365 Snaps

Growing up

2006-07-07T11:18:00.000-07:00

Today Shannon went in to take the test for her Learner's Permit. A milestone in anyone's life. Maybe not as much as getting the driver's license, but still very exciting for her. Unfortunately the first time was a bit of a roadblock (hey, not knowing the sign for 'steep gradient ahead' here in the flatlands is hardly her fault :) but next time is the charm.

Anyway, here's a few photos of the Big Day :)

Heading inside:

Filling out paperwork:

Taking the test:

Mmm Flummery

2006-05-19T13:54:00.000-07:00

Shannon wanted to make Flummery for her French class and club. The problem with Flummery is that if you make it, you usually make A LOT of it.

WTF is Flummery? It's the bestest dessert EVER, especially when it's hot out. Most people I introduce Flummery to flip out over it. The minor drawback is that it's very rich and sweet. Ok so that's 2 drawbacks. The two drawbacks to Flummery are that it's very rich and sweet. And addictive. ok THREE drawbacks... I'll come in again.

WTF is Flummery? It's the bestest dessert EVER, especially when it's hot out. Most people I introduce Flummery to flip out over it.The three minor drawbacks are that it's rich, sweet and addictive.

:)

Anyway, here's us trying to haul three containers filled with Flummery goodness to school and I'll have you know we managed it and only knocked over one cup.

Where did I go?

2006-05-17T20:07:00.000-07:00

There comes a point when you've forgotten/procrastinated on something for so long that you start feeling guilty about it. Then you think to yourself, "WTF? It's my thing. I set my own rules on it. Now I'm creating my own guilt over it. That's just crazy."

So I'm crazy.

I carry my camera everywhere. I have a camera in my phone. But when your life consists of getting up, going to work. Occasionally going to the store. Coming home. Doing chores. Watching telly. Going to bed. Pretty soon you run out of things to take pictures of. How many times can I cheat with a screencap or take another photo of my videos? Answer: not that many.

So I've decided that I'll keep this place going, but I'm only going to post a pic if it's worth it. What constitutes "worthy" is up to me of course so if Spooky does something cute again, I'll post it. Hehe.

So I don't think I'm going to make it to a year's worth and who knows, I might get back in the habit. And I'm really only posting this to justify it to myself. Because like I said, I'm crazy.

Election Night

2006-05-09T21:51:00.000-07:00

Apparently when you work election night, you get hella pizza.

Wandering around

2006-05-08T17:08:00.000-07:00

The kid and I had a good wander around downtown Lincoln while Gary and Swi went off to do their "boy" thing (which was basically getting onto the field at Memorial Stadium and running up and down fending off imaginary football players :) I'll post a pic of that in a mo.)

I decided to take a photo of a building I found semi-interesting, architecturally speaking:

It's what I like to do. Yes I know I'm a little... odd. Anyway, while I was snapping the pic, this asshole, surrounded by his hags:

remarked snidely, "First time in a big city?" as they passed us, and then they tittered like twits. So I figured I'd take their pic and make it available on teh Internets so they could be properly mocked and ridiculed. I know it's hard to see them but by the time I got over my indignation enough to remember to snap their pic they'd gotten farther down the block. I should have stalked them.

Apart from that, the following pic is one I stumbled on off of some alley downtown. It made me chuckle anyway. It's right outside Valentino's I think. So this is my actual pic for today:

And finally (man I have such a dry spell of pics and then suddenly I've got an abundance. Life is weird) here's Gary quarterbacking for the Huskers :)

That's one for the Dire Predictions Club, eh Gary?

Run Swi Run!

2006-05-07T13:50:00.000-07:00

Well my dad fell ill and wasn't able to run the Lincoln marathon this year but his best friend Swi did.

Gary and I had an enjoyable time trying to spot Swi amongst the thousands of runners. Basically we ended up shooting him from the car along the route when he was in the home stretch. Fun fun :)

Evening in a cafe

2006-05-06T20:32:00.000-07:00

Tonight we went to the Crescent Moon coffeehouse to listen to my cousin Gunter play gee-tar and mandolin with friends in the courtyard. It was lovely. Bit chilly but cool I wish GI had a place like this.

