We went to the US Nationals Snow Sculpting Championships this weekend! The competition was all this week and the judging was yesterday. Today was viewing day, so we went today to check them out. There were several great ones this year, and it looked like only one of them collapsed this time. Click on the thumbnail image to view the photo set. As usual, there are several photos of each sculpture along with their original drawings and the team signs. I missed the actual names for a couple of the best sculptures though, so I did my best to name them appropriately. There’s also a few photos of Kevin and Ty who accompanied me. We listened to the audiobook “Daemon” by Daniel Suarez on the trip there and back. I got Ty hooked on it–now he wants to listen to the whole thing. It sure made the drive go by quick–as usual!
Tag Archives: photos
Trick or Treating
We went trick-or-treating today and Kevin had a blast. First we had to stop back at the haunted yard we visited earlier in the month, just to see it during the day, and to see if the death row prisoner actually gets electrocuted. We weren’t disappointed. The display was working great, and the prisoner got zapped and shook violently for several seconds every few minutes. It was quite startling, even during the day. And as usual, Kevin kept his distance from everything, afraid of what might happen. A zombie was there at the front door handing out candy bars wrapped in dollar bills! It took some coaxing, but Kevin finally agreed to go up and get one. I even talked him into going up a second time””this time for a photo with him and the zombie. That’s the first photo in the set (and the one in this article). Click on it to go view the rest of the photos from throughout today’s trick-or-treating. It was pretty funny knowing Kevin was so frightened and paranoid around all the scary creatures and decorations at the haunted yard, while at the same time wearing a pretty scary costume himself. He really frightened a few children pretty good during trick-or-treating, and he wasn’t even trying to!
Kevin’s Halloween Costumes
At just over 18,000 photos, I’m finally done moving to Flickr. What a relief! One of the nice things about Flickr is how you can use any of your photos in multiple sets easily, allowing you to create custom groups of photos with things in common. So here’s my first set. This is “Kevin’s Costumes” – A photo of every Halloween costume Kevin has worn, from when he first went trick-or-treating at 2 years old (in 2000) right up to last year. Click on the thumbnail and take a look.
“Bear” Photo Collection
During all of the chaos around here this week, I completely forgot that the registration for my photo site, jimsphotoworld.com, was about to expire. I didn’t plan on continuing it, so that’s no big deal, but I did intend to have things up and running on flickr, which I was in the process of moving all of my photos to. Flickr is only half the price of SmugMug, which is one advantage, but it’s also much more popular, so I’m also seeing more visits and comments from strangers after only a week of starting to upload than I ever did in an entire year on SmugMug. Don’t get me wrong, SmugMug is a fine photo host, especially for professionals, and it has excellent features. But right now I need something more affordable, and flickr seems to fill the bill. Flickr is also owned by AT&T/Yahoo, and it’s integrated into U-Verse, which we just switched to. This means we can view all of our photos instantly on any of our TVs, which is great! I’m far from finishing the switch though, since other more important things have come up this week, so it’s still a work in progress right now. I did, however, manage to put together a great collection of Bear’s photos. Take a look.
Blizzard of 2008
The paper says that we officially got 8-14 inches of snow yesterday, depending on what part of town you were in. Further North, in and around Milwaukee they got even more—as much as 20 inches. It’s been an interesting couple days, to say the least. Here’s my story:
I left work at 3:30pm. Well, actually it was much later, because I couldn’t leave the parking lot—I was stuck in my parking space. When I got to my car in the parking lot of Vista Medical Center East, it was covered in several inches of heavy, wet snow. One thing that was a bit amusing to see was our car antenna. We have a “Homer Simpson in a Donut” antenna topper on our car (so Sandy can find the car in a parking lot) and that thing had accumulated several pounds of ice and snow, shaped itself into a huge ball, bending the antenna 180 degrees so it rested back onto the car! I looked pretty funny, and I wished I had a camera with me to capture the image. No such luck, so I proceeded to start up the car and clean the snow off of it. After clearing all of the snow from the car (it was still snowing like crazy, making it hard to keep up) I got in and tried to pull out of my space. I rocked it a few inches forward and back, and kept doing that for awhile, but it wasn’t budging much. Someone eventually walked up to my car with a shovel and just started shoveling me out. He told me when it was clear, I thanked him, and then he directed me out of the space. I got stuck again trying to go forward through the parking lot, but I was able to move fine in reverse, so I backed all the way out of my parking space and out of the lot and onto Sheridan Road in reverse all the way. Fortunately traffic was extremely slow-moving on Sheridan Road, so I was able to pull all the way onto the street without stopping. Stopping anywhere within the parking lot probably would have resulted in me getting immediately stuck again.
