Life Intrigued

I’d like to start this post with reading from a popular song….

“I believe the children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier
Let the children’s laughter remind us how we used to be”

At this point you should be staring down at a pinkish rendition of your most recent meal.. if not,  then you should introduce yourself much better genres of music (for starters, take a listen to The Gracious Few which appears to be about the only thing new worth listening to at the moment).  But my intention for referencing this umm garbage was not to make you sick, but unfortunately it was cheesy enough to fit the theme of this post… and that theme is “our society should be ashamed for openly torturing our young”.

Let’s look at Exhibit A:

I’ll wait a few minutes to allow you to catch your breath and bring your pulse back to a reasonable level .. tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock.  If you need to, shield your eyes so you can only see the text, we definitely understand.  What you saw just before trying to find the closest red hot poker to burn your eyes out was a scene that Linda and I came upon while we were at the University of Iowa medical facility.   Imagine if you will already being a little on edge from being there in the first place, but to turn the corner and encounter this horrific scene about stopped my heart on the spot.  So I get the whole Iowa Hawkeye pride thing (well, I actually don’t but let’s go with it for my marriage’s sake).  They obviously like their Herky mascot even though it is far inferior to my revered Chief Illiniwek symbol (it is not a mascot for you uneducated people out there), but hey, if you wanna be a chicken hawk have at it.  From a design perspective, I can totally get the concept of putting pride swelling decor in facility that gets it share of daily bad news.  But if you recall from your quick glimpse of the image above, some idiot decided to expand on that design point.  This particular walkway led to the children’s section of the hospital (we had to go through it to get to the MRI area).  Apparently some idiot had the awful idea to replace the yellow and black pride with …just a sec, gotta grab a bucket… raaaaaaaauuuuuuuuullllllllllllpppppphhhh  eeesh, that Twinkie looked and tasted better going down.. now where was I? oh right . replace it with a cl   rauullllgaggggrauuulllfffgaggg  .. sorry.. replace it with a clown outfit.  I’m sorry, but this horrific.  Imagine an innocent child already having to endure the fear and uncertainty that comes with having to be in a place like this and instead of cheerful trains or cuddly creatures like teddy bears and wolves, they are instead met with the embodiment of pure evil.  How can our society allow this cruelty to our young?

(Note, the ONLY reason this picture was taken was because I promised a coworker I would do this if they were able to find something that would help Linda’s vertigo and I always keep my promise)

Still not convinced our society has one foot in the toilet (hopefully flushed after our previous upchuck)?  Well, I give you Exhibit B (for the squeamish prepare to cover your eyes.

hit the jump to read more of this horror story

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Greetings everyone!  This month saw the rare appearance of the back to back posts of a series with the Halloween decorations (link here).  Generally I try and avoid that in order to give adequate variety for my millions of readers (I am obligated to say that to keep from having to hear how many Peeps Linda has on that crappy Fadbook site of hers).  The reason for this is October’s posts were all done from the road. This has limited my post coverage to whatever I managed to bring along with me and could get done before shutting the lights out in the hotel room.   Today I am actually writing from the car with our trusty Verizon stick.  The light is too harsh to really post process pictures so instead I’m going to double up my series posts again with the second part of the North journey Phoadtography set.  For the curious, I’ve scheduled this release to coincide with when we expect to be back home – I didn’t want to advertise that our home was vacant so kept that out of my posts up to now.  So here we go with a post from the road about being on the road which can be viewed while you are on the road.

Let’s start with congratulations to Milwaukee for a a great baseball season!  All those predictions and high expectations we were subjected to by local radio and TV announcers made me think for a moment my Cardinals never had a chance.  Their pitching was better than my Cardinals, their hitting was better than my Cardinals and their fielding well that might have been better than my Cardinals as well.  But all that doesn’t matter to a Cardinal fan now does it? .. and why is that?  … cause my Cardinals are still playing !!!!

Did I mention I was a Cardinal fan?  oh.. well then for the record I’m a Cardinal fan!  Enough gloating, there is still one more game to get through.  Now on to a staple in the Phoadtography world.  The water tower.  I have seen pumpkins, golfballs and a giant smiley face, but this is the first time for a basketball.  This town must be in a sports dry spell if it takes this much pride in something that happened back in 1952.  Whatever keeps the faith I guess.

hit the jump to see the rest of the pictures in the great trip up North series.

