Weekend Review

Last weekend I didn't do nothing. Use of a double negative there was entirely intentional. Because I did do something. I merely stated it as such to emphasize that this past weekend was different from others, during which I may do absolutely nothing.
Saturday morning I drove to the city to take part in a ceremony for Wreaths Across America, an organization whose goal is to place wreaths on graves of those who have served in the American armed forces. My part in the ceremony: bugler. I was asked to play Taps along with a few other trumpeters/buglers during the ceremony as well as a couple other short military calls. It was a really interesting experience in that a) I had not touched my trumpet in a month or so, b) I had never played Taps in front of people...or loudly...or maybe I've never even played it all the way through, and c) I had never heard of the other calls before and thus have never played them. To top that off, we only pseudo-practiced before the ceremony. It was a real hodge-podge kind of deal, but we pulled it off and I think it sounded great.
Last night I drove back into town and went caroling with members of my church. There were a few reasons I went. I thought it would help get me in the Christmas spirit. I thought it would be nice to cheer up those for whom we sang. I thought it would help me get to know some people in the church, where I am still relatively new. Really, I just thought it was the right thing to do. I had a good time, but all that singing made me thirsty.

VBlog - Meet Tommy

VBlog - Weekend Review

Big, busy weekend

It's a big, big, big weekend, this one is. Tonight I have plans to go to Kristel and John's house to watch the 1980's Transformers cartoon movie on their newly constructed projector. After that, we are going out to eat with Anna, another friend from work, whose birthday was yesterday. Happy birthday Anna!

Following the food, we're all going to Wildwood, some bar where there is apparently a mechanical bull. We should be meeting up with Katherine, a high school friend of mine who I had introduced to my work friends when we all went out for my birthday.

Anna told me that she's not feeling very well today. I hope she gets better because going out for dinner is for her birthday. And otherwise we're just going out to dinner. Also, she'll be bringing her friend Paul. And without Paul, I will be swimming in a sea of estrogen, which isn't all that bad I suppose.

Tomorrow the fun continues as Kristel invited me and even more friends from work (and some of their friends who I don't know) to a vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner. I'm looking forward to spending time with work friends outside of work, but I don't know about the food. Like I told Kristel, "Usually when I see something I don't recognize, I just tell myself it's chicken and I'm ok. With your food, I know it's not the case." But I know her food will be amazing. Kristel is very skilled in the culinary arts.

Sunday (whoo! I told you it will be a busy weekend!) I plan to spend the afternoon with Natasha, a new friend I have made at my [still relatively] new church. We don't know what we'll be doing yet, but we might just end up watching a movie or something.

That's it. That's my weekend. Oh, tomorrow morning I will sleep in. And it will be awesome!

VBlog- Vacation Shopping

Photo dump

Most of the time, the only reason I take pictures is so I can post them here on my blog. But then I'm all genius and don't post. So here are a few pics just so I can finally delete them from my desktop.

This is my burning bush, about a month ago. I had always wondered why they called it that.

They sky as I was leaving work one night. Of course, now when I leave work it's already dark. Stars are out by the time I get home.

This was in some guy's office in Chicago. I couldn't pass up the photo op of a life-size Yoda.

Post a comment if you know why I took this picture.

Really?! I can play a fantasy RPG with a guitar controller?! That would be so AWESOME!!!!

VBlog - Cooking With Beetlejuice

The ghost with the most gives a helpful cooking tip.

VBlog - Get to Know 2 Handhelds

A 2 for 1 today! One video - 2 handhelds! The world has gone mad!

I'm in Chicago!!!

Like, right now! I'm in Chicago, baby! On business to Chicago, I hopped on a plane at 6:44 this morning and, well, there's not much more to tell. I'm in Chicago. I'm working in a skyscraper. Here are some pictures taken from one of the corner offices I stopped in for a few minutes:

The office building was sitting right on the river. I was in awe of the view.

I was working from the 14th floor most of the time.

Some poor soul actually has to work with this view staring him in the face all day. Poor guy...

2 Pix 4U

Here is the very first look at my new piano. The bench. The piano is actually still at the auction house and it should get picked up sometime this week. I can't wait to get it in my house!

