The Wacom tablet and I are becoming good friends.

Clearly, I’m not going to be putting Da Vinci out of business anytime soon, if he even is in business…

For those who have given up on having a girlfriend, ever.

Pants with a built in keyboard.

I decided to undertake the task of moving my computer today. Anyone who’s been here before knows that my computer desk arrangement was stupid. It is probably the smallest computer desk in existence, and not exactly practical. I’m surprised I don’t have some kind of spinal disorder because of working in this cramped space. Anyway, there’s still time for the spinal disorder to show up, so I’d better knock on wood… which I can, because my new desk is made of wood.

Old and busted

The New Hotness

The Unfortunate Side Effect

So, yeah. I’m pretty proud of this new setup. Most of the wires are hidden, which is no small feat. There are a lot of wires involved. The desk has lots of potential too. It’s unfinished wood, so that means I can finish it later if I want. I was thinking of doing a collage of photos on the desktop, and then varnishing the whole deal with clear lacquer to protect it.

There’s a side effect of disaster in my old living room as a result of the move. But, the good news is all the stuff that’s cluttering that livingroom is mostly studio-related. I’ll have to set that up this week, because I’m shooting towards the end of the week, and I need a functional studio again. Motivation.

Here’s some more motivation:

I said to myself that I’d get this Wacom Bamboo tablet when I got a desk big enough for it. Being that it’s only the size of a mouse pad, that’s not saying much, but my new work area qualifies anyway. I’m looking forward to doing touchups with this new toy. Haven’t figured it out entirely yet, but I’m sure it’s not that hard.

It’s been an exciting day. More excitement tomorrow, I’m sure.

I’m back now. The last day was relaxing, mainly because we didn’t have to pack up and check out before 11am, as we did for most of the rest of the trip. I felt pretty lazy all day. We walked from the hotel down to the the famous Pike Market, where normally there are guys throwing fish around and stuff. But since no one was buying fish that day, there was just a crowd of tourists standing around the fish vendors, who were tossing a lemon around to keep themselves amused.

We had lunch at the Athenian, which is inside the market, overlooking the water. Tom Hanks and Rob Reiner filmed a scene from Sleepless in Seattle here. The antique eatery provided a nice environment. The food was somewhat expensive and mediocre though. Oh well. You can’t have everything I guess.

After lunch, we headed up to the Seattle Art Museum. They had quite an ecclectic collection of paintings, sculpture, costumes, and photos. Going from one room of contemporary aboriginal art to a room of Renaissance paintings was a bit jarring, but still fascinating.

That night, we met my sister Jadine and her boyfriend/semi-fiance Dave for dinner at Ray’s Cafe.
I neglected to mention that I noticed Jadine’s new, stylish and modern hair cut. Well, I did notice it, and it looks great. So if Jadine’s reading this, consider it noticed!

The next morning we had to get up at 5:30am to return the Cookie Monster, and to get to the airport for our flight home. We should have gotten up at 5:00am because our flight was actually leaving 30 minutes earlier than I had noted in my organizer. Whoops. Anyway, it all worked out ok. The flight back was uneventful and pleasant-ish. Even the small Embrauer jet we were on had personal TVs in the seatbacks, which I think is the single most important aviation invention ever. It keeps you from wanting to claw your face off from boredom during long flights.

When we got back to Laura’s place, I discovered that Emeril had decided to die during my absence. It’s nice to be missed, although, not so nice to have to call CAA to resolve the situation. Turns out that my battery is already dead and needs to be replaced. I’m appalled that my 2 year-old car already needs a new battery, but what can you do? The CAA guy says it’s not uncommon these days. Things just aren’t made like they used to be!

I finally got home, and proceeded to dump my stuff everywhere like I normally do when I get home from a trip. Except, since I’ve moved all my rooms around, nothing is where I expected it to be, so dumping my stuff was a bit confusing. Basically, things are everywhere now. I’ll figure it out later!

We drove out to the coast again. After hours on Interstate 5 and then smaller highways weaving through the stubbly, clear-cut hills, it was a relief to see the Pacific again when we reached Newport. We quickly found a room at the Shilo Inn, which had a fabulous view overlooking Newport’s enormous beach. From our room, we could see a few people, tiny as ants, traversing the vast expanse of sand, bordered between a scrubby hill and the gentle surf. I completely failed to get a photo of this. So, I present, instead, some horses from the previous morning at the treehouse place.

After checking in, and settling in a bit, we went out in search of a restaurant with a view of the ocean, so we could watch the sun set as we ate dinner. You’d think it would be easy to find this, but you’d be wrong. There were few apparent restaurants in Newport with a nice view of the sea. We finally found the Best Western hotel’s on-site restaurant, which had a partially obstructed view. The atmosphere was dismal, and the food was forgettable. Driving around town later, eventually finding an all-night Safeway grocery store was actually much more fun.

Ok, I didn’t entirely fail to get a picture of Newport’s beach, but I did fail to get a picture I liked. After we went back to the hotel, I grabbed my camera to take some night shots of the beach, but I struggled because the hotels had huge flood lights aimed at the beach. These threw awkward and unnatural shadows of everything everywhere, and I just couldn’t find an angle that looked good and worked with these shadows.

Anyway, we decided that the next morning, instead of heading up the coast to another beach town, we’d make directly for Seattle. This would give us two nights in the city, and some time to enjoy and explore a little. We drove back inland, and got to Interstate 5 again, and plowed directly up the middle of Oregon, through Salem and Portland, and into Washington State. We got to our Holiday Inn in downtown Seattle around 5. After our usual settling-in routine, we selected a restaurant from among a zillion mouth-watering choices, and made a reservation online. Dinner was great. Laura and I both had wild salmon. It was served on a bed of whipped avocado and grapefruit, of all things. We also had a small dish of wild mushrooms, sauteed in garlic butter. Yum. Later on, we went for a dessert at an artsy cafe/bar.

Now it’s time to sleep. It’s our last full day of the trip tomorrow, and Seattle awaits exploration.