The Thingbeard

I spent the winter and unusally cold spring working on vfx for The Thing and as OT wore on and the weather stayed bleak and grey, I decided to try and develop a beard worthy to take on The Thing itself. See file photo below.
And he was bronze- his great red-bronze beard, the heavy hair that matched it. The gnarled, corded hands gripping, relaxing, gripping and relaxing on the table planks were bronze. Even the deep-sunken eyes beneath heavy brows were bronzed. - description of Macready from the original story text.Clearly I had some difficulty with bronzed and heavy-haired bit, but vfx breeds nothing if not 'gnarled' and 'deep-sunken.' Then I read the text a bit further and found the resemblance went just as far for the creature: ...from a face ringed with writhing, loathsome nest of worms, blue, mobile worms that crawled where hair should grow-So today in preparation for a new job and the start of spring, the whole beast was shorn off, leaving only a few photos (the one above will likely be the cover of my acoustic guitar album should vfx fall through financially) and a tale or winter horror.
But in memory of the great facial hair of yesterday, you should check out this link and vote for your favorite :P

Spring Birds

The last few weekends we've had some good luck getting close to some special birds. These Harlequin Ducks are typically very shy and reclusive, but one day at low tide we were able to get within a few dozen feet of a group resting on some tidal rocks.
On the same walk we were wandering down one of the many forested paths of Stanley Park when we heard a tapping in the bush and stopped just in time to spot a Pileated Woodpecker foraging for grubs on some rotten stumps and logs. Better yet, it quickly turned out to be a pair out together and we watched them for several minutes before they flew off.
The first batches of goslings are just starting to be out and about, with several groups of slightly different ages all scampering around some shallow pools near Lost Lagoon. These ones were particularly cute, running around behind their parents and being generally charming.

Crowd Control

One Saturday a few weeks back, Kathryn and I were heading out for a morning walk and our neighborhood conspired to make things a bit more unusual than we were expecting. First off there was an apartment fire a few blocks away from us which was being put out though smoke was billowing all over the place. We've seen a few aparment fires and one at the docks in the last few years, so this wasn't in itself THAT surprising.
The fact that it coincided with the date of the Vancouver Sun Run and that there were 50000+ people now swarming through the exact area people were trying to fight a fire in did complicate things slightly.
Though in the end it was only a minor complication and its hats off all around to the Vancouver Fire Department for casually rerouting a torrent of runners out of their way and saving a building at the same time.
Kathryn read later that the fire was believed to have been caused by an elderly occupant leaving candles unattended, which once again serves as a warning to us all to be careful with open flames left alone in your home. Much like alligators, they can start off cute but they grow without warning and can make your apartment life awful.