Once I hit Sheridan Road it wasn’t so bad. The roads were someone plowed for the most part, and the tire treads from other cars made the going easier in a few areas that didn’t seem to be plowed at all. It took a lot of time to travel the 12 miles home traveling at 15 mph or less the entire way. I spoke to Sandy on the phone during the trip and she told me that a few cars had already gotten stuck on our street. I decided it wasn’t worth the risk. I didn’t want to end up stranded in the middle of the road and have to leave my car in an unsafe place, so I decided to park in a nearby parking garage and walk the few blocks home. The remaining ride to the parking garage was uneventful, luckily. I made it safely, locked up the car, bundled up, and proceeded to walk home on foot.
I got about a block away, walking on the sidewalk, and realized it was just too difficult to trudge through this all the way home. The snow was at least a foot high, and sometimes past my knees as I walked, and very hard to get through. Looking at the street, however, I realized it was much clearer there. So I switched to walking in the street for the rest of the walk home. The street, however, had its own drawbacks—it was solid ice in some places, and there was also traffic to watch out for. Sheridan Road turned out to be the worst part of it (aside from the first block I walked in the deep stuff). Sheridan Road looked like solid ice, and it was very slippery. I slipped a few times, but didn’t hurt myself. I was pretty nervous about all the traffic zipping by me though.
Eventually I got home, but I had to pause a few times along the way to catch my breath and rest a bit. By the time I got a few houses from home my back was really killing me. Once inside the house I rested in a chair, and my legs and feet felt pretty numb, and my feet were soaked. I warmed up after awhile and felt fine again, so no harm done I guess. After Kevin went to bed, Sandy and I went out to start shoveling. It was still snowing a little, but we knew it was stopping soon after I checked the radar map. After shoveling for some time we ran out of places to put the snow. The piles we had built up were so high that it was very difficult to throw the snow high enough to get it to stay there any more.
After managing to get everything cleared I was about to come back in the house when I saw a flash in the sky and heard a loud boom and a bzzzzz bzzzzzzp followed by everything in the neighborhood going dark for a couple seconds and then coming back on. It looked and sounded like a transformer blew somewhere close by, but I couldn’t tell exactly where. Sandy checked the flashlights and made sure some candles were ready in case we needed them. The power stayed on the rest of the night though, so we lucked out.
In the morning I got up early, and as expected, the plow had come through in the night and plowed 2 to 3 feet of snow back into our driveway. There was also about another inch on snow on our sidewalk. So I shoveled the walk and the driveway again and moved the plow’s aftermath. We had an open section of shoveled lawn that our neighbor was nice enough to clear for us after the previous snow storm, which was for our garbage and recyclables, so I ended up having to use this spot to move the driveway snow to. So right now we don’t have a good spot for our garbage to sit for pickup, but at least our sidewalk and driveway are clear.
We went and got our car back from the parking garage today too, so everything worked out ok. I even took the camera with me and snapped some photos when I took Kevin to school this morning, so I’ve created a “Blizzard of 2008” folder and posted those pictures in it. Click here to take a look at them.
Snow Sculpting 2008
The photos are now online from our visit to the 2008 National Snow Sculpting Competition in Lake Geneva. We were there today and it seemed much more crowded than previous years… probably because the weather was decent instead of the below-zero blizzard conditions I remember from last year. We had to park a few blocks away, but even that was ok–Kevin and I got a chance to walk and talk together and enjoy the brisk outdoors a bit.
My favorite one–and it’s gotta be in the top 3 if not the top prize winner–was “Sharks Lair.” Great detail all around and very well done. We even got photos of the team that did that one, posing with their finished sculpture. On the downside, one I thought was in pretty bad taste was called “Till the fat lady swings.” It was just that–a fat lady swinging on a swing. I didn’t care for it much, although, I must admit, much of the detailed surroundings in the sculpture were nicely rendered.
