Fen's Photo Journal

This weekend I've been over in Yakima with my mom, just sort of roaming around, exploring the area and spending time together (Yakima is right around halfway between where we each live, so it works well). Today we headed down to Toppenish to see the murals -- there are 73 of them painted on buildings scattered around the town, detailing the history of the area. Very cool! And I got some great photos... but the today's photo was actually taken out in White Swan, WA.

( Smoke-filled streets. )

On Sunday, I tried my hand at my first goat's milk based cheesecake... and it turned out pretty well!

( Mmmmmm... Desserty goodness. )

On Friday evening, we finally got down to the Seattle Center to see the Harry Potter Exhibition! Sadly, they did not let us take photos of any of the props in the exhibit, but here's a shot (taken with my little pocket camera) of the Exhibition marquee at the Pacific Science Center.

( Soaring archways in the night. )

And no visit to the Seattle Center is complete without a shot of the Space Needle!

( Glowing in the dark. )

Last week, the brakes on my car started letting out a horrid squealing sound whenever I tried using them... and since I was within 500 miles of needing the 90,000 mile service, we went ahead and took it in to get everything done at once. This meant that I was without my car for a few days (since they couldn't get us in until after the holiday) and had to drive Rackham's MINI Cooper!

( A feeling of power... )

I've meant to take a photo of this for awhile... it's the sort of thing that seems almost inevitable when geeks get married.

( Darth Vader's hamper? )

As I mentioned yesterday, Rackham and our friend Mekle have started designing their own Geocoins. For anyone not familiar with these things, in Geocaching there are items that can be tracked out at Geocaching.com. They're meant to be placed in caches and found by cachers who then move them on to other caches, usually with a goal in mind (e.g. "visit Antarctica and return to a particular cache" or "visit caches in all 50 States" or something like that). These items can be Travelbugs, which usually have a trackable number on a dogtag meant to be attached to another item or they can be Geocoins, which can have quite elaborate designs. A lot of people actually collect Geocoins and will buy them to keep, not to send out into the world to bounce from cache to cache (and usually disappear eventually when someone decides to keep them instead of logging and moving them).

( Road's End Geocoin. )

Sadly, Tuesday night's snow didn't last...

( Slush everywhere. )

Saturday brought an absolutely brilliant sunset. Taradaktyl put it best when she described it as: "Late afternoon clouds all turning pink and gold while the sky is going cobalt blue."

( Beautiful fractals. )

29 December 2010: ( Lights on Temple Square. )

30 December 2010: ( We return home to graupel!!! )

31 December 2010: ( Roasting marshmallows. )

1 January 2011: ( Numfar loves Rackham. )

2 January 2011: ( Christmas card collection. )

3 January 2011: ( Fifteen Pounds of M&Ms. )

4 January 2011: ( Cauliflower and Roasted-Red Pepper Chowder. )

On Monday, we headed out to do some shopping and ended up stopping by Bed Bath & Beyond in Orem. We got a bit of a surprise when we rounded a corner and were confronted by this:

( Now that's a lot of stuff! )