A few weeks back I went to watch Jen and her crew dominate the Des Moines Regatta. I used to have a bunch of statistics to back up this assertion, but they have since fleed from this old man’s brain.

I do know that Jen’s crew got the gold medal in their division and their time was good enough to beat at least one of the colleges competing.

I’m going to split these pictures into 2 categories. The first category is Evie doing cute Evie things:

Monkeys are Evie’s favorite although I think monkeys should be spelled monkies. Not sure why I feel that way.






This awesome baby backpack enabled Derrick and I to do some serious “extreme” hiking.


Too extreme for tuckered out Evie.

Most people wouldn’t advertise this fact, but unpictured was Evie’s first trip through a homeless camp. I’m pretty proud of having played a role in this “Evie’s First”.

Here are a collection of Jen’s crew in full domination mode:

There are many other high quality regatta pictures in this album:

I might have said this last week and it was a lie, but next week’s random collection will definitely involve Senior Pictures.

Apparently there isn’t much love in the world I occupy. Oh well, here are the submissions for LOVE:

Mike Vest


Christopher D. Bennett

This week’s theme is:

Hmmmm… that is going to be a hard theme to make about Naima or Foster.

This is a new category for this year. Good Luck to anybody that attempts to contribute this week.

A few weeks back I attended Evie’s birthday party. I didn’t take many photos as everybody else there had at least 1 camera and so my photo coverage of the event would have seemed excessive.

Seriously, Evie has her own paparazzi.

However, I did take a few photos of her cake eating and here they are:

Next week’s Wednesday will involve Senior pictures.

I hate the phrase “things happen for a reason” more than I hate any other phrase in the world. That doesn’t mean that I don’t necessarily believe in fate, but for the most part I don’t like fate. Its plans run contrary to my plans, no matter how hard I work on my plans. So fate can go suck an egg.

However, sometimes fate works out in my favor, even though I don’t know it.

One of those fate just screwed me over, but it ended up working out pretty well for me moments was when my wheel flew off my car on my way to Minnesota a few weeks back. I had a pretty sweet vacation planned, but it all went into the ditch with my wheel and more money than I care to think about.

I rescheduled my vacation for the last week in August. That movement of my vacation just a few days allowed me to complete Operation Puppy sooner than I anticipated.

I knew when I finally got a puppy, it would be while I was on vacation and I didn’t think that I would be taking a vacation for several more months, but I still checked several websites and newspaper (okay newspaper websites) for the puppy that I wanted. A female golden retriever.

A simple enough request, but there weren’t many in the area. Then an ad for a bunch of puppies showed up in the Des Moines Register.

I wrote them and they gave me the sad news, all of their female puppies were probably claimed. 2 were for sure. The other two were most likely claimed.

I wrote them back and let them know that if one of the females became available, I wanted to be at the front of the list. That was on a Wednesday. I resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn’t be getting a puppy for several more weeks or months.

Then on Friday they wrote me to tell me that they thought that one of the females might be coming available, but could not make any promises.

I made plans to drive up near Hubbard on Saturday to see the puppies. I figured that it would be a fruitless trip, but it wouldn’t hurt to see some puppies. The cutest most adorable kind of puppy: golden retrievers!

Then on Saturday morning I got an email saying that they had a female for me.

That afternoon Jason, Alexis, and I drove up to see the puppies. I put down a deposit and set up a day and time to come pick up my puppy. I worked it out so that I could pick her up on the Wednesday of my vacation as I came back down from Minnesota.

The next step was coming up with a name. I struggled with a name, but eventually with the help of friends a name was found. Here are some of the suggestions I received:

Willy: Cuddles or Miss Wiggles
Faust: Steele & Melanie
Jen: Mila
Jill: Daisy
Sara: Astrid, Mahtob and then she sent me a list of about 200 other suggestions.
Carla: Chloe, then she went out and bought a puppy and named it Chloe.

