Stay with me, this is going to be a longish update, starting with the US long weekend.

On Friday, my brother-in-law's friend was found. He had been missing for a week in the lake after a boating accident. There had been a search party organized that was going to go out on Monday morning that I was going to go lend a hand with. On Sunday, it was Timmy's first birthday (my brother-in-law's kid). Other than those 2 events, not much happened that weekend.

The weekend following, Teresa and I went to the Kruzin' Klassics Fun Run in Escanaba on Saturday. We walked for quite a bit, saw a lot of nice cars, saw the burnout competition finals and saw a couple dyno runs. On Sunday, we went for a nice 4 mile hike/walk on the "difficult" trail at Fumee Lake. It turned out to be pretty difficult (for us anyway) but we made it.

This past weekend was our first anniversary. On Saturday, we headed out to Porcupine Mountains State Park. We got our camp setup at the Union Bay campground and went for a short interpretive hike at the visitor's office of the park. We returned to the camp site, lit a fire and had supper. There was a really nice sunset that night (all digital pictures are here). Saturday morning I was up at about 8 after a crappy night's sleep. I sparked up a fire and after Teresa got up, we had some breakfast. After that, we got involved in a good bit of hiking. I think we did about 4 miles of some good elevation-changing trails. Near the end of the day, we drove to the west end of the park and saw the falls in the park. They were pretty amazing. We ended the day back at the campground again with some campfire food and a less appealing sunset. Teresa had a good headache in the evening so she spent some time in the tent while I sat around the fire eating marshmallows. On Sunday, I was up early again after a slightly better sleep. We packed up and were out of the campground by 12:30. It was a very nice campground and we'll probably go back again. Hopefully next time we're not next to some middle-aged man who talks to both of his parents like they're complete morons. Not only that but they couldn't hear very well so everybody around heard him yelling at his parents and making them feel useless. Anyway, after packing up, we drove to Ontonagon and spent a few hours there. We went a tourist information booth (AFTER spending most of the weekend in the area) and got some info for stuff on the way back and for other weekends. We spent an hour or so walking around an old Irish cemetary right outside of Rockland. It was a pretty interesting place. I think everybody there is directly from Ireland. Most stones we saw were from 1860-early 1900's. There were a few later 20th century stones but not many. It's a shame that the cemetery isn't kept up but at the same time, it's kind of neat letting nature take it's toll on the place. I'm sure it would be a very beautiful cemetery if it was trimmed up and all the stones were set back in place but I'm not sure it would have the same feel to it. After leaving there, we stopped at Bond Falls. We tried to find the town of Calderwood which was partially flooded with the Bond Falls flowage but had no luck. There were a few hours left before dark so we didn't get to see the Paulding Light but I'd like to go back for that someday.

That's my update for now.

Here is a lady who should've been shanked early on in life. Or perhaps Darwin will remove her from the gene pool and do everybody a favour.

Once again I've let this slip a little bit. There hasn't been a whole lot to report on lately but I'll do a short update.

Gas has gone crazy here. At one time, it was a bunch cheaper than at home. Now it's $3.24/gallon ($0.94/L as of today's exchange rate). Diesel is cheaper for the first time since I've been here. Last time I checked, it was $3.09/gallon ($0.89/L).

The weather has been up and down. Right now, it's 26°C/81°F with a high of 29°C/85°F. Tomorrow is supposed to similar. Some nights have still been around freezing though.

Last weekend, Teresa and I spent about 4 hours walking out at Pier's Gorge. If anybody comes to visit and wants to go, I'd happily go for a walk out there again. I wish I had brought a pedometer to see how far we went but I'm sure it was probably around 4 or 5 miles. The last marked trail point is 1.25 mile from the parking spot and we went well beyond that.
I found a nice spot that would work for camping but I'm not sure it's allowed there. I have to do some more research on that.

I've bought a few more cameras since the last update. Since then, I picked up a Kodak Tourist II, a Ricohflex Model VI, a Canon T70, and a Yashica Lynx 14E. The Yashica showed up with a stuck shutter and an extremely corroded set of batteries inside (pictures in the link). I've got it all cleaned up and working so I'll have to put a roll through it and maybe sell it. The T70 I bought to resell. I've got a roll of film in it now that's almost complete. I had thought about keeping it but it doesn't have a depth of field preview like my AE-1 does and it also doesn't display the shutter speed in the viewfinder.