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There is no rest for the weary these days.  I can see the edge of October and it is approaching fast.  The good news is I am down to one more post after this one and I think that is doable … at the moment.   I ended up losing yesterday because I forgot to process all the pictures for this post.  Soooo last night was spent getting that done and uploading them to our Smugmug account (Eddiesoft) so I could post tonight.

Today’s entry is from our trip up to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in early October.  Linda and the boys were competing in the Petit Prix, also known as the Teacup Dog Agility Association National’s.  Although I have really nothing to do with this since I neither train the dogs or run them in the ring, that doesn’t stop me from taking credit for how well they competed in the event.  Both Kerby and Rizzi came home with a pile of ribbons and Rizzi even made the Semi-Finals consisting of the top 84 dogs in the whole event.  Of course, there is a reason I get to take some credit…. I have to take off work and help Linda haul everything to and from the car and these toy dogs travel heavier than Paris Hilton.  The good news is Linda drove most of the way providing ample time to snap some shots along the way.  With that, let’s get to the pictures eh ? (in my best Wisconsin accent)

Keeping with the Halloween theme from the previous posts, I’ll start with these.  My eyes lit up when I saw this pumpkin.  Just imagine the cool pumpkin carving I could do with one of these babies.  It might take a chainsaw instead of a Dremel, but I’m definitely up for the challenge.

Hit the jump for the rest of the pictures from the trip

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Ummm well, a funny thing happened on the way to Lightroom today. I stumbled on the missing set of Phoadtography pictures we took on our Indianapolis trip. I knew there were pictures of a couple of signs that stuck out on the trip, and by stuck out I mean we actually made a conscious effort to snap some pictures when we came back through the town. The mystery was solved when they showed up in a secondary file in our Lightroom catalog. As a result, this series actually grew by one (see Part 1 Link and Part 2 Link). Depending on how things are looking toward the end of the month this particular post may not get included in the quota requirement giving you a bonus (yeah) month. Do not get too excited, my record so far hasn’t exactly been too stellar… but in my best Dumb and Dumber .. “so you’re saying there’s a chance”.

On a personal front, I’m under a week to my big event – after 4 or 5 more miles, the worrying and fretting will begin.

Starting out the third and final (I promise) Indy Phoadtography set, I give you one of the three best sign shots from the trip.

Linda gets credit for spotting this and actually the ones below.  Of course, she kept pointing them out to me when we are under 2 car lengths from them making it nearly impossible to get a good Phoadtography shot.  The final A-Count on the sign shots ended up being 4.  That’s right, it took a whopping 4 attempts to actually get the shot (and as the case above, a crooked shot still).  How embarrassing.  I should send myself back to the minors.  At least the next shot in the sign series is at least straight.. a little degrading to men.. but still straight.

Not sure if the “Primitives” sign was just piling on the insults or it was a coincidence with the outdoor decor.   Someone at this particular Hucks has some serious issues or there is a friendly man vs woman jesting going on.  As we passed the sign from the front (okay, okay, it was the 4th time) I happened to notice the other side also had lettering on it so I snapped it.  My exposure was not set right causing it to be a on the blurry side but you can still make out the jab.

For the record, that is NOT a cop car parked suspiciously behind the sign.  It is just a large white car with a giant flag on it… I wonder if Hucks sells donuts? ack.. nevermind.

Hit the jump to see the rest of the pictures

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Welcome to the 6th post for this month which successfully puts another check in the monthly post commitment and thankfully this one comes earlier than usual.  As you probably know I am usually rushing to get these babies done before day 30ish comes to a close.  Not this month, but that is primarily due to focusing on getting these done in order to spent the rest of the month (and some into the next month as well) focusing on a big personal event that is scheduled for September 11th.  Not really talking about it at the moment to keep from jinxing myself so we’ll just let that go for now.  On a side note, thanks to the ass Don Henley finding the need to come out in favor of the PROTECT IP Act (and using invalidated studies and hyperbole fear as a basis – must be learning from Gore), today marks the first day of never giving a penny to anything that funds the Eagles or Don Henley in any form.  This of course includes additional albums/CDs/DVDs to those already sitting in our shelves and god forbid anymore $75 tickets to their concerts.  Just my little way of helping make Donny-boy’s fake claims as real as I can – say, won’t you join me?