Kinda long story here. I made these pants. I was testing the pattern for size on me by making a crude pair of pants. They fit fairly well, so I'll use the pattern for my Halloween costume. I'll share that later...

And I really was on the phone when I took this picture.

VBlog - Junk In A Box

What will I pull out of the box next??

Rant - Lack of Eloquence

First and foremost, I will warn you that this post is not well written. Well, as always, I will do my best to spell everything correctly and toss in the appropriate punctuation, but don't expect fine reasoning or a well-spoken wag of the finger.
Bing. You've heard of it probably. Microsoft's new search engine. They're really trying to push this out to everyone. I'm not sure if it's working for them or not, but boy are they trying. The first time it bothered me was when I saw their TV ad. A real person speaks a search query. Then they mimic the "other search engine" by rattling off a ridiculous string of nouns or phrases which are seemingly linked through poor logic. I'm sorry, but my Google searches don't resemble my click-trail on Wikipedia. When I search for "candle dipping" I don't receive "Pierce Brosnan" as one of the results (I just made that up. Clever, huh? - Please, please, please someone prove the existence of that chain in Wikipedia; 25 clicks or less preferably).
The other thing is MSN's news page.
Sorry. No.
It's not news. I don't know why I get sucked into it. It's horrible writing. Sometimes it's a catchy picture or maybe a title that I think somehow relates to my life. But I find myself reading MSN articles. Not news. Junk. Mindless, time-wasting garbage. But I find myself on that page everytime I log out of Hotmail. Sometimes I wish Hotmail was still privately owned. It was. Learned it on Wikipedia.
So they get me to read these articles and regardless of what it is, they have links pointing me to Bing. One type of article might be a series of interesting stories or facts, only half told. The other half posed as a question with a link to Bing where the question is supposedly answered. WHY NOT JUST TELL ME? I know the authors of the articles must know the answer, but why waste my time? And why does this work for Microsoft? It just sounds lazy. Imagine it in a school setting: "...then Washington began crossing the Delaware. To find out if he reached the other side and what happened if he did, please see what happened next. Actually, I might have to check that out. I'm not too clear on all the details.
That's all I got tonight. Looking back, that actually wasn't such a bad rant. We should do it again sometime.

VBlog 1 - Get to know your handhelds

Good luck, Chum

On Wednesday my friend Chum - that is, Sara - will be taking her GRE test in Iowa City. Since I live much closer to the City than she, I will be playing host to her tomorrow evening so that she won't have to drive nearly so far come Wednesday morning.
I'm really excited to have a guest. Even though in all reality this is probably how the entire evening will go:

"Wanna play cribbage?"
"Sure!"




"Well, I'm bushed. Call it a night?"
"Yep. See you in the morning."

So good luck on your test on Wednesday Chum!
Aside from that, I bought a kitchen cabinet which I will place under the piece of countertop in my kitchen that conspicuously tops nothing. I just realized that a couple of in-progress photos would have been nice right here, but I'll have to get a shot or two of the finished product. Especially once it's in place. No promises though.

Woot! I'm on Woot!

If you've never been to woot.com, I would recommend it. I go there nearly everyday because they sell one thing on their website until it sells out or until midnight. After midnight, they put another item up for sale and the cycle repeats itself.
They also have a discussion board for each item and certain notable posts get marked as quality posts and they are highlighted on the main page. In essence, that sums up what you see in the picture I posted above.
I saw the item being sold, recognized it as something I already owned, and thought that I could share my experience with the product, which I thought was worthy of a quality post, albeit in poor literary form. No more than 30 seconds after submitting my post, I see that it was indeed selected as a quality post. Wow, those Woot guys must watch their discussion boards like hawks!

Building Up to Greatness

*The following events did not take place in a single day.

So today I totally built up to awesomeness (as if I wasn't already 110% there). Check it:

I blew a tire. It didn't lose air. It lost ALL it's air. I ripped such a gaping chasm into that wocker, it was like....like... Man, it's really hard to come up with a good simile when you're rocking out to Journey.

