Sorry for the dearth of postings – the trip, combined with some media projects here at home, are soaking up my brain and free time.

The media projects are associated with creating a DVD from an old VHS tape of a reunion perfomance by the Gizmos shot the last day of July in 1988 – the tape was edited and directed by Eric White at the cable-access staion in Bloomington, BCAT 3, which unfortunately at the time only made VHS cameras available to program producers except for in-studio work.

The tape is pretty good in every way except video quality – I’m actually quite impressed with Eric’s editing.

It being September again, I should note that Eric was working on the editing throughout the saga of my sister’s death – and she is quite visible on the tape, as am I, dancing and dancing. The concert stands at the gates of adulthood; the cost of entry too high to predict.

Happily, watching the video (over and over and over as I work the kinks out of the workflow here) is not saddening in the least – it’s almost like a video yearbook, and I find myself pointing at the fifteen-year-old video ghosts of my friends and calling their names:

“There’s Ransom!”

“It’s Katherine!”

“That’s Terri!”

May I just say:

and note that further imagery exploring the artistic effects of light abd shadow involved in my recent visit to my in-laws in Laguna Beach on a perfect late-summer weekend may be found here, here, here, and here.

Worthy of note were the amusingly provocative Oracle banners at the SeaTac federal screening positions:

“Oracle makes Linux unbreakable: Everybody knows Linux costs less. Now it’s faster and more reliable too.”

Translation: “Bill, your software broke last month. Loved it! See you soon – love, Larry.”

I also actually went swimming in the ocean for the first time in at least twenty years. It was fun, but, naturally, I seem to have an ear infection. Every time I get in the water, my head soaks it up like a sponge and it dribbles out for days and days.

We were there for my father-in-law’s 75th birthday party, and it was great fun.

The trip ended with United’s outbound plane experiencing starter failure in an engine – they put us on a direct Alaskan flight that we barely made, and which was so empty I cannot imagine how they can run the service.

A pleasant walk about the neighborhood of a summer night’s wee hours is often a salutary endeavor, accompanied or solo.

On this night, amid a quiet unnatural for a city, I spied the winking eye of Mars gazing across the fruited plains of Capitol Hill. I found some scrap wood, half-inch plywood, that is just what I needed to mount a nice keyboard shelf I picked up elewhere, also as scrap because it lacked the needed mounting hardware.

On my return loop, what should I spy but a lovingly-cared-for Pontiac Tempest, the first family car I can recall. Ours was a ’67 convertible in an ice-blue flake. This was an aquamarine hardtop with what I’m assuming is a restoration job on the upholstery in cream leather.

Ours had navy-and-ice-blue vinyl upholstery that stank to high heaven of complex, probably highly toxic vynil gasses under the summer sun, something which seriously undercut the otherwise impeccable beauty of this particluar crossbreed of land yacht and muscle car.

It was an interesting sense-memory to feel the door handles and the interior window-lining brushes.

Although very similar to the car I recall, this car featured an older-looking commercial script logo; the body style was otherwise nearly identical, which means, I suspect, that the car I saw in the night was a ’65 or ’67.