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Different Honeymoon

A couple of nights ago, my friend’s friend (Julie) received a random unsolicited email from combinedtours@trips-southamerica.com. Upon opening the message, she saw the following embedded advertisement:

As you can imagine, Julie was very surprised to see a couple of faces she recognized in the image! As was Kara, to whom Julie forwarded the message, and as was I when Kara in turn forwarded it along to me. I was as shocked as she was that Kenny and I were serving as models for a South American travel agency that we had never heard of. But even more baffling was the fact that this random image in a SPAM email from a totally obscure company, who apparently filched my image from Flickr but has no idea who I am, actually made its way back to me.

On another amusing note, the travel package described in the advertisement above includes a trip to the Brazilian side of Iguazu, which offers a panoramic view of the Cataratas, but nothing like the up close and personal experience shown in the photo, which was taken in Argentina.

Yellow and Red

I ended up spending my photography day two Sundays ago at the Volunteer Park Conservatory, UW campus, and the main branch of the Seattle Public Library. I had a great time at the Conservatory (aside from the one room where my lens kept fogging up), an okay time at UW (I really don’t know my way around campus, and I had to run back to my car early because my camera battery died), and an absolute blast at the library.

The library is obviously wonderful because of its unique amorphous exterior, the shapes formed by its blue metallic frame and panes of glass, and the views of the city that it offers. But I had the most fun playing with the bright colors of the red stairs and electric yellow escalators.

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Photogenic Seattle

I’m taking an “Introduction to SLR Photography Class,” and my assignment for this week is to take photos of scenes containing interesting geometric shapes. The assignment can be interpreted loosely — e.g., a pine tree can be a triangle, and the geometric shape in the photo may exist only because I’ve cut off the edges of an object in the way I’ve framed a shot. I kind of copped out on my last assignment because I was so busy and out of town for a few weekends in a row — I ended up finishing my assignment by taking photos around Microsoft campus during my lunch break. As you might expect, they weren’t very interesting.

This time around, I have all day Sunday free and I want to go do some shooting in various parts of Seattle. Here are some thoughts on places to go (mostly very obvious spots):

Any other ideas?

Alternative Homemaker

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My good friend Anjali is one of the most creative people I know. In the 12+ (!) years that I’ve known her, there has never been a time that she hasn’t been working on a new project (or three). These projects have included (but have not been limited to): jewelry-making, sewing her own clothing, knitting, making decorations for theme parties (and coming up with ideas for theme parties), papier-mache, designing outrageous Halloween costumes, and developing interesting (and attractive!) concoctions in the kitchen.

That latter interest has recently led her to make her first foray into the world of blogging, so that she can share her creations and the results of her experiments with the world.

My favorite posts so far are:

…with many more on the way. I can’t say the various attempts at bacon ice cream really do much for me, but I am a chickentarian after all.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention — by day she’s kicking ass as a first-year medical student, and this is somehow done during her copious amounts of free time.

Snow and More Snow

I’m in California for the weekend visiting my family. I just decided to check weather back in Seattle so that I’d know what to expect upon arriving early tomorrow morning. Gorgeous:

Interestingly, Kenny told me that snow was a pretty rare occurrence in Seattle during his first six winters there. This is my fifth winter in Seattle, and we’ve seen snow every year. El Nino/La Nina? Climate change? (Somebody get Al Gore on the phone)

And while it looks like this coming week will be complete crap, it bodes well for snowboarding next weekend! This will be my first chance this winter, since I’ve been out of town for six weekends out of the last seven. Crystal got six inches last night.