W00t!

2006-05-05T14:43:00.000-07:00

Tonga holding our department's first-ever 1st place AP award for the website :)

New Neighbour

2006-05-03T20:09:00.000-07:00

Meet my new neighbour:

He's kind of cute in a twitchy, A.D.D. kind of way :) He lives outside my bathroom window which makes showering an interesting experience.

My New Toy

2006-05-01T20:19:00.000-07:00

So I finally decided to get a DVR. After a glitch with one box, a replacement box a mere six hours after they installed the first one, I have now joined the world of digital recording.

I flippin' love it.

Debate and Rebuttal

2006-04-30T19:43:00.000-07:00

I worked my first Gubernatorial (Hehe. Guber.) debate tonight. I've never been to one really. It was interesting though a shame it was with three republicans. I won't be voting for any of them because none of them impressed me (and well I'm registered as a Damn Liberal Dem.)

But all in all it was interesting to watch. My job was originally going to be to take recorded audio and convert the files to MP3s and upload them to our server where the copy desk would then download them and begin transcribing them We had an ambitious goal of offering a full transcript of the debate in the next day's paper which means the audio had to be completely transcribed 2 and a half hours after the debate was over.

Well of course my computer wouldn't connect to the server from the debate site because of all of a bunch of security stuff the company made me put on my laptop so I was completely hindered while trying to do my job. I'd been agitated about the whole audio pressure thing all weekend - to the point of having a dream in which the city editor, a mild-mannered and very nice man, yelled at me and told me I'd let the paper down. He said he'd planned his entire news package around me being able to bring off this audio thing and I screwed it all up. Thank goodness it was just a dream and he had a good chuckle about it when I told him about it. But I think that's the first time pressure from real life manifested itself in my dreams. Weird.

Anyway we had a backup plan which was to have three recorders and we just recorded the debate in thirds. One person recorded the first half an hour and then took the recorder back to the paper so the copy desk could start transcribing. Then the next person did the next half an hour, then I finished up the final half an hour. It worked well enough and in hindsight was probably the best way to do it. Doing it with the MP3s and downloading etc would have needed more planning/training time with the copy desk.

So yeah, the debate was good and the transcript was in this morning's paper and is getting good feedback methinks.

Cleaning Fit

2006-04-29T15:32:00.000-07:00

A mild cleaning fit Saturday afternoon led to a semi-reorganization of some of my vids. It still looks cluttered I know, but trust me, it looks a hell of a lot better than it did. Someday I'll organize by genre or alpha or something but right now I'm not that ambitious :) I know where everything is so that's enough for me :)

Sort of a week from hell.

2006-04-28T10:05:00.000-07:00

I'm going to cheat a bit. Sorry it must be done. This week has been alternately great and it has sucked balls and to be honest 365snaps has been the furthest from my mind. I have a few images to post that I've taken but just haven't had time to pull off the camera so I'm just gonna do it all in this post, but I'm missing a day here and there and I'll try to get back on track starting tomorrow.

The sucky? Indyknow was hacked several times and I've had to fight with it all week to get it back to some kind of working order. It's still wonky but hopefully with help from tech support I'll have it back to normal.

The great? My 24 blog, 24addict.com somehow got noticed by FOX TV :) I got an email from them asking if I'd want to post a teaser to an interview with one of the show's creators. When I asked if it was true FOX reads my blog they replied, "Of course we do ;)" and I could not be more stoked. So now I'm going to get weekly info from them with clips and teasers I can post. Squee! :)

Anyway, on with the photos:

April 22nd:
Shannon had an Orchestra competition in Kearney that we had to get up at stupid o'clock for and she had to be in full formal dress as well. This is her getting ready to go in:

April 23rd:
IndyKnow was hacked. Hacked hacked hacked. Screwed up and mucked around. Data lost. Stupid f'ing hacker script kiddies motherf'ing moronic loser idiot from hell. I would like to chain them to the bumper of my car and drag them around a few miles of gravel roads and then drop them in a vat of lemon juice.

April 25th:
I steal peanuts from Texas T-bone. They have the best peanuts.