Hmm....what else is new? I don't think there's much. Teresa and I are trying to find a cheap house to live instead of pissing away money on rent. We have to go see what we can get pre-approved for and then start seriously looking since our lease is up on this apartment at the beginning of September I believe.

I think that's about all for now....

Holy fucking shit. People have lost their minds. Why? Click here and here. Why must people keep trying to make their pets like people? I watched Penn & Tellar's episode of "Bullshit" this week all about pet love. It's simply stunning how many nut jobs out their that think they know what their pets want or need.

The ultimate douchebag asshole lawyer? I think so.

Yesterday the camera sealing kit I ordered off of E-bay showed up. It was $6 (free shipping) and it supposed to be good for 6 camera bodies. I figured that was a decent enough deal. I started yesterday evening and finished this morning. It was pretty easy, just a little time consuming. Pictures are here of my work. I did a good general clean-up of the body while I was doing it as well. Now it's ready for film. That's really about all I have to comment about right now.

I went out and worked on my farmer tan for the first time this year. It was 21°C (70°F) yesterday so I sported shorts for the first time and walked to Teresa's work. Today it was even nicer (23°C/73°F) but I spent the day inside. Teresa's been gone on a scrapbooking thing with her sister and sister-in-law since Friday night so today was "take shit apart" day. First off, I spent roughly 4 hours tinkering with and breaking my Canonet that I mentioned in a previous post. After that, I tackled a minor swap on my AE-1's and took a couple things apart to see what they did. The other day, I took apart the Kodak Brownie Target Six-16, Brownie Target Six-20 and Brownie Hawkeye Flash to clean them up after they arrived. Today I took them apart again because I forgot to take pictures of the insides. Tomorrow I think I'll be going out to tinker with that trike so I suspect I'll have another day of "take shit apart".

Not much new to update really. I've been trying to get out and walk some when the weather is nice. I've been gaining some weight just sitting around doing nothing so I throw on my backpack of camera stuff and away I go. Friday I went out for quite a hike in the afternoon. I took Teresa's pedometer and found I went 4.5 miles. Tuesday I went out and walked another 3.5. I just got back from another little walk this afternoon at 2.29 miles.

Last weekend I went out to look at that trike I mentioned last time. It needs a bit of work but it's something small and simple enough that I can tackle and probably make nice again. I won't post any pictures since it's not much to look at right now but I may start a gallery in the future.

I survived my sickness last week but a couple days later, I picked up a cold. I'm just getting over it now. We went to Teresa's mom and dad's on Saturday for Easter supper. It was good stuff. I never got out to see that trike last weekend but hopefully this weekend I will. I finally uploaded some pictures from March. I got through deleting the hundreds of spam comments that ended up in my gallery over the course of a month. We bought a new mattress set yet to replace the ghetto and worn out setup we had. It's a nice pillowtop, individually wrapped coil Simmons Beautyrest. There's not much else to update on so until next time...

Being sick sucks. Teresa went to work on Monday and puked a few times at work. Tuesday she stayed home but managed to keep everything down even though she didn't really eat anything. She still doesn't feel 100% but she's gotten better. Last night I went to bed with a bit of a twisting feeling in my stomach. Sure enough, 2 AM rolls around and I make a run for the bathroom. I made it to the doorway of the bathroom before losing a bit of my insides to the floor and wall. The rest went into the sink since I didn't make it to the toilet. Just after 8:30 this morning, I made it to the toilet to toss up the water I had drank after waking up. After that, I kept down some dry Rice Krispies and Kraft Dinner for lunch (Mac & Cheese for you Americans). I've been drinking water all day and feel better but have a dull headache and a generally crappy feeling.

Monthly update here I come. Last update I forgot to mention our trip through a predominately black neighbourhood in Milwaukee while looking for the HD plant. I've never gone through one of those before and it was a bit of an interesting experience. There were a lot of fried chicken restaurants, lots of pawn shops and lots of liquor stores/bars. I'm not trying to stereotype here, that's just how it was. I think in the 20-30 blocks we drove, there were 5 Walgreens stores. Almost every store had bars on the windows as well.

I'll have to see if I can remember everything I've done from the last entry to this one.