Enough ranting, you are hear for one and only one reason.. to fill the empty void when you found out there were even more phoadtography pictures from our Indy trip!  So, picking up where part one left off (link) I give you this sign found on a building as we were driving through a city.

Talk about a bad signage planning.  Reading this to someone would put them in a quandary.  Those Damn Pentecostals! or those Pentecostals are one Damn Ass Company.  If their lucky they would have seen the name of the city (Damasco) as they drove through.

As we drove into Indianapolis we spotted this hotel rising up above the trees.  From a design perspective it was pretty stunning and blended nicely with the environment.  Turns out our hotel was right near this Marriott and could have used it to navigate directly where we needed to be.  The construction around Indy had us uncertain we were on the right road and quite frankly the neighborhoods we were passing through had us a little concerned.  It all turned out okay, but simply heading for this landmark would have probably worked better.

Hit the jump to see the rest of the Indy Phoadtography Collection

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Recently Linda and I were able to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary.  We are still planning our real celebration vacation (later in the year) but we decided it would be fun to just get away for a few days and relax a little.  This was a little hampered due to the Bix 7 race which was set for the end of the month but figured the taper down week would work perfectly – catch 2 shorter training runs on the road and I’d be good to go.  The next issue at hand was deciding where to go.  My constant hints of Vegas were eventually trumped by a trip to the Indianapolis Zoo followed by a stay at French Lick Indiana.  This way we could pack the cameras and catch a few state parks along the way … oh, and French Lick has a casino as well.  More importantly, what does any road trip provide the opportunity for?  Did you say PHOADTOGRAPHY?!?  How right you are.  A quick note, this time I stepped up my game a little and shot entirely on manual mode.  It makes it a little more challenging when you are trying to get the aperture and shutter speed right for the proper exposure while cruising down the highway at 65… well more like 75+ if Linda is driving.  So yes, there are some less than crisp shots, but overall I am pretty happy with the results.  (in honesty, it was additional training to making the switch from bird on a stick to a bird in flight which is damn hard in the field)

Enough banter.. show us the shots

We were heading into Indianapolis and decided to top off the tank.  You never know what the gas prices might be as you near the bigger cities, however, for some reason Peoria is always on the high end of the gas anyway.  As we were heading back onto the highway I noticed this sign which summed up this leg of the trip perfectly.

Hit the jump to see the rest of the great (okay, that may be subjective) pictures from the road.

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Hunger gnawing away the insides, thirst becoming unbearable, sleep deprivation making it nearly impossible to see, fatigue making it difficult to type, but muuusst … get .. . throuuuugh last part of Phoadtography post.  Just kidding, it isn’t really that much work, but thinking a Twinkie would really hit the spot right now.  This is the third and final set of phoadtography shots from last year’s Thanksgiving vacation.  Linda and I have been requested not to plan any vacations yet due to some corporate negotiations that are in flight, but hopefully we’ll be out on the road again very soon.  For now, enjoy this final set which appear to come mostly from the Vegas area.

Since we had to rent a vehicle to get up to Zion anyway, we decided to reserve it a few days early and take in some sites near Vegas.  First on the agenda was to check out Hoover Dam and the lake that resulted from the dam construction.  After a long slow trudge through traffic, we finally arrived at the lake.  The bad news is it was unseasonably cold the week we were there (in the mid 30’s for some of the days) so we did not spend a lot of time outside.

Instead, we decided to take the scenic drive and experience it from the car.  It is definitely a nice lake, but there really isn’t much to look at on the coastlines.  Most disappointing was the utter lack of wildlife beyond a few ducks scattered about.

Although we are pretty much burned out on the Luxor having stayed there so many times, it is rare when we actually get to see the front of the casino.  I snapped this as we drove by and it turned out pretty crisp.  For those not familiar with this casino, it has a light on top that can be seen from space and their elevators are actually called inclinators because they travel up the insides of the pyramid corners.  If you want a good physics exercise, try figuring out how they keep the inclinators level so you are not tossed all over the place as you ascend up to your floor.  It is a shame they have essentially removed just about all their Egyptian themed interior decor in place of annoying modern day club-style bars and nightclubs.

Hit the jump to see the rest of this Phoadtography set!

