My First Baby Shower

Tomorrow at work will be a first ever experience for me... the first baby shower I've attended. My friend Mike and I came up with (what we hope will be) a great idea for a gift from both him and me. I'm not gonna post what the present actually is, just in case Kim happens to check my blog sometime tonight, but the packaging itself may provide clues!

Celebrate Independence Day 2009

Once again, Independence Day is upon us. A time for friends, food, and fireworks.. and food!

I've been wondering now for a few years why I continue to put myself through the irritation of planning a 4th of July event.. as most years it has resulted in countless disappointment and irritation. This year was looking to be no different. My friend Kristen and her husband weren't going to be able to come, and getting a committed yes or no from some of my other friends is starting to seem impossible now days.

Add to this, that our traditionally "friend only" event somehow picked up countless family members - parents and siblings - and you have a recipe for suckage of epic proportions.

Or.. at least that's how I thought it was going to turn out. I'm not sure what it is about me or if its something that happened in my childhood to cause this, but I've always been of the opinion that if family is involved, the event or get-together or whatever you want to call it is automatically going to suck. I have to be honest, at first I wasn't the least bit looking forward to spending the holiday this way... in-laws, my friends parents, my friends in-laws, the parents kids... I read this sentence and it sounds something akin to waterboarding to me.

However, I honestly ended up thoroughly enjoying myself... probably for the first time ever at something like this. I'm not sure if it was the combination of friends and family or maybe, just maybe, that I can in fact really have fun with my family once I let go of the "uggggh this is going to SUUUUUCK!" disposition.... Madness, I know.

Everyone seemed to have a really good time, and I guess in the end that's what this day is all about. Being able to get together with friends... and family... and celebrating our freedoms and what makes this country truly great.

Less text, more pics!

The little ones having a great time together


The barbecue hard at work! Delicious!


Kaleah's first Independence Day!


I can neither confirm, nor deny, that this was ours...
(but it was awesome)


Children love holidays even more when they're cracked out on sugar!


The "finale" fountain in progress
(yes, those are fountains stacked on top of each other)


The 4th Division of the Tank Army lies in wait, prepared to strike!


You know you've put on a good show when all that's left is
piles upon piles of burning firework remains.

Make the Smart Choice, Don't Drown...

Well as everyone knows, we've been getting a lot of rain here in Utah over the last week or two. Apparently that's a major issue for some people who love to drive their cars into giant 5 foot deep lakes of water.

As a public service announcement, I'd like to remind all of my fellow Utah drivers that cars do not float. You will sink. Sinking in water typically results in drowning. And drowning usually = death.

The National Weather Service and I, via the Severe Weather Alert service, would like to remind you to make the "smart choice"


Just say no to drowning!

Scenic Evanston, Wyoming

Today in preparation for the 4th, Jeff and I made a run to Evanston in hopes of procuring some good fireworks at a fair price. My store of choice was always Porter's, dating back many years into my youth. Porter's has since been converted into the TNT warehouse, so that was naturally the first stop.

Living in Utah, it really sucks trying to find fireworks. What little fireworks are sold here are not impressive, and usually very expensive to boot. One of the greatest things about the store was just how obscene the size of some of the packages were. I was really tempted to buy one of these, but previous run-in's with the county sheriff made me decide to not test my luck.


On the way back to the freeway we passed one of those adult novelty stores. Normally, this isn't really my thing and I just drive on by, however I couldn't help but laugh at the last item on the sign. I felt compelled to take a pic so that I had proof I wasn't just making this all up in my head.


Somehow I don't think "I swear honey, I was just getting my Pac Man on" would cover me from my wife's wrath...

The Blight

A few days ago I posted about our budding Garden of the Apocalypse.
Things have been going pretty well up until my first visit to the
Garden since the weekend.

