Hello folks,

I realize it's been FOREVER since I wrote last in this blog. I think it's a natural progression. When E-mail went big back in the mid to late-90's I was all about Eudora and Postini... Then blogging came around in the early 2000's and I was all about Blogger. Then in the social networking explosion occurred in that 2003-2005 period. I was all over MySpace and Facebook. Blogging became secondary, then.

And since, Twitter has come around. I have two separate accounts, a personal account I use to provide random messages to friends and a second I use to expand on one of my favorite hobbies... Photography.

I grew up loving the outdoors and pretty much everything about it. Meteorology was my calling, because I loved anything and everything about the atmosphere and what came from it. But, I'm learning that even though Meteorology may have been my calling, photography is something I enjoy and love; immensely. It began, I think, when I began storm chasing back in 1996. Yes, 13 years ago!

While some find photography a strict art, initially, all I thought of it back then was a way to share what I saw on a chase with the storm chase community. I posted the photos up on my web-site and allowed others to view them. It was an innocent hobby and one I didn't really take too seriously. At least, as far as the quality of my photos was concerned.

Once I upgraded to digital in January of 2005, my interest expanded greatly and I began to appreciate the art of photography on a grander scale. No longer did I pay money for rolls of film or to get them processed. I could snap off hundreds of pictures a day and not even blink an eye. I snapped twice that, in fact, in the Badlands of South Dakota in late July of 2007. That record still stands, actually - 274 pictures in a single day. It may seem meager to the professionals in the crowd, but for me that's a lot!

Twitter takes me away from Blogger quite a bit. I communicate with most of my friends with it and those friends who aren't signed up, Facebook is a great alternative.

Twitter also provides a great opportunity to network with other photographers. And that is mostly the reason it distracts me from writing in my blog. Networking and receiving insight from these guys has allowed me to really grow into this industry. I'm coming into it self-taught and I realize that's not the ideal way of doing it. But, I've learned a lot about the in's and out's, the do's and don'ts and everything in between.

These photographers provide a lot of inspiration, just looking at their work. It provides great opportunities for me to diversify my photography portfolio. The ideas I get, the compositions I picture in my head, it's almost becoming second nature already. I'm certainly not just taking pictures of clouds anymore. In fact, I'm involved in a 365 Project currently, which is taking my camera and I on a wonderful journey through an entire year of daily photo-taking. It's been a great experience so far and I'm learning so much more about my camera just carrying it with me everyday. I'm learning how to look at the environment around me and what it would look like through a viewfinder and a lens. It's kind of neat, really...

What I'm getting at with all this... is that I really have become quite distracted with it all. It pushes me away from my computer and sitting and writing on the Internet. I almost feel it's a waste of time. It's been 25 minutes now that I've spent typing this entry, itself. I could have taken 50 pictures in this amount of time. Maybe more! ;)

Anyhow, so that's where I've been over the course of the last 2 months. I'm still meat-free, if you're wondering... :) I actually celebrated my 4-month anniversary of vegetarianism yesterday. I've got someone in my life. She hasn't exactly tugged at the strings of my heart yet, but we haven't exactly met in person, either. But, I've made some new friends outside of work and I've been hanging out with them quite a bit lately. We went hiking a couple of weeks ago and they've invited me to a couple of cookouts. If I had been a little more open about this earlier this summer, we could have been at the lake every weekend. Jared and Jason both have families with lake cottages - one is at Devils Lake, the other at Maple Lake, east of Grand Forks near Mentor, MN. They've got about a 4-5 member group that tend to hang out a lot. They're mostly friends of friends. Emily, a girl I dated about a year ago and have started to hang out with again, introduced me into the "circle." ;) So, my life has been going fairly well.

Work has been a little busy and will likely become even more so, with fall starting. We've got contracts winding up for the winter and that will make things even more hectic. Should be interesting, but I'm excited at the same time.


Well, I've got a couple of left over veggie burgers to warm up and some corn on the cob to cook. Dinner-time!

Also, if by chance, you are interested in following me along on this "Project 365" journey, hop on over to my photoblog. It's being updated everyday. In fact, I just posted my photo for today about an hour ago...!

Toodles for now...

Hey folks,

It's been a little while! I have an extra hour or two to blow off while my car gets checked out.

I had to take it into the dealership this afternoon to see what was up with the "Check Engine" light. It came on a couple of weeks ago, so I need to see what is up with that. While it's in, I'm having them look at why my cruise control is not working and to take care of a couple of other minor things. The auxiliary outlet down on my console quit working on me a few months ago, so I'm having them look at that. That is probably just a blown fuse, but since they have it, I'll have them replace that. I also need a new clip put on the seat-belt. You know, the clip that holds up the clasp... It broke off a couple of years ago and I always forget about it every time I take my car in.

I've had some things I've needed to get done around the apt. and I finally accomplished some of these this afternoon. I organized the cupboards and cleaned up the kitchen - and I have some dishes to do. I'll probably do those later.

And I have papers I need to file away. I have a big stack that's needed filed for a couple of months now! ;)

Oh, and I wanted to find a reason to post this photo. I follow Cedar Point on Twitter and they had posted this a while back.



One of their webcams captured that! Pretty cool, huh...?

Anyhow, I think I'm gonna hop off here and file those papers and maybe even do some post-processing to some photos. I have a ton of pictures I need to get uploaded to my photo gallery. I have photos from storm chases from the past month or so that still need uploaded. I'll let you all know when I get those done. Hopefully, I can get to these today. If not this afternoon, I'll work on them later tonight... When I return from Ottis' grilling party.

He's having some people over at his place to grill. I put together some potatoes, onions and peppers in some tin-foil. Mmmm, sounds good just talking about it!

Later!