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It’s quiz time.  What has over 70 pictures, comes in three parts and has the ability to completely clean out your browser’s cache of all that pr0n you’ve been wasting your web time on?  Okay, that was an easy one.  Yes, I’m back with the second installment of the Las Vegas and Zion Phoadtography post.  Unlike last time, none of these are wall worthy which means they generally fall into the category of things that make you go “Huh?”.  I like to get the most out of my vacations and finding those interesting pearls puts the cherry on top.  Now that the Smugmug picture links have been captured, let’s not waste anymore time and get right to this set.

Linda and I stumbled onto this sign just before entering the Zion National Park.  Having to leave the children at home to go on vacations is always tough but I am sure they enjoy the Doggy Spa at the grandparents.  Maybe next time we head out to this park we’ll see if they want to come along – although if they find out they have to work on a ranch their pampered paws will carry them right back home.

It is no secret Linda and I enjoy vacationing in Vegas.  For two people watchers, that place is like steroids for the eyes.  Even with all our trips, the first time we ever saw the Welcome to Vegas sign was a couple of years ago at Linda’s niece’s wedding.  Their party bus took us out there so they could get some pictures under it.  Well, this year was the first time we got to see the downtown Leaving Las Vegas sign.  Our lives are now officially complete.

Hit the jump to see a bunch more Phoadtography pictures!

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Guess what?… nope, guess again?  nope.. one more try?  Close, but the right answer is “it’s time for another Phoadtography post.”  Actually it is sometimes affectionately called a photo-bomb which is pretty accurate with this particular set since it requires 3 full posts to get through.  This series is brought to you via our Las Vegas and Zion trip we took over Thanksgiving last year.  That equates to two very photographic locations coupled with a road commute between them.  Translated, lots of Phoadtography opportunities.    For those of you who may be new to the blog, here are some guidelines I posted previously regarding one of my favorite means to pass the time trapped in the car.   Let’s jump right into the set!

Figured I would start with a quick sign shot.  That and I wanted to get a bad picture out of the way before getting into the good ones.  Clearly this one is not up to par in the Phoadtography quality scale.  The camera tilt is over 5 degrees and the trigger finger was a little quick on the draw.  However, at least I knew where I was on the camera card.

I’ll balance the previous shot with probably my favorite of the whole set.  This is primarily due to spotting the opportunity and patiently waiting for the perfect moment to take the shot.  It required taking into account the direction of the road and relationship to the fixed structure on top of the rock.  I have no idea what it is (maybe a weather satellite or cell tower).  With the clever alignment it really looks more like a deathray!

Hit the jump to see a lot more of the pictures!

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Time to close out this year’s posts.  With only the remaining year end summary left, this post essentially puts the finishing touches on the 2010 blog entries.  As with Part I of this Phoadtography Gallery this set comes with a healthy dose of photos as well.  The good news is this closes out all the road shots from the Maine trip allowing me to start fresh with the new year.  Unfortunately, I was unable to get through all the Maine photos (off the road) and now even farther behind with the recent Vegas/Mt Zion trip we took a month ago.   Oh well, plenty in the hopper for 2011 (should I choose to continue this activity for next year). Time’s a wasting, let’s get to the shots.

This should not be a surprise, but I have an affinity towards bridges.  The exact reason is difficult to tell since it is difficult to pin down exactly when I started admiring these structures.  Having built one now, this appreciation has definitely increased.  If pressed, I’d have to say that the fusion of artistic characteristics and functional purpose entwined in physics and math is the compelling factor.  This might be similar to some people’s fascination with sundials seeing how ornate and complex those functional timepieces can be.  This particular bridge has all of the classic features of bridge with its arches, triangles (notice the vertical beams are not straight up and down) and the cross hatch underneath to keep it rigid.  With the height of this beast, there are probably large ships traversing this waterway.

This particular bridge still confuses me in the sense I am unable to figure out the functional component.  It appears to go absolutely nowhere and the railing on the end suggests there was no plan for it to go anywhere.  The metal structure towards the middle of the bridge is interesting as well.  First thought was it rotated in some manner and connected up to another span allowing for easy traversal of the waterway.  This sounds good in theory, but there did not seem to be a pivot point or any span to hook up to.  It is a mystery and if anyone is near 194.75 and knows anything about this, please leave a comment.

Hit the jump to see the rest of the Phoadtography gallery.

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