Growing up

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

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?

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

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

Wandering around

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!

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

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!

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

New Neighbour

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.