Dec15

Dreams (of being a rock star… again)

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Brandi Carlile played in San Francisco last night, but I didn’t go see her because I had my own gig to play at.  (On the other hand, I did see her in St. Paul over Thanksgiving.)  Instead, tonight my second Blue Bear band, Sleigher*, covered Brandi’s song “Dreams” which once again Dave recorded for me.  I have a cold and was a little worried about the high note in the second and third choruses, but I think I hit it.  I did, however, go all out doing so and cracked at the very end.  As a result, I think Oh Darling! was better (and the audio of the recording was certainly better… don’t get me started on my messed up monitor), but this one isn’t bad.  The video is better — it being my fancy camera and all.  Plus, I got to cover Brandi Carlile this time and she’s kind of my hero.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go drink a bunch of tea and honey.

* Get it?  Sleigh?  ‘Cause we’re a Christmas rock band… or something.  We did cover “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” but that came directly after “Dreams” to close the set and my voice sounds pretty ragged on it, and not in a good rock and roll way.  So no Christmas tune for you, even though we did look kind of fun in our Santa and elf hats.

Dec11

Total Eclipse of the Moon

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Total Lunar Eclipse seen from San Francisco

Total Lunar Eclipse seen from the beach just off the Great Highway in San Francisco

One of the advantages of being sick is that I went to bed early on Friday night.  As a result, I had no problems getting up at 5:30 and driving out to the beach to see the total lunar eclipse on Saturday morning.  It was a pretty awesome sight as the moon was an eerie blood red.

I attempted to photograph it, but even my good camera isn’t that good.  I was also doing long exposures without the tripod, so most of my photos turned out blurry… and by the time I really figured out what I was doing, the sun had started to rise behind me.  But for those of you in the middle or eastern part of the country that couldn’t see it, here’s the one shot I managed to get that isn’t so bad.  I bet that ship under the moon had an awesome view.

Dec2

Oh my wordy, look who’s… in total denial

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Yep, kind of a big day.  I could be all depressed about turning 30, but that’s pretty impossible with how I spent the last few hours of my 20s.  (And I’m pretty sure my roommate thinks I’m insane.)  Last Saturday, my family went to the movies as kind of an annual post-Thanksgiving tradition, and this year we saw The Muppets.  If you want two hours of pleasant Muppet nostalgia that will have you laughing at fart shoes and spotting lots of random celebrity cameos (James Carville, really?) this is the movie for you.  Also, after the first few lines of the opening number, “Life’s a Happy Song,” I was convinced that it would be perfect for the ukulele.  However, as I didn’t have either of my ukes with me in Minnesota, I had to wait until I got back to San Francisco to test that theory.

Is it perfect?  I don’t know, but it kept me in a pretty good mood during the last few hours of my 20s, even if there wasn’t actually anyone by my side to sing along.  However, there’s a lot of words so I wound up recording the uke track (on my Lanikai LU-6) and the vocal track separately (in the bathroom!) and it shows at certain points.

If you’re not impressed with my version, check out Kermit and Bret McKenzie, of Flight of the Conchords fame.  I dare you to try and be in a bad mood after watching this video, even if you are turning 30.

Nov24

Happy Thanksgiving from SFO

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Delta, in their infinite wisdom as an airline I am frequently stuck flying, has not figured out how to manage planes the day before Thanksgiving.  And thus, my 12:40 AM red eye flight to Minneapolis is now a 2:10 AM flight to Minneapolis.  But they were kind enough to give us “refreshments.”  (I snagged a can of orange juice because caffeine before a red eye seems like a terrible idea.)  At least SFO has free WiFi.

In other news, thedan informed me of a puzzle competition that Google was hosting on Twitter and now it seems I have a Twitter account.  I made an attempt to find people I know, but I probably missed some.  If you’re a tweeter and I should be following you, let me know.  I have yet to decide if I will ever tweet anything again, but the colossus_rhode account (the “of” was taken) is now there if I want to.  (I do promise never to tweet my bodily functions.)  But don’t worry… the world isn’t ending.  I’m still not on Facebook.

Happy Turkey Day, everyone.  May your Thanksgiving have a better start then mine.

Nov8

Cheating California Weather

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Since the snow isn’t coming to me, I decided this past weekend to go to the snow.  Lake Tahoe got it’s first snow last Friday and the forecast called for more over the weekend, so I booked a cheap room on Expedia and got in the car and headed east.  After walking around town Saturday just being pleased to be around snow, Sunday morning I woke up and remembered the downsides when I had to scrape two inches of the white stuff off my car.  But it was worth it.

I spent most of Sunday hiking around Fallen Leaf Lake, which is less developed than Lake Tahoe itself.  I found some waterfalls, kind of by accident — sometimes taking a wrong turn is actually taking the right turn.  Later I walked across a dam and discovered hundreds of salmon just sitting in a pool.  I knew from reading James Michener’s Alaska that salmon will always return to the pond where they were born to spawn the next generation.   It seemed these guys were trying to get into the lake, but had run into the dam and didn’t know what to do next.  A local resident came by and we started chatting.  She explained that they had installed “fish ladders,” but that it appeared the salmon didn’t know how to use them.  I hope they figure it out…

Once again, using the slideshow feature, here are a sample of pictures I took from the weekend.

