Jul 8
I’m trying out a new WordPress plugin that allows me to embed my converted cellphone videos.
I’ve had this video of my great-niece on my phone for a couple years. It’s extra cute when she sees herself in the front screen of the phone and clobbers me.
embedded by Embedded Video
Download Video
I took this on July 1, 2007. Abbey had just turned 1!
Dec 8
Well, play weekend is over. For over two months, Ashley’s been staying after school, practicing lines, attending rehearsals and enjoying her first event as a member of Stagecrafters (Drama Club).
The Fall presentation this year was “Kodiak FlapJack: Man of the Frozen North”:
Step aside, Crocodile Dundee, Kodiak Flapjack is headin’ south! A likeable young outdoorsman who’s never been far from his hometown of Chug-a-lug, Alaska, Kodiak has just inherited a snooty girls’ academy in Connecticut. But under the conditions of the eccentric Cornelius Inchmeal’s will, Kodiak must serve as principal for a full year! What a hilarious mismatch this is for a guy who wrestles bears! When whale blubber is added to the menu, the faculty resigns. Kodiak solves the problem by hiring his woodsy friends from the frozen north, but Cornelious’ relatives are determined to get rid of Kodiak and his unpolished pals. Ultimately, of course, Kodiak wins everyone over and humanizes the school in the process. Inchmeal Academy relocates to Chug-a-lug, where the curriculum expands to include everything from snow-machine repair to fur sewing. – summary from PioneerDrama.com
It was a great show! All the kids did really well and made watching all three performances fresh and entertaining.
Ashley played the role of Skagway Sally, the “true heir” of Inchmeal Academy and the surprise ending of the play:
While the kids put their own spin on the characters and scenes, a highlight was a “prank” played by the crew on closing night. See if you can spot the “guest stars”:
Ashley’s already excited about tryouts for the spring musical.
I have to admit… we’re looking forward to it too…
May 23
Ashley’s about a week away from graduating 8th grade and the end-of-the-year festivities have begun. Last week we attended the honor’s ceremony.
Ashley was awarded the 4.0 GPA award.
Again.
She also got the Honor Roll award for being on the Honor Roll for the first three quarters this year.
Again.
Honor’s classes in High School await.
Today was the junior high talent show. It was held during the day, so Carrie and her Mom went up to the school to see the show. Carrie took the video camera and tonight I edited the video down and posted it on YouTube.
Ashley sang ‘Slipped Away’ by Avril Lavigne. I grabbed the video of just her song. Also from YouTube, check it out:
Jun 1
Ashley’s come a long way in the two years since she was denied entry into the school talent show. Today the middle school held their talent show for parents and teachers. Unfortunately, the school scheduled the show for 1:00pm so I, among many other parents, couldn’t make it. Carrie did, however, and she took the video camera.
Wow.
Ashley performed the song: ‘Everybody’s Fool’ by Evanescence (yeah, I spelled it wrong in the video below…). While she professed to us that she only got a little nervous moments before she hit the stage, you could never tell. She had a couple problems transitioning from the verse to the chorus, but she said that the music was hard for her to hear and it messed up her timing a little bit. But for a seventh grader with no formal voice training she was pretty awesome.
She’s already decided that she’s joining the Concert Choir in eighth grade. We can’t wait for next year’s show.
May 26
Yesterday was my great-niece’s first birthday. Today the family gathered for the party. Like most every one year old, Abbey was far more interested in wrapping paper and already-opened-envelopes than she was in her presents.
The highlight of the day was a family tradition… the smash cake. Although I think the smash cake is celebrated by lots of families with little ones, very often the birthday boy or girl just looks confused at the cake or maybe sticks a finger or two in the frosting.
Not Abigail.
Abbey went cake-crazy. Take a look.
May 24
We just got back from Ashley’s school award ceremony. Ashley got a certificate for perfect attendance this year (through three quarters… the day after the Fall Out Boy concert notwithstanding) and then the principal started announcing the academic awards.