Click on the thumbnail image to view the photos. I’ll update the captions with the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners as soon as the results are released.
Snow Sculpting 2007
The judging for the 2007 Snow Sculpting Nationals were held at Riviera Park in Lake Geneva today. Kevin and I went out there to take a look. With the below-zero temperatures and much worse wind chill, we didn’t stay long! We practically ran from exhibit to exhibit, snapping a few quick photos, then moving on to the next one. After about 15 minutes my hands and face were numb and we had had enough.
So here are all of the photos, most of them I named appropriately, remembering to also snap a shot of the credit signs. One of the sculptures remains unnamed because I missed the sign, so if anyone out there could help identify it, I’d appreciate it.
I’ll mark which ones were the winners after I get the results from tomorrow’s paper or off of their website. Click on the thumbnail to view all of the photos.
The world is open, come on in
Jim’s Photo World LogoProgress on the new photo section/site is going well. I still have most photos from 2001-2006 to upload though, and I’m trying to do it pretty much chronologically, so I’m currently working on 2001’s photographs. The part taking the longest by far is the naming of each photo. I’ve learned a good lesson here–whenever I’m going to keep a photo from now on, I will name it appropriately after downloading it from the camera. Hundreds of my photos were still named with the camera’s filename, and leaving them this way would make finding anything in a search almost impossible.
It’ll be great when it’s all finished though. In fact, I think it’s pretty great right now, even with just 1,700 photos online. So I’m officially announcing the location of the site so everyone can check it out. Please feel free to comment on what you like and don’t like and what works or doesn’t work. I’d appreciate the input. This website is actually completely separate from jimtrottier.com–in fact, it’s hosted by a completely different company. When it’s finished though, it will be very integrated into jimtrottier.com, almost seamlessly (if you don’t look at the address bar). Here it is: jimsphotoworld.com.
Jim’s Photo World
There are also the familiar “Most recent album”, “Most recent photo”, etc., thumbnails located at the bottom right corner of jimtrottier.com’s main web page, in case you haven’t noticed them. These were inserted while I was testing the integration of the two sites, and they’ll all be bumped up the page and will replace the current ones in the right sidebar once the new site is up-to-date. So go take a look. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
Daddy’s new toy
I recently purchased a new “toy”. It’s been a while since I’ve had a new toy, and certain circumstances arose that pointed me in the direction of this particular device, so I took the plunge and bought it. It’s a PSP. For those not familiar with the term, it’s a Sony PlayStation Portable. Like the Playstation and Playstation 2, this is a game system that plays some awesome games. It’s also portable (handheld) so you can play it anywhere. But it also does much MORE than play games, which was a big factor in my decision to purchase it, rather than something like the Nintendo DS, which actually has two screens instead of one.
The DS plays some great games as well, but lacks the ability to do all of the other things I like to do, like play MP3’s, videos, and display photos. The PSP does all of this, and also includes a web browser and several other features. I’ve been using it only a few days now, but I’m very impressed so far. I picked up a 2GB Memory Stick for it as well, so I have a lot of space on it to work with. Right now I have 23 of my favorite albums on it, a bunch of my favorite digital photos from 2006 (about 130 of them), and a couple of silly videos I like to show off. I still have over 600MB of space available on the memory card, even with all of this on it, as well as a few saved games from a couple Classic Arcade Game collections I bought with the system.
They even sell full movies for the PSP now, but from what I’ve read they’re not as popular as Sony would have hoped. It’s easy to understand why though. How much fun can it be to watch a whole movie on a screen that tiny? Sure, it’s widescreen format, but it’s just plain small for movies. It’s big for a handheld game system (the screen is bigger and much brighter than either of the two screens on the Nintendo DS), but it’s still just too small for watching movies on. Video clips are fine, but for extended movie watching you need something bigger to focus on.
