less snarky folder, so I'll try posting some links.

Shipboard Singer
One of the costumed staff aboard the Queen of Seattle.

Voyeur on Houseboat
Hey, you don't see me taking pictures of everyone who floats by my house in an authentic steam-powered paddlewheel, do you?

Houseboat, or Floating Mansion?  You Decide...
There was quite a range of styles in the houseboat neighborhoods we paddlewheeled past, depending on when they were built and how much money people were willing to shell out. According to our tour guides, some modern houseboats even have basements with underwater windows.

Gasworks Park with Duck
A former power plant converted into a "safe" park. (How safe is it? If you picnic there and drop anything, it's not advised to pick it up...) In front is one of the amphibious vehicles from the "Ride the Ducks" Seattle tour.

So Much for the Extinction Theory...
An unfinished topiary project from the Jurassic era.

TARDIS sighting
I can only assume that, in the original timeline, the drawbridge failed to open and a major disaster ensued. (Okay, I know the scale's way off... still looks like the blue box to me...)

Mama Tug and Babies
Ah, ain't that cute?

Arc to Arcturus
In memory of Jack "Star Gazer" Horkheimer, as he speeds on to Spica.

The aforementioned Big Wheel, actually turning
Yep, that there's a paddlewheel...

The Calliope Whistles
After the cabaret show started and the little kids left the top deck, the staff dropped the "Authorized Personel Only" cable and let those adults remaining get a closer look at the steam-powered calliope. The buckets are for runoff/drainage.

Cabaret
Not the most dynamic show, but with a little polish it'll be more impressive, I expect.

Sail the Rainbow
The Center for Wooden Boats must run some sort of sailing day camp or school in the summers.  Earlier, they had kids out kayaking, too.

Barone Garden Decor: Catfish, Eagle, and Gargoyle Fountain
Because it was a darned cool place to wander through, even without a yard to decorate.  Or a budget to spend on said decoration.