Last week I began to re-read Steven King’s Dark Tower series, a seven book epic he begun in 1970 and ultimately finished in 2003. I read the first few novels in the series in the early 80s while on tour with my band. In those days we frequently spent several hours each day in the tour van driving between gigs. Consequently I was a voracious reader on tour, going through books every few days and always keeping an eye open for used bookstores along the way where I could trade old for new. I had read a number of Steven King’s novels and picked up the first installment in the series out of curiosity. Pretty quickly I reached the point where I had read the completed installments in the series and had to wait for the next book to be published. Unfortunately just a few books were completed and when he stopped writing them.
In 1999 when the author was struck by a van, it was a scary moment for his fans. Once it was clear he would recover, my concern shifted to the well-being of the book series. Would we ever know the ending of the story? One of my personality traits is that I am fiercely loyal. This extends to family, friends, bands, jobs, activities, books and even video games. I’m such a bulldog for completing books and games that I will slog through to the end even if I’ve lost interest, simply because I can’t leave it unfinished. This book series was something that held my interest and I really wanted to continue the journey of reading them.
Fortunately King returned to writing the series with renewed vigor. Apparently he decided the story was his life’s work and needed to be finished. The final book arrived in 2003. Because it had been so long, I started to read the earliest books again in 2000 When I finished the series in 2004 I had a strange conflux of emotions. If you have read the books you may understand my meaning.
And so I have decided to revisit the entire story from end to end. I am nearly finished with the first book The Gunslinger and have discovered strong elements of foreshadowing that I hadn’t picked up on previously. King weaves a good tale, and I’ve always enjoyed reading his books. Steven King fans will discover the Dark Tower series is threaded with references to other books he has written; familiar characters and places are woven into the universe of the Dark Tower. If you are up for the adventure, this series is worth the time. A few years ago I had the opportunity to hear the author speak and answer questions. One member of the audience expressed their gratitude to him for completing the series and I echo that sentiment: thankee-sai.
UPDATE: This afternoon I was reading Wikipedia to refer to something about The Gunslinger. I’m surprised to discover that J.J. Abrama (Lost) is considering a movie adaptation of the series. It seems pretty unlikely he would undertake such a huge endeavor until the Lost series is completed. Still, quite amazing to me. I wondered if anyone would ever attempt to convert this epic tale into a screenplay.
Snow has a strange way of dulling our senses. Familiar objects are robbed of their shape and color. Sound travels poorly. Nothing smells or feels normal. It’s akin to a dream… can’t run… can’t hear… can’t see… nothing is right. The yard and the road and the ditch and the driveway were impossible to identify individually. It’s all just white. When we left for Seattle last week, my car was a formless hump in a featureless plane. The house was covered in ten inches of snow which softened the roofline. The back yard, so carefully landscaped, was blanketed. The top of the birdbath was just barely visible. Fortunately, all that stuff is capable of surviving a good snowstorm. When we left for the holidays I was a little concerned about the weight on the roof, but beyond that I was confident all would be fine.
Upon return from Montana we found the snow had largely melted away. My car, the house, the yard… all back in their usual shapes and colors. Sometime in the last week all that snow turned into thousands of gallons of water and went… well, somewhere! Our house is fairly well elevated and water generally drains away without much problem. But I know the melting snow must have introduced a huge influx of water into municipal storm drains.
Snow is pretty, but I’m glad we don’t get much here. Life is surreal enough without it.
One of my favorite places to be for Christmas is in Montana, visiting family and friends. It’s crisp and cold during the holidays, with clean mountain air and beautiful nights. As much as I love Seattle, this is definitely one of my favorite parts of the country. We were pretty lucky to get a flight out of Seattle on Tuesday. Many of the flights were cancelled due to the snow and ice. Our original flight was cancelled on Monday evening, and we got up at 4:30 AM the following morning to drive to the airport and get on the standby list for the next flight to Great Falls. We found out we were pretty far down the list, and the flight had been oversold to begin with… eek!
Some of the inbound flights had been cancelled, which isn’t good for those passengers who had hoped to make a connecting flight to Montana. But their misfortune allowed us to get seats on the only flight that went out that day.
We’re enjoying our visit and hopefully our flight home will be much less eventful. Merry Christmas to our wonderful friends and family! We look forward to seeing you soon. Stay safe and warm today, and give hugs to everyone around you!
Today I was doing some practicing on the Warr guitar and realized I hadn’t gotten around to posting any pictures of it yet. So here is a picture of the front and back of the instrument. I have a ten string “Artist” model with 18v Bartolini pickups. The body is West African Zebrawood (species Microberlinia) and the is neck maple / walnut laminae with a Wenge fretboard. It’s still string in the standard manner with the bass strings reversed. I have ordered a few sets of new strings. Once they arrive I’ll drop the instrument off with Mike Lull and have him cut a new nut so I can reverse the bass strings.
Overall I think the instrument is really lovely. The wood is beautiful and it has a very solid percussive tone. And it’s pretty heavy. I haven’t decided on the processing signal path yet. I plan to use my POD XTLive to process the melody side, and I need to find another processor to manage the bass side. My assumption is that I’ll need a less complex processor for the bass. We’ll see…
We just measured the accumulated snow on our deck, and we have TEN INCHES of snow! This is Seattle and that seems impossible. It’s beautiful and inconvenient. I’m really ready for it to go away now.
