Say What?

Happy birthday, Jesus! I worked the morning shift yesterday and got to work at 4:30am. It was nice to get off early as I had some last-minute running around to do before getting some steaks on the grill and getting to church for the 3:00pm service. I couldn't believe the traffic in Apple Valley...it was nuts! Total gridlock like I've never seen in that city before. For the most part, people were being very courteous and where traffic was merging together, drivers were taking turns and meshing lanes nicely. I was in a long line of traffic trying to get out of the Target, Best Buy parking lot onto the main road. The traffic on the main road was relentless and people in front of me weren't being given much chance to pull out. When they did go they had to be aggressive. So this guy a couple cars in front of me pulls out and in the process, the oncoming traffic has to brake so this guy can get out and merge into a lane which is stopped. It doesn't matter that all the traff

Thanks be to God that my headaches are over...for the most part. I went to bed last night believing I'd make it through the night without being awoken by a stabbing pain in my left eye...and I did. I had a couple of much smaller cluster h/a during the day but nothing like I'd been experiencing. It's time to get back on my bike and get some miles into my legs so I'm ready to hit the roads as soon as they're ready. I was even thinking today about putting my running on hold for a year so I can really focus on my bike. I'd like to ride 6000 road miles this year and if I'm trying to run also it's going to make it difficult. I won't run and ride on the same day. I used to but not anymore. Anyway, I'm excited to be on the mend again and looking forward to getting on my new wheels, too—my Mavic Ksyriums. I even had my bike into the shop a couple weeks ago to have the headset and bottom bracket overhauled as well as the usual stuff they do in a tune-up.

Tammy and Rachel just got back from violin class and dance class. Tammy said they had 30 minutes to kill downtown before the lesson so they stopped into a courtyard restaurant to get a bite. They noticed a homeless man in his 50s trying to get some warmth inside from out of the windy cold. Tammy approached him and asked if he would like a sandwich. He said he'd like that. She brought him to the register and had him pick out whatever he wanted. He ordered a turkey sandwich with apple pie and a drink. She asked him if he wanted some fruit to put in his pocket for later on but he declined. She said goodbye in the name of Christ and they went to class. I love that she will do this sort of thing. When we were in San Francisco a couple years ago we encountered so many homeless people begging for money...most likely for their next drink. We bought a bunch of cheese and cracker snacks and packages of peanuts to pass out instead of money. They were always glad and never disappointed or a

Tammy, Rachel and I are down here in the shop, each on our own computers. They're playing Minesweeper through MSN messenger. I'm obviously typing in my blog. Had an overtime shift today and that was good because I had nothing pressing to be done today...except for Christmas shopping which I have yet to start. Tammy's given me a couple ideas for her and Rachel put together a well thought out list of stuff...she always makes it so easy for us. I only have one request...an mp3 player for my workouts. I should get online and narrow it down to one or two.

But that's okay because I've gotten so much done on my website. I've been at work all night and rather than try and catch some sleep on my break time I stayed awake and went through the pages inserting the new menu. I'm not using a CSS template so I'm doing each one individually. I'm into the site too deep now to back out but the next one I make will be done quite a bit differently. Anyway, I've got this site about how I want it for uploading more photos to it. It was cluttered with nav buttons until the new menu. It's not totally how I'd like it but it's much better than it was. I've still got a couple dozen pages to modify. I got an email back from Carol Conti at ASGLA They liked the photos of the Laburnum lamp and wanted more information about its base. I think the shade photographed very well but I wasn't happy with the base and cap. They seemed pleased with the results. I noticed last week that the Google search bots have finall

It's just turning past midnight as I write this and it's Now Tammy's birthday. We celebrated it with Rachel tonight because her dad is picking her up after school tomorrow and there won't be time then. I had hoped to secretly bake her a cake but there just wasn't a chance for me to do it without her knowing. Mom was going to do it for me but I figured it wasn't such a big deal if she knew what I was up to so I let her know that I was about to do something I don't typically do much of...cook. Actually, it turned out very well...German chocolate...one of her favorites...and I made it a two-layered cake. No simple single layer for my gal. All my surprises were found out about before their time as I'd set flowers out on the table for her tonight after she went to bed but she had to get up again and found them. That's okay because she went to sleep with a smile. I'm very happy with the slides I took of my Laburnum lamp the other day. These are the b

I took yesterday off to spend time with Bryan He came over in the morning and we spent a couple hours trying to photograph my Laburnum lamp with his digital camera. They didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped. I told him I'd drag them into Photoshop to see if I could improve on them but I'm not very hopeful. After messing with the photographing we went over to Claudia and Ron's and visited with them and Tim. We spent a couple hours and had a nice visit. Bryan was going to get a photo of Ron but when I said I'd like to include it on the website Ron said 'no'. Whatever. I had a Cluster h/a come on while we were there but I went into the bathroom and took and Imitrex and was able to knock it out after 20 minutes or so. I'm hoping I'm nearly done with them for this cycle...maybe another 7 to 10 days. This is another photo of Bryan's which I like very much. I said goodbye to Bryan and he headed over to Moms for dinner and the night. I went

My brother Bryan is in town for a few days on his way back to Portland. He's taking a month to travel the country in his truck and photograph his journey. Recently he quit his job and got out of the corporate rat race with the idea of taking a year off to put some effort into beginning his own business in photography. If anyone can make a go of it I think he can. He met his wife Sue at her mother's home in Hickory, NC for Thanksgiving. Apart from that one rendezvous, he's been on no particular schedule. On the way south out of Portland to Texas, he stayed off the interstate and took the back roads which I thought was pretty cool. He's taken some beautiful photographs along the way...he's really got an eye for photography. This was in a bunch of photos he emailed me today... Pretty cool, huh? Anyway, not all of them are as...what's the word I'm looking for...sad? Dark? Dreary? I'm not sure but his photos run the gamut. So I'm sleeping soundly