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Nov2

Baseball Photography

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Last fall before I went to Alaska, I bought myself a fancy new camera — not a DSLR, but a fancier model than my old point and shoot that fit in my pocket.  (It’s a Panasonic DMC-FZ35 if that means anything to you.)  It has an 18x zoom and a burst mode.  These two features combined mean that it’s excellent for taking pictures at baseball games.  Thus, I have literally thousands of pictures from all the games I’ve gone to this year — and this doesn’t even count all the pictures I took with my old camera after the new one was accidentally left back in Minnesota.  Most of the pictures are pretty dull and redundant — batters taking pitches or swinging and missing.  However, there is the occasional treasure.

And so, as an excuse to blog even though the baseball season is over, here are my 10 favorite pictures from various baseball games I went to this season.  (Also, I figured out I can embed slideshows, so this seemed like a good first slideshow.)

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Oct27

Cardinals 10, Rangers 9, World Series tied 3-3

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Unbelievable World Series Game 6.

Not as good as 1991, but very very close.

I’m not really rooting for St. Louis or Texas this year, but tonight I was rooting for Cardinals simply because I wanted a game 7 tomorrow.  And holy cow, was this an exciting way to get there.  The Rangers scored in the first; the Cardinals responded in the first; the Rangers scored again; the Cardinals responded again.  After the Rangers scored three on back to back homeruns in the 7th to put the score at 7-4, I thought it might be over.  But then in the 8th, Allen Craig hit a homerun to bring the Cardinals within two, setting up for the bottom of the 9th.  Albert Pujols doubled, Lance Berkman walked, and the winning run was at the plate in the form of St. Louis native David Freese.

At this point, I said, “It would be quite the narrative if he jacked one here.  Not Kirby Puckett level, but close.”  Freese didn’t jack it… yet, but he did triple to tie it up and send the game to the 10th.  Hold on to my quote though, it comes up later.

Josh Hamilton hit a two run shot for the Rangers in the top of the inning and once again, I thought that might be it.  But St. Louis pulled together a bunch of little hits that scored two runs and tied it up again, sending the game to 11.  (Insert Spinal Tap joke here.)

Pause here for a refresher of 20 years ago… if you’re not aware, 20 years ago yesterday the Twins were playing the Braves in game 6 of the 1991 World Series.  The game was won on a Kirby Puckett walk-off homerun in the bottom of the 11th that lead to Jack Buck’s epic call “We’ll see you tomorrow night.”  Here’s the video if you don’t remember… or if you are my dad and think it was Al Michaels who made the call.

Okay, now that we all know the reference, back to tonight.  Leading off the bottom of the 11th inning was David Freese.  Remember what I said earlier?  Well, it totally happened.  And then, Joe Buck, son of Jack Buck, totally ripped off his father and made the Kirby Puckett call from 20 years ago.  *sigh* It was better the first time.

(Odds are good MLB takes that second video down, so watch it while you can.)

 

Edit: MLB took the second one down, but I found this:

 

Oct27

More earthquakes!

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At about 5:36 AM this morning, I was awoken by another small earthquake (3.6).  The bed shook back and forth a bit and my dream was disrupted by a sensation that I was falling.  But the best part was that I was positioned just so on my side so that when I opened my eyes, I saw the silhouettes of the bobbleheads bouncing up and down in the dark.  It was an appropriately creepy image, given that Halloween is coming up.

(Oh, and speaking of Halloween, I’m laming out this year and just repeating last year’s costume.  Pippi Longstocking rides again!)

Oct21

My first earthquake… and my second earthquake: Now with bobbleheads

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After coming back from lunch yesterday and sitting back down at my desk, I heard a loud boom and felt myself jolted forward and then back again.  After I yelled a loud “What the fu… dge?” (really, it was fudge *whistles innocently*), Dave looked at me calmly and said, “Earthquake.”  Dave can always be counted on as the sane one in the office.  I did a quick Twitter search (which I figured out is the best real time earthquake tracker even before XKCD told everyone) and confirmed that it wasn’t just someone dropping something really heavy upstairs.  And thus, I felt my first earthquake… a 4.0.

A few hours later, I was at home, watching the World Series.  Five minutes after the final out, everything started shaking again… but this time it lasted much longer and was more of a slow rolling rumble.  Whereas the first earthquake was too short for me to get nervous, this one was long enough to give me time to think and start to worry.  And then the cable went out briefly, making me really worry.  According to the USGS, this one was only a 3.8 but it certainly felt bigger to me.  When the cable did come back, the station cut immediately to a special report about the quake.  Even they thought it was bigger than it turned out to be.  But everything was fine.  After a quick survey of the apartment, I figured out that an empty milk crate had fallen off a closet shelf and my calendar was no longer level, and that was it for damage.

So, now for the fun part.  My dad would like credit for the idea, and he can have it.  For those who have never experienced an earthquake, I give you a re-enactment done with bobblehead dolls.  I would once again like to bemoan the fact that my good camera is still in Minnesota, because the video quality is subpar on my other camera.

(Oh, and thank you to Anand for talking to me while I calmed myself down from the second earthquake.  That kept me sane.)