One Million Dollars!

As Cari and I sat watching Survivor the other night, I asked her what she would do if she won a million dollars.  Without much thought she said she would pay off all of our debt.  Then she asked me what would be the first thing I would do with a million dollars.  I quickly said, "Quit my job."

That started a brief discussion if a million dollars would be enough to quit my job over.

My first argument, "How many years will I have to work before I have earned a million dollars?"

I think a million would be plenty enough to quit my job.

Bubbles

Brenna came running into the office today holding a small bottle of bubbles.  My first reaction was to grab it before she dumped it on the floor.  Once I had the bubbles in my hand she kept pointing at the bottle, wanting me to open it.

I told her we couldn't do bubbles in the house but she persisted.  She put my free hand on the cap as she was jabbering.  I'm sure she was telling me to open the bottle and make her happy.

My initial thought was that I didn't want bubble soap on my floor, but I finally gave in to her cuteness.  How could I not?   I decided that I would blow one burst of bubbles and be done with it.

Her reaction was adorable.  She squealed with joy and clasped her hands as the bubbles came down around her.  As the last one popped, she looked at me.  She, of course, wanted more.  I couldn't resist. All together we did bubbles for more than ten minutes in the office.  The soapy floor can be wiped up.  Watching her excitement was worth way more than a bit of clean up.

Christians Ruin Everything!

One of the joys of working with the public, if there is one, is that I hear people say some crazy things.

This past Sunday, I overheard two people talking about going to Chick-Fil-A for lunch.  The man reminded the woman that Chick-Fil-A is closed on Sunday.  The woman grimaced and said that the restaurant must be like Hobby Lobby.

He looked over at her and asked what she meant and she said,

"Stupid Christians, ruining my Sunday!"

Pinnacle Mountain Trail

Rick and I took a hike last week into Table Rock State park.  In the past we have tackled the Table Rock trail at the park during a severe thunderstorm.  Seriously!

This hike we decided to take on the Pinnacle Mountain Trail in much better weather.  Both trails are listed on the trail map as a strenuous hike.  The Pinnacle trail has a bit more elevation change and is also a bit longer overall compared to the Table Rock trail.  We would be hiking almost eight miles total in this hike.  We have done the Table Rock trail multiple times together and don't find it overly strenuous, so we were ready to tackle this trail.

Here is a overlay of our looped hike on Google Earth:

      

As we approached the three mile mark on our way up, we both agreed that we liked this trail more than the Table Rock trail.  The first part of this trail stays close to the Carrick creek which provides some nice background noise and some beautiful scenes.  We also hiked behind and below a few small waterfalls on our way to the top.

One of the best views along the trail is on a rock outcrop known as Bald Knob.  At this spot, we stood on the edge of a cliff that gave us awesome views.

It's a good thing we were able to stop and relax at that place because the toughest was yet to come.  We only had about half a mile left to the top from Bald Knob, yet we had over 500 ft left to climb.  The trail started to become steep and we were forced to take frequent, short breaks.  At one of our breaks, I looked up the hill and saw a posted white sign.  It wasn't far from us.  I pointed it out to Rick and indicated that it may be the end of our climb.  We pushed on and reached the sign just in time for another break.  Unfortunately, the sign was not the top, in fact there was a large hill still to our right.  The hill laughed at us as we realized we would have to climb it.  The sign was a marker for the beginning of the Foothills Trail.  It also had a trail map of the Table Rock park area.  Again, it listed both trails as "strenuous".

"Wait a second!", I said.  "If Table Rock is strenuous, then this should be listed as ridiculous!  "It's not even a fair comparison to put them on the same level.  The scale is broken!"

Rick was getting a drink of water while I ranted about the difficulty.  I pointed to the top of the hill and reminded my partner that we still had to climb it.  He asked me to stop trying to motivate him.

The last one or two tenths of a mile felt like a climb that would never end.  It was so steep that when I would stop to catch my breath, I held onto the trees to keep from falling back down the hill.  Both of us struggled for a bit, but it made it that much more satisfying when we reached the summit.  On the very tippy top of the mountain stood a tree in the middle of a small clearing.  No, there was no man handing out balloons for our success.  Not even a sign that congratulated us.  There was only the tree.

Instead of following the same trail down, we used the Ridge trail that headed East toward Table Rock.  This trail was much easier, but we were also going down, so it may have been deceiving.  As we worked our way down we kept looking for a clearing to have our lunch.  The Ridge trail doesn't offer very many views into the mountains, because it takes you through such dense forest.  We finally got tired enough that we found a fallen tree to use as a bench and gave up on finding a view.  At lunch Rick said that the climb to the top was about as much as he could take.  I agreed that it was the steepest hike I can remember taking and then I started to complain about the trail being described as "strenuous" instead of "ridiculous" again.