The pictures I had last posted were of bounty and green flourishing life...
imagine my surprise to find the garden half dead in a matter of 6
days. The combination of high rainfall plus lack of sunshine have
produced the perfect storm for The Blight, better known as black spot
fungus. In nothing flat we now find ourselves fighting for our harvest.

Everything I've read about this fungus says it's really hard to get
rid of once it gets a foothold on the area. Hopefully we haven't
reached that point quite yet. A good trimming and ample amounts of
fungicide should help us get back on track tonight.

However, the dandelions seem undeterred by this new plague.......

Disaster Resolved

Well, several hours later my phone issues have finally been resolved.
Apparently Apple's servers were having a momentary meltdown which has
since been fixed. Unfortunately my review of the iPhone 3.0 will be
tainted by the lackluster update, but so far I'm really digging the
universal landscape mode and most of all, cut and paste across all
apps. Everything seems to run a lot faster as well which is awesome.

More lata!

Disaster!!

Ah yes, the glory of the iPhone update. Download, transfer the update to said iPhone, then as the final step all you have to do is authenticate your phone with Apple's servers.

Easier said than done, my friends. Now my happy little iPhone is reduced to a half pound paperweight, and AT&T has no idea how to fix it. Beware... BEEEEWARE the iPhone 3.0 update! The harbinger of sorrow and despair!

Russia's Pravda Socialism Story

A couple weeks ago I mentioned an article I'd read on Pravda
commenting on our country's quick slide into socialism. Here's the
link if anyones interested in the full article. It was really eye
opening for me:

http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/107459-0/

Sent using iPhone mail!

Garden of the Apocalypse

Roughly two months ago I was listening to a segment on Glenn Beck's radio show about things to consider during the rough economic period we're in, as well as what would happen if things were to further collapse. During the course of the dialogue a really good point was made that, if things were to get really, really ugly, a lot of people would be completely lost. Imagine a world where you have no one to depend on except your family and friends: no stores, no Wal-mart, no mass-transport.

I found myself thinking that if that were to happen, I would be among the "screwed" segment of society.. lacking any basic knowledge of how to grow even the simplest of foods. I decided it made good sense to try and grow some food this summer, if for no other reason than it would help cut down on some food costs later on and provide valuable education in the process.

Thus, the Garden of the Apocalypse was born.

We're two months into the project, and despite an early setback from an untimely late April frost, things are now going fairly well.

Front to back, we have beans, radishes, carrots, and chard. We're also growing some rather large squash plants (no fruit yet) and taking an attempt at a watermelon which thus far has been a complete bust, but we're still early in the growing season for that.

In the other corner are our tomato plants which have been doing quite well. In the far corner we have what I have deemed the "Alpha Male" Beefmaster tomato plant which has grown to the point where its coming out of the top of the cage. Our garden is also sporting some rather large dandelion plants in the back... apparently MiracleGrow also feeds weeds as well.

The Alpha Male is sporting some rather hefty greens right now. Doing some research on Wiki today I learned that Beefmaster tomatoes can often times reach about one pound in weight... which I figure is roughly one can of salsa per tomato.

Email Formating is made of 100% Pure Lose!

A warning to anyone using email to post... Your messages will be
poorly formatted at best!

Sent using iPhone mail!

Back on the Wagon

Well I figured a six month break from the blog scene would be long
enough and that it's time to hop back on the blogging wagon. I've
decided to try out the mobile email blogging feature of the site and
see if that helps keep updates more regular, if not smaller.

I'm not really sure where to even begin with covering the last six
months. I've been watching my county quickly slide into a
nationalized, progressive wet dream and realizing that many people
don't have the time or energy to do anything about it.

I read an interesting article about a week and a half ago from the
Russian online news Pravda.ru (might be off on the name, will need to
dig up the article later) in which it talked about how America is
quickly descending into a socialist state, and how the average
American cares more about their favorite sports team or reality TV
show than about the decisions being made which with each passing day
are stripping more and more of our rights away. It mocked us for our
pride and that even when we're selling out our freedoms for money or
'security' we still have the audacity to mock other countries for
their lack of freedom. I'll have to find the article and post it
later... Was really kind of eye opening but at the same time sadly true.

