All posts by Christopher D. Bennett

Becca, Bethany, Derrick, Ernie, Jason, Jay, Jesse, Jill, Lowell, Mom, Nate, Sara, Teresa, WPC - Submissions

RWPE Y2 #31 – LEADING LINES

August 8, 2011 Christopher D. Bennett 1 Comment

The best laid plans of mice and men…

I had written this journal entry several days ahead of schedule because I was planning to be in Minnesota right now. I made all the appropriate plans, but fate took a hand and forced me to cancel my vacation.

At about 3:35 last Friday, I clocked out of work and left the building fully expecting not to see it again for 9 days or so. I spent most of Saturday morning mowing my lawn and packing and running errands and doing everything necessary to leave my humble abode for 5 or 6 days.

I pulled out of my driveway at about 3:15 and headed north to Oakdale, hoping to knock on Jill’s apartment door* at about 6:30.

But a funny thing happened on the way to Oakdale. My wheel flew off my car. That’s right. It flew the heck off.

It was a surreal experience and one that words will fail to describe adequately. I’m cruising along at about 75 MPH when suddenly the front passenger side of my car is clearly on the ground. My first thought was that I had very badly blown out the tire. I have done that before and this is kind of what it felt like. So I took a gander out the passenger side window and I saw my wheel flying through the air.

I immediately thought, “that is my tire flying through the air.. it isn’t supposed to be doing that… it is amazing I haven’t lost control of this car… I’m not going to be eating chicken wings tonight… this is garbage.”

About 10 miles north of Mason City my car came to a stop on the I-35 shoulder. There I sat for four hours roughly… pondering the questions of life.

As much as this incident has sucked (and continues to suck as my car has yet to be repaired and the towing bill from north of Mason City to Boone, well folks, it isn’t cheap!) I should be thankful for having such wonderful friends and family.

I had a pretty sweet vacation planned. Among other things, I was going to go to a chicken wing place that serves over 60 different types of wings. I was going to go to the Uptown Art Fair. I was going to watch the Minnesota Vikings practice. I was going to get to hang out with Jill, Bethany, Becca, Nate, Dae Hee, Faust, and Jackson.

Instead, I hung out with mile mark number 200.40.

But this isn’t about spilled milk, or in my case, uneaten chicken wings, this is about amazing friends and family, after all I will still be able to eat those chicken wings in about 3 weeks or so. Teresa and Ernie offered to come get me. As did Lowell, Jesse, and Sara. Faust and Jay called to make sure I was okay. Derrick even took my call while he was at a wedding reception. Becca and Bethany offered whatever assistance they could provide. After towing arrangements and picking me up arrangements were made (Thanks Mom and Jason!) and I was able to find my wheel after combing the ditch for an hour, Jill kept me company on the phone for the last 90 minutes while I sat in a ditch.

Before we get into this week’s RWPE, here are a few pictures from my time in the ditch:

You may notice from looking at the pictures, the bolts were sheered off clean. Jason has been working on cars for his entire life. He has never seen anything like this before.

Also, because of my cancelled vacation, I did get to go to the Iowa State Fair Photography Salon Reception. So now I know if I won an award besides the Superintendent’s Merit Award. Hint: I did!

Here are the submissions for LEADING LINES:

Christopher D. Bennett

Mike Vest

Next week’s theme:

NOISE

That is a new theme for this year, so there is no looking back. Only looking forward. Good luck!

*This is hyperbole. Jill lives in a secured building.

Contests, Jill, Personal Photo Project

Personal Photo Project of the Week #79

August 5, 2011 Christopher D. Bennett 7 Comments

This is not meant to be a “tooting my own horn” thing. That is not something I do. In fact, I don’t even own me a horn. This is just a statement of facts for interested parties. Both of you. You know who you are.

Several weeks back I selected and put together my entries for the State Fair Photography Salon. A couple weeks back I got the card in the mail that tells you if you got any photos in and if you did, how many.

This year the card looked something like this:

I can’t mention success without mentioning failure. Success leads to backslapping, which leads to complacency, which stunts growth. For the last 4 years, the card said “Get out of here kid. You got no future!” So while this year’s card might not be that motivating, it was a more pleasant read.

Again, I’m not bragging. I’m not an award person. Awards don’t factor into my motivations in anything that I do. Whatever award I get will go into the photo contest trunk with all the other past photo contest pictures and awards. But I do want to give you some statistics and then you can determine if this was an accomplishment or if this was just luck.

Last year a little over 1,500 people entered this contest. 8 people got all 4 of their pictures accepted for display. I don’t know how many people entered the contest this year, but only 5 people got all 4 of their pictures accepted for display.

For having all of your pictures displayed, you get the Superintendent’s Award of Merit. I assume that is the award I got, but it is feasible that one of my pictures got another award of some kind. The Award Ceremony is this Sunday, but I won’t be able to attend. I had already made my vacation plans for that day, so I’ll be celebrating by having brunch with Jill at Hell’s Kitchen while the ceremony is going down. Or we might be at an Arts Festival in Minneapolis. It depends on how the day lines up, but I won’t be able to make it to the Awards Ceremony.

Wondering what four pictures I entered? The only way to find out will be to go to the State Fair and see for yourself. However, I will give you a one word clue for each picture:

1. Daisy
2. Foster
3. Barn
4. Jill

Good luck finding them!

Carla, Dad, History, Slice of Life

Slice of Life Vol. 61

August 4, 2011 Christopher D. Bennett

A lot of old Pufferbilly Day Parade pictures in this collection:

I still get pissed when I go by our old house!