Below is a the elevation map that my Garmin captured while we hiked.  You can see the sharp incline on the left of the peak that we traveled and that almost killed my friend.

Balloon Photos

Here's a few of the shots I took last weekend at the balloon festival.

This balloon floated directly over my head.  I thought it was a different view than what you normally see.

I think I told you earlier this week that I got to stand in the middle of the launch field on Sunday morning.  As each balloon was filled with hot air, there was a person attached to a rope holding the top of the balloon.  These ropes seemed to be everywhere as the mass of balloons were be prepared.

This was something I wanted to try with the photos and I wasn't sure if it would work.  I ended up really liking this shot.  The challenge:  Would a black and white of colorful balloons work?

No balloons here.  This is sunrise on lake Hartwell.  Taken somewhere around 6:30am on Sunday morning.  There was no traffic, so I stopped my car on the bridge and snapped two quick shots out of the car window. Here's one of those two:

In photography, light is everything.  Getting up at 5:30am on my day off was well worth getting these shots.  As the balloons ascended into the air, the sun was low on the horizon, giving each balloon some great side lighting.  Taking balloon shots in the afternoon, with the sun up high, would not have had the same effect.  Well, unless the flight was at sunset.  

Can I post hot air balloon photos without showing you some flames?  I almost did, but I decided I owe you at least one.  First, they fill the balloon with air using a big fan.  When the balloon is mostly inflated, they start shooting the flames into it, heating the air.  At that point, it only takes about a minute for the balloon to stand upright and start to gently lift off the ground.

worthless stats

Tuesday was family game night at our house.  The kids and I were setting up the game when Cari said, "You know a person with blue eyes has won four of the last six games we've played."

I laughed a bit while the kids started comparing eye color. Cari was making a joke that started while we watched Nascar last week.  The announcers were spouting off worthless stats like:

Nobody has ever won this race when starting any farther back then twenty second.

The last seven races we have had a caution by lap ten.

The list goes on.  The commentators don't seem to consider that over time we have different drivers, different cars, etc... Now when they quote these stats we just laugh.

When the kids and I finished the setup of our game, and we all sat down.  Cari said, "The person that sits to my left has never won family game night."  Then she smirked at Randy sitting to her left.

"I'm going to my room!", Randy said.
I stopped him from storming off with no hope of winning, but only after I agreed to switch seats with him.

Sitting to Cari's left on Tuesday night, would you believe that I lost?

Balloons Over Anderson 2009

Five people and a lot of volunteers really wanted to bring back a ballooning festival to Anderson, SC this year.  They worked hard to produce the first Balloons Over Anderson festival this past weekend.  I went on Saturday morning, Saturday night, and at sunrise on Sunday morning.  From my perspective, the festival turned out great.

In addition to a good turnout of balloons, we saw skydivers, and large scale model airplanes.

Saturday morning we noticed tethered rides in a balloon being offered and the line only had five people.

Randy and I paid and got in line.  As our turn was approaching, I started getting nervous.  I looked back at Cari to see if she would switch with me.  I had never been up in a wicker basket attached to a flame thrower attached to a large fabric envelope.  I was unable to get her attention before one of the workers was giving me instruction.  He told me as soon as the basket hit the ground, I needed to jump on because he would need my weight to help hold it down.  With no time for fear, I was in the basket.

Once we ascended, I realized how incredible it was.  It was such a gentle ride and my fear left me very quickly.  That's when we hit the full length of the tether at around 130 ft in the air. The basket jolted to the side a bit but nobody got kicked overboard. We continued floating in place for a few minutes before the balloon slowly drifted back down.

It was really awesome.  As soon as we got down, I begged Cari to go try.  She wasn't excited about it, but she went and Randy got his second ride.  Cari can be seen in this photo wearing the blue sweater:

Saturday night, Cari and I went back to see the balloons glow in the dark.  If you have never seen what I'm talking about, here's a video I made with my new Motorola Droid:

The final launch of the event was going to come on Sunday morning at sunrise, otherwise known as seven in the morning.  It's a thirty minute ride out there from the house and I wanted to have plenty of time to see the setup so I left my house at six.

I found myself in the middle of the launch field taking what would turn out to be 260 photos.  I was surrounded by balloons and it was really amazing.  Here's another video, again made with the Droid.

As I go through some more of my photos this week, I'll get some more ready to post toward the end of the week.

It's amazing what five people and their volunteers can put together.  I hope their efforts were well rewarded this weekend so they can start planning for next years event.

It is MINE!

On Friday during lunch I headed over to the Verizon store with my lovely wife to pick up the new Motorola Droid.  I already blogged about this earlier in the week, so I'll just tell you . . .