But for all other uses, the PSP does a great job. And I recently heard that Sony is planning to soon open up their collection of original Playstation (PSOne) games and make them available as playable downloads from their website, so that sounds great too. As for add-ons and accessories, I made sure there were plenty of options available before I bought it as well, and waiting a year since it’s initial release has made a huge difference. The built-in system software itself has been updated many times since it’s release, so I immediately checked for updates and sure enough, I was already two releases behind. But since I have a wireless network at home, I was able to quickly configure the built-in wifi settings and get it updated in a few minutes.
I also bought Sony’s Media Manager software to make managing my files on the PSP much easier, and that’s working out great. It will automatically re-encode your music, photos, and videos (if you configure it to) on-the-fly to save you more space on the PSP memory stick. This is very handy, and I use it for my music, but for digital photos I like being able to zoom in on details and scroll around, and if you have it resize your photos down to the PSP’s screen size, you’ll lose too much detail and zooming it looks horrible. Fortunately, they give you four or five scale sizes though, so you can choose how much to scale your photos or not to even scale them at all and keep their original sizes intact. This is a one-way process, fortunately, so files are only re-encoded and scaled down when transferring to the PSP. Your original, full-detail files remain intact on your computer.
Lastly, battery life seems satisfactory, but it all depends on what feature you’re using the most. For example, the worst battery killer is the wifi function. If you use the wifi, or accidentally leave the wifi switch on, your battery will last a few hours less than it would with the wifi turned off. The rest of the functions are much less stressful on the battery, but as you might expect, playing games from the proprietary UMD disc drive (the discs look like very tiny DVDs) are a bit more draining than just playing MP3s from the memory card. But if you’re doing the latter, you can also extend your battery’s time a great deal by turning the screen itself off when listening to MP3s. As a backup battery solution I found a nice battery pack that opens up and you can insert 3 AAA batteries into it and continue using the PSP after your rechargeable battery dies.
So for now, as you can see, I’m really enjoying this thing. Hopefully it’ll bring me years of entertainment in all of its many forms.
Easter
Easter was a little different this year. More depressing than previous ones though. First of all, my dad is now in a nursing home. He is very negative on nursing homes, so we had to assure him that if he can get better with the rehab, and get to walking on his own again without the risk of falling, then he can go home. The doctor isn’t so sure, but who knows, miracles can happen. He went into the home straight from the hospital on Saturday. Sunday night I got a call from the nursing home–he tried to go to the bathroom on his own again already, bare feet, and fell again. An aide was supposedly helping him walk back from the bathroom when he fell though, and he landed on his butt, so there was no injury. Now he’s wired with an alarm. Any attempt to get up o his own, and everyone instantly knows about it with a shriek.
Sandy had already bought everything for a big Easter dinner at my dad’s, so she still cooked over at his house and Kevin, Matt, Sandy and I had a wonderful Easter Feast there. Afterward she brought a nice Easter dinner plate to my dad at the nursing home.
Sandy and Kevin decorated eggs Easter Eve, and I took a few pictures. The kids got their Easter baskets Easter morning, and we took a few photos and a little video. Kevin got the Narnia movie in his basket, and he’s already watched it at least 3 times, as expected.
Kevin’s off school for spring break and enjoying himself. Matt’s out of town for a couple days doing some testing and getting a complete physical for his military recruitment. He’s going in the Army. He’s be doing his Basic Training this summer, and he gets work experience credit toward his high school diploma if all goes well. We’re rooting for him, whether he believes it or not. If this is what he wants to do, more power to him. Defending your country is not to be taken lightly.
Photography
Kevin’s birthday is this week! We’re having his party at one of his favorite restaurants, so he’s quite excited about it. He wants a Plasma Ball and a Darth Vader Voice Changer, among other things. It should be a great party, I’ll take lots of photos.
Mahirose, Kevin and I are planning to go to the Snow Sculpting Championships in Lake Geneva on Saturday. We’re really looking forward to it. I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures there as well.
Mahirose and I also recently joined the PhotoKenosha Club “Kenosha’s Very Own Shutterbugs”. We haven’t been to a meeting or outing yet, but it should be fun. The club is pretty new, from what I hear, so it’s just starting out and still has a pretty small membership. It’s totally free though, so you can’t beat the price! If you’re into photography, whether it’s digital or not, and you’re in or around Kenosha, why not consider joining! Check out the website for more information.
