A mountain of trouble . . .

Posted on August 31, 2009 by alexis

I’m sneaking this in a lull in the action. While Alexis was off playing at Pike Street Market in Seattle, I was hip deep in bad mojo. Mount St. Helens might not be in the news much anymore, but that doesn’t mean she’s always quiet. And when she decides to rattle and hum, well, things get interesting for us. We’ve been on round-the-clock duty for the past several days. Right now, things have settled down, mop up is over, and Devlin is gradually letting us stand down. No going home yet, not until we know the dance is over and the band has gone home.

Anyway, I thought you might like to see some pictures of the mountain in all her glory. Remember, next spring will mark the 30th anniversary of the big erruption that blew the side of the mountain off. Even after all this time, very little in the way of vegetation has come back, leaving the place looking much the same despite the passage of time.

A handsome fellow we can all adore . . .

Posted on August 26, 2009 by alexis

Everyone, may I introduce Jackson, the newest guy in Bonnie’s life . . . . I’ll let her tell you more about him, but he’s a standard poodle and about 3 months old (I think). This is one guy DJ won’t mind sharing the limelight with. Alexis

There be Orcas!

Posted on August 25, 2009 by alexis

Okay, I’ve lived in Seattle long time and yet had never gone whale watching. I appreciate Alexis inviting me along on her adventure, even if it’s made all the other guys jealous. The day started off clear and a bit cool. The San Juan Islands are beautiful, and I’ve always loved watching sailboats on the Sound.

However, we ran into some serious fog out on the water, the kind where you can’t see more than a few yards in any direction. That makes it difficult for anyone to spot much of anything out on the water–including other boats. However, our intrepid captain was well in control of the situation. With the limited visibility, we kind of accepted that it was unlikely we’d see much of anything and resigned ourselves to just enjoying a day out on the water.

Boy, were we wrong! All of sudden, there they were–orcas! Up to four at a time! OMG, you’ve never seen anything so absolutely amazing. Alexis took pictures, but you guess how those turned out. I’ve posted one of the better ones–yes, the black dots about a third of the way across (going left to right) are orca dorsal fins. You might try clicking on the picture and see if that takes you to a bigger version so you can see it better. Blame it on the fog, though, it was hard to know when to snap the picture with such limited visibility. Besides, whales are sneaky. They cruise underwater for a long distance only to reappear where you’d least expect them. Luckily the cruise company posted a couple of great shots. Here’s the link: http://blog.island-adventures.com/ If that takes you to their home page, go to their Whale Report and look at the shots for August 24th.

The whales were playful–spy hopping (when they come out of the water vertically and look around), breaching, swimming on their backs. It was flat out amazing. One swam right under the boat in his back so we could see his black and white markings, then he flipped and surface just a few yards away. When he swam under the boat, it was right were Alexis was standing and looking down. She grinned for hours.

So that was my day on the water. Truly, I wish you’d all been there.

Lonzo

Ahoy, Lonzo!

Posted on August 24, 2009 by alexis

Okay, now I know I got to go whale watching with Alexis just a few weeks ago, but she’s going again and not taking me. However, I’m actually pleased that she’s taking my good buddy Lonzo on this trip. He might not admit it, but he’s still a bit off from his time in the lab last week. So the two of them are spending all day Monday back out on the Sound and looking for orcas and other creatures that live on and around the water.

He’s promised to post a bit about their adventure on Tuesday, Wednesday at the latest.

Sportswise, I’m bummed about the Chiefs losing, but the Seahawks won, so that’s good. The Mariners, though, lost both Saturday and Sunday. 12 games out doesn’t sound hopeful for the playoffs. Still, this season is soooooo much better than last year. Besides, the team is rebuilding from the ground up–new general manager, new coaches, and a whole lot of new players. There’s always next year, and I’ve seen spots of potential greatness in some of the new players they’ve brought up.

Well, I’ll check in off and on all week even though I’ll be sharing the spotlight with Lonzo. Turns out Alexis isn’t heading for Portland at the end of the week, so she’ll be popping in and out, too.

Hope everyone has a great start to their week–

all is right in my world . . .

Posted on August 17, 2009 by alexis

Yes, football is back. I love the heady combination of football games on the weekend with baseball to fill in the weekdays. Life is indeed good. The Seahawks won on Saturday and the Chiefs lost. So what else is new? Certainly not the Mariners losing at least the first two games to the Yankees. The cool thing is that although I had to listen to the Chiefs’ game on the computer Saturday evening, the NFL channel replayed the entire game on Sunday morning. It’s amazing how much more relaxing it was knowing they’d already lost. Of course, I had to drag my lazy self out of bed to watch it at 7 o’clock in the morning, but sacrifices must be made for the important things in life.

Of course, I wouldn’t say anything like that to Alexis right now. She finally managed to drag Greyhill Danby’s sorry ass across the finish line of his book. She needs a few days to polish and tweak, but essentially he got his HEA. I’m pretty sure he didn’t deserve one.

