Your Sunday Squirrel

As luck would have it, amid Wednesday's wind and rain, I found this squirrel at Denny Park. I'm pretty sure he's the same one I did business with a few weeks ago. Although it's not completely obvious from this picture, both of them had extremely furry faces. OK, so I'm very glad there are still squirrels in the park. I have all this week off, so I'll be there almost every day looking for this fellow.

I Went to an Art-Thing Last Night

And this is one of the things I saw:

My friend Jim helped stage this shindig in Ballard. If it were my place to call it anything, I'd say it was a resounding success. This piece here was butcher paper that was intricately cut and then rotated around. Quite wonderful, I declare it.

When They Ask Me...

...where I was when they closed Mercer Street - causing much chaos and gnashing of teeth throughout this lousy town - I'll tell them I was there. And it was beautiful in its majestic calm. Now you know.

Your Sunday Squirrel

OK, here's a blurrel. Most of my shots look like this. This is the fellow from last week, the one I had to coax down from a tree. Since I haven't seen any squirrels since then, I'm just rationing my footage. Next week's offering will be far less blurry.

No Mo Sno

This was the only shot I took of the snow. I was headed to work on Wednesday morning. I'm sure the local news had much more compelling footage from the outlying areas. Here in Belltown, things were really quite normal. Of course, once the snow was over, this whole neighborhood was really kind of, well, ugly. That's OK. I don't live here for the scenery - although the Darth Vader Building is always quite compelling. I'm doing a temp job down on Western Ave. and I was the only one in my department to make it in this week. That's the thing about living and working here: you never have an excuse for weather-related absences. That's OK. My apartment was freezing anyway. So that was the snow. Here's a funny shot I took on Friday:

It's a snowman that's melting in back of the Taco del Mar at 1st & Blanchard. Poor Mr. Snowman! Well, he's in a better place now.

Your Sunday Squirrel

I finally found a squirrel in Denny Park. Saints be praised! I had to coax him down from his tree, but I got some good shots. You'll notice here that he's not too keen on looking into the camera. That's OK, because he has a nice profile. I gave him a peanut and he went way the hell back up in his tree. This is what he looked like:

Pardon the lack of sharpness. I had to use near-maximum zoom, because he was so high up. I was able to lure him down again for more pictures. I'll post those next week. Enjoy.

Belltown Snow!

Angry car is angry!

You know, right after I posted that previous entry, it really started to snow. A few short hours later and Belltown was briefly a Winnuh Wonnuh Lan. Here is the largest snowy expanse I was able to find at 2nd & Virginia:

These are other shots:


Wouldn't it be cool if all this stuff froze? What chaos that would be! Anyhow, enjoy it while it lasts.

Snow!

This was the scene up in Snohomish yesterday. I was taking down my parents' Christmas decorations. I guess you could say that we had a white Christmas cleanup. And if there's gonna be snow, it'll be up in Snohomish. Without snow, it would just be Homish.

Suddenly...

...geese!

This was the scene down at Lake Union yesterday morning. Canada geese are big - really big. Unlike a lot of other birds, they're not too wary of humans, so they just swim around and honk at each other and ignore everything else - including that seaplane in the background. Did that concern them? Not at all.

Your Sunday Squirrel

From the archives... And yes, this is the same guy as last week. Look how friendly he is! You know, these last few weeks have been an exercise in futility. There are no squirrels in Denny Park. I've been there more than several times and the guys in gray are nowhere around. So you get this wonderful fellow climbing up on the bench to sit next to me from several weeks ago. Is he in focus? Is that important? If you think he is, then he is. Please enjoy.

Your Sunday Squirrel

I realize this guy is a little out of focus. Don't get me started about my inept focus-bot. Anyhow, here we have a shot from the same session that yielded the months of October AND December for this year's calendar. That's right, it's the same squirrel. And here he is again.

I've been to Denny Park several times over the last few weeks and I've only seen a grand total of one squirrel. And he wasn't particularly friendly. I hope they're all on vacation somewhere or in their trees watching football and not, y'know, dead. That would be a shame. But there is always hope with rodents. They're very tough, they reproduce quickly and they have mad skills. I'm sure 2012 will be a very good year for squirrels in Denny Park, as long as there's not too much heavy equipment in there.

Happy New Year!

Here was the scene last night at the Space Needle:

It was a very nice show. The crappy cell phone quality only enhances the pyrotechnics. And the yelling from all the surrounding drunken idiots is muted out for everyone's sake. You know, last year I predicted that 2011 would be good and it was. I wrote a bunch of great tunes, recorded an album and got on TV. This year looks to be even better. (Plus, I put out a very nice squirrel calendar.) Sure, it would have been nice to sell more albums, get some airplay and garner a bit more attention for my efforts, but I still fee like I've accomplished a lot. So I'm declaring 2011 a year of victory and hoping that 2012 continues with the good stuff. I'm set to record my next album in February and that will probably come out in April. It's gonna be good.

Anyhow, that's the year redux. You know, the fireworks were so good last night, I'll just include all my 18-second videos. Yeah, my phone is THAT old. Here goes:







And shortly after this, I realized that I was missing the show because I was taking videos and not experiencing it. The end.

Happy New Year, all.