I need an official ruling

I need some help with an official ruling on my running goal for this month. But first, a few photos from the Hercules parade.

The parade was supposed to roll Friday night, but due to cold and rain, it was rescheduled for Sunday afternoon. Alright, no biggie. At the time, it sucked. Spending all day riding around in a bus, getting excited about the ride... only to have it cancelled right when we got to the floats.

But It worked out well. The weather was great on Sunday and the parade was split between day and night. I don't think there were as many people along the route because we rode behind another parade, but there were still quite a few people to throw stuff too.

Here's a shot of me teasing some folks along the route. 

And a couple shots of the crowd about half way through the parade. A few times, I'd grab a three sacks of beads and juggle for the crowd. I'd lean way out over the crowd, juggle for a few minutes, then toss the bags to the people. I got a couple nice cheers. It was fun. 

and finally a shot of Mike (Duke Mike) close to downtown. We stopped here for quite a while, so I walked around the float for a while.



All in all, it was a great weekend. I was able to get Misty and Taylor their special gifts and still be able to throw all my bouncy balls and glow sticks. So until next... WEEK!!! Yea, Misty and I are riding in another parade on Fat Tuesday. I'm not going to buy any more things to throw. We're just catching enough stuff from all the other parades to throw. Misty is a genius and made a giant bulls eye with a trash can below it to catch stuff. It works great.

Alright, now, I need an official ruling.

If you don't know already, using Nike+ I've set a resolution for 2008. And I set a goal each month to help me reach that resolution. You can check it out here and leave me notes of encouragement. (Thanks to those who have left comments already)

My resolution says this "If I don't run at least twice a week in 2008, I'll wear KU stuff when they play KSU in football or Basketball" (You can keep track of the goal by looking at the box on the ride side of the page.. might have to scroll up a bit from this point)

So what that means, if I don't accomplish any of my monthly goals, I'll be putting on the Red and Blue and chanting "Rock Chalk."

Now then, my goal for January is to run 9 times. Right now, i've run 7 times. I just need two more runs to keep from wearing KU stuff.

BUT... yesterday my stomach decided to produce a Staph Infection. If you take a dollar bill and put it on your belly button, that's about the size of the area of the swelling. The last two days, I've worn shoes that don't need to be tied because I can't bend at my waist enough to get to my shoe laces. And if I can't bend enough to tie my shoes, running is pretty much out of the question.

I'm going to the doctor Wednesday morning to get some drugs to help take this thing away, but the drugs usually take a few days to get rid of it. So you can see my bind. I've got Tonight, Wednesday and Thursday to run two times. But I can't run.

Would anybody have a problem if we skip ahead to next month and just kind of forget about January? Because I don't think I'll be able to run twice before the end of the month.

And to make up for skipping out on my first goal of the year, I'll take suggestions on what my February goal should be.

It can be one of three things. A distance, more often or faster.

For example, this month's goal went like this... "To achieve my resolution, My January goal is 9 runs."

or it could be "To achieve my resolution, My February goal is (blank) miles"

or "To achieve my resolution, My February goal is (blank) runs under the time of (blank minutes blank seconds)

FYI... My average mile pace is about 10 minutes per mile.

So there you go. I probably could (and should have) run nine times by now, but... I just didn't.

But for now, There's hamburger helper waiting for me. So I'm ending this here.

Lets Ride

Mardi Gras!!!

My float is loaded and I'm ready to ride.

The Krewe of Hercules rolls at 6 p.m. Friday night. If you're at the parade, I'm on float #27 (the one with the giant walt disney head) on the Mall Side in the back. )

If you're not in Houma... No worries. houmatoday.com has a webcam set up looking over downtown. The parade should be getting downtown around 10 p.m. So if you've got nothing else to do on a friday night, check out the webcam. I'll throw you something.

Here's a quick list of things I'm throwing this year

-Bouncy Balls (about two thousand of the little guys)
-Foam Footballs
-Glow Bracelets
-Light Up puffer balls
-Beads, lots of them (duh)
-special gift for Misty and Taylor (not telling what it is)
-Nintendo Hats donated by Mike Sr.
-cups with the names of everybody on our float
-plastic swords
-frisbees
-and a bunch of other novelty type toys that I can't remember right now.

I spent the afternoon loading all my stuff onto the float. My buddy Jonathan Cohen and I have the entire back section of the float. So we've got plenty of room. I got one of those window garden bucket things and screwed that into the side of the float to hold stuff (beads, balls... whatever)

So here's a shot of me being a dork on top of all my stuff. You can only see the footballs, the rest of the stuff in under there somewhere.

Happy Mardi Gras!

nevermind

well... I spent a good portion of tonight and this morning typing up a post about the past few weeks.

My trip home to Kansas, Christmas, the snow, KSU basketball

The sugar bowl

New Years eve

the BCS National Championship game

Getting back into running and this new goal I set for myself... that you guys get to help with...

