I’ve just uploaded another old photo album. This one contains 124 photos, and many of them contain people I don’t recognize. If you can help identify anyone not listed in a caption, please add a comment to the photo or let me know. I’d appreciate it.
I just uploaded Old Photo Album #9. 84 photos in this set. Includes Harold, Donna, Beth, Penny Clifford, Clayton, Paul, Paula, Karen and one of her exes (Bert) and many others. Also includes a few photos of Rex and Prince, two of the dogs we had.
It’s a little easier for me to scan a whole album now, so you should be seeing many more of these old photos from me real soon. I can insert a flash drive in my MFP and scan whole album pages directly to the flash drive, so I don’t have to leave the scanner for each photo or each page any more. Then I move the flash drive to the PC and process all of the pages at once.
We celebrated Kevin’s birthday on Sunday with a Pool Party at Best Western Harborside. Everyone had a great time, especially those that swam! The kids really wore me out in the water. Here’s a ton of photos we took.
Well, we’re in the deep-freeze part of Winter here in Wisconsin, when we’re lucky if we see no temperature at all outside—a.k.a. “0 degrees”, and everyone debates the differences between “Wind chill” and “Feels Like” calculations. The Kenosha Unified School District has a strict policy of closing schools when “Either -20 degrees Fahrenheit sustained temperature or -34 degrees below zero or lower Fahrenheit sustained wind-chill,” so there’s something to look forward to.
Socks got stuck in the backyard the other day. He ran out to the back fence to argue with the neighbor’s dog, and when I checked on him he was walking back to the house and halfway across the yard he started slowing down, slower and slower, then he stopped, looked up at me sadly and just whimpered. I called him a few times and he couldn’t move. I put on my shoes and went out there and carefully pulled his frozen feet from the icy snow, then carried him inside. It only took him a few moments to recover though, and he was back to normal again.
Our forever-crumbling sidewalk around our house constantly fills with melted snow water when the temperature gets a little warmer in the daytime, then freezes to a solid, smooth surface at night, causing us a lot of problems with trying to walk across it, and worrying that someone (either us or a stranger walking by) will slip and fall, causing an injury. We salt it daily too, but the salt washes away when it melts in the daytime. We’ve sure spent our share of money on 10-lb. bags of salt, and have even had to use table salt as a last resort once in awhile.
At least both cars have started every time so far this season. The colder it gets though, the more we long to make our move to Arizona. It’s going to happen, we just haven’t set a date yet. It’s like getting married. There are so many things that have to be done first, so many plans to make, and it’s a real commitment. Every winter and cold day brings us closer to it though. It will not only be a lot warmer, but it will greatly improve our health and well-being. It will also be a completely new chapter in our lives, so I’m already excited about it.
For now though, bring it on winter! Let’s see what you got! And Go Pack/Bears. I’m on the fence. I have family members on both sides of the fence for the Championship, but I’m not a football fan, so I’m neutral. We’ll be watching the game Sunday, but what I’m looking forward to the most is Sandy’s snack menu–Mini Pigs in a Blanket, cocktail meatballs in barbeque sauce, cheese & sausage & crackers, ham-cream cheese-pickle rollups, a giant Packers-Bears cookie, and chicken wings!
We attended Dylan’s 2nd Birthday Party at Monkey Joe’s today. This was our first time there. Compared to Chuck E. Cheese’s, I would say Kevin had more fun here. There are fewer arcade games and more inflatable bouncy things in this place, and he seemed to get a good workout out of it. Darn it though, they wouldn’t allow adults on any of them though. Of course that probably would have meant certain disaster for them after MY visit, if the did… Kevin had a great time though, and it looked like all the other kids did too. We took a bunch of photos using only our phones this time–this was the first family event we’ve ever attended without bringing a regular camera–sort of a first for us. It worked out fine I think. We’re very happy with our Androids. Click here to view the photos.
We”re having a great holiday season! It’s the day after Christmas and this is my day to recover enough to be able to go back to work tomorrow and be productive for another week. I woke up early this morning to find Sandy already gone off to work–or so I thought.– I looked out front, and there she was, trying to shovel about three feet of snow out of our plowed-in driveway! I dressed quickly and went out to help her.
