Feeling A Bit Artsy

Nothing new to report.
I had some pictures on my camera and wanted to share them was all.


First up... some sidewalk art from downtown last week:





And this:

I just thought these dew drops looked really cool the way they formed on the blade off grass like that.





Bonus!
Here is a picture I took this morning of the strawberries growing on my deck.


They're almost ripe. I can't wait!
I'm going to celebrate by either having them on a bowl of cereal of making a daiquiri. (I guess it depends on how many ripe ones I have at the time)



By the way, all these pictures were taken with my phone.

Friday Before The Expo

So now we're at Friday.

Everyone from the Seattle had arrived and was busy doing something to get the show ready.

I got to spend the day in a hotel lobby greeting the guests as they arrived and handing out their badges.

It's a tough life, I know. But somebody had to do it.

The hotel was nice and there was lots of artwork on the walls.
That's probably whay it was called the Hotel Arts. Duh!

This piece was about 15 feet long and 5 feet high. I wanted to bring it home for Hotness, but it just wouldn't fit into my suitcases.

They also had cute signs on the doors for the restrooms and the stairway:




I'd been in Canada for about 2-1/2 days and I needed to exchange the rest of my American cash into the local currency. Also, I really wanted to go to Tim Horton's and get a coffee from Canada's version of Dunkin' Donuts.
As luck would have it, I had about an hour to kill before guests started to arrive, so I walked about 8 blocks from the hotel and found both a bank AND a Timmie's right next to each other.
I proceeded to swap my money for Canadian loot and then got myself a regular w/ two sugars and one cream. It was every bit as good as they say.

I walked back to the hotel with... well, let's just say I was carrying a LOT of money.
I had also exchanged Technogreek's and his brother's money as well. So I was holding on to some serious bankroll* in my pockets.
Luckily I wasn't mugged on my way back. When I got to the hotel, I stashed the cash away and went back to the lobby to perform my duties.

I told the desk clerks who I was and what I'd be doing so they wouldn't freak out about a strange guy hanging out in the lobby accosting their guests all day.
When I told them that some of the BSG actors would be showing up, I became a celebrity. Two or three times during the day hotel employees would come up to ask me about meeting the actors.

Guests trickled in a few at a time. Other volunteers were picking them up at the airport and shuttling them to the hotel where I'd greet them.

I got a text message from one volunteer who said "I'm bringing Terry and Robyn right now".
Oh snap! It was my day. Terry Moore and his wife Robyn were going to arrive shortly and I got to see them when they arrived. *swoon*

They walked into the hotel and as I was greeting them (thinking they may not remember me from ECCC back in '07) Robyn reached out and gave me a big hug and Terry said "It's great to see you again Tom!". *double-swoon*

I gave them their badges for the show and told Terry that I had some Dr. Pepper chilling in a fridge in my room upstairs. I'd bring it for him to the show and whenever he needed it, it'd be ready.
He was really happy about that and then he handed me his art piece for the Expo Art Book which was to be auctioned later at the show.

I took it up to my room for safe-keeping as they went to their room to get settled.

Shortly after that, Steve Rolston showed up.
I met him and told him that I had some Red Bulls that would be nice and cold and ready for him in the morning on Saturday.
The other guest next to him looked at him and said, "Chilled Red Bulls? How do you rate getting that?!"
Steve said, "He takes care of me at the conventions" and then smiled.
I like making the guests feel comfortable and it's fun knowing some of their personal tastes.

It was getting well past noon and it dawned on me that I hadn't had anything to eat so far today.
Just the Tim Horton coffee.
Thankfully Wade Schin walked by me in the lobby and said, "I know of a great place here in town that makes these terrific cupcakes. You want me to pick one up for you?"
FOOD AT LAST! "Yes, that would be wonderful. Thanks," I said.

He came back a few minutes later and I scarfed down a chocolate cupcake in practically no time at all.
Then he got out his laptop and hung out in the lobby with me keeping me company which was really nice.

Pretty much the rest of the day was just sitting and waiting until guests would show up. I'd give them their stuff and then it was more sitting.

I got a chance to talk to Terry for a while later in the afternoon, which was nice. He told me that the art I commissioned from him was one of his favorite pieces to work on.

Later that afternoon, I went to the convention center at the Stampede Park and helped out a little while also familiarizing myself with the show floor.

Not much else happened after that.
There was an impromptu get-together at the bar in the hotel.
The Seattle group got together and went out to dinner, but nothing very remarkable about that.
The food was palatable but that was about it. It was mostly just fun hanging out together.

We got back to the hotel and I went to the bar to chat with the few people still hanging around.
It was me, Wade Schin, Matt Stewart, and Dale Berry. We shared stories for a bit then decided it was getting late and we'd all better get some sleep before the show the next day.


