a rush of blood to the head

I've got four holes in my mouth. And I couldn't resist wearing this shirt:


This whole deal isn't near as bad as everyone makes it out to be. Maybe the vicadin and ice packs are working better than I thought, but thus far I am feeling pretty good!

Mattie and I are in Petoskey learning how to be rich and famous. Very relaxing and quite inspiring so far. Glad we came.




We went into town this morning for inspiration and met this incredible artist we thought Reuben would be particularly interested in. He looks to be about a million years old, and this room full of intricate wood inlay mosaics represented his life's work. We took some photos of a few of them. Would have liked to photographed him, too, but I didn't have a good camera with. Even borrowed one and went back later, but he was gone. Maybe tomorrow??? Anyway, Reuben I'm on his email list and he does teach the craft if you are interested. Actually he told me he wanted to teach a female the craft just to see the feminine perspective.....

We had little Evie baptized today. You can see her dressed in her church garb below:

Winter Wonderland

I was hanging out with Mattie (and a bunch of other people last night) and it came to my attention I have been delinquent in posting for recent events. Well, here is one I missed that people were interested.

The end of February, I went on a backpacking-snowshoeing overnighter at Nordhouse Dunes. It was a lot of fun. In the day it was sunny enough to run around. night was really cold, but I was prepared. It got down to about 3 degrees, before the wind chill. We were a ways back in the woods, that helped to. On the day we left the air was still less than ten and the snow was moving horizontally. My friends water filter was frozen so we decided to head back and not linger much that day.

The ice formations on the shore were a lot of fun to explore the day we came in. We spent a while hiking up and down the shore. watching the waves and floating ice chunks. With that wind at night, a lot of waves came. It was eerie when we woke up the next morning and large chunks of ice, like the size of a small home, completely disappeared. The sunset over the lake was a great site as well. The whole trip was great. I felt like a pioneer, charting new lands in an forbidden landscape. Not much was around. We saw two bald eagles on the trip. One flew over-head. Another was on the way out. It was perched in a tree. We approached enough to make it nervous and he took off. The way the bird was able to effortlessly navigate the bare tree branches with it's massive 7ft wingspan was impressive to say the least. Otherwise it was really quiet as far as any life forms were concerned. Best part of all, there were zero bugs.

Well, that is the highlights of my adventure. Here are my pictures.

lifestyle portraiture

One of the last photos I took for class, its a "lifestyle portrait." I thought it was funny...


One more paper to write, and probably an all nighter for kicks. a 5 min presentation at 6-9 tomorrow, and then I am done!

It's cold outside

Global warming rears its ugly head again. This time in the form of 36" of snow in late April.
We are out of power for awhile too. I'm working on the laptop battery and aircard until we get the power back on. Hopefully tomorrow sometime.

Got Political....

Dad and I got a little political yesterday. Not as much hoopla as when Obama visited, but interesting. Our first political thing ever. I was hoping to throw a little tea into the river, but oh well. No angry chanting, a few signs, lots of people looked like they were out of their comfort zone. ;-)... Here are a couple of pics of people's backs ;-)

Friday marks 10 years since Ashley and I started dating. In honor of that occasion here's a picture of us from those first few weeks, young and stress-free.

Other notable events from 1999:
Lance Armstron wins his first Tour de France
Bill Clinton and Mikhail Gorbechev are presidents
Napster debuts
The Dow closes above 10,000 for the first time
Apple release the first ibook
The Roth IRA is introduced

Ashley is the Champions

Thanks to everyone for participating. Ashley is the winner this year. I don't like getting beat by my wife, but at least Spencer didn't win.

Happy Birthday Dad..Grandpa...Greatgrandpa...

Just a few snapshots from Grandpa's Birthday party. It was sooo cool to have everyone there. Thanks for helping to make it a good day.