And since this posting seems to be all about pictures, I might as well explain my recent dilemma. I’ve been trimming down the photo gallery lately. We’ve been getting dangerously close to using up all of our 2 GB of space lately. I managed to whittle it down a few times previously, but apparently the cache is just eating it back up as users view the photos. I empty the cache again, but that’s only very temporary relief.
So far though, I’ve managed to not have to remove any of my own photos or other users’ photos. I had hundreds of stock photos of sunsets, animals, space, etc., which I removed first. This helped quite a bit. As a second step I’ve been resizing and compressing the remaining albums. Since I started using photo gallery I tended to keep my photos large, usually at least 1280×1024. Everyone else seemed to only have small images 640×480 or less on their sites, and I figured why not off some better quality? Well, now I’ve learned my lesson. Gallery 2 makes it fairly easy to trim down entire albums of photos though, so it’s not a big deal. I just end up with smaller images on my website.
So if you happen to see a photo you like on the site, like a sunset or something else, but it’s too small to use as you wallpaper or for developing, feel free to contact me directly and I’ll be glad to send you a full-sized version of the photo you want. Keep in mind, however, that I don’t have larger-sized versions of any images in the humor galleries and other user galleries, only the photos I’ve taken myself.
Goodbye Peanut
We have been struggling for a couple years with problems with Peanut, our tan chihuahua. As you’ve probably read in a couple previous articles, we’ve been through a lot with him, including having him get lost in a strange neighborhood for a few days in the freezing cold. Well, our problems began after that incident in the cold, and they never really improved after stuggling day after day to try to get him to behave properly (he always hated Sandy, growling and snapping whenever she got close to him or he to her) and he continued to pee and mark everything in the house even after being fixed, training with training pads, using “Stay-Off” spray, and everything else we could think of.
As a result of his continued “marking” issues, we’re pretty sure this is what caused my leg infection twice, both of which were very serious, extremely painful, and costly in both lost work time and medical fees. The leg infections cleared up, but I recently got an arm infection that no one can explain, so we’re assuming it is somehow connected with the previous leg infections. Anyway, we had been seriously considering our options for Peanut for the past few weeks, and thought it would be better for him in a new home. He just doesn’t–and isn’t ever–going to get along with us and learn to behave properly. We also have Socks, our black and white chihuahua, and he is the total opposite of Peanut. He has learned to tell us when he needs to go outside, in emergencies he uses his pad to do his business, and he’s very friendly to the entire family. Neighbors and outside family members are another story, but that’s just a chihuahua trait in general.
So before doing anything else with Peanut, we called our good friends who gave him to us originally, who still owns Peanut’s father, mother, and even a sibling. They agreed to take him back, which was a tremendous relief for us. It’s bad enough having to give up a pet you’ve been with for years, but at least we know he’s with a good family, and has other playmates to live with. They picked him up last night, so he’s gone now. Socks is adjusting already. He’ll get all of our attention, just like he’s always wanted, so he’ll be fine.
We just felt we couldn’t afford to have any more of my infection problems, and thought we needed to do something before anything else was destroyed in the house. He has wrecked numerous CDs, DVDs, boxes, shoes, and basically everything we’ve left on or near floor level. He would even get so angry whenever one of us left the house that, after attacking the door we walked out of, he would run around and pee on two or three things. Yes, we had already previously tried to bring him outside at these points, when we could, but it didn’t help the situation at all. And even when we crated both dogs each time all of us left the house, Socks would go willingly into his cage, sit down and be calm, while Peanut would throw a tantrum, snap, growl, and bark, while we nudged him into his cage and locked it. Even after years of this he never came around and grew into the routine.
So he’s gone now, but he’s still in town and we can visit him and his family whenever we want, so we’ll see what happens. We’re hoping he adjusts and does well in his new environment. You can see more photos of Peanut if you’d like by clicking on the thumbnail. That will take you to Peanut’s Photo Album.
Christmas Tree Lighting
We attended Kenosha’s Christmas Tree Lighting tonight at the Museum. The weather was pretty rough though–blizzard conditions! Kevin, Matt and I toughed it out though, and sat in the cold on a bench in front of the tree outside the museum for about 45 minutes for the ceremony. I took a few photos, and Matt even managed to capture the entire audio of the ceremony with my Olympus DS-2 Digital Recorder. Thanks, Matt!