The donut isn't anything terribly impressive, but check out the roadside assistance! I completely dig the vibes I was giving off that day.

Now this I actually saw today. Not sure if you can make it out... Any idea what that car is ahead of me?

Holy heck! That's a Viper!!!! A genuine Dodge Viper!!!!! I've never seen one in person before and here is one on the road in front of me as I'm leaving work! I wanted to pass it so I could get a nice side shot of it as I passed, but what self-respecting Viper owner allows himself to get passed by an Olds Intrigue?

To bring my day to a close, you can try to rock harder than this, but you will fail.

Yardwork? I totally didn't see this coming

I swear all I was going to do was take a picture of my rose. That's right. I'm growning a rose in front of my house. And by growing, I mean not touching it and letting it do its thing. I didn't even plant it. Came with the house.
Before I got so far as getting out the camera, all of a sudden I found myself behind my garage tearing up my large brush pile. After about half an hour of that, I checked on my rose. Still there. Then I got ambitious and started tearing off some of the dead stems on the bush. Then I got really ambitious and started doing the same on another (non-rose) bush. Long story short, I got my picture.

It smells great too!

I also have a massive hosta (funkia). Just how big is it? I took a picture with me next to it for comparison, but I didn't like how it looked, so you'll have to take my word on its size. I can assure you that the sprouts reach over my head, which peaks at about 6'1" with shoes on.

I particularly like the blooms on the hosta (funkia). I used a better camera than my Blackberry. Happy?

Meteor-ocre Shower

Wow. That was a really lame pun. Seriously. I tried coming up with better. I sat down and told myself I couldn't leave until I developed a decent joke, anecdote, or play on words. I gave up. Turns out I wasn't that cometted.
Last night I went meteor shower viewing with Kim. It was a lot of fun. The night started out great because neither of us knew where the park was where we had originally planned to meet. We gave up and met up at a park whose location we did know.
The showers are known as the Perseid Meteor Showers and occur each August. Aside from that, all I know about them is that they were apparently more spectacular on the 11th this year. Honestly, the display was kind of a letdown. I would say we were lucky if we saw a dozen shooting stars the whole night.
There were a couple of satellites in the eastern sky that reflected the sun's light from the other side of the planet just right so it looked like a burning ball of something. I took binoculars with me so I was able to track the satellites for a little while even after it was too dim to see with the naked eye. Taking those with me was a good call. For an interesting rundown of the brightness of celestial bodies, have a look at this article on Apparent Magnitude.
Despite the comets' dismal turnout, I had a great time. It was probably a good thing that more clouds rolled in and covered the sky when they did. Otherwise, we probably would have stayed much later and I would be running off of even less sleep than I am now. (Which isn't much.)

Busy Week - Part 2, Chum's Wedding

Continuing on the story of my busy week, which was now actually two weeks ago, I bring up the wedding of my good chum, Sara. The wedding was really small and modest, but quaint. The reception was a lot of fun and I really busted out, having a great time through the night and even well past the end of the reception. In fact, I had my first after party. I've never partied enough to have an after party before. Here are some pictures:

Drew, the groom, hugging an elderly woman - likely his grandmother?

Sara talking with Chris after the ceremony.

She was laughing, not sneezing or whatever else this could be mistaken for.

Drew, walking outside for pictures

Kristen, Sara, Krista, Ann

Chris, Jace, Jake, Cody, Drew, Sara, Krista, Ann, Kristen, Erin

The ladies, producing a photo opp.

Drew and Sara's first wedding dance.

Sara, her dad Mike, her half-sister Elanda, and her half-brother Derek.

This is Sara's cousin Donnie after the reception dancing with Krista's baby Cyra (pronounced Kira - yeah, wasn't my idea) to keep her happy.

Following the reception, Ann and I decided we were still in party mode, so we bought some ice cream, headed over to my parent's place, and played cribbage with my dad for over an hour. The evening, as a whole, was a great way to end my busy week.

Busy Week - Part 1 - Baseball!!!