But it was actually a suggestion by Derrick that put me on the road to the name. While we were sitting on a bench at the State Fair resting, he asked if there was a female character from a Kubrick movie that I liked. I have to confess that Kubrick movies aren’t filled with extremely strong female characters. If you take out the prostitute from Eyes Wide Shut or the sniper from Full Metal Jacket, that really leaves you with Lolita and I’m not naming a dog after Lolita.

I toyed with the idea of Kubrick and then Coltrane as a name, but those were just too male sounding names. I was stalled.

Then fate took a hand again. Every morning I run shuffle on Media Player and then post whatever the first song that comes up to Twitter. Now, I know that nobody in the world cares at all what song I am listening to during that exact moment of the day. I do it as a reminder to the world that I have better taste in music than they do.

On August 24th a Miles Davis song was the song that shuffle landed on and I posted the following to Twitter:

“In a Silent Way/It’s About That Time…”-Miles Davis-In A Silent Way-If I were getting a male (puppy), I would name it Miles, Coltrane or Kubrick.”

Dawn replied to my tweet with this tweet:

“How about Naima? Unusual & fits the jazz theme…”

It was a great idea and while I marinated on the idea for a couple of days, in the end, I decided it was too great of an idea to pass up. So I named my puppy after one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite musicians.

I had a name and a week later I had a puppy. Here are a few of the pictures from my first few days with Naima:

Next week’s Wednesday randomness will feature pictures from the mini family reunion I hosted Labor Day weekend.

These pictures come from the following folder:

backup/Old My Pictures/Unhingd/Concert

Next week’s pictures will come from:

Backup/Old My Pictures/Unhingd/Proposals

These pictures came from backup/Old My Pictures/UnHingd

These are a mixture of concert pictures from an Iowa State game, practice and recording their first demo.

The phallic nature of the “I” was a constant source of debate.














This is a Jay Janson Photoshop original.

Next week’s folder will be:

Backup/Old My Pictures/Unhingd/Concert

Greatest Poverty

This Personal Photo Project consists of random flowers of mine (and well Jen and Derrick) that don’t fit into the flowers I make a point to photograph (lilies, daisies, irises, moonflowers, coneflowers, mums…).

Here are the rest of the “unloved” flowers:

Next week’s Personal Photo Project will involve a recent trip to beautiful Lake Augustin and Rancho Augustin.

I made it to the State Fair twice this year. I went once on a Friday to see Maroon 5 with Jill. Then on the last day of the Fair I went with my Mom. I met up with Derrick, Jen, and Evie. We ran into Sara, Shawn, and Cousin Amy. Here are some pictures from those trips:

Jill in front of the picture of her at the Photography Salon.


Jill with her turkey leg.


The damage she did to that turkey leg.


Even though Jill is a Legacy Member of the Maroon 5 Fan Club, she felt our seats could have been better…


I thought that they were pretty good.
















For some reason, Maroon 5 played before Train. Don’t know why, but at least we didn’t have to endure Train.












Evie loves baby animals!




Evie is a toe wiggler!




Evie supports winners!


We heard the following at this stand a lot: “1 fried butter on a stick and a bottle of water, please!”




You can’t imagine how hard it was for me NOT to photoshop that terrible Hawk logo out of this picture, but trust me, despite what his wardrobe is telling the world, Shawn is a good guy. He just doesn’t know how to dress.


With the 2nd Place Picture


With the Honorable Mention Picture


Some people view this as impressive.

Looking forward to next year’s fair already!

These are the pictures I entered in the Pufferbilly Days Photo Contest and the person that selected the picture:

Derrick Gorshe


Jen Gorshe


Russell Kennerly


Dawn Krause


Scottie D.


Rebecca Peterson

Thanks to everybody who took their time and energy to select pictures for me this year!

The picture that Dawn chose got 2nd Place in Black & White. My original intent for next year’s selectors was to bring back all of the people that had chose an award winning photo in the past few years, but my fire for photo contests has kind of been extinguished. Not that I might not reconsider, but I think that this might have been my last photo contest. Or at the very least the last time I enter the Pufferbilly Days Photo Contest.

The rest of the The Girl in the Blue Skirt Series:

This series of lily pictures consisted of lilies found in the gardens of my Grandma, Mom, Jen, and your truly.