And when I went to preview my post before publishing it... POOF! it all disappeared.

I had 17 photos, I talked about each one.

It's now two in the morning and I really don't feel like typing it all up again. At least I haven't broken anything in my room yet.

Sorry about that... hopefully soon I'll get the motivation to post all that stuff again.

And what sucks is that I can't figure out how it happend... this post has already saved it self three times and I've only been typing for three minutes. The big post kept saving it self but for whatever reason, the last time it saved, it reverted it back to the first time it saved. Awesome uh?

oh well.

I'm going to wind down with some TV, I'm a little to fired up right now to fall asleep.

Holding... on the Offense... 10 Yard penalty... repeat second down

Oops... been a while since I posted anything. My bad. I've had a lot of ideas, I usually think of cool or funny things to blog while I'm running. I've good cool topics too... like the week I was involved in about 6 games that went into overtime. Or the series of photos Misty took of me at the Christmas celebration thing at City Park in New Orleans last weekend. (I will probably get to that... it's pretty funny)

But I've got a little bit of time this morning so I thought I'd share some photos from yesterday's Saints game against the Arizona Cardinals.

The coolest part of the game was watching Martin Gramatica play. I watched him play in college, in fact, I watched him kick the longest field goal in NCAA and Pro history with out a tee (65 Yards). But the Saints signed him this week and he made four extra points and a field goal on Sunday. Stud.

After the game, I went up to him, shook his hand and told him I watched him in college and wished him luck with the Saints. He kind of looked at me funny and said "Thanks." So I pointed at my KSU hat and he said "Ohhhhh...Thanks, Thanks a lot." That's about it.



I got a nice shot during the first half of Arizona wide receiver Larry Fitsgerald diving for the endzone... but the play was called back for holding. It's still a cool shot, but it's a non-play and doesn't really count. At least he didn't make the touchdown and at least Arizona didn't go on to win. So it's not an important picture for the game, it's just a cool picture.



Early in the Second half, Gumbo (The Mascot) came next to me during a play and acted like he was taking pictures. After the play, I gave him my camera and asked if wanted to give it a try. He played around for a little bit and gave me the camera back. I told him we should switch jobs for the rest of the game. He leaned in and said "You don't want this job son."



Here are a couple more shots from the game.... Pre-Game intros... The defensive starters are announced and run out of this inflatable tunnel thing. I set up shop behind the tunnel and got some cool shots. And the other pic is of a nice pass break up in the first half.





That's all for now. I'll do a better job about posting stuff. Well, I say that but who knows if I will or not.

Big Uneasy

I've been a subscriber of Sports Illustrated since 1998. And every week I make it a point to look through the magazine.

Each week I have a little ceremony so to say to flip through the magazine and look at every photo. I might read a thing or two, but the first thing I do is look at each photo. Then, I go back and read the stories.

My thoughts on the photos have really progressed since I first started to subscribe. At first they were just out of reach. After a while, I learned to appreciate the images because I learned what it takes to make those pictures.

A while later, after shooting many of the events that Sports Illustrated photographers were also at, I would think "Man, I got a picture of the same play, but I didn't get a picture like THAT of the play."

And recently, I've felt that I can at least hang in there with the best sports shooters. Don't get me wrong, I'm no where near the level of a Sports Illustrated shooter... But think of it like this...The Royals get base hits and home runs against the Yankees and Red Sox each year. They might not win the game or have a better record at the end of the season, but they do have some success against the best of the best.

My "New Sports Illustrated" routine didn't change when I got the latest issue on Friday (one day late btw). I came home from shooting a basketball game and stood in my room flipping through the pages looking at each photo. This issue is the College Basketball Preview issue, so it's a little larger than normal. When I turned to page 128, two pages from the end, for some reason I went right to the photo credits before looking at the photos.

Matt Stamey/US PRESSWIRE

I had to do a double take... I had a photo published in Sports Illustrated. I talked a little about this photo in my last post... Reggie getting knocked out at the one yard line against St. Louis.



A side story about this photo... I actually liked the frame before this shot a lot better. Reggie was reaching out a little more towards the endzone and it had the moment of the impact that knocked him out. But it was a little soft (out of focus). So I transmitted this image instead.

I've been freelancing for US PRESSWIRE for the past few years. They're a photo wire service for sports images. An A.P. for sports photos if you will. When I shoot a game, I send them a bunch of my best photos from the game. From there, an editor posts the majority of those photos on their website (www.uspresswire.com) for clients to purchase. (Clients include USA Today, Sports Illustrated, ESPN... etc)

So, Friday night I went out to find more copies. I hit up five places... nothing. But I had a funny encounter at the Walgreens. While searching the the S.I. on the magazine rack, I saw a Runners World and thought I'd check one of those out since I've been running. So I went to the counter with my Runners World and a thing of Tic-Tac's. The lady scanned the magazine, then the Tic-Tac's, looked at me and said "Wow, you must be really bored tonight." What's that mean? So I asked her "what?" to see if I heard her correctly. "You must be really bored tonight uh?"

