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(I took this photo Saturday afternoon.)

A (not so) quick update

I'm not going to touch on all the highlights of my past few weeks, just a few. I'm pretty sure Misty touched on the things I'm going to leave out. So if you'd like to know more about what's going on, check out her blog.

I will touch on a few things though...

Last weekend and this weekend are the annual Blessing of the Fleet celebrations. A priest is aboard a Shrimp Boat and goes down the bayou blessing the other shrimp boats. They file in behind and parade down close to the Gulf. It's pretty neat to see.

Last weekend, Misty and I were on the lead boat for the entire trip. Here are a few shots from that afternoon.







And here's one my buddy Doug shot of Misty and me on the lead boat.



This Sunday there is another Blessing that I plan to cover. I get to ride on one of those boats for a couple hours and they always offer me some type of good food.

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(That's my little Webdings community to separate my thoughts)

Also, last weekend was the Louisiana Press Asso. awards banquet. It's a fun afternoon lunch type event where vendors hook you up with plenty of free stuff. Then, they serve a nice meal and announce the winners of the Annual Contest.

Before the lunch started, people attending the banquet were able to walk around and view the top three winners in each category. (categories range from Best Headline to Best Sports Photo to Best Full Page Color Ad... so the contest covers all aspects of the newspaper). You didn't know the exact place, but the top three were displayed in random order.

While people were viewing the winners, they were given a ballot and asked to go vote for their favorite photo in the entire contest. I'd guess there were about 50 photos to choose from. The photo with the most votes got slugged "Best in Show"

So I did a little campaigning amongst my friends and co-workers in attendance. And ended up winning the "Best in Show" in the entire contest. I don't know how many votes were cast, but I did overhear a group of people I didn't know say they were going to vote for mine, so the voting wasn't totally skewed because of me.

Anyway, it was a photo from a high school graduation I shot last year. One of the students wore his full Marine uniform instead of his cap and gown. I mounted a camera in the cat-walk of the civic center and took pictures with that camera using a remote button. (thanks for the help with that Grant) Turned out pretty well.

Here's the photo...



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And on another winning note, Misty took home a nice chunk of change from the casino the other night. I took home twenty less bucks. She was down to just a few buck left and she hit big on the slot machine. She's planning to put the money towards a new dryer or towards the "take boyfriend to nice dinner" fund. But it's totally up to her how she spends her winnings.

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The past few weeks, Taylor has been playing a youth soccer league. It's pretty much 5-6 year old kids running around like crazy all trying to kick the ball at once. And every now and then, they lose interest and go climb around in the goal. It's fun to watch and I finally busted out my camera tonight and grabbed some shots.

I'm guessing this first shot was taken right as the ball passed inches from my camera. I was lying on the ground with my wide angle hoping the action would come close to me. And it did. The ball was kicked right past my camera. I missed getting the ball in the picture, but I still think it's cool how all the kids are looking right at the camera... that usually never happens when shooting sports.



And the best part of playing youth sports.... the post-game snack. I remember getting a can of Rocky Top or Sam's Choice Soda or some sort of cheap drink. After this game, Taylor got hooked up with a CapriSun and an Oreo Cupcake. I was in charge of holding the CapriSun so she could eat the cupcake. Misty scored a bite of the cupcake and claimed that it tasted bad.




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This morning, I tuned into the last few minutes of Press Your Luck on the Game Show Channel. Anybody remember that show? I started cheering for this guy to win. He had three whammies
and the defending champ passed him 4 pushes. (meaning he's required to Press his Luck four more times). He kept getting Money+Spin. So he ended up passing the champ 2 pushes. And she got a couple Money+Spin. But instead of passing those free spins to the dude with three whammies, she kept pressing her luck. She didn't quite catch up to the amount of money the dude had so she lost. It was the best episode of Press Your Luck I've ever seen with out seeing a Whammy dance across the screen.

You know you always cheered to see the people get whammies. Nobody cares about the Big Bucks or Vacation package.

I can't believe I just did a play by play of a game show.

Alright Alright... I'll post something.

I know it's been a while since I last posted. And here are my list of excuses.

1. I've been working a bunch lately and when I get home after a long day, the last thing I want to do is stare at a computer some more.
2. When I did feel like looking at a computer and posting a blog, our Internet was down. Our provider is undergoing "changes" which means our Internet sometimes doesn't work. But these "changes" have taken over a month so it's really starting to suck.
3. I'm just plain lazy

Now then, let me give you guys a quick rundown of what I've done the past few weeks.

It's mostly been A LOT of work. Spring sports are in full swing, Houma hosted a Harley-Davidson festival, I started a new painting that will take me a while to finish, I've spent quite a few evenings over at Misty's enjoying pizza rolls and whatever activity Taylor is interested in that night, Good Friday crawfish, and I'm sure a bunch of other stuff that I can't remember right now.

I shot a track meet a few weeks ago. In the middle of the meet, they have an event called the "Fat Man Relays" It's when the shot-put and discuss throwers compete in a 4x100 meter relay. And the winning team gets a dozen doughnuts. It doesn't count towards the overall standings of the meet, but it is sure fun to watch the fat guys run 100 yard sprints. Anyway, I got this photo during that race. It doesn't say "fat man relay" but I still thought it was pretty funny.



I did something on Saturday I haven't done in quite a while... paint Easter eggs. Misty, Taylor and I painted about 7 dozen eggs on Saturday night. It was great. Misty picked up some specialty egg painting kit things and what started as your traditional "dipping the eggs into the colors" turned into Taylor splashing the liquid dye all over the table, floor and shirt, and Misty and I using paint brushes to paint our eggs. It was great. Here's a shot of one of my favorite eggs. I discovered an easy way to put some dead looking trees on the egg. Pretty cool I thought. I think Misty came away with the best decorated egg with her swamp scene. But I'll let her show that one off.




Then of course, the Easter bunny paid a visit to Misty and Taylor. Items of interest to Taylor included new ear rings, paint brushes and a chocolate cross. Items of to me included bubbles, jelly beans and Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs.



But before we painted the eggs on Saturday, I hooked myself up with an Easter Present of my own. We went to Sam's Club and picked up a huge bucket of Cheese Balls, a million rolls of toilet paper, a 32-inch flat screen TV, about 3,000 ounces of Gatorade and 5 boxes of Mac and Cheese.

So, on Sunday, we made a nice dent in the bucket of cheese balls and set up my new TV in my room.



Points of interest in this photo.

1. The TV (duh)
2. The Family Guy Bobble head dolls on top of the TV
3. My Guitar Hero guitar
4. My 1985 KC Royals World Series Champions trash can (under TV behind the shelf thing)
5. My comfy office chair I'm sitting in right now.
6. The vacuumed carpet
7. My Kansas State "Growl Towel" and the New Orleans Hornets Equivalent (both currently serving as dust covers for my Printer in the back corner)
8. My last box of Samoas Girl Scout Cookies
   

A big thanks to Misty for helping me clean this section of my room. (there's a reason you're only seeing this corner). I've got a BUNCH of space in my room, but I've taken zero advantage of this space. I moved into this room in July 2005. When I moved in, I just got everything into the room as quick as possible. I didn't think about where things should go, I just put things where they fit. At the time I told myself "Self, I'll just organize all of this later, I'll have plenty of time." Yea, never got around to doing anything.

So Misty went through my little closet, moved some things around and freed up a bunch of space. So a big round of applause for Misty.

I think that pretty much brings everybody up to date with me. If you'd like to see some of my work from the past few weeks, check out some of my recent photo galleries. Oh, and while your there, check out Misty's gallery from something she shot on Friday.