Sunday, July 27, 2014

Your Sunday Squirrel

Sorry for the lack of blogging.  My aunt passed away and I went to the funeral in Idaho.  Believe it or not, at the time it was actually hotter here than there.  Sure, she was 85; she lived a long, full life, but I still really miss her.  Anyhow, I was out of action for most of the week and I'm in the midst of getting ready to record next week.  So yeah, I had something of a crisis when I got back.  I had to record a scad of scratch vocals for my engineer and I was a little unsure of how to treat the tunes.  Plus, I was changing lyrics on every tune.  The good news is that I've finally gotten a handle on everything.  I spent all of today printing out brass parts and singing a bunch of tunes really well.

OK, so yesterday I ran into this fellow at Denny Park.  He was really hungry.  He was also acting kind of woozy.  I hope the four peanuts I gave him helped.  We parted ways and while I was headed back to my place, I saw a squirrel at 4th & Blanchard, right by the Darth Vader building.  It was a bit alarming to see a squirrel that far away from Denny Park.  I hope he made it back to his home tree OK.

Ah yes, I also witnessed the Torchlight Parade last night.  I have pictures.  I hope to post them soon.  I've really fallen asleep at the switch when it comes to parades.  I still haven't posted anything from the Edmonds 4th of July Parade.  I swear I will.  Anyways, there will soon be parades on this blog.

Sunday, July 13, 2014

Spamalot

No, not the Monty Python musical.  This is different.  I checked my email this morning and I got an email notification from an old blog site of mine.  I haven't posted anything there in years, but it's still around.  See, in 2008-09, I decided to write 300 pieces for brass ensemble.  I wasn't going to make myself write one each day, but that's pretty much how it turned out.  Occasionally, I'd give myself the day off, but it was a rarity.  I finished the entire project after 323 days and then set to posting.  Funny thing, the internet of 2009 relied on hosting services in order to post larger files.  After all, I wanted to post the audio files that I exported from Finale, the notation software.  I set myself up with one hosting company and began posting every single piece.  A week after I finished, it shut down.  Yeah, just my luck.  Since then, the blog is still there, but it has no music files.  All kinds of descriptions, but no music.  Oh, well.  It was a massive project that made me really proud of my abilities five years ago, but I immediately went on to something else.  And that's pretty much been how I operate since then: do big project, move on.  However, the site attracts spam.  Most of it is cryptic or stupid or wants to help me with web traffic.  What I got this morning is pretty special.  Here it is:

What i don't realize is if truth be told how you're no longer really much more well-preferred than you may be now.  You're very intelligent. You understand therefore significantly relating to this matter, produced me personally imagine it from numerous varied angles. Its like men and women don't seem to be fascinated until it's one thing to accomplish with Girl gaga!
Your individual stuffs outstanding. All the time care for it up!
You think it's going to make sense and it just doesn't; it never quite gets there.  Sometimes spam is fun.  All the time care for it up - that's what I say!  I'm just trying to figure out what language this was translated from or what its author's native language is.  I realize that it actually might be engineered to not make sense so as to make it searchable.  And therefore, it might attract spam to this crappy blog.  If it does, I hope it's like this.    

Your Sunday Squirrel

Well, it's a few weeks later and there's the squirrel with the funny ear.  I'm super-sure his name is Bub.  I got a new iPhone this week and I was trying out the camera.  The thing is that you can edit the photo in the camera, but it doesn't come out that way when you export it.  I really zoomed in and the quality was still pretty good.  I can imagine that there's a way around this.  It's just that I never doctor photos.  I don't crop or do any of that.  They are as I took them.  With an iPhone, you'd have to get way too close.  The subject would scramble for the nearest tree.  For the time being, please imagine the squirrel being much bigger and the environment much smaller.

OK, so I was hoping to post about the Edmonds Fourth of July parade, but I haven't had time.  I won't be able to write anything till the end of the week.  It might be worth the wait.  There was conflict - not of the revolutionary sort, but rather Edmonds showed its crankier side and I made a stand against it.  Yeah, it was a study in heroism.  But for now, all you get is a squirrel with a bent ear.

Sunday, July 6, 2014

Your Sunday Squirrel

Although many squirrels look very similar, there are some who are just a bit different.  This fellow has a slightly bent left ear.  I see him often in the park.  He's really quite friendly, even though it looks like he's ready to bolt for the next tree.  I don't give squirrels nicknames.  Most of them are just too tough to tell apart.  But no, I wouldn't christen this guy "Bent Ear" or anything like that.  That seems a little too obvious.  It's like in Bad Santa when Thurman Merman asks Billy Bob about the elves' names.  Santa says something like: "How should I know?  I just call them all bub."  That's kind of how I keep track of the squirrels.  They're all bub.

New Douchery!

OK, so it seems that this guy is scrawling on a lot of stuff.  I've seen more of his tags around.  I saw these two just walking back from the store.  One thing's for sure, he ain't no artist.  Hell, he isn't really all that good at spelling his own handle: 
Ha!  Nicely done, chum.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, douche.