d o z i n g h i p p o . c o m

Skagit Valley Tulip Festival 2009

Published: Mon, 04 May 2009 03:24:09 Z

Last Monday my friend Barry picked me up at 4:50am for a sunrise photo-safari to the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival.  It’s been a strange winter/spring as far as weather goes, with the winter delivering more snow in the lowlands than we’ve seen in a long time.  Then spring seemed to be cold for much longer than usual.  All of this worked to our advantage – the tulips came late this year.  Late enough that the festival extended a couple of extra weeks.  What we realized was that the tulips were at their peak color, and we both had a chance to take a Monday photo-safari to avoid some crowds, and go see some flowers.  Oh, as for the early departure, the tulip fields are about 60 miles north of us, and sunrise was for right at 6am.  We spent about 90 minutes in the first field for sunrise, and although the sun rose into some morning clouds, it was still gorgeous, and when the sun did finally break through, we were treated to some spectacular morning light.  We went on to a second field where I broke out a new gizmo for this safari: a ladder.  We have a folding 6’ ladder from our RVing days, and it fit nicely into Barry’s car.  It offered some interesting perspectives, especially for someone who is vertically challenged like myself.  After an awesome breakfast at Calico Cupboard in La Conner (and a cookie for the road), we went on to the Rosengarden display gardens to check out the wide variety of tulips.  Also gave us a chance to break out the macro lens, since by that time, even for a Monday, the crowds were starting to get pretty heavy.  Here’s a few of my favorites, but I encourage you to click through to my flickr set with all of my favorites from the day.  I’d say it was well worth getting up at that hour.

Spring Break Vancouver

Published: Mon, 09 Mar 2009 02:55:11 Z

Last week was Mary’s spring break.  Her last official academic spring break (!).  It comes before she starts a 10 week rotation at Evergreen Hospital, so we decided to take a break and head north to Vancouver for a few days.  Mary had spent a long weekend there with some friends last spring, but I haven’t been since a quick overnight trip in ‘05. 

As the host to the Winter Olympics in 2010, Vancouver is bustling with activity with construction all around from new buildings going up, the Olympic Village being built, roads and sidewalks redone and expanded, and the Sky Train system extended.  It made for a bit more planning to get around, but wasn’t too bad overall.  A year from now, when the Olympics over, the city will be thriving with all of the new infrastructure improvements in place.  And it’s a great city now, so it will really be spectacular when they get these projects done.

We stayed in a one bedroom condo rental that we found online.  There are lots of condos in the vacation rental market as people prepare to cash in on the Olympics.  Our unit was about 6 blocks from BC Place where the opening ceremonies will be.  The management company believes units like it will fetch $600-800/night during the games.  It was a fraction of that for our short visit.  It was a great condo – a smallish one-bedroom condo on the 26th floor of a building built in 2005.  It had floor to ceiling windows and a small balcony.  Because the unit is on a curved part of the building (which made for a bunch of non-90 degree corners) we could see both sunrise and sunset from our windows.   The picture below is of Yaletown (the neighborhood where our building was) taken from the AquaBus on our way over to Granville Island.  If you view the original image on flickr, you can see I drew in a red box around the windows of our condo.  The other image is a panorama of several images stitched together showing part of our view – this is roughly the eastern 2/3 of what we could see.  If you open that image full size you can see the white fabric roof of BC Place between some buildings just to the left of center in this image.  The cranes in the distance to the right of center and across False Creek is the construction of the new Olympic Village.

One of the best parts of the condo rental is we had a full kitchen.  While we didn’t cook, we did use the fridge to store some snacks acquired from the Granville Market.  Here are two of our favorite stands, the Oyama Sausage Co., and Terra Breads.

We ate all sorts of incredible foods, but Mary has a no-flash policy at dinner, so the only good food photo we have is of lunch one day where we ate at Japadog.  This is a hotdog stand made famous in part by their appearance on Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations”.  Mine is a Korabuta pork sausage with Japanese mayo, teriyaki sauce, and seaweed. Mary had a bratwurst with a spicy radish relish.