Wow!
Okay, this is getting kind of long-winded so I'll wrap it up here for now.
I'll be back with exploits from the Expo.


* Also now known as "nagiri". Ask me when you see me and I'll explain it to you.

ROTFLMAO

Real quick...
This was too funny not to post a link up for it.

Why you should always check your kid's homework

... In Which I Didn't Accomplish What I Set Out To Do

I went over to see my mom this weekend (well, Friday night / Saturday at least).

Last time I was there I was to help her get her toes wet with 21st-century technology by setting up a Paypal, eBay, and Amazon account.

We started with getting her a Paypal account and I soon discovered that she didn't have any antivirus software on her computer.

NONE!

So I immediately ceased any further account set-up information and told her we'd have to get that fixed before anything else.

That's why I was over this weekend, to get antivirus installed.

So I'm there, booting up the computer, getting things going, etc....

And one thing leads to another.

'You have updates to install. Please click to begin the download'

So I do. And it takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r.

'You must restart you system for updates to take effect'

I do that. And the system starts back up.

'You have updates to install Please click here to begin the download'

What? More?!? "Hey, mom! Do you ever get the updates when it tells you to?", I ask.

"No, I click the X on the box and close it. I never do that. I don't know what they are for", she replies.

".......", I'm thinking. So I click to get the new update and it not only takes 2 hrs but stalls in the process. So I try to start over and that makes things worse. It took another 2 hours to undo what it was trying to update.

Finally it's done and I put in the antivirus software. Then it can't download the current signatures to update itself. WHAT?!?

Try it again. No luck.

I'm working with a recycled laptop with XP installed, but it's like it's running at MS DOS speed with a 28K modem.

To cut to the chase, NOTHING worked like it was supposed to. After 6+ hours of putzing with the machine all I succeeded in doing was cursing at it.

I'm not a tech expert, so I had to leave it in other (hopefully) capable hands to solve.

All was not wasted though.

I managed to make a stop at a nearby coffee shop where they diplayed some art from a local artist. She has an anime-flair and I gave her link to Technogreek to maybe contact her for the upcoming ECCC in 2009. Hopefully she'll be there and if you're reading this blog and make it to the show, stop by and tell her you found out about her here.

Today should be a blast.

I've got the comic book release party to go to.

I'm not exactly what's all in store for when I get there, but I'll try to get pictures and post them soon afterwards.

I hope to see some of you there today. (I know some of you will be there at least!)

Chillin' With Friends

Spent the day in Seattle with Liz, G-Rod and new friend Kristi visiting the Frye Art Museum for the Robert Crumb exhibit they were having.

Crumb is best known for his work in the underground comics scene of the 60's and 70's. He created a lot of different pieces with memorable characters, most notably Fritz The Cat and Mr. Natural, among others.

There was even a movie about his life, although I haven't yet seen it so I don't know much about it.

It was a very interesting body of work that was on display. There were pieces he'd drawn in his early childhood, sketchbook pages, original comic art from the 60's (during his LSD days) on through his current pieces he's done for the cover of New Yorker Magazine.

Unfortunately we couldn't take any pictures so I don't have any to post here for you, but if you're in Seattle and have a chance to see the exhibit, I recommend it.

(Hotness wasn't able to join us today, but the exhibit runs until April 27th so hopefully we can get back to it before then)

After that, we went down to the waterfront and had lunch at Anthony's and then walked through the Olympic Sculpture Park.

The morning didn't start out looking very nice, but by the time we were through with lunch and were looking at the artwork, the sun had poked through the clouds to say "hi" briefly.

We had met at a Park & Ride to carpool into the city, so we headed back to drop off Liz 'cause she had a hot date later in the day. (Ooooooh!)

G, K, and myself drove back north and ended up doing some shopping.

Well... okay, actually I did all the shopping. They just humored me by being good sports and joining me. Thanks you two!

I picked up a couple pairs of jeans, new dress shirts, a couple of ties and some new shoes.

I've been updating my wardrobe and with my New Year's resolution to wear a tie at least once a week, I've had to get shirts and ties so that I'm not cycling through the same 4 I've have for the last few years.

With the shopping finished, I dropped the two of them off and headed home where Hotness and I shared dinner I'd picked up on the way.

A long, but very fun day!

P.S. More random graffiti found in Seattle:

Potty Humor

While putzing around on the web during lunch today, I found a link to 59 of the coolest toilet signs.

Some of them are really kind of nifty looking , and others push the envelope without being too tacky.

"Art is what you can get away with" ~ Andy Warhol

Random Seattle Pictures - The Art

Here are a bunch of pictures I took with my camera phone while I was in Seattle the last couple of days.
Not much to post about, but I'll give descriptions where necessary.

If you get lost, just find a manhole cover. This one had a map of Seattle on it. Not as easy to carry around as a folding paper map or a GPS, though!


