Parallel parking

Frank Fujimoto
Photography

This picture was snapped quickly with my cell phone, which is why the quality isn't great. The house is on the way when walking between work and home. If you look closely you can make out that it's a car pulling into a garage. What's different about that? The garage is only about 15 feet deep, so the car needs to parallel parking into it. When the door is closed it looks like a normal two-car garage.

Planet Earth

Frank Fujimoto
TV/Movies

Melody and I finished watching Planet Earth the other day. We had actually finished the series itself in December but just recently got around to finishing up the "Planet Earth - The Future", the companion series talking about environmental and conservation issues. If you haven't seen the series, the photography is just as exquisite as you've heard. The version available on DVD is the BBC one narrated by David Attenborough, rather than the version which aired on the Discovery Channel with Sigourney Weaver.

Kiyo in the hospital

Frank Fujimoto
Family, What's Up

My mom went back into the hospital on Wednesday the 21st. From what I can tell she's still having dehydration problems, and this time it caused her to be dizzy and have problems with her equilibrium. She's doing better now, although she sounded a bit tired when I spoke with her earlier this evening.

Going on a cardboard hunt

Frank Fujimoto
Hobbies, What's Up

As part of our multi-year landscaping project, Melody and I cover up a lot of weeds and sod. Our landscape designer recommended starting with a layer of compost, a double layer of cardboard, then a thick layer of wood chips. This has worked really well for us; the old weeds and sod are pretty well suppressed, and all we need to do is pile on more chips every now and then. Sometimes the hard part is making sure we have all the parts necessary to proceed.

Pre-scanning at Costco

Frank Fujimoto
What's Up

I went to Costco tonight and picked up about a dozen things. I found a line which looked suspiciously shorter than the others - I'm always a sucker for those lines, even though it seems that many times they're slower than the other ones. At any rate, the guy before me was almost ready to start loading his stuff onto the belt when something happened that I had never seen before: I got pre-scanned.

No power

Frank Fujimoto
What's Up

Got home tonight at about 7pm and noticed the street light near our house was out. After I picked up the mail it dawned on me that our porch light was also out. Our neighbor to the east had lights so I figured this was one of those rare times it didn't turn on. However, it also didn't turn on when I flicked the switch. Our neighbors across the street, their neighbor, and the neighbor to the west didn't have power either, but all the other houses seemed to.

Travel plans changed

Frank Fujimoto
Family, What's Up

By the time this gets posted we had planned on being in Spokane with Melody's sister Celeste, but weather has changed plans. It would have been a slow drive over the pass, and we would have needed to turn around the next day and head back to Seattle. Instead, she'll sometime after the 1st, after travel is more sane.

Trudging through snow

Frank Fujimoto
What's Up

Even though the roads and sidewalks have been slick, Melody and I have been walking around in the snow to go to the store, hang out at a coffee shop, etc. The snow we got during the week only went away a little bit and we got more last night, to the point where there's about 6" on the ground right now, and the snow has started back up.

Snow-covered Seattle

Frank Fujimoto
What's Up

I went up to the top floor of the UW Tower today to take a look at how the snow we've been getting looked from above. Since there are only a few inches on the ground, it doesn't look completely white, but I still thought it was pretty.

Photo - First snow of the season

Frank Fujimoto
Hobbies, Photography

We don't get snow too often in Seattle, but it looks really pretty when we do. I suppose that's true almost anywhere, but it doesn't reduce our appreciation for the white stuff. It's not unusual for us to accumulate a few inches once or twice a year, but some years we don't get any and others we get a lot. We'll see how this year pans out - we apparently missed getting snow a couple days ago because of a low pressure system which ended up going to the north instead of through Seattle.

Christmas shopping with Uncle Easy

Frank Fujimoto
Family, Oral History

I was talking with my cousin Kay earlier this week and we talked about how this was the time of year when as a child I'd go out with my Uncle Easy to go shopping for toys for the younger members of our family. Being a bachelor, he would say he needed help picking out the right fits. When the planned day came around, Uncle Easy would pick me up and we'd go have dinner, after which we'd make our way to Toys 'R' Us and he'd ask "would this be good for so-and-so?", checking his list to make sure he had something for everyone. After we were done, we'd drop the presents off with Kay so she could wrap them.

Short plat land sale

Frank Fujimoto
What's Up

For several years our neighbor (to the west) has been thinking about changing his house, either expanding it by adding a second story or by tearing it down and building a larger house in its place. Then last year he and his wife drove by a house on a golf course in Federal Way and decided that's where they wanted to live.

Photo - Plane on I-280

Frank Fujimoto
Photography

When we lived in Sunnyvale, CA we were not very far from the Wolfe Road exit off I-280. We noticed there was a big ado on Wolfe so we put Kellen (about 1 year old at the time) into the backpack, grabbed cameras, and went to be typical gawkers. At first it was hard to tell what was going on with the traffic pattern, but then we saw the tail of an airplane.

Podcasts - Escape Pod

Frank Fujimoto
Listening, Reading

If you enjoy science fiction and aren't listening to Escape Pod, you really should. It's a weekly short story anthology with a wide variety of themes and styles. The host, Steve Eley, reads many of the stories in addition to providing intros and commentary, but guest readers are not uncommon. It was Steve's blog entry about going on hiatus for a few weeks which prompted me to write about Escape Pod. I noticed last week that a new story hadn't gone up, so I went to check if something was up, and indeed there is.

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