Why "News" annoys me

Just heard about this: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/science.1190719

Published yesterday. It's totally not in my field, but I still feel comfortable saying that this is the most significant news of the day.

I wanted to hear more about the responses to this so I went to cnn.com
Front page, top news stories - nothing.

Ok, I get it. I'm a nerd. I care more about nerdy things than the average person. Fine. I'll go to the science and technology section.

Nothing.

Though, apparently, facebook can predict who you will date next. Talk about ground breaking research!

To be fair - there is a link to this http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1990836,00.html in the health section.

Oh, and thanks TED! http://www.ted.com/talks/craig_venter_unveils_synthetic_life.html

Brandi (a.k.a. The Surprise Date Night)

A month ago I mentioned an upcoming surprise date night that I was going to try to get Michael to blog about. As that hasn't happened, I thought I would go ahead and explain.

I got us tickets to see Brandi Carlile at the Crocodile Cafe (The Croc). I think the show sold out in a couple of hours and it is a total fluke that I was online and noticed it in that window. The Croc is a small, but famous, venue and happens to be the first gig Brandi got in Seattle. She played from XOBC, but it was mostly a requests show. Very fun. We were center stage, fourth row back. (Is it a row if it is standing room only?) It was awesome. I never thought we would get to see her in a venue that small. I mean - the girl sold out the symphony hall in a matter of minutes. (I'm not exaggerating, though that doesn't count that symphony patrons had an early crack at the tickets.)

Here are pics from a photographer that was standing next to me in the crowd.

Surprisingly enough - one of my favorite moments from the evening was sans Brandi. The twins did a duet of The Sound of Silence. There was a humorous quality to it since it was clearly not planned and they struggled to remember the words. But, mostly it was hauntingly beautiful. Their voices are so similar (They are twins after all) that it was like listening to someone sing a duet with themselves.

Anyway- I know most of you aren't as nuts about Brandi as I am and so you probably don't care about this. But, really a blog is half diary and I just wanted to write this special night down.

Kate's Wedding

Last weekend was my cousin Kate's wedding. It was so beautiful. Anyone not in my family will probably not be all that interested in my poor quality videos, but the pictures are good.

I shot in segments because I wasn't sure what length video my camera would take. Sorry for the poor quality and shaky hands. (For some reason, water kept getting in my eyes.)

New Albums

http://picasaweb.google.com/vickirwilliams/TulipFields

http://picasaweb.google.com/vickirwilliams/MaxwellSmart#
(Old Max album at http://picasaweb.google.com/vickirwilliams/MaxwellSmart200809)

Shaun the Sheep

I recently got Max a tuffies sheep because he loves stuffed toys and because the tuffies toys actually tend to last a while.


This photo is actually of Max's girlfriend, Maddie, chewing on Shaun's ear. You won't see a picture of Max like this. That isn't to say that he hasn't chewed on Shaun's ear. At first, he liked Shaun quite a bit. Then, Michael started humping Max with Shaun and chasing him around the apartment with Shaun and tying a leash to Shaun so he could animate him. Now, Max is afraid of Shaun. Very afraid...

Bad Dog

A while ago (yes, I'm behind on blogging again...) I was getting a stack of stuff together to take to good will. With this was going to be some of Max's on clothes that don't fit him anymore. Well, he decided that since they were HIS clothes, that it would be ok for him to topple over the pile of goodwill stuff, pull out his clothes (and maybe a plastic hanger) and chew on them a while. The yellow thing in the photo above WAS a rain jacket.



Does he look guilt ridden?



Yeah, I didn't think so either.

PHC + BC = Bliss

Saturday we went to the live taping / performance of Prairie Home Companion. If you missed it, you can listen to the show here: http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/programs/2010/04/03/

It was a great show, as always. And it is always fun to hear Garrison's take on your hometown. It was also interesting, having been with him Thursday night - to see how many topics of conversation made it into the show. I wonder how last minute his sketch writing is! For example, in the first show they did here (http://origin-prairiehome.publicradio.org/programs/2010/03/27/) the weekend before, he brought up Seattle manners. Well, Thursday night the audience got into a dialog with him about the subject and a woman mentioned how after moving from NYC, she had a hard time not jumping in an answering people once she understood what they were asking. Well, what do you know, two days later he's up on stage performing a skit about someone moving from NYC and needing to learn not to interrupt people.

They were in town for two weekends and we sort of arbitrarily got tickets to the second show. Later, the line-ups came out and our most favorite musical artist, Brandi Carlile (local, but you should still consider yourself uncultured if you don't know who she is), was going to be playing the first show. I was distraught. We had gotten tickets to the WRONG show! Well, turns out Garrison was quite taken with her and decided they needed to have her back on the show. So, they added in an encore performance at the last minute and we got to see her after all! Hurray! What a great surprise.

Now, how many of you guys noticed that they last post was by Michael? Wasn't it great to hear from him? Shouldn't he post more? I'm taking him out for a surprise date night tomorrow night. (Surprise = what we are doing, not the existence of the date night.) Maybe I can get him to blog about that...

An Evening with Tom and Garrison

One of our favorite radio shows is in Seattle this weekend: A Prairie Home Companion, which broadcasts Saturdays on NPR. The local station arranged a fund raiser Thursday evening which was to include an informal question-and-answer session with the show's host, Garrison Keillor, and local celebrity chef Tom Douglas. We found out about this early and managed to get tickets. Tom was bringing the wine and hors d'oeuvres...sign us up!

It was a great evening. The event was much smaller than we had expected, there couldn't have been more than 150 people there. There were drinks and bites for about a half hour, and Garrison and Tom were milling around and chatting with the attendees. Vicki and I didn't strike up conversations, but had we had fun watching some of the others snapping pictures and asking for autographs. We caught a glance of Garrison holding out some lady's disposable camera to take a picture of the two of them together. The food, of course, was incredible.

When the questions and answers started, Garrison naturally took the mic and started quizzing Tom about his career and about northwest cuisine. Turns out when Tom is interviewing a new chef for a job, one of his questions is, "what would you prepare for a date night if you wanted to get lucky?" Garrison's answer was "nothing, I'd rather she be hungry."

The questions from the audience ranged from the insightful ("How much of the Prairie Home Companion sketches are scripted, and how much is improvisation?") to the outright absurd ("What do the two of you think about global warming?") We learned that Tom's favorite thing to cook is crab cakes, and Garrison's is sweet corn fresh from the garden (2 minutes to the pot, max). Tom started his career in Seattle because as a young chef he was on a cross-country road trip and this is where his car broke down. Garrison once lived in Copenhagen and finds it difficult to carry on small-talk in Danish.


Tomorrow we're going to the live weekly performance! We did this once before in Charlottesville and it was a lot of fun.