Merit roll and Honor roll awards were given out and all the kids went up and received their certificates. The last academic award was the 4.0 GPA award. The principal explained what a big deal this award was and proceeded to tell us how significant is was that only three kids in the entire school were eligible for the award this year.
That’s right, Ashley was one of the three. Ashley’s name was called along with two of her classmates (two boys who happened to be the class president and vice-president!).
Afterward we all gathered in the cafeteria for punch and bakery where Ashley was congratulated by her friends and teachers.
Our kid is the only girl in Middle School this year to tally a perfect score! We’re so proud of her.
Mar 25
So I finally broke down and bought a video camera. I knew I didn’t want a camera that recorded on any kind of VHS and I wanted something from which I could transfer videos to the computer.
I wound up buying a JVC GR-D370u. It takes MiniDV tapes and apart from a weird noise issue we had with the first one (which we exchanged a week later) it’s pretty nice. Of course in order to make the video play nicely online, I have to compress it a whole lot and that kinda makes the video quality all pixelated. But I could also transfer the vids to DVD and maintain the quality. Hmmm… I’ll have to try that next.
Now I have to figure out the best way to get my videos online. YouTube? Google Video? Just plain old embedded flash? I don’t know.
Until I decide, enjoy this embedded video clip of my family preparing to serve St Patrick’s Day dinner at the American Legion a couple weeks ago. NOTE: I replaced the video with a YouTube version… too many people were having a hard time with the ‘right-click > Play’ thing…)
Feb 11
So last night Carrie and Ashley and I went to see Jim Gaffigan. What a riot!! We got the tickets the moment they went on sale back in November and it paid off when we got front row seats!! (Well, technically, there was three rows of folding chairs in front of us (what’s up with that?), but those seats were too close in my opinion; like sitting in the front row at the movies). He had an opening act, Rich Brooks, who was pretty funny, and he and Jim both stayed after the show to sign autographs and take pictures.
What’s that? You’ve never heard of Jim Gaffigan? Oh sure you have… he’s the guy in all those Sierra Mist commercials:
Sierra Mist Comb Over
Sierra Mist Holiday Hawk
and He’s a frequent guest on late night television:
Jim on the Jimmy Kimmel Show
Jim on Late Night with Conan O’Brien
He was also Doug, the “open-door-dump” guy on Sex and the City:
(from the synopsis)
…Meanwhile, Miranda is a little freaked out when her date Doug pees in front of her the morning after their first night together. Miranda decides that she should go with the flow, and tries peeing with the door open herself. However, Doug takes the no-boundaries thing too far, subjecting Miranda to an “open door dump” after which Miranda quickly dumps him.
(Sorry, no video link on this one!)
He says that he’ll autograph anything you bring him, so we brought our copy of his “Beyond the Pale” DVD and Ashley brought an empty Hot Pockets box. He signed everything and as we posed for a picture with him he thanked us for coming to his show. Wow. He did two sold out shows yesterday and still had a line a mile long for autographs and he still thanks each of his fans for coming to see him. That’s cool.
Thank you, Jim. What a great show.
Oct 31
We’re off to the land of the sugar-coma.
May 26
My great niece was born the day before yesterday. Today we went to the hospital to see her and the proud mama and papa.
She’s so beautiful.
Even though she had lots of visitors, she spent most of the day asleep. Hey – she’s only a day old. And she had a big day. Click here to see more pics.
May 9
Ashley and I had appointments with the optometrist last night. Ashley’s been complaining that sometimes she can’t see the board in class and she almost always has a problem with the overhead projector. I noticed it over the weekend when she and I were Mother’s Day shopping and she asked me the price of an item on a high shelf. “You can’t see the price tag?”, I asked her. “Well, kinda… but not really”, she answered. “Uh-oh, good thing your going to the doctor”. And it was a good thing too – Ashley is slightly nearsighted. We pick up her glasses in about a week.
