Summer Lightning, Had Me A Bla-ast..

Enable javascript and get the Flash Player to view this video.

Last hight, after a 90+ degree weekened, it began thunder and lightning! Kind of a weird follow-up to a sweaty weekend. But, me being me, I grabbed my cam, and went out and got some footage of mother natures early fireworks show. Going purely by the 1-one-thousand, 2-one-thousand.. method of counting time between the lightning and it's thunderclap, it was about 4 miles away from here. Scott also mentioned to me this morning that I guess a group of 4 people nearly got hit by it.

... J, K, L, M, N, O, Pee.

So I was sitting at the table eating breakfast when I noticed some 20-something guy with a shaved head and a long black beard walk into our yard but off to the side of the house. So I get up, and go to the window to see what he's doing in our yard. He walks over to the edge of our backyard (pic), unzips his pants, and starts urinating.

The asshole is peeing in our yard!

So i'm on the back porch now, and I yell out "Hay!" but get no reaction. He's only about 20 feet away and I know he hears me. I say it again, louder this time, but still nuthin'. I say it once more, more angrily, and he continues to pee, but finally sends back a sarcastic "Sorry, had to pee.." with a cavalier tone like "What's your problem lady? I had to go.." I said, "What the hell, you don't just walk into and pee in peoples yards.." he shrugged, turned, and as he walked away said "Hay.. had to go.."

I'm weirded out just from the sheer oddness of it. What the hell is wrong with people?! Who does that?!

Even Better Then The Real Thing.

Enable javascript and get the Flash Player to view this video.

So we decided to go to the Point Defiance Zoo and give my new HD camcorder a little workout this weekend. The footage came out great, and I'm just in love with the whole recording to flash media thing. It's just so much nicer and easier to manage.

The catch is, AVCHD video is a highly compressed format which takes some serious computer power to edit, which means we need to upgrade my computer. But, I found a way to work around that a bit and got a video made anyway. It won't look as good as it could (certainly not HD) but you get the jist.

In A Crabby Mood.

So for a while now we've wanted to go check out a restaurant we'd heard about called The Crab Pot. It's a seafood place where they bring you a big bowl of crab legs, mussels, clams, shrimp, red potatoes and corn on the cob and just dump it all out on the table where everybody picks from the same pile. No plates, no silverware, just a wooden mallet, a shell cracker, and a small cutting board. It's not all that dignified I admit, but it is kinda fun.

We had planned to eat outside, but it was lightly raining off and on so we stayed indoors and got ourselves a window seat. Since the restaurant is located on a small man made lake, we could watch the ducks and geese swim around while we ate.

We tied our bibs, grabbed a tool in each hand, and were all ready for the fishy feast.

Then the food arrived. What's kind of odd about the place, is you HAVE to order 2 bowls of food. It makes sense in that one order wouldn't be very much, but at $30 a pop for the Alaskan (which is the one we wanted) it adds up fast, especially since Scott's mom was treating us for my birthday. Anyway, the food came and was dumped on the table. We grabbed our mallets and a crab leg and began hammering them to pieces like we were Mario in a real life version of Donkey Kong.

It was a little messy (moreso once I spilled my water and some butter, but hay, it's what I do..), but that's all part of the fun. And while the food was maybe a little overpriced, especially since I doubt it was all fresh, it was still a cool experience. We ate just about all of it save for a couple crab legs. You just get tired of trying to dig the meat out after a while. My only real complaint is the lack of lobster tails in the bucket. Of course that would skyrocket the price even more, but they're so much easier to eat, and just that much more delicious.

Best Birthday I've Had All Year.

I haven't posted in a little while, so I figured i'd share a couple of my recent birthday treasures.

The big surprise gift was Scott wanting to upgrade my old camcorder. I had a MiniDV cam, and it was nice, but it's over 4 years old and things have advanced significantly in the camcorder world since then. So after some research, I settled on the Canon Vixia HF100 Hi-Def cam. The footage is Hi-Def all right, I didn't really expect it to be as good as it is for a consumer cam this small, but I was pleasantly surprised. Plus, you don't need tapes anymore because it records straight to SD cards which is far more convienent and easier to manage. Now I just need to upgrade my computer so it can handle editing Hi-Def footage.


I also got the "I am Not A Paper Cup" coffee cup, and if you haven't heard of it, It's an insulated porcelain mug with a silicon lid that looks exactly like the tall white paper cups you get at your local coffee shop. The whole point of it is to be more environmentally friendly, though I really just like it for it's novelty.

And then Scott wrapped up the day by making me a delicious steak & crab legs dinner. And even though we had the right tools for the job, getting meat from crab legs is still a ton of work.

So despite the life odometer advancing a digit, it turned out to be a very good day.

..And DB Was It's Name-o

We got our vanity plates yesterday. As you may remember, we bought a Mini Cooper recently, and I made a spontaneous pun on the name before we even got it, (it's a Cooper, so I joked we should name it "D.B.") and it just sorta stuck. So, in the spirit of taking things too far, we ordered a vanity plate. Since "DB" was already taken, we got our alternate. It works.

So there you have it. The tale of DB Coop the car. And as if that wasn't interesting enough for ya, we live in the northwest, the same part of the country where our car's namesake jumped from the plane.

I know!