A December To Remember

What's worse then being sick? Being sick on Thanksgiving! Talk about getting the short end of the stick on one of my favorite holidays. I'm feeling better, but not 100%. At least I got it out of the way before the best December EVER kicks off. Check this out:

2nd - Stacey's parents arrive for Julia's 1st birthday

6th - Matt and Pat arrive for Julia's 1st birthday

7th - Our little cutie-pie celebrates her 1st birthday

11th - Headwaters Christmas Party

13th - We leave for our cruise to Mexico with my parents and Michelle

16th - Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

17th - Mazatlan, Mexico

18th - Cabo San Lucas, Mexico

20th - We return from our cruise

22nd - Grandma Engebretson arrives

24th - Christmas Eve

25th - Christmas

27th - Stacey and my 5th anniversary

31st - New Year's Eve

Totally ALLSOME!

Pumpin' Iron

Tickle Fight!

...and some dancing...

Happy Birthday Stacey!

Go Zags!

Catsup...A Government Conspiracy

A few Saturdays ago, Stacey and I swung by the Wendy’s drive through to pick up some lunch. I was in a very contemplative and philosophical state that day, so I was pondering many of life’s biggest questions. As we sat in line, I turned to Stacey and asked her about the one in particular that had been weighing heavy on my mind:

Whatever happened to catsup?

Seriously, haven’t you ever wondered what happened to catsup and why everything now is called ketchup? What was so bad about catsup? Why did it disappear from the shelves? Did ketchup go better with Haterade? As far as I can remember, catsup and ketchup looked the same and tasted the same. Obviously, there had to be answers out there and someone had a lot of explaining to do.

Surprisingly, there wasn’t a whole lot of information out there on this topic. Seems to me that there has been a lot of covering up by the “ketchupers” and of course, it involves the federal government. Just like Area 51, the JFK assassination, and many other examples, the fate of catsup seems to be part of a huge government conspiracy.

It all started shortly after World War 2. As America entered the 1950's, it appeared as if only 3 major brands remained to steal the spotlight...Heinz Ketchup, Del Monte Catsup, and Hunts, who could not decide on a spelling and bottled under the names Hunts Catsup (east of the Mississippi), Hunts Ketchup (west of the Mississippi), and Hunts Tomato Cornchops (in Iowa only). At some point in the 1980s, the federal government stepped in and ketchup was declared a vegetable on the government's standards for school lunch menus. Suddenly catsup, because of its spelling, was not on the approved list. Heartbroken “catsupers” could see the end in sight. It wasn't long afterwards that Del Monte changed the product's name to Del Monte ketchup and Hunt’s remedied its schizophrenic position on the subject.

So then the question then becomes, why did the federal government feel the need to step in and end this ongoing debate? And why did they have to bring children into this mess? Proposing that the “ketchupers” had better lobbyists is too easy of an answer, as is the failure of Hunts to “earmark” their right to call it Hunts Tomato Cornchops. There is a better explanation. From my extensive research, I believe that ketchup was responsible for the fall of the Berlin Wall, and hence, the end of the Cold War and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union and communism. Top secret U.S. government documents reveal that in the 1980s, the Heinz company still had strong ties to its founder’s home country, Germany. Billions and billions of dollars worth of tomatoes and ingredients that went into making Heinz ketchup were actually manufactured in East Germany and were being smuggled into the United States by the U.S. military. Many people don’t realize this, but the U.S. government used U.S. military aircraft and warships as commercial shipping vessels during this time. In the end, our ketchup habit was supporting communist East Germany with cold hard cash. At first, the U.S. threatened to call the product catsup, thereby dooming East Germany’s economy to utter ruin. However, this would have also exposed the huge cover-up operation between the United States and East Germany. In an attempt to pacify the East Germans and avoid a huge ketchup scandal, the U.S. government negotiated the agreement to name the condiment ketchup on school lunches as fair trade to bringing down the Berlin Wall. The East Germans accepted the overthrow of their government for the economic right to now legally supply us with their yummy ingredients while the U.S. government avoided certain disaster and the exposing of their continued backing of East German communism to support our eating habits.

