Carnival Rides

Every year on the weekend nearest May 5th -- Cinco de Mayo -- Portland hosts a carnival on the waterfront. Coincidentally, Kathy and I (with Marybeth and Amanda) visited Saturday Market, which was adjacent to the carnival.

Although the rides looked stable and well-constructed, I thought it would be interesting to post an impressionistic view of the Portland Cinco de Mayo carnival's Merry-Go-Round, reflected in the windows of the Portland Fire Bureau:



Click on the picture to bring up the larger size, then ask yourself if those supporting struts are sturdy enough, or not. :-)

It was warm as Kathy and I strolled along the waterfront, making it tempting to join these children in the Fountain:



But we resisted, and stayed dry. :-)

Rainbow on the ground

Here is something you don't see every day: a rainbow on the ground:



Last Sunday Kathy and I dragged Marybeth and Amanda on a Mother's Day trip to the Columbia Gorge. At the time we happened to be at the Crown Point Vista House, a rainstorm blew in from the north, inspiring the rainbow to make an appearance. You can see that bigger context here:



By the way, this was the same vantage point where we could see snow on the low-lying hills -- in May!

The Starving Artist's Blog

I finally figured out what to use this blog for. I can pretend to be a Starving Artist who makes a meager living by taking photos that other people might want to put on a wall somewhere. Or, maybe people will just view the photos once or twice and feel that their lives have been enriched by a few molecules of visual enjoyment.

In any case, these postings will contain photos that struck my fancy, yet aren't ones that I would broadcast to friends and family members via an emailed Flickr link -- which I often do for weddings or other events.

The previous blog posting has photos from the Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm. For this blog entry, I will show a set of recent photos of the mountains outside Langley. When we helped Marybeth move after graduation from Trinity Western University, the nice weather provided some spectacular blue-sky mountain vistas:



If you would like to see larger versions of the photos, here is a full-window view.

By the way, I'm not planning to post these "artistic shots" in full-resolution. Let me know if you would like me to email you the full-res version of something.

I'll add more artistic photo albums as time permits, assuming anyone cares among my very small fan base. :-)

Flickr

I haven't yet been able to connect a Flickr slideshow to a blog entry; only Picasaweb slideshows. And even they are inflexible regarding size. (You choose the size when you insert the embedded HTML, and there doesn't seem to be a good way for the viewer to say, "Hey -- I'd like to break out to a full-size Picasaweb window for this show.")

Sigh.

Let's try this slideshow thingy...

So, I take more photos than the average bear, but haven't posted any of them to this blog. (Not that it matters, since no one actually reads this blog!) In any case, it occurs to me that I should at least check out the technology that allows slideshows to be embedded in a blog.

So, here we go:



Okay, now how about a bigger version:



And the tiniest version:

The Hobbits are coming!

Having recently finished re-reading "The Hobbit," it occurred to me that surely they must consider making a movie from that book, akin to the Lord of the Rings series. So, I looked it up on IMDB.

Not only are they thinking about it, plans are well underway! Here is the info:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0903624/

Although Peter Jackson will probably not personally direct the new film (and its sequel), he will be an executive producer.

In any case, I'm looking forward to visiting Middle Earth again, through the magic of film!

A real person!

Well, well, well. I guess I am a real person after all! The Omnipotent Google Computers had determined that my blog fit the profile of computer-generated spam, and locked me out for over a week, "pending review by Google staff."

I guess they performed that review, because I can now post again. However, they did not bother telling me that my person-hood had been affirmed, even though they said they would. Oh well.