Last week was a very busy week. I did quite a lot. But I won't really share all that I did. Here's a taste:
On Wednesday I went to a baseball game with my friend Lacey after eating at Deano's bar and grill in Cedar Rapids. The food was alright but the game was a lot of fun. Granted, it was just baseball, but I don't think I've ever enjoyed a game of the sport so much in my life.

It started while it was still light. Cheer for the white team.

Me with Lacey. Proof that we actually went and I didn't just Google image search "baseball game" for a mildly interesting blog post.

We saw a hot air balloon! (Two actually, but the other one wasn't as pretty.)


And some creepy eye balls were racing... for our entertainment, I guess?

Then it got dark. Didn't affect how much fun we were having, though.

She didn't know I took this.

And before I forget, you'll never believed who served me ice cream at the game!

This is Bryce Dallas Howard, who played Gwen Stacey in Spider-Man 3 and served me ice cream last Wednesday. Lacey didn't know who the actress was when I pointed her out, so I used my phone to pull up some images of her, and she agreed that our ice cream salesperson looked very much like the actress. For some brief reading see more on why I think it was really her.

'C' is for Cookie/I is smart

I still don't know where my USB cable is, but as I did yesterday, I pondered at the thought that there must be some alternate way to transfer files from my phone to the computer. Only today I pondered a little bit harder.
Hmmmm... Can't do USB. Bluetooth? My bluetooth adapter is as missing as my USB cable and that thing has always been a bit sketchy, so I'd say the odds of it actually working are about 50-50. Connect the memory card directly to the computer? Again, the memory card adapter is in an unknown location. Seriously, I don't know where anything is!
But as I mentioned, I pondered a smidgen more thoroughly than I did yesterday and today I came up with the solution: email! It actually hit me like a brick, but I was glad that I had thought of it.

This is the picture I was going to show you yesterday. It's not exciting. In fact, my caption was going to be "I only took this picture to make you happy" or something to that effect.

I was making cookies tonight and I got kind of lazy toward the end. Or I was running out of pans that I was using as cookie sheets. You know how it is. The rest of the batter became nine inches of oatmeal chocolatey chip tastiness.

Finally moved in

On Friday, two days ago, I finally moved the last of all of my items out of the house I was renting into the house I now own. I took a picture with my phone of a pile of boxes (since I know how you like pictures to accommodate my words), but I have no idea where any of my USB cables might be hidden. Sorry, no pic.
Also on Friday, I got my internet and satellite TV set up. This is great! Not only can I continue blogging - I know, it's been a week - but I can also watch television on my second TV while I'm on the computer. Except for right now, because I have an old TV that every once in a while decides it doesn't want to display anything from input signals.
Ok, it's working again. See? It has a mind of its own.
Well, that's all I really had to say. I got my own place. It's pretty great. Now I gotta go mow my yard again. Take care, friends!

Photo Dump

I went back to my parents' house for the weekend and got some good pictures.
You'll like these. Promise.
Bear. What kind of dog is he? He's a big brown dog.

A big black bug. I like to think it's flying in front of some really cool fireworks.

Eamon. I haven't gotten to see this guy for a long time. Always a pleasure. Keep an eye on my poetry page for some of Eamon's work. (It's not there yet)

The cutest little girl in the entire freaking world.

Cute enough to melt your face off. And she will. Watch out!

Speaks for itself.

Worst Lyrics Ever

Stupid song lyrics bug me quite a bit. That's one of the reasons I don't listen to rap (ex. "Sometime y'all get crimey crimey, grimy grimy But those with a tiny hiney they get whiny whiny") or country (ex. "I've got the hungries for your love and I'm waiting in your welfare line"). That and the music just sucks.
I was looking up lyrics to a song today - a pretty good song that is actually nothing without its witty lyrics - and due to some random synaptic firing, decided to Google worst song lyrics ever. One list I found was on a BBC site and didn't include lyrics from any country or rap songs; presumably because they belong in categories all their own.
The BBC list had some good (as in, good to mention how badly bad they are) songs on their list. Let me highlight a couple:

I don't want to see a ghost,
It's the sight that I fear most,
I'd rather have a piece of toast,
Watch the evening news.