Looks like we got about 8-10 inches of the dreaded “lake effect” snow here overnight. So it really was a White Christmas after all. After the driveway was cleared enough, Sandy was able to leave for work, and I finished the rest. I’m a little sore right now, but recovering with a hot cup of coffee (it’s no Vente Quad White Mocha, but it’ll do) and sitting at the desk next to the radiator. I’m uploading 170 Christmas photos to Flickr right now. Here’s the link. Kevin got the Playstation Move AND the X-Box Kinect! Sheesh, was side of Santa’s naughty-and-nice list was HE on?!? The Move was pretty easy to setup, just pair the controllers and go. The Kinect, on the other hand, was one of those projects that just didn’t want to go right. It uses NO controllers–YOU are the controller. Instead, it’s a big bar that sits above or below your TV and includes a high-def camera and a bunch of sensors. It also moves on it’s own to find the best position to track whoever is playing at the time. It looked easy to setup at first–and it probably is for people with large living rooms–but for us it was tough. Apparently our living room is just a little too small for it, so placing it above or below the TV wouldn’t work. After some thinking and a playing around with it, we ended up having to mount it on a shelf on the wall behind the TV. This gave us a few extra precious inches, which was apparently just enough to allow it to function properly. After that, Kevin and Matt had a blast tubing down the whitewater rapids and bouncing in zero gravity in Kinect Adventures.
We had our traditional great Christmas dinner with Mike, Rick, George and the family, a great ham, and some great homemade Au Gratin Potatoes that Sandy made. And this morning, since Socks absolutely refuses to go outside at all, it looks like we’ll be doing another of our traditions–the annual Doggie Deck Toss–where we throw the Chihuahua off the back deck and into the tallest snow bank in the backyard, then watch him tunnel and hop his way out. I’ll try to grab a picture.
Update: We had a successful Puppy Launch this morning. Here’s the photo. See the flying Chihuahua!
Sandy called me at work this afternoon around 2:15pm when our power went out. I called We Energies and they confirmed that there was an outage in the area. Power was still off when I got home at 4:00pm, but came back on about 4:15pm. Luckily it wasn’t off long enough to spoil all of our food in the fridge and freezer. Here’s the report from We Energies:
Strong winds and rain earlier today caused extensive damage to electric facilities in Racine, Kenosha and Burlington. Preliminary and approximate outage numbers are: 10,000 customers in the Burlington area, 10,000 customers in the Kenosha area and 5,000 in Racine as a result of this latest storm. Additionally, approximately 2,000 customers are out of service in Fort Atkinson and 200-300 customers in northern Milwaukee County, the result of storms that passed through the area last night. The public should exercise extreme caution around downed lines; often these lines are still carrying electricity.
Customers without service should be prepared to be without power throughout tonight. Wisconsin Electric estimates that the majority of customers will be brought back into service sometime tomorrow. Wisconsin Electric has taken almost 10,000 calls today from customers reporting power outages as a result of storms last night and today. The company has received more than 500 reports of wires down and dozens of reports of broken poles and other damaged equipment. The phone lines to report outages and down wire are extremely busy. Wisconsin Electric asks customers to be patient. The phone number is 800-662-4797. Crews are still working to restore power to some customers who lost electricity as a result of last night’s storm. Most customers had their power back on earlier today, but isolated outages remain.
Jay is in town this weekend, up from Arizona for the weekend! We had a pretty busy day today, starting with Ty’s football game this morning (which got rained out after 3 quarters just before they were going to put Ty in!) so Jay didn’t get to actually see him play. No one told Ty that his dad was coming this weekend (on purpose), so it would be a surprise. I did get one photo of Ty running…back from the porta-potty! We grabbed lunch from Hungry Head, then Jay fixed a little plumbing problem we had at the house (saving us a bundle we would have had to pay a plumber). After that we went out to Wells Brothers in Racine for their awesome, world famous, paper-thin-crusted pizza. We’re all stuffed! Click here for the photo highlights. And here’s a quick video taken after the game was rained out:
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Beth & Tom held their annual Fish Fry yesterday. Kevin, Matt, Sandy and I attended. The food was awesome! I took a few photos, so click on the thumbnail to take a look. For yesterday’s walk I was going to have Sandy drop me off about a 1/2 mile from their house, then I figured “what the heck, I’ll just walk all the way there”, so I left about an hour before everyone else left the house and met them there. It took me just over an hour and it was my longest walk yet, at just over 2 miles. It was fun though–I listened to the Slacker Radio Comedy Channel the whole way there, so I was laughing most of the time.
I scanned another of my dad’s old photo albums this weekend. This one includes a few more “mystery” people, so if anyone out there can give me a clue about who the people might be in those photos, I’d really appreciate the help. Most of these had no writing on the backs and nothing written in the album itself, so all descriptions were written from memory–and these sure do bring back a lot of old memories! Click on the thumbnail to view the photos in Old Photo Album #8.
During our walk we stopped to feed some bread to the ducks at the tot park today. Take a look at the exciting footage…in 2 videos and a few photos. It’s so exciting, I bet you could watch and stream both videos simultaneously and not miss a thing! Give it a go.
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Kari’s ‘lil man’ Kaiden is in the running to be the next Gerber Baby! He has a chance at starring in a Gerber commercial and winning a $25,000 scholarship! Please click on this link, search for “Kaiden” from “Kenosha”, and cast your vote! You can vote daily, so please do, and help him win this contest!! Thank you!!!