How in the world does a Runners World magazine and some white Tic-Tac's translate into me being bored on a Friday night? Oh well.

And, as of Sunday afternoon, Books-a-Million has no more copies of Sports Illustrated.

Get to Know Jake Owen

Who is Jake Owen? I'll get to that.

But lets start with a little KSU basketball. Freshman Michael Beasley is amazing. In his first game Friday night, broke the record for most rebounds for a freshman... in the first 19 minutes. Also he's the first KSU player to have at least 30 points and 20 rebounds in a game since Bob Boozer in 1957. Wow. See you in March!

On Saturday, I did something I haven't done since the 1998 St. Patricks day celebration in Manhattan. I ran in a 5k Road Race in downtown Houma. It was a blast. My goal was to finish under 30 minutes. No problem. Here's the chart for the race, and a picture of me a few steps after the finish line. (Misty left her cousins wedding early to be there... Thanks Misty!)





Not quite at the pace I ran in High School... but I don't care. It was fun.

On Sunday, Misty and shot the Saints game... against St. Louis. The winless Rams bead the Saints 37-29. Oops. Here are some shots.

Couple of Rams players celebrate a touchdown.



Rams running back Steven Jackson... he's good.



Reggie gets knocked out at the one yard line.



Misty and I left the superdome and headed to Biloxi for a concert. Misty won tickets to Little Big Town and Sugarland from a radio station contest. (A picture of Misty and a dog she was taking care of was online with a bunch of other photos, and her picture got enough votes to win her tickets to the show.)

The seats were on the floor, 10 rows back. Not to shabby. I don't really know ether of the groups, I've heard a couple of songs, but I don't know them well enough to sing along.

Here's where Jake Owen comes in. Jake Owen was the opening act for Sugarland and Little Big Town. Jake Owen is the guy that gets on stage and sings a few songs before the main acts come on. Well, for one of his songs, Jake Owen decided to come to the corner of the statge (in front of us) and play his guitar solo. After the solo, Jake Owen tossed his guitar pick into the crowd. I saw it comming right at us, but it was dark and with all the crazy lights I lost it. But I know it was heading right towards us. Misty said that she felt it hit her. So we were looking all over for this thing.... a long with everybody around us. Misty was got on the floor, I started checking on the seats. I even pulled out my cell phone to use as a light. Then, the lady sitting next to me said I should check my pockets. And sure enough, the darn thing landed in my sweatshirt pocket. Now Misty has a Jake Owen guitar pick.

So get to know Jake Owen, he's going to become famous and that guitar pick is going to be worth millions.

Don't eat the Cheese

During the press conference after the Saints game today, Reggie Bush said that Coach Payton has been telling the team "Don't eat the cheese."

Someone asked what that means... and all I heard (well, all I listened to really) was when he listed off a bunch of cheeses, including Gouda. And when I heard that I started silently cheering to Misty because Reggie Bush talked about Gouda cheese. Yea, I know he was talking about not eating it, but he still said "Gouda Cheese"

But yea, the Saints beat the Jacksonville Jaguars 41-24 today. It was a great way to finish off a crappy weekend of football for me.

Friday:
The high school game I covered on Friday sucked, it was really boring.

Saturday:
Kansas Sate lost to a one-win Iowa State.
Wake Forest lost (I picked them to win in the Jimmy C contest)
and LSU won. (Yea, sorry any LSU fans out there, but I've kind of become anti-LSU recently, I think I'll dive into that in another post)

Sunday:
I got some good shots at the Saints game, and they won.
I also won my Fantasy game against Ben... but he just so happened to have three players on bye weeks on his active roster. (wink wink)

But other than the crappy sports on Friday and Saturday... the weekend was great.

here are a few from the Saints game today.

Intros before the game...



A tackle in the first half...



Reggie doing his best karate kick...



And Tom Benson, the Saints' owner, celebrating after the win.

Nine Nine Seven One

My Bad on not posting sooner after my trip back to Kansas. But I jumped into a moving train my first day back and it's finally stopped long enough for me to get off.

The wedding was great. Better than I could have imagined. My only responsibilities were to usher people to their seats before the ceremony, pass out the packets of bird seed after the ceremony and have fun at the reception. I was flawless.

Here are a few shots I grabbed during the day. I only carried my point and shoot with me during the day, so I don't have much.

This is the Firetruck outside the church before the ceremony.



Here's Michelle making her way down the isle at the start of the ceremony. Notice how crowded it is? Must have taken some mighty fine ushers to make sure all those people had a place to sit.