I, on the other hand, mentioned to the doctor that some days after sitting in front of the computer all day I have a hard time readjusting my eyes to see things that are farther away than say two or three feet. He examined my eyes and told me that I’ve got near perfect vision but that my eyes are getting older and having a harder time refocusing. Sitting in front of the computer for almost 12 hours a day is just speeding up the inevitable. He suggested +1 strength reading glasses only for reading or sitting in front of the computer. “As you age, the natural ability to focus on things that are closer to you becomes more difficult. Reading glasses will take some of the stress off your eyes when your doing close-up work like reading or writing” Fine. I picked up a pair at Wal-Mart and tried them on. I look like a huge dork. But, I’m writing this paragraph with the glasses on and I have to admit that everything is slightly bigger and it doesn’t feel like my eyes are working so hard. Does that make sense? I don’t know. It’s gonna take some getting used to.
Jan 18
It was two years ago today that I quit smoking. I realized that fact this morning when I was looking at the calendar and trying to remember why January 18 seemed so familiar. The first year was tough, but this past year has been so easy that I almost forgot.
Oh well. I win a cookie, I guess. What else….
Oh yeah, Ashley had four more teeth pulled on Monday. She’s scheduled for braces in March, but we’re wondering if she’s gonna have enough teeth to put braces on. Monday marked the 14th tooth she’s had pulled and she still looks like an Ash-O’Lantern.
At home, I’ve turned my laptop into a streaming jukebox for the bedroom. I just plug in the wireless card, power it up and load WinAmp’s shoutcast library. With over 600 streaming channels we’re bound to find something better than local radio.
So far, our current favorites are the New Age and World Music channel (for falling asleep), .977 – The 80′s Channel (for waking up) and the uncensored comedy channel (for cracking up). A sleep-timer WinAmp-plugin takes care of turning the machine off around 3:00am so I can hear my alarm clock in the morning.
What else? Well, American Idol started last night and we sat there watching like zombies. Much like last year I’m betting we’ll all lose interest by the time they whittle down to the top 30 or 50 or how ever many they start the real show with. (We haven’t watched AI past the initial tryouts for the last couple years.) Only to tune back in once they get down to the top 10.
I just hope Crazy-Dave doesn’t get squashed in Hollywood.
Lastly, I got my W-2 today. Did my taxes already too. Actually Carrie did the hard work. I just scanned the W-2′s and emailed them home. We’ve used Tax-Act for the past two years and it’s been super easy. Carrie filled everything out on-line and we’re waiting for the comfirmation from the IRS that they’ve received the submission. Cool. Electronic filing means we might get our refund by the end of next week. Or the end of the following week.
If you haven’t filed electronically yet, now’s the time. Tax Act is setting you up for FREE!! And it’s FireFox friendly. What are ya waiting for?
I’m testing a new video sharing service called YouTube. It allows you to upload and share videos and most importantly, has a cool interface that allows you to post your videos in your blog, like so:
This is a funny little blurb from Cindy’s surprise 50th birthday party. Cindy and Sue sang “the Bear Song” and forget the next verse. Turn your speakers down – cause they’re loud.
And, oh yes, alcohol was served.
Nov 13
I’ve been recovering from the party on Friday for a couple days now and I’ve been trying to come up with something witty and smart-ass to write about it. But, y’know – a picture is worth a thousand words. So I’m thinking you’ll get at least a few hundred words outta the last picture of the night:
The rest of the pictures are up (in the gallery) and check out some poorly done videos I took on my camera (they are really dark – you might be able to boost the brightness in your video player). It was quite a party.
Cindy and Sue – The Bear Song
Crissy and Mikey D. Dancing
Cindy enjoying “Hang on Sloopy”
Oct 23
G-Pa’s surprise birthday photos are in the gallery. Check em out!