It's a bit cool today (-7°C right now). It was pretty nice a couple weeks ago with highs in the high teens. Last night it snowed and there's been flurries blowing around off and on all day. It's supposed to be the same for the rest of the week as well.

I did a Facebook profile. That was just to see what the whole buzz was about. I can't really get into those too much but I have to say it is a lot nicer and more organized than MySpace, which I refuse to join.

I bought a Kodak Baby Brownie Special camera off of Ebay for a couple of dollars. Since then, I also bought a Canon Canonet and a Ricohflex Model VI. I recently found a website of a guy who finds and develops old film and cameras with old film in them to see what turns out. He also takes pictures with various old cameras and puts them up. I like how most old cameras have "personality" in their pictures (they all look a little different) and all old cameras look different than the next. That and they're cheap (I mentioned the price for the Brownie and I got the Canonet for $3. The Ricohflex was a bit more but it came with a 35mm adaptor). I'm hoping I can get some darkroom equipment with my tax refund and start doing some B&W photo developing with some assistance from Vance.

Last weekend we had a birthday get together for Teresa's dad since he's turning 60 this year (today in fact). There were a lot of people in that house and I don't really care for that so I'm in for the same thing this year at Christmas. We got him a Twirl-a-Squirrel as a gift. The website I ordered it from had it in stock when I ordered it (last Tuesday I think it was). I got no shipment verification or a receipt for my purchase but yesterday I got an e-mail telling me it's backordered until April 15th. Thanks for that.

I was offered an early 80's Kawasaki Prairie 250 for free this past weekend from Teresa's sister's boyfriend. I'm hoping I can get a look at it this weekend and take some pictures. It needs a little bit of work but for free I can't complain. I've been spending a good deal of time reading up on it lately so hopefully he doesn't back out of the deal.

I have some pictures to post up in my gallery again but I've gotten a lot of spam comments lately and I've been busy trying to delete all those. Once that's cleaned up, I'll get the pictures up and put up some links.

I think that's about all for now.

Time for a bit of an update. On Friday morning, Teresa and I left for Chicago. She had a training thing for the jewelry parties that she does. The plan was to go to the Harley Davidson Powertrain Tour in Milwaukee. We arrived at 11:45 and were given tickets and told to come back at 1:45. Teresa wanted to try and find some jeans so we went off in search of a store of some kind. We eventually found one and we left to try and get back in time. After racing through Milwaukee, we ended up being 3 minutes late. I was a bit pissed off but I got over it. After that, we headed off to a couple bead shops that Teresa wanted to check out. Obviously not my thing but I went along anyway. We stopped at the McDonald's museum afterwards but it was closed. I took a couple pictures of it anyway since it was nearly dark and looked fairly neat lit up (those pictures will have to wait since I took them with my film camera). After a long day of driving and shopping, we went to our $30 hotel room that we found on Hotwire. Saturday was Teresa's training. We were up at around 7 for her to be there at 8:30. I dropped her off and headed back to the hotel to watch TV until the 11 AM checkout time. After that, I spent the day driving and walking around taking pictures of different things. I found a park and got my shoes all full of goose shit. Since my shoes got full of it, the bottoms of my pants also did with my shoes rubbing against them while walking. I picked Teresa up later in the day and we started to head home. Just outside of Chicago, there's the Gurnee Mills Mall. We stopped in, intending on only staying for a bit, but ended up staying until closing (~4 hours later). We arrived home at 2:30 AM so it was a long day.

Saturday was also Steph and Derek's wedding. Barb posted some pictures of the event. Sadly, I wasn't able to attend for border crossing reasons. Had that not been in the way, I would've been there for sure. It sounded like a good time was had by all and I've known them both for a long time so it sucks that I missed it.

Today it's very nice out (18°C/66°F). My new camera bag showed up today so I decided to load it up with my stuff and head out to take a few pictures. I stopped to take a picture of this one house and had some offensive old lady ask me why I was taking pictures of her house. After repeating "I like your house" 4 times to her because she must've been 90% deaf, she told me it wasn't for sale. I guess the lack of a "for sale" sign on the lawn was the dead giveaway. I hate living in a small town sometimes. I had no problems on Saturday since everybody minds their own business but here, people have nothing better to do. Anyway, that's all for now.