The newlyweds arrived at the Reception in style... on the Firetruck.



Cake Cutting.



You couldn't ask for a better day. I got to see a bunch of people I haven't seen in a while, the weather was perfect and the best part... now I have in-laws. I've never really had in-laws before. I'm just so happy for John and Michelle. It was pretty special to have all the Stamey's together for something like this. Then add our new "other side" of the family and all the friends and it was an amazing weekend.

Now, fast forward to this afternoon.... I finally did something something I've probably been needing to do for about three years. Register my car in Louisiana.

Yep, the ole' Alero is now a Louisianaian (if that's even a word). Right after I graduated High School, I worked for the Manhattan Mercury. One afternoon I watched one of the reporters take her California plate off her car and put on her Kansas Plate. It wasn't that big of a deal, but I remember thinking "I wonder if I'll ever move out of state and have to change my plate?" Well, I did move out of state, but just never got around to swapping plates.

So now if I do something stupid while driving, I can't think to myself "Well, the person I just pissed off will forgive me when they see that I'm not from here"

I guess it means I'm a little more local now.

I went with the Environmental plate. I had the choice between the normal Louisiana Plate, the "Save the Louisiana Black Bear" plate and the Envromental plate. I thought the Brown Pelican was pretty cool. I think it cost me a little extra but the lady said it goes towards a good cause.

So say goodbye to VAP 039 and say Hello to 9971

First Shower in Two Days

Well, my vacation to Kansas started great, but then went downhill... but it's alright now. Here's the rundown.

Friday: I had lunch with Misty (mom's spaghetti) and said goodbye. She thought I was leaving that evening. But nope, my flight was Saturday morning so I was able to go to the first night of the Voice of the Wetlands Festival... that Misty had been working on for the past few months. I suprised her at the festival that night.

Saturday: Thanks to Misty for driving me to the Airport REALLY early in the morning. Got into KC just fine. Went to my brothers new house. Had lunch at Arby's (not Hardee's). Drove back to Manhattan. Met up with Kelly and went to the Stadium to tail gate before the Colorado game.

The game was awesome. I saw some friends and family I haven't seen in a while and was able to sit with my mom. I've never done that before. We had a great time. Near the end of the third quarter, Colorado lined up to punt. I leaned over to mom and said "Five bucks if they block it." And sure enough.. they did, and recovered it for a touchdown. We both went crazy (well, the entire stadium went crazy, but I'm sure we went the most crazy). Kansas State won by 27

Here's a shot of the stadium before the game.



Sunday: I decided to be lazy and just watch some football in the TV room at my parents house. They have nice leather comfey chairs, HD TV and wireless internet. So I just kicked back and watched the games... and watched my Fantasy team.

Sunday evening my stomach started to act up... and that night things took a turn for the worse. I didn't sleep at all because my chrones decided to flare up. I finally dozed off for a few hours around 6 a.m.

Monday: My stomach still hurt... all day. I spent the entire day in the leather comfey chairs in pain. It was cool to be lazy and do nothing, but it sucked being sick. I called my Doctor in Houma and they hooked me up with some Steiroids. And they did the trick.

Tuesday: I woke up able to bench press 325lbs and then beat up my dog. Not really... but I did feel great. I played with my dog for a while, took a shower for the first time in two days, went to lunch and did some shopping.

Plans for the rest of the week include... A trip to Wichita so see Kelly and meet Lili, A visit with the grandparents and then the wedding festivities. (That's actually why I'm here, my brother John is getting married on Saturday)

I'll post more later

Kicking the Beggar

How about them Cats! Knocking off Texas for the second year in a row. My fantasy football team sucked this week, I made a bad Jimmy C pick... but I could care less because I know all of Texas nation is still upset for losing to Kansas State.... Twice. I love it. Bring on KU!

And if you would please... just ignore my most recent run. It's pretty embarassing. It goes to show that eating is pretty important when it comes to working out on a regular basis.

I had a nice lunch and I even saved some of it to eat for dinner. But I got caught up at work and all I had to eat for dinner was a Red Bull and a Snickers.

Well, when it comes time to work out and all you have in your system is nothing, it makes it a little difficult to do anyhing... and you can plainly see by how quicly I dropped down to a near walking pace tonight.

I bet I looked a lot like these guys... I think I was most like Oliver.



Oh well, at least I did something.

And did anybody catch that Rockies vs San Diego game tonight? Holy Cow what a finish uh? And the dude who scored the game winning run didn't even touch home! I predict that we'll see instant replay in Major League Baseball soon. Maybe not next year, but that play will be talked about a bunch during the Playoffs and the off season. Some rule will be made or changed because of that play.

That's about all I know right now. No photo this time, haven't really shot anything interesting in a few days. I did start a new project about off-shore oil wokers. But I want to get a little deeper into the projcet before showing anything.