I HAVE ONE!

IT IS AWESOME!

Over the next week I'll try to type up some of my thoughts on this phone.  Maybe not a full, true review, but as close as I'll get to that.  For now, we're heading out to a balloon festival. . .

QR Code

What is this funny looking square?  It's a QR Code!  I've been reading about smart phones over the past two weeks and I started to notice these codes on some websites.  A QR Code is like a barcode found on any product you purchase.  But the QR Code can hold MUCH more data than that silly old bar code on your box of tissues.  You can print a QR Code onto a business card that contains all of your contact info.  When someone needs your contact info, they can scan the code with their phones camera and instantly they have everything without typing a single key.

A company could put a QR Code into a magazine and when you scan the code, it would take you directly to their website.

There are some really interesting ways these codes can be utilized.  I've even seen photos of codes being used on giant screens like at Times Square.  When I get my first smart phone, this will be the first QR Code I will scan!

DROID

Over the past year I have become more and more interested in having a BlackBerry.  No, I don't need one.  It's just a really cool gadget that I want to have.  Really, I probably would have wanted an iPhone but I have zero interest in switching over to AT&T, so I have pretty well ignored the iPhone.

A few months ago my sister-in-law, Amanda, got herself a BlackBerry.  Initially, Cari and Amanda tried to keep it a secret from me.  Cari was afraid that my BlackBerry jealousy would cause me to run out and get one.  While it did ramp up my want of the device, I stayed fairly calm.

Then I heard that the BlackBerry Storm 2 was coming out at the end of October.  I started getting very excited and had the feeling that I just HAD to have one.

When Amanda visited in October, we got to see her with her BlackBerry.  Even the baby was excited about it!

 In the weeks leading up to the Storm 2 release, I started seeing more information about the Motorola Droid.

I quickly switched alliances and started scouring the internets for anything about the Droid.

At this point I have pretty much read every review and seen every YouTube video demonstrating the Droid.  I must have one.

Do I need one?  Nope.  Do I want one?  Yep.  Can I afford one?  Maybe.

The Droid comes out on Friday.  IF I get one, I'll be sure to post about it that day!

Jack-O-Lantern

Here's a shot of our carved pumpkins for 2009.

It was pretty cloudy and rainy through the evening last night.  We still managed to get out and get some candy from our neighbors, but only for about an hour.  Combine that with the candy we got on Friday night and we have more than enough to keep ourselves sick the rest of the week.

A few notes on the pumpkins.  Cari had a white pumpkin this year, though you wouldn't know it in that photo, she used a drill to poke her pattern of flames into it for a very cool result.  I traced my hand, cut it out, shaved the edges of the shell off and put the hand back in place with tooth pics.  Meredith used a similar style to do the ghost and Randy did a traditional face.  He worked in an 'R' as the left eye.

Happy Halloween

Here's the costumes around the house this year.

On Friday night we carved our pumpkins and went downtown for some trick or treating.  We came home with TONS of candy and it wasn't even Halloween yet!  I think actual trick or treating might be a bit shortened this year.  We simply don't need this much candy.

I'll try and get some shots of our pumpkins lit up later tonight.

9

I just got done working nine straight days.  If I wasn't so tired and worn out I would draw you a graph of my productivity over that time frame.

Good thing I don't go back for a week!

Pumpkin Patch!

It's time to get our pumpkins and start carving!  We tend to wait until closer to Halloween before carving so that they will still look pretty good that evening.

This year we heard about a church that has filled their yard with pumpkins and is putting the money they make toward missions, so we headed over there to support their cause.  As we got out of the car, Cari said she just wanted to pick up two pumpkins at the church and we would get a few more over at Walmart for cheap.

I followed my kids around with the camera as they tried to pick the perfect pumpkins.
I had some other great shots of the baby, but decided to post this one because it shows that she NEVER stops moving.

After a while, I looked up from my camera and saw Cari paying at the counter.  She had SIX pumpkins.  That's just a few more than the two she claimed to limit herself to.  At least the money goes to a good cause.

Before we left, we walked the kids over to the display they had setup for taking photos.  We sat the kids down and took the standard photo of our kids:

Carving photos should be posted by Halloween!

Naked!

Baby in the bath photos are always fun.  But now the baby seems to be more aware of the camera.   Well, I know she is more aware of the camera.  After taking a shot of her, I can't get a second one because she comes running up to me.  She wants to see the shot in the LCD every time.  Maybe she is making sure I got her good side.

In the bath, I won't allow her to jump up and get to me, but she was still curious, pointing at the camera after a few shots.  Maybe she was saying, "STOP!  I'M NAKED!"