Nice Choices, America

Maybe I'm just getting older and wiser, but it sure seems that presidential elections have been getting more and more ridiculous in this country with every passing four years. I was already extremely unhappy with the candidates that both the Republican and Democratic parties chose, but with the events that have taken place in the last 24 hours I'm disgusted.Last night I watched 15 minutes or so of Barack Obama's acceptance speech officially becoming the Democratic Presidential Candidate Nominee. I have to give the guy credit on his speech. His speech seemed unread and unrehearsed. It was motivating, moving, and exciting. Not for me, but...

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On The Road Again

Well, we are finally back home for good. And I finally get to use this map I made showing our August Wedding Extravaganza. I made this map the week before the four weddings began to show the distance that we would be traveling. But, in an effort to avoid a possible break-in to our home in our absence, I decided to not go into detail about how far we were going to be going away and when we'd be gone on a public web page. But, now that we are home, I have no problem posting this. The blue lines represent us heading towards our destinations and the red ones are for when we were heading home. The four weddings were in Springfield, MO, Eureka...

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Drive In Drive Out

What a short/long weekend. Last Friday afternoon, I left work early so that we could head off to Michigan and get there at a decent time. We wound up not leaving as early as we had originally hoped because some unexpected business came up that we couldn't rush away. We did get on the road as soon as we could, though. After many hours on the road and several stops for gas, bathroom breaks, and one quick shopping stop we made it to my brother's house at 4:00 in the morning Saturday. Energized by seeing each other finally after such a long period the four of us wound up talking until finally calling it a morning at 6:00. My brother's...

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Sushi Night

The night before last, Jodi and I invited Cheryl and RJ over for a fun night of sushi rolling. We wound up with a pretty decent mix of sushi and definitely too much. We wound up eating the left-overs for dinner last night and it was plenty even then. And during dinner, Jodi said that she had eaten it for breakfast and lunch as well. So, now we have a pretty good idea about how much rice to make for the specified number of people. We made nigiri-zushi (tightly pressed oval balls of rice with thinly sliced sashimi (raw fish) draped over them) , futomaki (large rolls), and seaweed salad. For the sashimi, we used Atlantic salmon, unagi (freshwater eel), and butterflied shrimp. The eel came pre-grilled and we bought the shrimp frozen and pre-cooked so I'm thinking that they may not technically...

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Busy August

It's Thursday, the seventh day of August. The day before 8-8-08. Apparently, this has been viewed as a lucky day almost worldwide for weddings. According to the Chicago Tribune, local Chicago chapels and wedding decor marketers have seen a 213% rise for weddings on this Friday compared to that of the same Friday this time last year. It also reports that 8-8-08 has failed to be as popular as 7-7-07 was just last year. It happened to fall on a Saturday which could have also helped it in its desirability. For me, I will be doing the same thing this year on 8-8-08 that I did last year on 7-7-07, which is photographing a wedding. They're even...

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Correction

Sometimes people tell me things that interest me and I fail to perform my litmus test of truth on the new information. I, in turn, pass this information on to others as fact. Today, I cannot remember how many people I might have told that the Olympic flame was a tradition started by Adolf Hitler, but I do recall mentioning it in a conversation or two.So, here is my retraction. It isn't true. The ancient Olympics in Olympia, Greece had a fire burning for the entirety of the events in order to honor the fabled theft of the fire of Zeus by Prometheus. The story goes as follows:Prometheus who was a descendant of the Titans, being half man and...

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