Hence, ketchup.

Things Overheard…

…at a Christian organization:

“ARGGGGGGGGGGGGH! I’ve HAD IT with this mouse!!! I need some alcohol!!!” After which, the individual storms out of his office.

(insert your own, sarcastic response here)

Classic!

Mt. Harvard

Elevation - 14,420 feet
Round Trip - 13.5 miles

Wikipedia:

Mount Harvard is a 14er in the U.S. state of Colorado. It is the third highest mountain in Colorado, and also the fourth highest mountain in the Contiguous United States. It is located in the Collegiate Peaks, part of the central Sawatch Range of Chaffee County, approximately 10 miles (16 km) northwest of the town of Buena Vista. The Harvard Crimson, flagship newspaper of the mountain's namesake university, wrote that: "despite its height, climbing up Mt. Harvard is hardly a death-defying experience. 'It's an undistinguished lump on a fairly undistinguished range; it just happens to be very high,' says John C. Reed of the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver. Reed, who has climbed the mountain once, describes it only as 'a long walk'. Nor is the view from the mountain especially scenic, compared with Colorado's other 54 mountains above 14,000 feet. 'In terms of being spectacular, Mt. Harvard would not be really high on the list,' Reed says." I added the above section from Wikipedia because I thought it pretty much summed up my thoughts exactly!

Earlier this week Josh and I made plans to hike Mt Shavano on Saturday. As the day grew closer, the weather forecast for Mt Shavano called for "a blustery day, gusts upwards of 40 mph, and wind chill as low as -15 degrees". Understandably, I didn't "warm up" to that idea. So, Friday afternoon Josh suggested we check out Lake Kroenke, a lake outside of Buena Vista that he frequently had sent people to but never had visited himself.

Since we were just hiking up to the lake for the day, we hit the trailhead at around 8 a.m. - late as far as serious hiking is concerned. After all, we had brought our tripods with us since this casual trip was all about getting out and taking some pictures. After hiking for a little bit, we quickly realized that the weather forecast had been wrong. Dead wrong. Like, 180 degrees wrong. The sky was completely blue and without a cloud. The wind was calm, and if it hadn't been for a small amount of snow on the trail you could have told me it was June and I would have believed it.

Two miles in, we came to a fork in the trail. Left took us to Kroenke Lake, right to Mt. Harvard. Since the weather was so nice, we decided to go right, and reevaluate the potential ascent at Bear Lake further up the trail. The weather was holding at the fork in the trail at Bear Lake so we decided to stay right again. The hike was on.

As mentioned above, there wasn't anything in particular that stood out to me on this hike. I remember thinking at the end of if that I hadn't taken many pictures along the way. I guess that's why. However, I learned some good things from this trip. I would characterize this trip as "valuable experience", not necessarily entertainment. That is, this was one of those trips that I gained more then just a few photographs. First, peanut M&Ms make a great energy snack. I was pounding them by the handful, literally. They easily fit in my pocket and I could grab as many or as little as I wanted without stopping. Except for a Red Bull and diluted Gatorade, they were all I ate and sustained me the entire tip. Second, I like my new camera a lot. It's the perfect size and rode in my right pant pocket the entire trip. Third, my L.L. Bean boots dominate. Previously I had worn 3/4 top trail cross-trainers. These boots are waterproof, surprisingsly lightweight, and supportive and durable. I quickly realized that my previous choice of footwear had made my previous hikes less then enjoyable. These boots forced me to use the large muscles in my legs instead of the smaller stabilizing muscles in my ankles and calves. Additionally, I could step anywhere without fear of twisting an ankle or stepping on a rock. I hardly felt any of the mountain on this trip. Previously, in cross-trainers, my feet took a pounding but after this hike they hardly feel walked on. I can't thank my Dad for the M&Ms, but I can thank him for the camera and the boots. The boots in particular made this a much more enjoyable trip! Thanks Dad!