Other meals and beverages included a great wine bar with an adventurous selection of cocktails called Uva, an incredible meal at Gastropod who sources as many ingredients locally as they can, and Vij’s (an Indian restaurant also visited by Anthony Bourdain, and a place Mary went to last spring).  We also checked out the bar at Jean Georges’s Market, which is in the newly opened Shangri-La Hotel.  With more time, I think we would have eaten there also.  We also discovered and frequented a coffee shop (in Yaletown & Granville Island) called Agro Cafe.  They had a machine called Clover (developed by Starbucks) that brews a single cup of coffee at a time.  Mary had only ever read about it, but she enjoyed it a few times this week.

And finally, we couldn’t have timed this any better – we got to see live Curling.  We had considered trying to get Olympic Curling tickets, but declined because of the price of both lodging and event tickets.  When we arrived in Vancouver this trip, we were thrilled to learn that the World Junior Curling Championships were just starting.  This meant that we got to see Championship Curling in the Olympic Curling Center, but only paid $10/ticket.  We’ve seen curling on TV, but this was really much different.  There was so much going on!  Four matches are played at the same time, whereas on TV, they usually focus on just one match.  We were focusing primarily on the sheet closest to where we were sitting (Denmark vs. Russia) and the Canada vs. Germany match (because we were sitting with a large and vocal contingent of Canadian fans.  Despite trying to focus, there was always some random yelling (from the players) or cheering (from the fans) which made it a bit difficult to follow.  It was very fun though, and felt like a very Canadian thing to do!

A Big Chunk of Wood

Published: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 06:06:14 Z

When we bought our house in July 2004, one of the things we really liked about it was that it was perfectly livable as it was, but there were also lots of small projects we could do to make incremental improvements.  We’ve done landscaping, painting, and changed the carpet in a couple of rooms.  Last fall, we decided that we wanted to put in a gas fireplace.  Simple enough.  Not.  I’ll spare you all of the incremental project photos, but let’s just say that after 5 months, we’re finally done.  It started with resurfacing the old brick, with stone (OK, they’re fake stones, but they look pretty convincing), and laying new tile for the hearth.  Then we had the gas insert installed.  It’s been in since before Thanksgiving, and has been great to have this winter.  But, it was the mantle that took the longest.  Today it finally got installed.

My friend Henry happens to have a small wood shop in his garage.  When I mentioned this project to him in passing last fall, he suggested that a “big chunk of wood” would be something we should consider for the new mantle.  It seemed like a good idea, so we started to investigate.  He showed us the hardwood store in Redmond, and we tried a variety of samples before we settled on black walnut for our mantle.  As it happens, we got very lucky and they had an incredible piece of black walnut that was perfect.  After Henry got it to his shop in December and started to finish it, he told me how great it was, but it wasn’t till we saw it finished in person today that I really understood.  It’s an absolutely gorgeous chunk of wood.  Very consistently colored from the core of what must have been a massive tree, with a really lucky end-cut that has a near-perfect rainbow pattern in the grain.

You might also notice the blue glass lamp in the photo – we bought the shades for this lamp back in September, and after a fairly major electrical project that spanned December, January and February (new panel, etc.) we finally got the lamp finished as well. 

For your amusement, I went back and found a photo of the original fireplace with the original lamp from the day we moved in back in July 2004.  I think today’s version of our living room is a big improvement.

For the “chunk of wood” fans, here’s a shot of the end facing our dining room.  Nicely done Henry!

I Have a Gear Habit

Published: Sun, 08 Feb 2009 20:22:58 Z

It’s true that I love drumming more than many other things in life.  And it’s also true that I love gadgets of all kinds.  The combination is pretty complicated, and I’m here to admit that I have a drum gear habit.  While I don’t think this is too much of a problem, I think there are some folks around me that would beg to differ.  In any case, I’m here to admit it, and to introduce you to my latest drum kit.

I bought this kit from a nice guy in Colorado via Ebay.  They are Ayotte Custom drums built to his original specs in a custom color called Daredevil Red based on the color of Daredevil’s suit.  The seller told me the folks at Ayotte watched the movie, and then sent him paint samples before they finalized the color.  For the drummers among you, it is a 10, 12, 14, 16, 22, with a matching 13x6 snare.  All Canadian Sugar Maple shells, with matching wood hoops.  In this photo, I also have a 12” DW Craviotto maple snare set up that I use in addition to the primary snare on one of the tracks.  For that part, I muffle it at the floor tom with towels for part of the song.

And yes, at such point that the tunes are mixed and ready for you to hear them, you’ll find out about it here too.  Home recording is a long & complex process, but patience is a virtue – except when it comes to gear.