- "Life" Des'ree

Or

More Sacrifices than an Aztec priest,
Standing here straining at that leash,
All fall down,
Can't complain, mustn't grumble,
Help yourself to another piece of apple crumble.

- "That Was Then But This Is Now" ABC

And I was really glad they included this one:

Generals gathered in their masses,
Just like witches at black masses.

- "War Pigs" Black Sabbath

Wow! Rhyming a word... with itself! Genius!
But this last one for sure bothers me the most. Part of what bothers me is that I have never heard anyone else complain about it so it makes me wonder if I am the only one to catch the grammar catastrophe.

"But in this in ever in changing in world in which in we in live in in..."

- "Live and Let Die" Paul McCartney

Don't try giving me any of that "Queen's English" bull crap, either.
For more fun, Google "worst country lyrics". There's one about not taking your woman to the dog fight because "I'm afraid she'd win" and another about Grandma swinging topless from the outhouse door. High class, if you ask me.

Dual Bruises

This one is for you, Andrew (once you finally get internet back). Apparently I brawl in my sleep. Twice in the past two weeks I wake up with bruises on my biceps. Mysteriously. As in, I have no idea how they got there. They're pretty spotty little shiners, if I do say so.

This guy is a dark tan color and is on my right arm. If my whole body were this color, it would look like I just came back from a very sunny vacation. That's a mole right next to it.

This one has more of a sickly greenish purply hue and I've had it longer. There is a sizable freckle nearby to keep it company.
But Andrew - I'm talking to Andrew here - Andrew, I just thought that that (Dual Bruises) would be an amazing name for an attack and I had to share it with you. And by you, I of course mean... the world. Because I couldn't just text it to you.




Creeping Freckle!!!!!!

Spock Through Glass, or YouTube Nazis

I created this video because I thought it would be a good idea. Then I uploaded it to YouTube, and it was eventually removed. I think it had to do with copyright infringement or something along those lines. As if I were the first to do this sort of thing...
Most of the shots were taken from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. A few were taken from Star Trek IV, notably the scene with Spock talking to his mom.
I'm not sure what first gave me the idea for the video, if it was the question "How do you feel?" or the thing with Spock literally being behind glass. But I built upon the idea and wanted to show some cool footage of a space battle, which made it in there.
My favorite part of this whole video is at 2:45 showing Spock looking remorseful over blowing the engines of the other ship, even though in the movie I don't believe it was his call.

What is usually the case when I edit a video that includes music is that I end up loathing the song after the video is complete because I listen to bits and pieces of the song over and over as I work on completing the final product. Strangely, I still love this song. "Through Glass" by Stone Sour.

Creepy Music

I was out cruising with my friend Andrew when we were last in the same town and we decided to go to the local Salvation Army and enlist. I mean, buy crap.
We were not far into the store when we both heard an eerie chimed music box melody. We both tracked it down and found it to be coming from a porcelain statue of two cardinals sitting on a stick. Disregarding the cardinals, Andrew decided that he must have the music box within. He bought the cheap nicknack only to be disappointed. When he took it home, he unscrewed the base of the statue to remove the music box.
As soon as the box was out of its porcelain housing, the volume of the music greatly diminished. What's more (did I use that phrase in a previous post?), the gears for some reason became sluggish and it sounded as if the batteries were going dead on his walkman.
Before we allowed it to stop playing completely, I promised Andrew I would recompose the tune digitally for his listening pleasure. And that's what I did. I post it here in video form with a creepy-looking hallway made to look like it was shot on really old film. Enjoy.

On a sidenote, when I first heard the music, I envisioned a dark hallway with a little girl in dark clothes standing at the end. When I did a Google image search for "creepy", that was the first image that came up. Unfortunately, the image wasn't very large...

Photo Dump

I dump random photos upon you.

This jet stream cast a neat shadow over the other clouds. Two more to follow.



How often do you find yourself following a horse and buggy down the road? The highway, sure. But in the middle of town, I was trying to figure out if it was ok to pass.


The pile of brush I injured my "little piggies" on. It's a big pile and will take a long while to break down completely.