Due to the time of year, we had limited daylight. The last hour or so out were done in darkness. Of course, we had both been smart enough to bring headlamps, so it didn't make much of a difference. In the end, the entire half-marathon trek took us 10 hours. Around town, I could probably walk the 13.5 miles on level ground and at a reasonable altitude in 4 hours. What made this route so long was the 4,600 feet in elevation gain. Brutal. There are other 14ers that you could do twice in one day and probably still not match the mileage and elevation gain that this trip gave us.

I had a great time with Josh and I thank him for his willingness to make a day out of it. Considering the holidays are coming up, I won't be out again until 2009. This trip was a bit spontaneous, but it allowed me to reach the goal I had set for myself back in January to hike 5 14ers this year. Enjoy the pictures. The pictures loop through twice because I wanted to share this entire song with you.

Music by Phil Wickham (Divine Romance)

Northern Exposure

...part completely dark room, part exterior lights, part red cell phone with blue screen, part crazy guy jumping up and down in front of the camera for 15 seconds...

An HDR Sunrise

Have you ever tried to take a picture of a sunset or a sunrise, but the picture never quite did it justice? Chances are your picture ended up looking like one of the smaller photos below. You either captured the foreground but the sky was washed out, or you could see the colors in the sky but nothing else.

That's because the human eye is amazing. It can capture changes in light, color, contrast, etc at the same time, something cameras can't do by themselves. Enter HDR. The basic concept is to take about 3 pictures at different settings and to let the HDR software program blend them all together to re-create what the scene really looked like since one picture can't do it justice.

This morning I took two quick shots of the sunrise through a window with my new camera at different settings. They are the smaller two pictures below. I then generated them together using a trial version of Photomatix Pro, and made some minor adjustments. The large photo is the final product. Of course, it's not perfect because I only used 2 pictures, probably over-exposed one of them, took the shots through a window, and quite honestly don't exactly know what I'm doing yet.

Anyway, this was first attempt. I think the results are pretty obvious. The generated image looks a lot better and a lot more like what I saw this morning when I woke up. With some more practice and effort, I'm sure my future attempts will be much better.

Like Father Like Son

Fun With Video

My Christmas present arrived today...a Canon Powershot SX110 IS!

In addition to taking pictures, it takes pretty good video. Since Julia wanted to cuddle with Mommy tonight instead of sleeping, I was able to capture this short clip on my new camera. Talk about hilarious.

11 Months Old

Library Fun With Grandma

I thought you would like to see some pictures of what Julia does on Mondays…library super fun time! Actually, I’ve never been but you can obviously tell from the look on her face that she loves being there. One thing I noticed from these pictures is that she’s grown quite the skullet!

Illinois State Lottery

The winning Illinois state lottery numbers on November 5, 2008 for the evening pick 3 game were:

6 6 6

A crazy co-incidence?! You bet. Still... If you don’t believe me, click on the numbers and it will take you to the Illinois state lottery page.

We Voted...

...barely.

I left work yesterday at about 3:45 to vote. I picked Stacey and Julia up at our house, and we headed to our polling location located only 1/2 mile away at the middle school nearby. The line wasn't too long, so we immediately went inside and found different tables with different precinct numbers on them. Not entirely sure which precinct we were in (this is our first time voting since moving here), Stacey pulled out the voter registration card she had received in the mail so that we would know what table (and line) to get in.

Precinct 379. Uh-oh. There were no tables with this number on it. The card said the address for the 379 location was off of Mark Scheffel road! We were a bit confused, considering that this polling location is literally a stones-throw away from our house. We asked an attendant to be sure, and he told us that this location was not for precinct 379. I was sure that this was our location to vote, considering that I had looked it up only a few days before. Skyview Middle School...that's supposed to be our location but this card says were under another precinct...379.

We concluded that maybe it was like a school district, and proximity didn't necessarily matter. Growing up I went to Rampart, but the kids feet from our house on the other side of Dublin had to go all the way downtown to Palmer even though it was much farther away. They have to draw the line somewhere, so we thought we were probably right on the other side of the line. So, we hopped in the car and drove half-way to Kansas to our polling location.