In other areas things are going about as well as can be expected.
Seems like everyone I know is pregnant or having children right now
which is great for them and honestly makes me a little sad (for
reasons I shall not get into here) but it's still wonderful to see all
of my friends and coworkers experiencing it.

I'm going to finish with something that has really carried me through
the last five or six months of economic uncertainty. In these
uncertain times, be prepared to lose EVERYTHING. I don't mean this in
a doomsday sort of way. It's a mindset that if you mentally prepare
yourself with this in mind, it helps you realize what is really truly
important. It helps you think about ways you can become more self-
reliant. Give it a try and really think it through. You'll see it's
really a freeing concept.

Christmas Reflections...

Well another Christmas has come and gone, and this year has given me a lot to reflect on and think about as we head into 2009. Its been a Christmas of ups and downs... and I think I've learned a lot about myself and my family this holiday season.

Firstly, I've definitely learned to appreciate all of the hard work that goes into preparing Christmas dinners and events. Heidi and I have been going pretty much non-stop since the 9th and its definitely taken its toll on our energy levels. Today is the first day we've had to pretty much sit and do nothing in almost three weeks.

Still, I wouldn't trade any of the events over the last three weeks for extra rest or relaxation. For the first year in a long time we've been in a position to have dinners, buy nice gifts, and have a wonderful home to entertain in. 2008 has definitely been a year of blessings for me and my wife. I got to experience a lot of joy just having family and friends around, and how exciting it was seeing the children enjoy the holidays.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, and that the good times continue in 2009!

Tragedy!

Well... I must say this didn't come as a huge shock. It is with great sadness that I report the failure of Hatemonger University to defend the Fantasy Football championship. For the third time this year I couldn't quite cut it against Effie and went down 57-77 in the championship round. Given my regular season record of 7-6-1 I wasn't expecting to get this far, but I had a lot of fun this season.

So until next August, Hate U will sit quietly by and plot their revenge!

Sibling Christmas Dinner!

With all that we've been able to do this Christmas, we thought it would be a great new tradition to start having a 'sibling Christmas' dinner. Our idea was to have a nice Christmas night with just the kids - myself, my sister and her husband, her kids, and my foster sisters. I also wanted to invite my good friend Jeff and his family since we've been friends since third grade and he's more a brother to me than a friend.

Dinner, I must say, was excellent. We had a glazed ham, yams, green bean casserole, jello, and some tasty rolls. Heidi also wanted to take a shot at making her grandma's sweat mustard sauce for the ham. Everything turned out perfect, although space was pretty tight during dinner.

After dinner we had a small present exchange and then it was time to break out the band! We had a great time rocking out in small groups and even the children were able to get into the act thanks to what we've deemed "Guitar Hero Retard Mode." I guess we could have named it "Child Mode" but it just didn't have the same ring - besides, Jeff could only hack it on the drums at that skill level, so "Retard Mode" seemed a lot more fitting.

While we were busy rocking out, the children took shifts decorating sugar cookies. This sounds like a disaster in the making, I know, but I had the foresight to cover the entire kitchen floor with tablecloths! I'm glad I did because sprinkles were EVERYWHERE!

HOT PIX!!!

Karek and Jackson discuss their haul. Four year olds
reading packaging is a little scary...

Kian thrashes on the guitar. He was averaging over
90% notes hit every time.

Kiera impresses her new boyfriend, Karek, with her
mad drumming skills. She's even got the headbang down.

Jackson and Kian hard at work on the sugar cookies
while Heather supervises.

