Say What?

I tried to get a jump on the heat and humidity this morning but my ambition was elsewhere. Can you have ambition for sleeping in? Today was a vacation day for me as is the rest of the week. I still managed to get away by 9:30. The plan was to head out into Wisconsin then down to Red Wing but once I got on the road I reevaluated my plans and went south toward Northfield instead. My legs were tired and my right knee was feeling a bit painful but I was confident the Advil hadn't yet begun doing its thing. It wasn't long ago on this route that I'd be surrounded by cornfields within 10-15 minutes of leaving home but I'm either getting slower or they're building more homes: actually both. The cornfields take a bit longer to reach these days. It was a beautiful day and once the heat kicked in I only had to remind myself about those zero degree days I biked in last winter and how I'd much rather be too warm than frozen. That works every time. I was overdue for t...

I've had too little time for blogging lately as I've been using nearly all my spare time to put the finishing touches on our driveway and sidewalk project which is now complete. We're happy with how it turned out. The task of amassing the garden blocks and building them into a retaining wall was a bigger project than I remembered it being the first time I did it when I had our home built 16 years ago. I expected the job to be a one-day project at most but it was all of that plus a couple of additional afternoons. I included a row of cap blocks that I didn't have on the previous wall and I'm glad I went through the extra effort as it gives it a much nicer look. It was a bit of a hassle cutting the blocks to fit around the curve in the wall but once I got the hang of it I made quick work of it. A bit like fitting stained glass pieces into a window. Here's the "before" shot from a couple weeks ago. I found some landscape lights at Lowe's and pl...

I received an email this morning from someone who had read my posts titled A Brave New World from a few months ago. Here's the email... Dear Kevin, My name is Emilio and I'm contacting you after reading with much interest your series of posts "A Brave New World" and obtaining your email address from this page on your website (listed in your blog's info). The reason is that I'm currently working on a postgraduate on film studies on the topic of film reception, for which I'm building a collection of video-recorded accounts of memorable experiences with films and I was wondering if you might be interested in helping me out by collaborating with telling your experience with You've Got Mail and how it lead you to meet your wife. The idea is to have these videos uploaded to a site specifically dedicated to them, to explore the varied ways in which people make sense of films. Unfortunately, I can't pay for any collaboration, but I guarantee you I...

When I first met Tammy over nine years ago I was cellphone-less. I'd recently equipped myself with a pager but I didn't have much need for a cellphone, nor did I have the money. My first phone was a Qualcomm; the same kind Tammy owned. It was big by today's standards but it was state-of-the-art when I bought it. I can't say that my current Envy is a whole lot smaller. Until recently, it used to be that I'd go days without so much as turning my phone on. Sometimes I'd find a message from a day or two before and I'd hurry to return the call so I wouldn't be perceived as being rude. I suppose I'm not much for talking on my phone and when I do it's mostly done while I'm in my truck, usually to or from work. My phone habits have been slowly evolving as I pretty much carry my Envy with me now wherever I go and it's always on. Surprisingly enough I use it mostly for text messaging with Tammy and Rachel. We talk some but not nearly as much as w...

The crew from MdConcrete came by at 7:00pm Wednesday to tear-out our driveway. We were in the middle of hosting our small group from church but our guests didn't mind; especially the men as this is the sort of stuff that most males can appreciate. Tom, one of the guys from our small group commented that he was doing that same sort of work five years ago working for an asphalt company. I spoke with the bobcat operator and asked him if they recycled the asphalt and he said, yes. They take it to a gravel mine near 160th and Pilot Knob to be disposed of. I got up at 6:20 yesterday morning and cleared out the utility room where the furnace and air-conditioning people would be working. They were here by 7:00 and with their arrival, our much-appreciated air-conditioner was shut down. An hour later the cement workers were on the scene and they got busy busting up the sidewalk in front. There wasn't enough room to use a bobcat so their work would have to be done by hand. Within a...

We had a GAF Viewmaster in our family when I was a kid. I can remember sitting on the couch in our living room flipping its lever to change from one photo to the next while becoming a part of each image as the 3-D effect worked its magic. There was one set of photos in particular of the Grand Canyon which I liked best. The scenery was breathtaking and the Viewmaster was the next best thing to actually being there. I've played around some with producing my own 3-D shots. I first saw the technique used on the net with this photo on Robert Oddy's site. Seeing what he did gave me inspiration to try using it to photograph a couple of our lamps:  here and here . It's not all that difficult to do. Depending on how near or far your subject is you take photos which are offset by either a few inches or a few feet . The next step is to position the photos side by side. I use the Photomerge feature in Photoshop to accomplish this. Be sure that the photos are swapped out from how...

How quickly the 4th of July comes and goes. Tammy and I went to the Taste of Minnesota celebration on Harriet Island in St. Paul Thursday afternoon and evening. We strolled around seeing how much free food and beverages we could fill up on before finally breaking down and buying some tickets. We're not cheap; we only had $45 in cash and I'm one who hates to pay an ATM fee for taking money out of my account. It's quite easy to blow through $45 between the two of us at this event. We got off the beaten path a bit and went down along the pier to look at the boats pulled alongside. We talked about what it would be like to live on a houseboat and then we talked about how maintenance would be a constant. REO Speedwagon was the headline act. Tammy isn't real big on them but I enjoy some of their music. Here's one of the videos I took for my YouTube account:  Golden Country . As we were leaving we walked by the Christian music tent/stage and grabbed a seat inside with...

The last passport I had expired nearly ten years ago. Tammy has never had one. We had no intention of acquiring new passports because we don't have any out of the country trips planned but a friend at work, Rob, suggested that it's still a good idea to have them should we need them, especially with Rachel's trip to Guatemala next month. Should a circumstance arise where we would need to travel to be with her we wouldn't be able to without passports. Tammy did all the legwork of filling out the forms and gathering the necessary documents and together we went to the local CVS pharmacy to have our photos taken. The woman at the licensing bureau who we submitted our papers to told us it would be about six weeks before we'd receive them. She suggested we could pay an additional (I think) $60 each to have them expedited but we declined and decided to take our chances instead. I was surprised when they arrived in the mail less than two weeks later. I was mowing the l...