We arrived to find the end of the line out the door. I went in to make sure there was a precinct 379 table at this location and that we were in the right place. Check. 379. Unfortunately, 379 was the table that everyone else had come for as well. There were 4 different precincts at this location, but they each had one table and 2 workers, despite the volume of voters. Later on I found out that 379 had a line like ours since 7 a.m. straight. You would think that they would have started another table for 379 to match the demand, but the 1 book per precinct of voters probably prohibited that. So, we got in line.

After a few minutes a voting judge came by and I asked him if he had any infomation on where the precinct lines were. It was more out of curiousity then anything. He took me over to a vague map on the wall. It had Powers, Woodmen, and Mark Scheffel on it, and that's as detailed as our location got on the map. Looking at it, I couldn't tell exactly where we lived, and it could very well be that we were just on the other side of the line somewhere in one of the many precincts in our neighborhood. Unfortunately, I couldn't find out if we were really in the 379 book until I got to the front of the line...since that's where everyone's names were registered.

So, we stood in line for an hour and half before finally getting to the front. We handed the lady our identification. She flipped back, then forward, then back again. She looked at the name on the i.d. again. We weren't in her book. We were sent over to the provisional table and after doing some research in the "voter bible" the guy told us we could cast provisional ballots here, but that our polling location was at Skyview Middle School, precinct 365, where we went the first time. His words when telling this to us were, "don't kill me, but"... I didn't kill him, but I did say, "I already know what you're going to say".

Long story short...the "genius" that sent us our voter registration card put the wrong information on it!

Meanwhile, Julia started having a meltdown since she had been dragged around for 2 hours. We left this voting location and listened to Julia scream bloody murder all the way home. We got home at about 6 p.m., and I dropped her and Stacey off. I raced back over to the middle school and found no one was there except a few people. I was in and out in 5 minutes (literally). I came home and put Julia to bed while Stacey went to the school and voted. In the end, we got to vote...but I'm still questioning whether or not it was really worth it.

If the clerk's office hadn't screwed up our information, I estimate we could have both voted in about 20 minutes (instead of 3 hours).

Julia's First Steps

Julia took her first steps this weekend, so we decided to get it on video. In the first part of the video she's mostly interested in the camera and kitty. After we busted out the "puffs" she started to walk since she had some "motivation".

I don't know a lot about babies, but I do know that Julia has been beating the "averages" as far as firsts go. She's only going to be 11 months old on Friday, so this seems pretty early to be taking steps.

Anyway, it's all so exciting! If you don't want to watch the entire video, you'll get the idea after a minute or two. Make sure the volume is up so you can hear her talking to kitty.

The Tottenham Insider

Where to begin? About 10 days ago I made a post stating that I had put Tottenham on notice and until they got their act together, I was boycotting (in the most supportive way possible) watching them play. Apparently, the Tottenham chairman reads my blog. The very next day he gathered the manager, coach, and director of football together and fired them all. The worst start to a league season ever (126 years and winless) and being last in the league had something to do with it. However, you can’t deny the sequence of events and so I’m going to maintain my blog was the final straw that caused these major changes at the club.

Tottenham announced that same day that they had successfully lured Harry Redknapp away from Portsmouth and that he was our new manager. For those who don’t know, Portsmouth is in the same league as Tottenham. Fast-forward 3 games. Since Redknapp has arrived, we’ve gotten 7 out of 9 possible points (2 wins and a draw). The difference in results is as noticeable as the difference in play on the field…but I guess those usually go hand in hand.

We tied our arch-enemy Arsenal 4-4 by scoring 2 goals in the last 3 minutes. Then, we took on league leaders and undefeated Liverpool, and thanks to an own goal, 2 posts, and another goal in the last minute we won 2-1. Although we have been very fortunate (ok, lucky) since Harry arrived, I’ll take it. We’re now out of the basement and amazingly enough, only 6 points out of a UEFA Cup spot!

I do have to offer a formal apology to Matt though, because he and I were watching the Tottenham Liverpool game together. When Spurs scored the late winner I went silly. Somehow I went from one couch to the floor to the other couch, past Matt, up over the couch, hit my head on the ceiling, over the coffee table, and on to the floor, all while yelling. It all happened so fast, I don’t know what came over me. I think it was probably just months and months of pent up frustration finally getting out.