And does that mean she now has time for me? Oh, hell , no. She’s doing the next round of work on her precious Hunter’s book. Shees, what’s a guy got to do to get some attention around here? Not that I’m complaining. Nope, not me. I’m grateful for whatever few crumbs that Alexis tosses me. ;-D

Hope you all had a nice weekend end. We had to do some dancing down in the tunnels on Sunday night, if you get my drift. Lonzo will be Laurel’s guest for a day or two, but then he likes to be fussed over. Who doesn’t? I promised the jerk I’d stop by with food and the cribbage board later today.

Better get some work done—I like to set a good example for Trahern and Cullen, you know.

Alexis is at it again . . .

Posted on August 13, 2009 by alexis

Okay, I have to admit that Alexis has the strangest personal library. She has books on weapons, history, earthquakes, volcanoes, steamboats, and medieval gardening. She prefers to think her taste is eclectic. I think it’s plain weird, but then who am I to talk?

Anyway, today she was looking at pictures of Karl Urban and noticing his uncanny resemblance to me. How could she have not noticed that before now? Anyway, while she was browsing the net on him, she ran across a documentary film he was involved in producing called RECLAIMING THE BLADE. She gave one of those girly, “I HAVE GOT TO HAVE THIS!” squeals and broke out her well-worn credit card. She’s promised me popcorn if I’ll watch it with her when it comes in a week or so.

We’ll keep you posted on how it all turns out . . .

DJ
Here’s the description:

Reclaiming the Blade celebrates the culture and craft of swords and the Hollywood legends and academic warriors who wield them. The film explores the Medieval and Renaissance blade; a profound and beautiful object handcrafted by master artisans of old. Today, much of the history of the sword remains cloaked under a shadow of legend. Reclaiming the Blade highlights today s cinematic tribute to the beauty and necessity of the sword through films such as Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Chronicles of Narnia and The Pirates of the Caribbean.

Narrated by acclaimed Welsh actor John Rhys-Davies and produced with the support of Peter Jackson, Weta Workshop, Skywalker Sound and the Royal Armouries, this unique film brings to life our fascination with swords in popular media and the emergence of a worldwide movement to reclaim the ancient art of medieval and renaissance martial arts. Highly anticipated, Reclaiming the Blade traces the sword s true history throughout the ages and features the following talent:

Viggo Mortensen (Eastern Promises), Karl Urban (Borne Supremacy, JJ Abrams new Star Trek), Richard Taylor (LOTR, King Kong, Narnia), Bob Anderson (Hollywood Sword-master to Errol Flynn, Johnny Depp, Star Wars, etc), and legendary Illustrator John Howe (LOTR, Narnia).

The cutting-edge soundtrack to the film illuminates the story with an original orchestral score by composer David James Nielsen and pop/rock hits from the Doves, Yo La Tengo, The Dandy Warhols, and Juliana Hatfield, among others.

More of the same . . .

Posted on August 10, 2009 by alexis

Last week I promised to post some of the pictures I took on the whale watching tour with Alexis.. Unfortunately, Devlin kept me running all week, so I just now had time to upload them. I’m not all that happy with how they turned out–for one thing, the whales were too far away for my small zoom lens to pick up. So instead, I’m posting pictures of the San Juan Islands we cruised through and one of the ferries that service the folks who live on the islands.

THERE BE WHALES!

Posted on August 3, 2009 by alexis

Okay–I have officially retaken control of my blog. Alexis is busy writing the end of Grey’s book (like I care), and Sandor is . . . well, never mind. Let’s just say he’s busy and leave it at that.

SO–here’s what I did on Sunday. Alexis asked her dh for a whale watching trip for her birthday (which was about a month ago.) With my busy schedule (and hers), yesterday was the first chance we had to go. We booked passage on the Island Explorer III, through Island Adventure Cruises, in Anacortes, WA.

We left port about 9:30 in the morning to cruise through the beautiful San Juan Islands. Despite living in this area most of my life, I sometimes forget how amazing it is. As we made our way northward looking for the resident J, K, and L pods of Orcas, we saw all kinds of sea birds, bald eagles, and harbour seals. We also got some quick glimpes of dolphins–or porpoises, I’m not sure which. Cool by any name, though. Here’s a link to the cruise line’s photo album of critters in Puget Sound. http://www.island-adventures.com/gallery/index.php

As it turned out, we had to go an extra 20 miles north into Canadian waters in the Gulf Islands to find the main part of the pods. Here’s one of the pictures taken by the naturalist on board. From the whales they recognized, we actually saw a combination of a couple of the pods, or a super pod. They’d been sleeping for about an hour and a half before we got into the area and had just become active again. Several “spyhopped” which is what the one on the right is doing. They come straight up out of the water to get a good look around. Tails were splashing. You can tell the males from the females, at least at maturity, by the size of their dorsal fins. In males, the dorsal fin can be as much as six feet high! Here’s another shot– I took some pictures of the islands themselves that I’ll try to post later. I wanted to get these up this morning. I have one last one–we didn’t actually see this whale, but I thought you’d get a kick out of seeing her. Everyone, meet Alexis!

alexismorgan.com

Alexis Morgan

Monthly Archives: August 2009