Kevin froze most of the time, and got mad when I called him Rudolph because he had a red nose. He just kept asking to go home. I kept reminding him that it wouldn’t be long and that we’d go to Christmas Lane and see the Christmas Train afterward, but he said he just wanted to go home. After the ceremony we warmed up in the car, got nice and toasty and we headed over to Christmas Lane feeling much better. Matt took some more photos and Kevin talked to Santa and got a couple of gifts from him at the Christmas Train House. They even served cookies, treats and popcorn! We stood around a fire pit they had set up and kept warm while we drank hot cider, hot chocolate, and had a few snacks. It was a very nice evening all around and we had a nice, Christmastime night, even if it was a bit early.
Click here for the audio from the Tree Lighting Ceremony, and click here for the photos we took. And as an added bonus, click here for an awesome display now showing at the museum: David Valentine Holmes: The Mystical Mechanical Menagerie. When viewing the images in this gallery, be sure to view them FULL SIZE. The detail is amazing on all of them, and I left the original images quite large to show the detail.
I’ve been busy
My apologies to those loyal readers of this website who visit daily (I know there are at least one or two of you). I try as much as possible to post SOMETHING every day or two, whether it’s in the forums, in this blog, or even just a funny photo in the daily photos section. But the past few weeks have been extremely busy for me, and I’ve had to put the website on the back burner for a bit. But we’ve still been getting regular postings, and I did still pop in almost daily for a minute or two at a time, even though I haven’t had time to actually compose a forum post or blog entry. I’d sure love to have the activity that KenoshaOnline.net gets though, and I always keep dreaming that I DO still get as many visitors, they just don’t POST here much, they just read.
But anyway, I’m still here, I’ll never give up on the site. I am now back to gainful full-time employment after a short period of searching, and I feel really good about it. I’ll still try to provide meaningful content and news as much as possible, and you may even notice some slightly outdated postings in the forums tonight. I added those just “for the record”, so I’d have the complete timeline of major current events on my site for future reference. I don’t “prune” any of my content, so I intend to end up with quite a bit of accumulated worthy content some day. Hang in there with me.
Tall ships are just around the corner!
It looks like Kenosha’s 4th of July Festivities were a huge success this year. No major incidents or accidents, 200 fireworks calls–but those were normal for the holiday though, and no major problems reported at the fireworks, which reportedly attracted 19,000-20,000 people to the lakefront to watch. Just like our little home-based event, everything went off without a hitch for the most part. It’s actually a relief to see something nice reported on the front of the newspaper for a change.
I regret missing the Patriotic Pooch contest though–that would have made for some pretty cool photos for the site I think. And if Kevin were able to ride his bike well enough, we would have even participated in the Kids Bike Decorating Contest and Parade that they had. He’s just not to that point yet, but we’re working on it. Hopefully he’ll be good to go for next year’s event. We’ll keep him “in training” for it until then. And if we could just get Socks to keep a stars and stripes top hat and coat on for a few minutes he’d certainly win the Patriotic Pooch Contest walking around like that on two legs! The Tall Ships Festival will be here next month! (August 4th-8th) So we’re anxiously awaiting another good time.
In other news, Louie got a very perty new toy to play with! I was going to post the photos on my site, but since Pam did it already, I’ll just point you over there, since it’s their new toy anyway. There are very few RumbleBees made, and each one is individually serialized, as you’ll see in the photos. They also cost a pretty penny more than the “simple” Ram 1500 that they’re based on, based on the info on DaimlerChrysler’s website. Zoom zoom. Whoops, wrong vehicle ad… Gotta Hemi?
Old Car Lovers Show
Kevin and I walked over to the car show at Baker Park yesterday morning. Take a look at the photo highlights. Kevin seemed pretty much disinterested, however. He seemed to be just tagging along, not thrilled at all by all the old cars, except a slight perk-up when he spotted a bright yellow one (his favorite color) and a flashy purple one with flames (mom’s favorite color). I was thinking maybe the car show would touch a nerve with him and spark some interest. He has expressed an interest in cars in the past, hence his collection of hundreds of Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars, but that seems to be fading these days.