Well, since I don't have anything really to comment about, here are some cat pictures that I thought were terribly funny:

Here's the pictures I promised: link.

I also forgot to mention our run to the liquor store. Saturday night, we went to a place called the Shottle Bop. We picked out a few items and went to the till. Ahead of us was a guy from a frat house. He had probably 8 bottles or so on the counter when we got there. I'm not sure how many more he bought but the line up was quite long and he ended up spending $620 on alcohol. I've never seen anyone buy that much at one time before.

It was time for Michigan Tech’s Winter Carnival this weekend. We went and stayed with Teresa’s cousin, Autumn, on Saturday and Sunday. We got there in the middle of the afternoon and I got stuck going shopping with Teresa, her cousin and 2 aunts. That night we missed most of the fireworks for the carnival so we just went back to Autumn’s to have some drinks and play some games. We slept in late on Sunday and went to see the snow sculptures in the afternoon. They weren’t as good as they were last year and it was pretty cold when we went. Whenever I get time, I’ll put the pictures up that I took and post a link.

Teresa won an original Nintendo off of Ebay last week and it arrived today. We've been playing Mario Bros. for the past hour and a half. That really takes me back to being little. It also came with Zelda, Marble Madness and Sesame Street. I had both the Zelda and Sesame Street games as a kid so those bring back memories too. I just need to find Tetris now.

Today seems to be a day full of stupidity. First off, I stopped at a gas station this morning. An older lady, probably in her late 60's, prepaid $15 worth of gas. She went out and pumped $3.27 before it shut off on her. She came back into the station and here is how the conversation went between her and the cashier as I heard it (I came in after she started with the cashier):
Cashier: Here is your change. The pump turned off and since you paid for $15 worth of gas, this is what you get back.
Old Lady: Well, I'm not sure how big the tank is.
C: I'm not sure. You can go back, try it again and come back to pay for it or I can put this money back on the pump again.
OL: Maybe I should go turn the key on and see if it's full?
C: (Obviously getting irritated now) That's fine. You can try the pump again or take the change.
OL: I'm not sure how big the tank is.
C: I'm not sure either but here's your change.
OL: Maybe we should call somebody who knows?

After that last line, I was out of the store since another cashier had helped me while the old lady decided she needed to occupy the other one with her stupidity.

Stupid thing number 2 for the day: New York May Ban iPods While Crossing The Street. If you're stupid enough to get hit by a car while on your phone or listening to music, Darwin has chosen you for a reason. Deal with it.

Stupid thing number 3: Wal-Mart Faces Sex Bias Case. Way to go on that one Wal-Mart. I hope you have to pay out the ass for that.


It's unfortunate but the pot smoking, drug dealing sex offender that lives across the hall came back today. Last Wednesday night/Thursday morning, there was a bit of an incident. It wasn't related but at midnight, a customer (I'm sure) stomped up the stairs and knocked on his door. Whoever this customer was with decided that midnight is a good time to honk the horn to hurry things along. So after that guy leaves, I fall asleep and am awoken just after 3 by the above mentioned drunken neighbour stomping up the stairs. I get up, go to the bathroom and lay back down but can't get to sleep. About 45 minutes later at 4, somebody starts knocking at their door. This guy stops and comes back a few minutes later. This keeps going and I get up to have a look. This guy knocks and then goes to sit at the end of the hall and repeats. This goes on for about 20 minutes. Finally the drunken son gets home. I'm not sure how he managed to get up the stairs since he was so drunk he couldn't stand but he got the door open only to find his dad latched the security chain inside. Now he's yelling through the door to be let in. Once dad opens the door, the guy who was knocking sees his chance and runs inside the apartment (his name is Al Ray as I find out later from the police). Not long after there's some yelling and loud smashing and 15 minutes later, the son leaves, somehow making it back down the stairs again. I was at the computer at this time and didn't notice Al leave but the son returns shortly after 5, again finding the security chain latched inside the door. This time, as he was leaning into the door waiting for it to be unlatched, he fell. I figured this was the end of it all so I went back to bed. Still not being able to sleep, I lay there and at about 5:45 I hear a car pull up outside. I look and it's the police. Apparently the son had hit Al and he bled all over. Al left and the two across the hall called the police. The police left again, picked up Al and came back. They asked the son how much he had to drink and he told them nothing. A few minutes later he fessed up to one beer. I guess as part of the routine, they had to give him a breathalyzer. He tried it twice and couldn't do it but at this time, they went into the apartment and shut the door so I don't know if he was able to get it to work and if he did, what the reading was. Anyway, I didn't get much sleep that night and later that morning, both of them left and were gone up until this afternoon when the dad returned. I sure liked not having all those people coming and going all day and the smell of cigarettes and pot in the air in the hall. I'm still keeping my hopes up that they get booted out since the landlord was over at the beginning of last week looking for January's rent.