Hey folks,

Again, I'm finding it harder and harder to remind myself to get in here and update all of you! ;)

I was in Fargo this past Friday night to see Green Day in concert! I've been a long time fan of theirs but had never seen these guys live.

The show was freakin' awesome and after a 2.5 hour set, my voice was just about shot!

Here's a sample video from the phone... I apologize ahead of time, the video isn't the best quality. Again, it was from the phone and we were quite a ways from the stage - a far cry from where we usually are for concerts. We're usually on the floor!

Anyhow, hopefully, it work for you all. You'll probably need Real Player for it to work.

They are performing 21 Guns, here:



I have several vids, so I may post more later...

Hello there fellow readers...

Checking back in, to let you all know I finally got the route entered in at USATF's site tonight from my bike-ride on Saturday the 13th. The ride on Saturday wasn't anywhere near the trek I took on Sunday, but it was another long ride. I wasn't gone on the ride for over 3 hours on Saturday, so I knew the distance wasn't as great. If I hadn't been messaged about going down to the Art-Fest that was going on downtown, I probably would have ridden much more. Ultimately, I wanted to get on the bike trails out on the south end of town, south of 32nd Avenue!

That would have been another very long ride - just as, or perhaps, longer than the ride was on Sunday!

As you can see, the trek on Saturday went a grand total of 9.08 miles!
http://www.usatf.org/routes/view.asp?rID=299513

So, my grand total for the weekend was a whopping 27.64 miles! Impressive, I'd have to say - especially, given I haven't ridden my bike much at all over the past couple of years I've had it up here.

In other news, our first couple of days after that beautiful weekend we had, have been slightly gloomy. Cooler and much cloudier, for sure. But, not too bad, really. We had some rain this evening, but it wasn't anything that caused too many problems. I was over at Victor's place tonight for a little grilling and hanging out with friends. The rain pushed back the scheduled grilling a bit, but it was still sufficient so that most of us were able to get something to snack on.

Unfortunately, due to some recent lifestyle changes, I had to resist the urge for anything grilled. As some, perhaps, many of you know already, I've made the decision to cut back on the meat intake. It's something I've thought about before in the past and if anything, it's mostly just something I want to see if I can do, at all. I could see some people looking at this as me succumbing to peer-pressure (3 of the 4 people I'm gardening with ARE vegetarians!), and it may be to some extent, but really it's more of just a little kick in the pants to something I've actually wanted to try for a couple of years.

If you asked my family, they could probably tell you that I grew up eating a lot of veggies and fruit. I remember eating strawberries when I was younger until I'd get stomach-aches and would eat radishes until I stunk everyone out of the house! Hah! Actually, when I put it that way, it isn't all that much different today. Tee-hee...

Anyhow, so yes, it's a big commitment and a major lifestyle change, but it is something I am going to try. I began a few weeks ago and have slowly cut back the intake. I was down to maybe 3-4 meals that had meat in it a couple of weeks ago, last week, I may have splurged on a couple of meals, but so far, this week, I haven't ate a thing with meat in it. I've consulted with Tim, Kalli, and Justin and they've helped me quite a bit... On things I can try, what to get, what not to get, and they all have helped me find vegetarian recipes that are well-balanced. I'm not sure exactly if vegetarianism is really what I'm after... I guess that is something I'm really going to have to think about. I've found out that people that do decide to go that route that decide later to go back to meat after years and years, their bodies can reject the meat, and can actually cause problems. So, I'm not exactly sure what I want to accomplish quite yet. Right now, I just want to see how long I can go. From there, I'll see what happens. Either way, I'll keep you all updated. ;)

Other rumblings, since the last time I really updated all of you? Not much else, really... The new position at work is going fairly well. We haven't had a lot to do up until recently. The traveling between Grand Forks and Crookston has slowed down considerably over the past few weeks and actually, with the Minnesota contract now shut down for the summer, I will mainly be working on developing training modules for the MDSS application. This week, I'm hoping to get many of them done.

My fantasy sports teams are both performing poorly... Much like my Chicago Cubbies. They have disappointed me this year - and I'll just leave it at that. Maybe sometime in the near future, I can elaborate a little further - I just don't feel like it tonight. ;) In fact, I don't really feel like writing much more, anyway.

It's getting late and I want to get a little snack before I hit the sack.

Anyway, so there's a little bit of an update on my life the past couple of months. I'll have a couple of chase reports to post to the Chase/Wx-Blog here soon, so stay tuned there, as well.

Take care, folks! Have a great week!

Hello folks,

It's been a long while since I last posted anything in here and I apologize for that! There are several new developments, but I'll wait to share that with you tomorrow.

It's late and I should be getting to bed, but I was severely curious how far I rode my bike today. This weekend was so beautiful and warm, I had to spend some time outdoors this weekend... and I got the bike out for the first time Saturday. Sunday, I hopped on the bike around 6:20 PM and didn't make it back until 9:43 PM! Yes, that's right, over 3 hours on my bike!

I rode all around town and really wanted to make it down to the Greenway, finally, to ride my bike on it. I've run on the Greenway a few times over the past few years, but in the last 2 years I've had my bike up here, I haven't rode on it at all.

I had no clue on the total distance, but after realizing I had been all over the place and even into East Grand Forks, I had to calculate and map this thing.

While this site, is mainly used for running routes, its the best at plotting routes of your own, and plus, you can save the routes for viewing.

So, without further ado, here's my route from last evening:
http://www.usatf.org/routes/view.asp?rID=298938

I can't believe I rode 18.5 miles on my bike today! My knees, while a little sore, don't feel quite as bad as I would think. It was mainly my ass, bothering me the most! Hah! From riding on that seat!

I took another long ride on Saturday afternoon, as well, so I'll try to get it plotted later.