Month: April 2004

A squat pitbull-type walks at the end of a taut clothesline leash, panting and slurping deep around the duo-tone tennis ball wedged into one side of her mouth. Stringy white slobber drips out over the ball once or twice per sidewalk square, but in a cute way.

The printable Beans for Breakfast calendar for May is here. This month’s calendar was prepared with invaluable feedback from Samantha. I thank her and I hope to renew the collaboration at some future date. If you would like to contribute to the June calendar, leave a comment to that effect, and I’ll select an entrant at random.

As always, the calendar is available in two formats. The first file is appropriate for reproduction on letter size paper, as used in the United States and Canada. The second file is optimized for the A4 paper format, as designed by the International Standards Organization/Technical Commitee 6/Work Group 8 under the guiding hand of The Creator, and as used by the rest of the world.

The calendar user accepts all responsiblity if he or she chooses to print from a file that is incompatible with his or her printer paper. Click here [   ]. Okay, Thanks.

Letter Size (104 kb PDF)
A4 Format (104 kb PDF)

A quick storm hit this evening. It toiled around a bit, downed a powerline on my block, and finished up in a few hours.

Samantha and I went down to Alki Beach yesterday. I’d never driven there before, but I found a shortcut and didn’t get lost at all.

A flock of birds flies out over the water, their wings flicker in unison. They turn back quick, changing colors. Their one side is dark, and the other is white. They zigzag in front of me five or seven times, finally settle on their first heading, and then they’re gone.

There’s another flock floating around out there. One dunks its head beneath the surface and disappears. The others follow, one every ten or fifteen seconds, until there’s one left. That last one just stays up on the water.

4/24/04

A man and a woman walk up to a small group of women standing on the corner outside R Place. The new girl wears a sarong, bikini top, and a straw hat decorated with fruit and leaves. The other girls are more conservatively dressed, though some are accessorized with frills that are consistent with the theme of their friend’s elaborate costume. The guy who just joined – white tanktop and jeans – is inflating a beach ball. One girl bounces back and forth, from one foot to the other, ina dance of impatience.

Now the corner is mobbed bya dozen men. With the exception of the bagpiper, they’re all wearing some combination of white polo shirt and khaki shorts or Hawaiian shirt and jeans. They overshoot the club’s entrance, mingle briefly with the others, and then find the door.

The guy gives the now inflated beach ball to one of the girls and crosses the street toward Hot Mama’s Pizza, where I’m finishing a slice. At some point, the number of girls in the group is reduced to two — the girl with the hat (now holding the beach ball) and another (who is blowing up another beach ball). I finish my pizza and walk out onto the sidewalk (forgetting my backpack). The girl in the hat is calling out to someone that I don’t see, “I didn’t have my ID.”

Today…

I took a Pez dispenser with me when I moved out of the house where I lived during my first year in Seattle. I may have stolen it; I wasn’t sure if it had belonged to one of my housemates or if it had been left behind by some forgotten housemate.

I bought some refills and kept it around in the new place. Then one morning, while I was fixing myself some cereal or tea or something, I spied it over on the kitchen table. I couldn’t remember if it was loaded or not.

I picked the Pez dispenser up and considered it. I could tell nothing by its weight — a full Pez dispenser feels much the same as an empty one. I could not detect the degree of tension on the spring inside the chamber based on outward appearance. Light sometimes shines through the plastic of lighter colored dispensers, revealing the shadow of the candy inside. But the light did not permeate the gray-blue plastic of this dispenser. So I pushed the head back. It was an experiment. I didn’t have a strong desire to eat Pez at that moment; I just wanted to know if there was a Pez.

I noticed the Pez dispenser on the kitchen table again the next morning, and I couldn’t remember whether there’d been Pez in it or not. So I pushed Batman’s head back again and a Pez came out or it didn’t.

These are the pictures I submitted for the Seattle/Tacoma photobloggers group show that TYD is organizing.

It wasn’t as hard to pick out the better photos as I thought it would be. That said, I didn’t have the self-restraint to choose fewer than five photos, the maximum number that she asked for. If you’re a photoblogger or fotologger in the Puget Sound area, you should think about sending her some photos. The information is here.