Well, that was longer than expected but that's my update for today.

It’s been a few weeks since my last update. Barb said I should update my blog last night so here it is. I haven’t been up to much lately. I’ve been drinking a lot of decaf coffee (nobody else will drink it so I thought I’d get rid of it) and watching TV while playing sudoku puzzles. It’s no wonder old people go senile when they older because they don’t do anything else. I haven’t talked with my family or friends much lately either which sucks also.

Anyway, “Heroes” is back on TV again. I haven’t made a point to see every episode of a TV show in….well, I can’t even remember the last time I did that but I like this show a lot. If anybody hasn’t watched it, I highly recommend it although I don’t know how easy it would be to pick up on. I haven’t found any real good music lately since it all pretty much sucks but I’ve been listening to a band called Hurt lately. They’re very good and I recommend everybody check them out as well. Their album (only one so far) is similar to Metallica’s S&M in that they have some orchestra instruments in them and each song sounds different than the last. I’m behind the times but I had a listen to the last Evanescence album (“The Open Door”, released in October or so of ’06) and it’s pretty good as well.

That’s my update. Not very long but not much needed to be reported.

Been a busy few days here. On Tuesday, Teresa's sister Carrie went into the hospital to have her baby. Her boyfriend doesn't have a driver's license and they live about 45 minutes out of town. That night they asked me if I would take him home to let their dog out and take care of their other animals (4 cats!). So Teresa and I took him home that night and I told them I've got nothing better to do so if he needs any more rides to give me a call. On both Wednesday and Thursday, I had to give him a ride home in the morning and in the evening. Each ride killed probably 1.5-2.5 hours with the visiting he wanted to do. I didn't mind since I told them to call me and it got me out of the house. Wednesday afternoon Carrie had a baby girl named Sophia Louise. They got to take her home on Friday only to have to bring her back in on Saturday because of Jaundice. Their other baby had the same thing and it sounds like it's fairly common. As far as I know, they got to take her home last night or today. Saturday night we looked after their baby while they were at the hospital with her. Yesterday we went out to Teresa's mom and dad's to visit and ended up driving home in a lovely bit of winter weather. I wasn't able to go above ~45 mph (70 km/h) with the snow packed roads and the less than desirable traction that Teresa's car has. It had been awhile since I had a good challenging winter drive so I didn't mind. Today I took our Christmas tree down and took it outside. It lost quite a lot of needles (probably an hour worth of vacuuming to get all the needles picked up in here and in the hallway and I'm still not done.

In other news, I've recently gotten back into taking film pictures with my trusty old Canon AE-1. I found that Snapfish does very reasonable film developing ($5 with shipping and it includes free and unlimited digital storage on their website). I've tried a couple local places and one place has had my film since Dec. 30th and I haven't gotten it back yet and the other place didn't do very good prints. I haven't tried Snapfish yet but I'll be sure to post some results when I do.

Merry happy New Year. Last night, Teresa and I went over to her boss' place. It was a small gathering (6 people including us) but it was pretty fun. He passed around a mason jar of spiced apple pie liquor made with everclear. That was bad, bad stuff. It was so sweet and smooth that you could drink it like juice but I'm sure you would die shortly afterwards. I need to see if I can get the recipe for that. He also had some of this, this, this and this to drink. We watched the ball drop in New York without the aid of Dick Clark but sadly, Carson Daly replaced him. Not only did that suck but so did the music they had on there. That happened at 11 so we watched "Roy Orbison - A Black & White Night" to fill in the hour, which was quite a good video actually. At midnight, we had some champagne, which I'm normally not a fan of but there was some good red/pink stuff that I enjoyed.

In other news, I just switched to the new blogger so some things may change as I fudge around with it and see what's new.