Cookies manufactured by my beloved niece.
(yes, there are cookies in there somewhere)

The boys at about 1:00am. Too bad we didn't have
any chalk to outline them with lol

The Christmas Sweater

Tonight my wife and I attended the Fathom Events showing of Glenn Beck's "The Christmas Sweater" which is based on the book by the same name (obviously)

The story focuses on a 12 year old boy named Eddie and a Christmas where what he wanted more than anything else in the world was a bike. His mother, like many others, was in a difficult financial position and was only able to make a handmade sweater for his only gift. Its not until his mother dies in a horrible car accident driving home from their grandparents that Christmas night that the story truly begins.

What follows is a story of anger, guilt, sorrow and sadness... whereby Eddie learns the true meaning of Christmas. In the end, this story is really about the storms that all of us face in life, and about finding the courage to push through the storm and keep on living.

The stage show production was excellent. Glenn provided the narration and acting, and was accompanied by an orchestra and gospel singer. I really thought it was a great story... even though the first act was really quite sad. My wife's only complaint was the gospel rendition of "God be with You til we Meet Again" as she was under the impression that it was a "Mormon song" - whatever that means - and shouldn't have been sung the way it was. Even after I reminded my wife that it was actually a Christian song, she still objected to it.

What can I say... my wife is a dirty racist. I myself had a great time, and I'm convinced that these Fathom Events are totally the way to go if you want to see a play or stage show. Tickets are a lot cheaper and you get a much, MUCH better view than you would from any seat in the theater its being performed in.

A Candlelight Christmas

On the way to work this morning, I saw a billboard for A Candlelight Christmas being held at This is the Place Heritage Park. Having never been to this before I thought it would be something fun that my wife and I could enjoy. Even though it was very, very cold, we braved the trek up 8th South to check it out. I also thought this would be an awesome opportunity to test out my new camera!

The idea of the display is how Christmas would have been back in the days of the pioneers. Odd, I thought.. here all this time I've been thinking the pioneers didn't have electricity.. but I digress.


Our first stop was their recreation of the Nativity, complete with the Star and bed in a manger, or in this case a barn. Have I mentioned how awesome I think my new camera is? I must admit I had a difficult time getting the right shutter speed so that it didn't look like these pictures were taken in the middle of the day with flash grenades going off in front of you, but once I got it down I think they turned out great.


Another really neat thing they did was pioneer type crafts. With your admission, you got to build any three crafts of your choosing, and the different crafts were scattered throughout the many buildings of the park. We built a paper Nativity, made a copy of the first commercial Christmas card using a printing press, and made our own jingle bells. It was pretty cool to see how all these things were done 'back in the day.'


Speaking of the printing press, as we were walking through the printing building, I took out my camera to take a picture of a printing machine. I didn't notice until after I'd taken the picture that a slight amount of fog had built up on my lens due to coming into the warm building from the frozen tundra. I think it turned out pretty awesome with the fog effect.


One final thing that caught my eye is we were leaving was a candy display in the window of an old original ZCMI building. It occurred to me that a lot of the children walking around probably wouldn't even realize that the display is something that was a tradition in Salt Lake City for hundreds of years, only to be brought to a dead stop thanks to Macy's purchasing ZCMI a few years ago. Brought back a lot of memories of my brothers and sisters going downtown to see the beautiful candy displays at ZCMI during the holidays.

Pre-Christmas Goodness

Tonight I got my first Christmas present from my dear wife, the above-shown, very hot Nikon CoolPix P80. Sporting an 18x optical zoom, a huge array of features, and 10.1 megapixels of photo taking goodness.

I waited two hours after opening my camera for the batteries to charge so I could play around with it. One of the only complaints I found about this camera online was that it takes poor pictures in very low light, so I decided to put that to the test right out of the gate while I had my 15 days to return the camera if I didn't like it.

These pictures are of our Christmas tree from across the room. It should be noted that the Christmas lights were the only light source in the entire room and I didn't use any flash. I think I can say with safety that the people making the complaints about low light had no idea what they were doing.

Note: these pictures are at 25% of their original size. The originals were 3648x2736 resolution. You can click on the pictures to view them larger.