Andree, Derrick, House, Jason, Jay, Scottie D.

Palisade

August 3, 2011 Christopher D. Bennett

I’d like to give a big thanks to my fence crew that over the course of 4 intense work days over the last couple of months built a fence for me.

Thanks to:

Jason Stensland
Jay Janson
Andree Jauhari
Joshua Kraushaar
Derrick Gorshe
Scottie D.

Here are a few pictures from the project:

Me and my friends put a lot of sweat equity in this project. The heat index was well over 110 on at least 1 of the days we worked on this project. But I’m sure it will be worth it when I finally complete Operation Puppy!

Jill, Sara

The Archives: Edition Twenty-Eight

August 2, 2011 Christopher D. Bennett

These pictures come from the following folder:

Backup/Old My Pictures/Pop Art

I want to make one thing clear, I’ve always hated Pop Art and Andy Warhol. Although fascinatingly, very few of these pictures could be considered pop art, but I want to make sure that nobody misconstrues this collection as any kind of tribute Andy Warhol.

Jill once loaned me a movie called Factory Girl. The movie is about Edie Sedgwick. She was one of Andy Warhol’s first “superstars” and one of the people he used and threw away most completely.

There is a scene in the movie that best sums up the way I feel about Andy Warhol. Edie and Andy are having dinner with her parents. Although Edie’s father is definitely not a hero in the movie and he most likely sexually abused her in real life, his character has a brilliant line about Andy Warhol.

He looks at Warhol and says:

“You’re really more of a printmaker than an artist aren’t you?”

What I originally thought about doing with some of these pictures was hanging them in the kitchen. My current kitchen doesn’t really possess much picture hanging space, so this idea is kind of kaput, but I wouldn’t hang such terrible pictures on my wall any way. Not when I need to hang up the sweet apron that Sara (masquerading as Jupiter) gave me recently.

I firmly believe that the Bennett family pickle relish recipe is the best pickle relish recipe in the world.

I found this phone booth in Mexico.

I’ve been fond of growing Marigolds for nearly a decade now.

My Giverny (Picture named after Monet’s garden)

Next week’s folder will be:

Backup/Old My Pictures/Project Universe

Brog Frog, Cousin Amy, Dawn, Formal Portrait, Night, Sara, Self-Portrait, Shawn Lockner, Vest, WPC - Submissions

RWPE Y2 #30 – NIGHT

August 1, 2011 Christopher D. Bennett

I’ll just confess that my picture this week was not the intended picture. But I did what I could after I had some kind of memory card failure where I lost my original picture.

Here are the submissions for NIGHT:

Christopher D. Bennett

IMAGE LOST
Dawn Krause

Mike Vest A

Mike Vest B

Next week’s theme will be:

LEADING LINES

A look back at last year’s submissions.

LEADING LINES – 2010

I am going on vacation next week, so next Monday at noon the theme for next week will publish, but none of the pictures will be published until I return from my sabbatical. Unless you get your picture in by Friday.

Cousin Amy, Funk, Personal Photo Project, Sara, Still Life

Personal Photo Project of the Week #78

July 29, 2011 Christopher D. Bennett

Soul Mending

This Personal Photo Project was to photograph around an Amish farm on my trip to Kalona with Sara, Cousin Amy and the Funk.

Here are a few more pictures from the farm.

Next week’s Personal Photo Project involves lilies.

Carla, Dad, Linda, Mom, Slice of Life, Teresa

Slice of Life Vol. 60

July 28, 2011 Christopher D. Bennett

A lot of pictures of the old Greene Street house and cakes.

Baseball/Softball, Becca, Bethany, Jen, Jill, Jim, Nate, Road Trip

Minnesota

July 27, 2011 Christopher D. Bennett

Back in the middle of June I made a trip to Minnesota with Jim. There were several great moments on the trip, but I will just cover two of the events in this entry.

The first is a tale of when I went to see Super 8 with Jill. Since I’m slightly too lazy to re-write this small adventure, I’m just going to copy and paste from an email I sent Jen.

On Saturday, Jill and I went to see Super 8 at the Mall of America Theater. Why the Mall of America Theater? Because it was the closest theater to Eagan that Jill knew about.

As I was buying the tickets for the show, the woman at the box office asked me if I wanted the “Dbox seats”. I wasn’t really sure what that meant, but there was a sign on the box office that said something about VIP seats and that got you access to beer and wine. I assumed that is what “Dbox seats” were and we didn’t need access to beer and wine. So I told her that regular seats were fine.

The tickets were 6 bucks a piece, which I though was cheap considering that the last time we went to a movie, it was $10 a piece. But, I figured that maybe we got matinee prices since it was a Saturday and it was somewhat in the afternoon.

We were nearly late to the theater as the line for the concession stand was slow moving and going to the movie was kind of a late decision based on the fact that it was raining. So when we got to the theater most of the good seats were already taken. However, there were a couple of seats available in the back row. So we sat in the back row.

We hadn’t been situated for more than a few seconds when an usher approached us and asked to see our tickets. I handed them over and she said, “It would cost you an extra 8 bucks to sit there. You can sit in the blue seats.”

It was then that I noticed that we were sitting in a red seat. The last 8 rows of the theater were all red seats.

Most of the blue seats that were in the middle of the theater that weren’t smashed up against the screen were taken, so we took some side seat and watched the movie from a weird angle.

So here is the object lesson from this story. I will not be going to a movie at the Mall of America Theater again. A theater that has 1st and 2nd class seats.

The second event was going to Target Field to watch the Padres play. It was the first time I’ve ever seen the Padres play, so that was exciting. Here are some pictures from the trip.