One night early

Mwahahaha!

Dev's jack o' lantern

My jack o' lantern

Line o' lanterns

Today's awesome t-shirt

Perk of working at a computer shop

:-)

Mt Hood sunrise

It's hard to see in this picture but Mount Hood looked very Mount Doom
this morning.

Sunrise over Portland

New bike report

Four days with the new bike have finished. It feels slow with just 3 gears, but I have a set of wheels with an 8 speed internally geared hub which should take care of the power spread. The seat will be chucked in favor of a Brooks leather saddle. The geometry and handling seem good. And the bike is just fun to ride, if not quite as zippy as my Bianchi.I'm still working my way through all the adjustments and really should have it in at a shop for a basic tune up soon, since it is almost a year old.

Personal Record

I got three (3) 165 pound front squats at the gym on Monday. I felt in control and strong through the set. So I felt pretty good about that.

[big grin]

New ride

Picked this up used on Friday night. I'm gonna try to turn it into a
winter commuter and general fun bike.

Dev refusing to smile

At Lisa and Sean's going away party.

Another contest - this one for a journal

Even though I only jopurnal and write sporadically, I have a bit of a journal fetish. I really like the aesthetics of Moleskine journals. They just have a great feel and weight. The "history" of the journal (augmented for maximum marketing impact) adds to the aura of the brand. But they are expensive.

I started digging around and looking for other brands of journals. And then I found Black Cover.

So I've been following this website for a while now. The guy reviews all the "Moleskine like" pocket journals that he can get his hands on. I get to live vicariously through his reviews. His standards are quite a bit higher than mine, which is good. When he gives high marks to a journal, I know it's pretty dang good. The blog also saves me time in looking for new brands to try.

Well, now he has a contest. I can win a set of journals by posting about the website here on my blog. And I've linked him in the side bar with my followed blogs. That gets me some entries in the contest. But if all of you who read this click through to Black Cover and generate the most number of hits to his website, then I get an extra credit entry in the contest. So get clicking!

And thanks!

Republicans are NOT fiscal conservatives

How many ways can you say it?

Fuzzy caterpillar at the dog park

Thought I'd share.

Pictures from last Sunday

Took me a while to post these.

Breakfast to cheer our marathon-running friends Shirley and Sean.

Beating the rain

I got home about 10 minutes ahead of the rain. Funny how the clouds looked static on my ride home. I didn't feel much wind. Then I get home, and I do a couple of things on the computer. I look out the window and the road is soaked. Good (and lucky) timing on my part I guess.

Clouds over west hills

From Willamette blvd

Clouds over the west hills

From Willamette blvd

Clouds to the west

On my way home

HPL Film Fest wrap up

I had a great time. Instead of a listing of the things I watched, I'll just say that I'm glad I bought a weekend pass and "ate my fill" at the trough. I didn't stay all the way through the end tonight; I got home at 1:30 am this morning. Then Dev and I hosted breakfast for a lot of folks from the gym so we could go cheer Sean and Shirley on their run in the Portland marathon (pics coming soon). I made it through the first session at the film festival today and then just hit the wall. I listened to some good discussion on pop culture and Lovecraft, on Robert E Howard and his Solomon Kane character, and one more spate of comments and funniness from Mike Mignola.

And I won a DVD by knowing some Lovecraft trivia.

So a successful weekend. Now time for pizza, a DVD at home (no, not the one I won) and then the sweet release of sleep.

I won a prize

Re-Animator DVD!

Tiki with John and Jetgirl

ST Joshi question and answer

Bad light. But that's the man. Good speaker. Easy to see why he's the
authority on H P.

Vendor Hall at HPL Film Fest

Good crowd.

HPL film festival day 2

Lovecraft Film Fest night 1

First, I clearly need more practice mobile blogging.

One post the entire night I'm there.

And no pictures?

Seriously.

So, first up tonight I saw "Hellboy" with an intro and a Q&A session from Hellboy creator Mike Mignola. Funny guy. Good answers to questions posed. Best question of the night: "Did you intentionally use Lovecraft in the mythos for Hellboy?" Answer: "No." Mignola said he scoured creation myths for inspiration. He found one that he hijacked, pruned and face-lifted for Hellboy. Resemblance to Lovecraftian mythos critters is coincidental/subconscious.

Next up, I watched the Shorts Block 2. Uneven quality, but generally entertaining. There were two wholly original pieces and a Poe-inspired film and a music video. The rest of the shorts came pretty much from Lovecraft's writings.

Hopefully more pictures from tomorrow's festival happenings.

At the film fest

Waiting for Mignola to come out for a QA priory to Hellboy. The vendors have a pretty good assortment of Cthuliana. Sighco has some very tempting workshirts and hoodies.

Fall's here

Raining.

Lots.

{Sigh}

I wasn't ready just yet.....

Tellin' stories

So I used to be a huge fantasy/sci-fi literature junkie. And one of my favorite authors in the genre is H.P. Lovecraft. I first read him in high school after checking one of his books out of the school library, of all places. I was hooked. His dark universe of implacable and coldly indifferent forces mesmerized me. Reading him led to the first time I had trouble turning the lights off to go to sleep.

I wrote my college thesis on Lovecraft's universe.

While I don't crack the spines very often, I own the hard-bound edition of the complete works of Lovecraft.

And now I live in a city that has a film festival started

in the hope that H.P. Lovecraft would be rightly recognized as a master of gothic horror and his work more faithfully adapted to film and television.

The H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival.

And I just bought a weekend pass for the show. If you're going, then lemme know. If you want to go, lemme know. I'll be there.

Foggy morning commute

Sun breaking through fog onto downtown.

Foggy morning commute

Esplanade in fog.

Foggy morning commute

Steel bridge in the fog.

Foggy morning commute

Broadway bridge disappears into fog.

Foggy morning commute

Highway 405 swallowed by fogbank.

Foggy morning commute

Willamette road

Foggy morning commute