Chief Seattle, our city's namesake




Bumble-bee pig at Pike Market / a squid sculpture / Tricerapig


Bad parking job / Hammering Man (These two were outside of the Seattle Art Museum)






This was along the side of one of the buildings downtown. I think it was one of the (many) bank buildings, but I don't remember for sure.
This depicts a scene from Northwest Native American life before the area was settled.
To the best of my knowledge, the Native Americans in this area were a very peaceful tribe so I'm not really sure what they are doing to that head in the left-hand picture.


By the way, those pig sculptures pictured earlier on this post?
They are part of the Pigs On Parade in Seattle and they are ALL OVER the city.
I only took a couple of pictures, but they are all very cool looking.
There are almost as many pigs as there are Starbucks in Seattle!

Jury Duty

As promised, here are the exploits of my recent call to do my civic responsibility and report for jury duty.


About a month ago I got a summons to appear at the King County Superior Courthouse in Seattle. I'm surprised it took this long to happen, really. The last time I was summoned was over 10 years ago when I lived in a different county.
So... rather than try to get out of it, I scheduled the time off from work.

You never know what kind of case you'll be a part of (if you're even chosen for the jury), but I was hoping it was something interesting that wouldn't drag on for weeks.

As it turns out I was never even called into any of the jury selections, what few there were.

I rode the bus into the city, rather than take my car. I'm glad I did. I didn't have to worry about parking, or traffic or ANY of that crap. I just rode into town and then walked back a couple of blocks to the courthouse.

By my best 'guesstimate', there were probably 200 or so of us in the jury pool. We all showed up and reported in at 8:00 a.m. and then waited to be called. And waited. And waited.

By 11:00 a.m. they still hadn't had any jury requests, as all court cases had been postponed until later in the day. So instead of making us wait another hour until lunch break, they let us go have a 2-1/2 lunch. We had to return by 1:30 p.m., so everybody split out of there to get some fresh air and take advantage of the long break.

As for myself, I took the time to walk down to Pike Place Market.

While there, I bought some books at Golden Age Collectables and a couple of children's books for my neice at another little bookstore in the market.

Then I browsed around and headed back up towards the courthouse to get some lunch before reporting back in.

(Mmmm! Sushi!)

As the day wore on, it became apparent that they weren't going to need all of us for that day, and they let a few of us go home early.... including yours truly.

So not being one to waste a good opportunity to spend time in downtown Seattle, I called up my buddy G-Rod, who works down on the waterfront and asked if he'd like to meet me and bum around town for a while.

What a beautiful, summer day in Seattle! Let me tell you, when the sun comes out, it's a wonderful day to be in the city.

I met a couple of folks who were from Milwaukee. They were just visiting the Emerald City because they'd never been here before, and they'd picked the perfect time to do it.

They said they were having a wonderful time, although they had expected rain. (heh heh! That's what we WANT people to think, so they won't move here!)

I met G and we walked around town so I could take pictures, we stopped at Zanadu Comics and picked up more books, and went to Pioneer Square to maybe take the Seattle Underground Tour. (Which we were too late for that day)

We stopped at Benaroya Hall and got something cold to drink at Starbucks.

They had a couple of awesome Dale Chihuly sculptures hanging at both ends of the front entrance.

Then we both caught the bus, headed back to his car, and he drove me home where I treated us to dinner at Ixtapa. (I called hotness to join us, and we had a good time)

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Today was the second day for me to report for jury duty. When summoned, you are required to appear for either 2 days (in which case, if you are not chosen for jury you are then excused) or one trial (which could last several days... or weeks if it's a major court case).

This time I only had to be there by 8:45 a.m., but since I took the same bus in, I got there an hour early and waited to sign in.

Everbody showed up and we all waited again for our names to be called. But it never happened.

We took a break around 10:00 and when we got back, lo and behold!, some of us were called into a jury selection. I wasn't one of them, however. So I sat in the jury room and that was it.

No other court cases came up that required more jurors to be called on.

They let us go, since we'd served our duty, and again I was in town and didn't want to pass up another opportunity to walk around Seattle.

I called up G-Rod again, and this time we bought tickets for the Seattle Underground Tour. First, though, we grabbed a bite to eat at a little Italian restaurant around the corner where we met a nice, older couple who were visiting from Arizona. They also were getting something to eat before taking the tour, so we sat and talked with them for a while.

(from left to right: Leonard, G-Rod, and Alice)

The tour was fun, and very informative.

Heck! I'm a native from here, and I didn't know most of the history of Seattle.

We had some very corrupt and deceitful founding fathers, let me tell you!

Nothing exciting to report regarding the jury duty itself, but I had an absolute blast walking around Seattle and taking pictures (which I'll post more of a little later).

I hope you weren't expecting something along the lines of me being on a murder trial or anything. (Believe me, that thought crossed my mind too but I'm glad I wasn't).