One of the interesting side effects of having fresh snow on the ground is that we can clearly see the animal tracks going through our back yard. Over the years here we’ve seen dozens of raccoons, innumerable squirrels and birds of all sorts. Not surprising since I have bird feeders in the front and back yards, and several bird houses as well. Birds are the modern-day descendents of dinosaurs, and until we resurrect the dinos, this is as good as it gets for me. But in the fresh snow, we’ve positively identified the tracks of a fox. We’ve suspected a few of them were living in the woods behind our house.
Fascinating stuff. Now let’s get back to summer please.
Last night’s storm was indeed cold and windy, but we’re managing pretty well. I’m looking forward to this crazy weather going away. Seattle doesn’t have the appropriate infrastructure for snow management, and for good reason: we generally don’t get much snow in the Northwest. I am impressed that the downtown Seattle streets are generally cleared. In my neighborhood the roads have an inch of solid ice, topped with four inches of snow. I’ve never seen a snowplow anywhere near my neighborhood, but I’m amazed that the streets have been sanded at least once a day.
Hope everyone is staying warm and safe out there. Happy holidays. Happy solstice!
Well, here it comes. According to all kinds of weather feeds and the Cliff Mass weather blog, we’re in for 24+ hours of the most intense winter storms Seattle has seen in a long time. In my neighborhood there is already five inches of snow and it’s about 20 degrees and dropping. The snow is beginning to fall again, with as much as eight inches predicted overnight along with 50 MPH wind storms, followed tomorrow by freezing rain and even lower temperatures.
If nothing else, we’re going to have a comfy night in the Tiki Bar. I’m opening a bottle of good wine and cranking up the gas fireplace.
And we still have Montana to look forward to in a few days… currently -30 where we’re headed…
It seems certain “the weather” is the #1 local blog topic this week. Generally speaking, I’m not fond of cold weather, and really don’t enjoy snow all that much. It’s lovely to look at and can be briefly fun to romp in, but it is miserable for driving / walking / living. This Seattle snow storm is described as the worst we’ve had in 20 years, and I would concur.
Yesterday’s adventure: I tried to drive to work. I ordinarily take the bus, but our annual holiday potluck was scheduled for this day and I had items to take. I managed to make it to Hwy 509 and got stuck in a massive backup. The radio weatherman was saying the roads were very bad and things were expected to get worse with falling snow. After an hour I had progressed about three miles, so I exited and returned home to work from my home office all day. And THEN it snowed another four inches.
Today’s adventure: I made it to the local transit center and found a large crowd of commuters waiting for a bus. Apparently many of them had already been there for a long time. The buses were running at about 50% total route capacity, and all of the articulated (double length) buses are garaged due to poor handling in the snow. So the buses currently running are smaller and less frequent. My morning commute involved 45 minutes of waiting at the station and scrambling to cram onto a bus that was already over capacity – we left a number of disappointed people behind and at all subsequent stops the driver told waiting commuters the bus had no room. The trip usually takes about 25 minutes. This morning it took over 90 and I wound up standing the whole time, shouldering a heavy laptop and somewhat heavy commuter bag.
The good news is that downtown Seattle is really pretty clear. The roads have been ploughed and sanded, and surprisingly we seem to have managed this unusual storm without the usual apocalyptic “close everything down” reaction. My office is very quiet today, and I may seize the opportunity to do a bit of “surprise redecorating” for selected individuals… I wonder if anyone around here has a good stock of “my little pony” merchandise…
It’s been a while since I took music lessons on a regular basis. Next month I hope to begin meeting with an instructor to stimulate new expansion in my approach. It’s interesting to be at a point where I feel my technical facility is fairly good, but that my creative cycle is puttering. So I guess I am in need of a software update to make better use of the hardware. It’s a little daunting to be approaching an advanced musician for coaching, and I am honored that he has time and inclination. I guess this means I’ll be spending a lot more time in my music room at home….
Today WordPress announced the released of v2.7 “Coltrane”. It looks like a major step forward for the blogging engine, but I’m going to stick with v2.6.5 for another month. Last time I “early adopted” a release was v2.5 and it caused me some serious headaches. Those of us who installed the update on day 1 discovered a number of bugs that required multiple point-update patches to resolve. The whole experience amounted to an unplanned scramble to put our sites back into working order. All that being said, it looks like they’ve incorporated some attractive new features into this version of the engine, and I appreciate the WordPress crew for accomplishing two major revisions of the code base in 2008. It’s a great tool and I continue to enjoy it.
I’m especially intrigued by the statement:
“…this may be the last time you ever have to manually upgrade WordPress again. We heard how tired you were of doing upgrades for yourself and your friends, so now WordPress includes a built-in upgrade that will automatically notify you of new releases, and when you’re ready it will download them, install them, and upgrade your blog with a single click.”
Yes indeed! The current site update process involves the careful deletion of certain files within the site folders, copying new files/folders onto the server, and hoping it worked. Building an automated updating system is big improvement and I’ll look forward to having it in place… that is… when I install this major update in a month or so…