I am re-publishing this posting with an updated link. It was originally posted on 7/25/09 and I can’t believe it’s been that long since I scanned an old photo album! I have tons of them left to do. I need to get busy. The last “Classic Album” (#7) and every other old photo posting on my website was posted with links to my old “Jims Photo World” website, so none of the links work any more. So this posting is one the the few that I’m re-posting, but pointing it to the photo album’s new location on Flickr. It includes 54 photos. This one included many tiny, square (less than wallet-size) photos, as I’m sure you’ll see by the quality, but there’s a lot of good old memories here. Highlights include many family members when they were very young, including me (Jimmmy), Beth, Loretta, Clifford and Clayton, and Karen. There are also photos from my mom’s activities with the Mothers of Twins Club and Clifford and Clayton’s Cub Scout Troop. There were also many photos of our pets in the back of this album, but unfortunately they were removed. I think some of them might have been used for the big photoboards we created for my dad’s funeral though, I’ll have to check. So there ya go. As usual, click on the thumbnail to view the photos.
We attended Brianna’s High School Graduation party today. Had a lot of fun and some great food! Take a look at all the pics!
We attended Pam’s son Joey’s High School Graduation Party this afternoon. It took place in their backyard, and everyone had a great time. The food was just amazing too. It did rain through a lot of the party, but they had a tarp for everyone to hide under, so it wasn’t so bad. Click on the thumbnail to view the photos we took, or click here for a nice slideshow
I just posted a few pics from my 47th birthday. 47. Man, where did the time go? The milestones slowly go from “YAY!” to “ACK!” I’ve noticed. Anyway, I’m not going to dwell on it. Every day I wake up is another gift at this point. I’ll take it. Now let’s see what I can do with it…
We helped Woody open her pool last weekend. Ty asked if he could help open it, after helping us close it last year. He helped alright, then he asked if he could be the first of the season to go in. Unfortunately I forgot the camera, but Woody’s neighbor used her cell phone and snapped a photo. Click on the thumbnail to view it. It’s not much bigger than the thumbnail, but it’s all we got. The water was 58 degrees, so he got out pretty quickly, but ended up jumping in a few more times just to show off (and chill out).
Brianna had her baby just minutes ago. Her name is Tessa Jade. She is 6 pounds, 13 ounces, and 19 inches long! Brianna was in labor since 11:30pm last night! Wow! I’ll add some pictures in a day or two, after we take some.
5/8/2010 – Update: Sandy took some photos today. Click on this one to view them: 
Brianna had her baby shower today and Sandy attended. The baby’s name is Tessa Jade, and she’s due May 14th. Click here for the photos
A co-worker got me today with a simple, yet potentially very effective practical joke. I came back from lunch and sat down at my workstation to use the computer and the mouse cursor wouldn’t move. I moved the mouse around faster, trying to get some sort of response from it, but got nothing. Being the geek that I am–and having helped users with this same issue many times in the past–I started checking things. I guess I got lucky and did the right thing first–I flipped the mouse over to check the mechanism. On the bottom, covering the laser sensor, was a sticker that said “April Fools! :)”. Nice.
So I brought the idea home and did it to both Kevin and my wife. It didn’t quite work right with Kevin though. I asked him to check a website for me. When he couldn’t get the mouse working on his laptop in his room, I heard some violent shaking and banging around in his room, then he came out complianing that his mouse isn’t working. He looked angray and almost ready to cry. I told him to calm down and work through it. I asked him “What would you do to try to fix it?” He said “I checked, it’s plugged in!” I asked “Anything else you can check?” After a few long moments of considering this, he flipped it over to check it. Then he yelled at me, saying “You MEANIE!”. He was all set to tattle to his mother about me and I waved him off, silently motioning that I did it to her mouse as well. She was in the living room watching TV, and starting to get curious of what was going on and while Kevin was angry at me.
Kevin kept quiet once he realized what I was saying, and Sandy dropped the questioning, so I figured I might still be able to pull it off on her too. I had to go out shortly after this though, and she only mentioned passively later on that she had found my April Fools joke. Kevin says he didn’t spoil it, but I’m not buying it. Kevin’s a mama’s boy and he can’t keep a secret. I’m sure he helped her as soon as she ran into trouble. I thought she might call me on my cell while I was out if she had a problem with the computer, as usual, but no such luck. Kevin probably bailed her out, but no one is fessing up, so I guess I’ll never know.
I thought it was a neat little prank though, much better than finding out your wife got picked for JURY DUTY! Which I convinced myself was an April Fools joke my wife was just taking to an extreme…until I got home and she showed me the official letter from the court. Can you believe that? What a day to get picked for Jury Duty! Now, time to go over the postal stamp and verbage of the letter for signs of an intricate hoax…
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