Posted on by mwhybark

Blown

Yow, whatta day. We finally dropped off the busted teevee and went podunking. Brunch at upper Queen Anne’s Paragon, followed by random house-for-sale flyer sampling. We ended up in a couple of antique stores we’d never been in, and I got my gentleman’s clothes butler, finally.

On our way south, we pulled over hurriedly and pinched the tire between wheel and curb with force enough to cause a blowout. A call to AAA, and the tow truck appeared just as we hung up. He changed the tire and we were on the road again within ten minutes of the blowout.

Posted on by mwhybark

Harlem Nocturne

Viv was dining in the tender confines of happy hour, so I placed a few calls and wandered down to the specimen of declining urbanity known as Broadway, the cracked jewel of Capitol Hill.

I ended up dining at a small Pakistani establishment, and when I left, I was surprised to hear someone really busting out on a sax. He was standing on the corner across from the Starbucks that faces the newly-remodeled Broadway Market (which now houses a two-story full-city-block grocery store, ex-Seattleites may be interested to know).

I had just gotten set to record the sax when he wound up and fell into deep conversation with a woman who appeared fascinated, her small dog in tow. After much intent gazing and some note-scribbling, she crossed the street. He gazed after her for a moment, saxophone lowered.

He turned to face the stream of people passing on the sidewalk and lifted his ax.

“Harlem Nocturne” erupted from the instrument’s bell. Believing that I had previously activated the audio recorder on the phone I am posting this from, I crossed the street, excited.

After several minutes and a few muffed notes, the musician wound the tune up. As he placed his sax into his battered hardshell case, I walked by and gave him a five, saying “thank you,” reflecting my appreciation not solely of his playing, but also the beauty and drama of his musical choice following the interaction I had observed.

“God bless you,” was the unexpectedly heartfelt response. I watched a moment later as he boarded the number 60 bus.

A bookstore stop later (new Vollmann! The Men Who Stare at Goats!) I was excitedly mulling the prospect of converting my recording to mp3 and blogging it in the context of this entry. I had decided to head home as an economizAtion measure when I ran into my coworker Diana.

Her pals were playing at Julia’s, the former Ernie Steele’s space, and she was speaking to them outside. I excitedly tried to play my recording, but alas. I had been mistaken, and had actually failed to record the song !

I mentioned to Diana that I had been looking for a place to write, and to my surprise, that’s what Julia’s has proved to be – this entry was written and posted during her friends’ first set.

Now I should probably call Viv.

Posted on by mwhybark

Sunny, but pouring

This week, we have been so swamped at work that we have actually shipped a higher volume of orders than we did at the peak of Christmas. Apparently, this bolus is not limited to our retail traffic.

On Wednesday, a freelance gig came in on the answering machine – I’m still evaluating the labor requirements versus my free time before committing. Any readers out there with current downtime and agency production experience coding HTML, please drop a line in case I need to pass. It’s not a hard job, but may require more time than I have available. You will need to have Photoshop and Dreamweaver and Fireworks and should have experience creating HTML under an art director or within an advertising and design agency as a production person. If you haven’t in the past, this is most definitely not the job to learn on.

The other gig is an experienced developer position at a well-known local house that provides varying levels of end-user with real estate tools. The toolkit was specifically identified as ‘open-source’ and name-checked PHP, MySQL, etc., etc. It’s a gig that’s too dev-oriented for my skillset, but surely there are candidates out there reading this.

Naturally, this is also the week that the third issue of the magazine is in planning. Most happily, my editor and I knocked out the content definition stuff in about twenty minutes on Tuesday night.

Additionally, I call your attention once again to the Siffblog, which is ginning up. The contributors over there last year had a great time and I know I very much enjoyed reading the blog. A group blog about a film festival the size of SIFF might be expected to provide some amusement.

Finally, I jimmied the header link set, my sidebar, and this blog’s about page to more effectively reflect my current range of activities.

Posted on by mwhybark

mg tc

As I stepped out of the house into a cool, misty morning, a British racing-green MG TC wheeled round the corner, top down in the dew. The driver sported a leather aviator’s helmet with flight goggles and was also wearing a worn leather driving coat, collar secured against the tempest.

I smiled to see such a sight.

Posted on by mwhybark

Crushed

My sleep last night was extremely restless and full of nightmares, concluding with a dream that yanked me awake. In that dream I was walking along a wooded bluff above a pebbled beach with a companion. We were discussing the several wrecked buildings that were scattered along the ridge. Apparently I recalled a time when the mossy cul de sac had been the center of a vibrant nightlife, but the lights were long gone.

As we walked down a path leading to the strand, we came across a huge, partially completed building which had never been finished due to an obvious arson. As we looked at it, we were jolted by terrifying screams from the beach below. Two small children clutched each other and sobbed in terror, lying prone and rolled away from the source of their terror.

Behind them, a construction crew worked frantically to free a coworker who was lying, partially crushed, under a collapsed concrete wall. It was his screams that we’d heard up the embankment.