Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives - A. Sachs

Imagine my surprise when I checked my e-mail a while ago and saw a note from the Seattle P-I. “Ho ho, what kind of scam e-mail is this?” I wondered. Turns out, not a scam at all. Just a polite note letting me know that they had selected one of my photos as their 2007-2008 reader-submitted photo of the year! A pleasant surprise I can assure you.

It’s currently featured in their gallery of other top photos from the year.

No, not *that* kind of fantasy… get yer mind out o’ the gutter! The kids were over and we were *watching* fantasy movies! We picked up a copy of Stardust on Saturday to watch (even though we’ve all seen it). I really do like this movie a lot. It’s not perfect but I gave it a favorable review when it originally hit theaters.

When we were done with Stardust, we decided to watch a second movie. We’re fans of double features in case you hadn’t picked up on that. One of my quirks though is that if I’m going to watch two movies in a row, they have to be related somehow. There has to be a theme, whether it’s two movies of the same genre, the same actor, director, something. It just can’t be two random movies. We poked through my library of DVDs a bit and pulled out a candidate. Any guesses what it might have been? Keep reading to see if you were right!

A while back, as part of a meme, Stacie asked me about my past relationship with aviation. She’s been taking flying lessons and wondered if in my exploits I ever seriously considered getting my pilot’s license. The short answer is “no” but I thought a more complete answer might make an interesting blog post. I have a history of involvement with various aspect of aerospace and aviation that goes back almost 30 years.

Beautiful weekend in Seattle, sunny and warm (well, warm for us anyway!)… I took advantage of the weather and hopped on the bike for a few hours. Very therapeutic. I needed that!

I did this meme way back when on the old blog, but since I saw Lisa post it over on her blog I thought it was time for an update. This is the desktop on the Macbook so it still looks pretty tidy. I really like OS X so far, it’s been an easy transition. I don’t see myself getting rid of my PC desktop machine anytime soon but with the new portable, I have the best of both worlds.

Want to play? Just take a screenshot of your desktop and post it on your blog. Lisa has simple instructions in her blog post if you need help doing that.

Today was a beautiful day in Seattle. It was shirt sleeve weather (well for us, probably still cold if you’re used to warmer temperatures), the skies were blue, the sun was shining. It’s also starting to stay light out a little later. I can go out in the evening and it’s not pitch black at 4:30pm any more. A friend stopped by and dragged me out to lunch, which was nice. I tend to hole up during the week, I’ll go days without ever poking my head out the door sometimes. That’s probably not a good thing.

Interesting new article in Newsweek on the subject of “Secret Prejudices.” The idea being that while our rational minds might allow us to overcome biases, subconsciously we may still be prejudiced towards groups of people and this can affect our behavior in ways we may not realize. The article goes on to discuss a type of psychological test called Implicit Association Tests or IATs. It’s a testing technique that tries to bypass our conscious minds and tap into our subconscious. Harvard University hosts IAT tests on their website and allows the general public to try them. I took a few this evening just to see what I thought, and the results were interesting…

I saw this meme on Lisa’s blog and thought I’d play along. the idea is that if *you* want to play, you leave a comment indicating so in this post and I’ll respond with a set of answers, as follows…

Updated with responses finally!

What do you think about when you think about Seattle? You do think about Seattle right? Right?! Things that come to mind for me include rain, the Puget Sound, ferry boats, the Space Needle, coffee, seafood, things like that. I was reading the paper today (online of course) when I came across a fascinating article that introduced me to an new aspect of Seattle. I’m quite excited about it honestly.