Love this camera already.

Third Time's the Charm?

Ahhh sweet, sweet victory! I have yet again survived another week of Fantasy Football Playoffs with a great win over Sean 80-61. Thanks go out to the G-Men for playing their worst game of the season in their loss to the Cowboys. It was that game that allowed me to cruise to victory!

Now its on to the finals, where I will again face my arch-nemesis Effie. I've yet to beat her in two prior games this year, so perhaps third time's the charm. We'll find out this weekend!

iPhone Playtime

As you may remember from my earlier posts, my iPhone really doesn't take the best pictures in low-light or indoor situations. About a week ago, I had read a few snippets online about some apps which greatly improve the functionality of the iPhone camera and allow it to take some semi decent shots. Keep in mind, its only a 2 megapixel camera so the results can only get so good.

The first app I downloaded is called SteadyCam. This program allows you to take better shots in low light or indoor situations by using the built in motion detection sensors in the phone. You press the shutter button, then as soon as the phone detects that the camera is steady it takes the pic. Helpful for people like me who inadvertantly shake the camera when pressing the picture button. This program was free and it actually works pretty well.

The second program is Camera Bag. This program allows you to take pictures using 12 different picture lens effects - ranging from black and white to a grainy 1970s camera to some more modern effects. I really like this program a lot as it allows you to do some really creative things with pictures you're taking right at that moment. Here's a couple pictures I took using a black and white effect, and then a 1930s camera grain:



The final app I downloaded is PhotoLab which allows you to do a lot of creative, on the fly photo editing before you email your pictures off. I'm not sure how extensively I will use this app, as I can do all of these things using Photoshop, but its great for times I won't have access to my computer and need to do some base photo editing. I took a few before and after shots of my beloved Alessandra and a Mountain Dew can to show off some effects. I uploaded these directly from the camera 'photo roll.'

Sadly I did not get to take this picture in person

This is using the stencil effect


This is the dramatic black and white effect

All hail the Dew!

The pencil with color effect, which produces cool results

MoTab Christmas Concert!

Last night, my wife and I had the opportunity to attend the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert. This is probably one of my favorite Christmas traditions, and for us always marks the traditional beginning of the Christmas season.


The theme of the concert was "Ring Christmas Bells," with many of the musical numbers featuring the bell choirs from Davis, Fremont, Jordan, Murray, and Riverton High Schools. The special guests were Brian Stokes Mitchell, who has been in more Broadway productions and received more awards than honestly anyone else I can name, and Edward K Herrman, who is well known for his portrayal of FDR in "Eleanor and Franklin" and more recently as Richard Gilmore on CW's "The Gilmore Girls."

The concert featured many, many un-traditional Christmas songs, some of which weren't even really Christmas songs. One thing I immediately picked up on was how prominent Brian Stokes Mitchell was in this concert - largely featured in about two-thirds of the overall performance. At many times I felt like I was at a Brian Stokes Mitchell concert with the Choir in the background.

It should be noted that this was not a bad thing! Mitchell has a powerful, amazing voice that completely blew me away. He was absolutely fantastic in all aspects. My favorite peices of his work that evening were two songs: "Through Heaven's Eyes" from The Prince of Egypt and "New Words."

A trend I've noticed in recent years is that the Choir will do a peice centered around a story from history. This year the story was told from the Civil War, and a man named Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It was during this timultuous period in our nation's history that he wrote four stanzas of a poem which would later become the Christmas song "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day." Edward K Herrmann narrated the story, and did a fantastic job. He has a really awesome story-telling voice.

Overall, I felt the concert was one of the best in recent years, mostly because so much new material was performed. It didn't feel like the same old rehashed Christmas concert, something unique and wonderful to experience! I hope the Choir keeps this up in the coming years ahead.


Here's a shot from the final song, "Angels from the Realms of Glory" - my favorite Choir Christmas song ever! Sweet, sweet forbidden pictures!