April 26th:
Shannon worked her first fundraiser at Wendy's. A poorly organized fundraiser that illicited more puzzled looks then fundgiving from the patrons but ah well. At least she got to clean some tables.

Cramming

2006-04-20T09:18:00.000-07:00

I had intended to spend more time getting my TV column fine-tuned this week, but with things as crazy as they are I didn't have the time. So I had to sort of cram it in before it could be placed. It's not bad, but it could have been better.

Next time I'll make time.

Ahh the colours

2006-04-19T11:32:00.000-07:00

For a brief bit of time in the spring the trees are virtually exploding in vivid colours of pinks and greens. This is at my usual park and the cam phone just doesn't do it justice.

Bye Judy...

2006-04-18T17:36:00.000-07:00

After work I met my grandpa up at my aunt's house where we picked up several boxes of stuff I had stored there after mom died. I hadn't seen this stuff in five years and couldn't remember what it all was but I had a good time poking through some of it. I'll go through it in-depth this weekend but for now we needed to get it out of my uncle's house because he's moving.

Yep he sold the house. After my Aunt Judy died we often wondered if he'd rattle around in the place on his own and after a few years I guess he decided it was too much for him.

I'm gonna miss this place. We spent a lot of happy times here, especially at Christmas which Judy always made sure was spectacular for the kids. She had a good time decorating the place as well. It was hard to go back in it after all this time but also sort of a good thing too. Time to move on.

Shiny

2006-04-17T10:13:00.000-07:00

I got a new pen.

Normally this would not be very exciting. But this isn't a normal pen. It's a sweeeet pen. Very shiny. Built-in laser pointer and bright-ass flashlight in the top. I've never had a laser pointer before. My cat enjoys it immensely. This may be the first impulse item I've every bought in a checkout line that has been so thoroughly fun and useful :)

A pretty for the pretties

2006-04-16T10:23:00.000-07:00

I gave the kid a lovely cherry wood jewelry box for Easter. She needed something to hold her growing collection of jewelry - a better place to put this stuff instead of by the side of the bathroom sink anyway :)

I think I might take it and get it engraved too.

[I will have a pic forthcoming. She disappeared with the box in her room and I'm scared to go in there.]

Weird skies

2006-04-15T17:19:00.000-07:00

Did a little Easter shopping at the Devil tonight. When I came out the clouds looked really cool, an impending storm that turned out to be fairly weak and disappointing. Ah well.

Video hunt

2006-04-14T11:40:00.000-07:00

Been wanting to check out a couple movies of a particular actor I like so I went on the hunt at Movie gallery since it's close to work. Couldn't find the one I really wanted, which was "Urban Legend" (Had never seen it, would probably have never tried to see it were it not for this particular actor.) MG didn't have it of course (their selection is for shit) but I did find "Poolhall Junkies" which turned out to be a real gem.

No pic today.

2006-04-13T15:54:00.000-07:00

Yeah. Today was a bad day. Would rather forget it so no pic today.

Daily trip to Walgreens.

2006-04-12T11:37:00.000-07:00

Went to Walgreens this am to pick up some brekkie food. Walked the same path from the entrance to the muffins. Stopped took this pic for no other reason than this aisle was empty and I wouldn't feel like a tool for snapping a photo inside Walgreens.

Dull day today in other words :)

Ugh. Gas prices.

2006-04-11T15:23:00.000-07:00

I feel like I'm entitled to moan about gas prices because I drive an economical-ish car rather than some monstrous SUV I don't really need to own. Prices are expected to pass $3.00 again this summer just when I was hoping to make a roadtrip up to see my dad. It's going to hurt. A lot.

Vote Lex!

2006-04-10T21:05:00.000-07:00

Yeah it's Jack bauer Monday. But I'm so sucked into Smallville that I watched the DVDs until 24 time. Something about Lex on this show is what makes this the current obsession. I make no apologies for being a thirty-something watching a WB show. Bite me :) Lex is hawt.

Spring is in the air

2006-04-09T15:49:00.000-07:00

I'm starting to notice little buds of green on the trees. I like the renewal and it will be nice to look outside while I'm in the shower and see pretty trees rather than their bones and the pervy neighbour behind me. I still prefer Fall though.