The house gets very quiet when the power goes out… I sit in the dark and post via cell phone. Guess I’ll turn in early tonight!

The annual winds have arrived in the Puget Sound finally.  Our first really big wind storm of Winter and it looks like it’s going to be a doozy.  Winds have been gusting to 40-45 mph off and on all day and the main storm isn’t here yet.  Between 10pm and midnight winds are projected to increase to 60-70 mph. 

My power is obviously still on but I’m becoming an increasing minority apparently.  Just about all of my friends are sitting in the dark. I’m braced for a power outage though. I cook on gas so I won’t have to worry about that, but I’ve got my camp stoves and grill too just in case.  And I’ve got plenty of emergency lighting and the like. Heck, I can continue to surf the Internet too for a while, as long as the batteries in my Smart Phone hold out.

Could be an interesting night!

I had an opportunity to catch a screening of Eragon this evening.  I was looking forward to seeing this one. It’s based on the book of the same name.  I really enjoyed it, although honestly I don’t think it will do that well at the box office or with critics in general. Fans of the book might like it, but may take issue with deviations from the source material. Fans of Tolkien and LOTR will probably dismiss it as fluff by comparison.

Frankly, that’s one of the things I liked about it. I don’t mind being challenged by a movie in general, but sometimes I just want good old escapism.  A simple story. Clear delineation between good and evil. Swords and magic.  And oh yes, dragons please!

I hate to say it, but my zeal for this movie is directly related to the meme I did yesterday. As much as I like to pretend otherwise, I guess I do tend to look at the world through the eyes of an innocent and yeah, maybe rainbows and unicorns are involved.  And dragons. Lots of dragons.

The movie opens Friday.  My review will “go to press” on Friday also.  You’ll find it with my other scribblings in the author archive at “Past The Popcorn” which is the site I’m writing for these days.

To tie this in with a music update, this particular track was written by Jem for the movie.  It plays along with another track by Avril Lavigne during the closing credits.  I liked it… and did I mention that I like dragons?

Ok this meme looked interesting.  I saw it a SilverWillow’s and at Lisa’s… so I figure, no harm might as well try it right? Wrong… why oh why did I do this one?  If I could take it back… oh why, why me? *sob* It’s over… it’s all over..

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I’ve already mentioned losing things, now I’m forgetting things too!  Clearly a sign of my impending 40th birthday! I’ve had photos on my laptop from my Thanksgiving trip to Lopez Island for some time now and I never got around to going through them and posting to Flickr. I’ve now done so… huzzah!

Click here to view them!

I’ve managed to lose a piece of art. This isn’t it.  I found this while I was looking for the other project. I was actually feeling inspired to work on the missing piece but since I can’t find it… *sigh*

This piece shown here never really got finished either.  I got it this far and ran out of steam. I suppose I should finish it someday too. I’d thought I’d post it “as-is” since it’s not doing anyone any good tucked away in the dark, dusty recesses of my archives.

This was drawn in Adobe Illustrator and then colored and manipulated in Adobe Photoshop (to add the reflections and a few other things). I was experimenting with trying to make realistic reflections on water but I wasn’t very happy with the results at this point.

I got tired of the header photo so I changed the image to an old favorite from the last version of the blog. I setup a template so I can change ‘em easier in the future… I may even put in some code to randomize the header just for varieties sake.

Also tweaked the style sheet because I was *finally* able to see the problem that Shephard and Marianna had mentioned regarding not being able to see posts past the first one.  I upgraded to IE7 on my laptop so I could test it and it rendered the page improperly.  It’s not 100% accurate in IE now but it should at least be readable.  Let me know if you see any further rendering problems.

My son Matt and I watched Donnie Darko last weekend while he was over. What a real mind trip of a movie! We both loved it. We wound up watching it because I had heard a song in a television advert a while back and tracked down the song they used.  Turned out the same song was on the soundtrack to Donnie Darko and that brought us to the point of watching the movie.

I really do love this song.  I suppose it’s a little dark and depressing but it strums a chord that resonates with me. I really want to use it as the background music for a slideshow, I just have to come up with a good theme for the photos. In any case, give it a listen!

Yes I know, technically the year isn’t over. However I’d say the motorcycling weather has pretty much come to an end.  It’s possible that a sunny day might pop up and give me a change to go for a short ride, but any overnight roadtrips are done until next Spring.  So be it…

That means I might as well look back at some of the rides I did this year. I put together a little video slideshow that captures the memorable moments I look back on fondly.  Can’t wait until the first big ride of 2007 in May, when I’ll head down to Fortuna, CA.

The kids and Kiko were over for a visit this weekend.  We spent most of it lolling around the house doing as little productive as possible. I mostly cooked, watched TV with Lindsey, played on the computer, or shot photos of Matt playing with Kiko.

I did manage to finish up most of my Christmas shopping.  That’s easy though, I started shopping online several years ago. Why fight the crowds when all you need is a web browser and a credit card?

I still need to finish up my Christmas Mix CDs and get them in the mail to those few hardy souls that volunteered to listen to them.  Hopefully that will happen by the end of the week. I still need to shoot the cover photo that I’m using for my Christmas cards too. I couldn’t muster the creative energy to do it this past weekend.

At least it wasn’t snowing this weekend…