I’m always searching for that one thing that’s going to thrill him to no end, to pique his interest enough to spark some sort of direction for him. For me it was computers and electronics. Once I found that, which happened at around 9 or 10 years old I believe, I was hooked for life. I’m hoping to help Kevin find that one thing too. I’ll wait as long as it takes. And until then we’ll try to expose him to as many different things as we can, giving him the opportunity to find his niche for himself. One thing is true though–he loves going “places.” No matter where, he just always wants to go to more places. Take him to school, then shopping, then swimming, which fills out the whole day, and he still says “I wanna go to more places!” even though he’s half asleep from exhaustion. He seems to just want to experience more and more of what the world has to offer. Perhaps he’ll be a traveler of some sort when he grows up, who knows.
But the car show was nice. As you can see by the photos, there were some awesome vehicles there, including the Prowler and several “Deathmobiles”, complete with coffins and–in some cases–skeletons. Kevin was afraid to approach the hearses with the skeletons and body parts all around them. I told him, “Come on, it’s not real, it’s make-believe” but he wouldn’t get close, so we moved on.
We had lunch there (hot dogs, soda, and ice cream), Kevin played on the slides and swings a little, and then we walked home. Later in the afternoon, Kevin, Sandy and I went to my dad’s to visit for Father’s Day. Sandy cooked burgers, brats, and hot dogs on the grill and we had a good meal. Overall it was a pretty nice Father’s Day all the way around.
Oh, and make sure you don’t miss Socks’ audition photo for the part of “Odie” in the new Garfield movie….
Kari’s Graduation / Brianna’s Birthday
Kari graduated from Reuther Central High School Friday!! Click on the image to check out the photos in the gallery! It includes photos from her Graduation ceremony as well as her Graduation Party, which was also Brianna’s Birthday party!
Fall Colors
I went around town the other day looking at the fall colors and snapping photos. Here’s a few of the better ones I took.
We’re off to Happ’s Pumpkin Farm today, so I’ll be posting the photos from that shortly! This family farm is more than just a pumpkin patch. Fall fun at Happ’s includes a five-acre corn maze, spooky school bus, country carnival games and, new for 2002, the Twinkleville Train. For $4 enjoy the corn maze, a hayride, the “Ghoul Bus,” a small pumpkin, two gourds and a prize! See farm animals, themed Halloween displays and indulge in some fresh apple cider and a homemade taffy apple. Open daily, 10 a.m.-8 p.m. through November 1st. 24129 Wilmot Rd. Trevor. (One block west of Hwy. 83 on Hwy. C in Trevor.) (262) 862-6515
Ladybug Headache
I have a headache. This morning, as I sat working on the computer in my really comfy Lane Pillowsoft Executive Chair, I took a short break and leaned back in the chair. As usual, the chair bent backward, then suddenly WHAM! I was lying flat on my back–still in the chair–on the floor! The post of the chair had peeled right off at the base. I think I bumped my head on the floor, now it hurts. I’ll get over it. So much for one of Best Buy’s top-of-the-line executive chairs though! But Lane furniture is guaranteed for eons. Now all I have to do is call them, e-mail them a few photos of the broken part, and sit back (in a very uncomfortable wooden chair) and wait for the UPS guy. My headache will turn into a butt ache real soon, I’m quite sure…
To top things off today, we’re in the middle of some sort of ladybug invasion… I don’t know if it’s our white house that’s attacting them or what, but there’s hundreds of them camped out on our porches, front and back, and all over the doors and windows. I’ve been catching them in the house and throwing them out all day. Sandy came home from work and her white top even had a few on it. Getting the mail from the porch was even an exciting endeavor today. They quickly covered the inside of the screen door, so I had to knock them off into my hand one by one, then throw them back out the door in groups of 4 or 5 at a time.
Enchanted Ceiling
Dee recently turned me on to a site called Enchanted Ceiling. This site is a collection of sky photos submitted by everyone. It’s growing nicely. In fact, I just sent them 9 of my favorite sky photos. Take a look!
JimTrottier.com 