April 2005 Archives

I forgot to mention that I made another change to the photo gallery: I finally added exterior shots of the Seattle Public Library. The first "new" picture is here. The exterior pictures were taken on 9 June 2004, so I managed to get them online in less than eleven months. Speedy!

Well, it looks like the new photo gallery design I used for the Victoria pictures is working okay. I managed to track down and fix one problem with Internet Explorer 6 for Windows, so it ought to work with pretty much any browser now. It should even degrade fairly gracefully if you use an older browser.

Anyway, with the design finalized, I went ahead and moved the whole photo section of this site over to the new design. In the process, I've dropped some older pictures from the gallery. They may return at some point; if you miss them, let me know.

[November 2008 - Photos have migrated to flickr]

For the first time since we've been going to M's games, the Mariner Moose came to our section on opening day. Pretty cool. Needless to say, Henry was thrilled.

Last week, we took a short trip up to Victoria, British Columbia. The last time we were there, Henry wasn't even one. That time, we took the Victoria Clipper direct from Seattle. This time, we drove over to the Olympic Peninsula and took the Coho ferry across the Strait of Juan de Fuca. After a couple glorious days in Victoria, we took the BC Ferry back to the mainland before driving back down I-5 to Seattle.

It was a great trip. The weather was mostly gorgeous, the seas were calm, and Henry's travel-induced insanity wasn't too bad. It takes him a few days to settle into an away-from-home routine. On a four-day trip like this one, he just starts to adapt as we arrive home.

We've posted a bunch of pictures from our trip in our photo gallery. [Nov 2008 - This now links to flickr.] This is a test of a new gallery design I've been working on. The pages should load a little quicker and look a little better. I've noticed some odd behavior in old versions of Netscape and Internet Explorer, but everything looks and works great in any standards-compliant browser. Let me know if you find anything weird in the new gallery (be sure to let me know what browser you're using).

As I've mentioned before, I use iView Media Pro to keep track of all of our digital photos. A few weeks ago, I was browsing through our pictures and thinking about just how many pictures we've taken. According to iView, we've managed to take 23,745 pictures since we got our first usable digital camera in 1998. (We have another 75 pictures we took with our QuickTake 100, but they're so embarrassingly awful, I don't keep them in iView.)

In the beginning, I remember constantly running out of space on the tiny compact flash card we used. On our first trip to Hawaii in 1999, we had to go through and delete pictures to make room for a few of the Hilo side of the island. In total, we took 110 pictures on that trip. By comparison, we took 1,129 pictures on our most recent trip to Hawaii. At this rate, we'll take 11,000 pictures on our 2011 trip to Hawaii.

A couple weeks ago, Henry's group at pre-school ("red group") worked together to tell a story. The parent leading the group got things rolling, then wrote down what the kids said. The end result is fascinating. As you can see, Henry worked hard to introduce some tension into the story.

(I've changed the names of the other kids)

I mentioned a few days ago that Henry loves puzzles. Since then, he's been in hyper-puzzle mode. We have a 1000-piece puzzle going on the dining room table that we all work on, but Henry likes some more immediate gratification. As a result, we often have several other puzzles scattered about the house in various states of completion. Sometimes he'll fly through several puzzles in a row. The other day, he brought his three 60-piece Ravensburger puzzles out to the living room and proceeded to do each in quick succession (incidentally, who knew Ravensburger has a theme park?). Other times, he seems to use a round-robin approach, starting a few puzzles and working a bit on each in turn until he's done.

Anyway, with all this puzzle action going on, I decided to buy a couple custom puzzles. I checked around online and settled on Up In Pieces. I ordered an 11 x 17 inch puzzle of this picture with something like 300 pieces. It came out great. They laser-cut their puzzles, so the pieces fit together perfectly. Henry loved it, but it was a little too tough for him to work on alone, so I ordered the one in the picture above. I stuck with the 11 x 17 size, but went with bigger pieces. It was a hit. I suppose it probably helped that I used a picture from our Disneyland trip. In the first day, he had done the puzzle (with and without help) a good half dozen times.

After hearing about it for what seems like forever, we finally stopped by Cupcake Royale (aka Vérité Coffee) this afternoon. The espresso drinks were excellent; as good as Zoka on an average day, which is pretty darn good. They use coffee from Caffe Umbria, which was started by the original founders of Torrefazione Italia. My double short latte had nicely textured milk, with a passable rosetta on top and deep mahogany color from the espresso shot. Tasty.

The cupcakes were less of a hit. They were good, but not quite as good as I'd expect from a place that pins its whole reputation on its cupcakes. Not Royale. The cake was tasty, but had a bit of a coarse crumb and was very crumbly. Henry's a pretty tidy eater for a four year old, yet by the time we left he was covered with a layer of crumbs. The bigger disappointment was the frosting. As with the cake, it was very tasty (the lemon in particular was wonderful), but it was way too sweet. Not quite frosting-in-a-can sweet, but much sweeter than I like. It also had a coarseness to it that I don't associate with a fine buttercream (I like my buttercreams silky smooth). Kathy and I agreed that the cupcakes she and Henry made for me on my birthday were much better.

So, there you have it. Cupcake Royale and Vérité Coffee: great coffee, okay cupcakes.

Subject of an email message caught by my spam filter:

"Thanks for sending the whale to my verandah"

Well, we attended our first baseball game of the year, the Mariners' Opening Day, on Monday. We had a great time! We decided to take the bus to the ballpark; last year, we drove down for Opening Day and parking was non-existent. The bus was crowded but someone offered me a seat upon observing the bump; my faith in humanity bolstered, I enjoyed the ride. (It really is getting difficult for me to stand for long periods of time. It feels sort of wimpy, but I was really glad to be sitting down for the ride.)

We made it to the park with enough time to settle into our seats and get the first round of food and drinks before the pre-game show started. The Presidents of the United States of America played a few tunes, 2004 season highlights were shown, 1995 highlights were shown (it's the 10 year anniversary of the year that saved baseball in Seattle), a kid got to run around the bases, there were awards bestowed on some of the players, the teams were introduced with fireworks, Edgar Martinez threw out the ceremonial first pitch to thunderous applause, the national anthem was sung with accompanying honor guard, and finally, the best part: the announcer declared, "Let's play ball!" and Jamie Moyer threw the first pitch of the game. I did experience what I've heard others talk about, that feeling of endless possibility, that this could be the year, that my team had a chance to go all the way. When I saw each players' stats come up as zeroes ( .000 batting average, 0 home runs, 0 ERA, etc) it really hit home that it all begins again.

That feeling lasted until the end of the game, helped I'm sure by the fact that the Mariners led the entire time. Also, I had much more opportunity to enjoy the baseball this time; Henry actually wanted to watch the entire game. A brief break for Dippin' Dots during the third inning was the only time he wanted to leave our seats. Maybe we really can keep score. (At least until the next child arrives...)

Of course, now that the Mariners have lost the last two of their games, that feeling is a bit tarnished... but, I'm still eagerly awaiting the next game, disappointed that they have tomorrow off. It's going to take a little while longer for the sparkly bright grass-green newness of the season to completely fade.

At last!

In just a few minutes, I'll be heading out to pick up Kathy and Henry at preschool. After that, we're all taking the bus down to Safeco Field for the first baseball game of the season. The new, improved Mariners will be taking on the Minnesota Twins. Wish them luck.