Category Archives: Family

First 10 Things I’d Do if I Won the Lottery

With the lottery topping out over a billion dollars recently, the “what would you do if you won the lottery” discussion has been at an all-time high at the day job this week. Therefore I will start this new list experiment with the extremely unoriginal topic of what would I do if I won the lottery.

I should start with the caveat that I don’t actually play the lottery.

The lottery is a self-imposed tax designed to move the tax burden from the wealthy to the poor and uneducated.

I will throw a couple bucks into the lottery pool at work because if those guys somehow win, I don’t want to be the only person that has to show up for work on Monday.

Here are the First Ten Things I’d Do if I Won the Lottery:

1. I wouldn’t tell anybody.

For at least the first two days I wouldn’t tell anybody. Not a single soul. Okay, I’d tell Naima. She is pretty good at keeping secrets. Then I’d start setting a plan in motion.

2. Hire a lawyer, financial adviser, and a personal assistant.

I don’t know any lawyers or financial advisers like the kind I would need. I would start quietly interviewing lawyers and financial advisers without them knowing it. If they treated me well without knowing I was filthy rich, then they would have a chance at being hired. I don’t need anybody that is nice to me to be nice to my money.  That is essentially the downside to suddenly becoming wealthy. I’m the type of person that would never trust a new person coming into my life at that point.  At least not 100%.

As for the personal assistant. I’d be done answering my phone. I wouldn’t be able to handle all the people that  would be coming out of the woodwork to get at me. I’d need a buffer between me and the rest of the world.

I have a few friends that I know hate their job. A few of them might make great personal assistants. I’d start with who I think would be the best at it. If they weren’t interested, I’d go to the next person. Whomever got this job would need to be a friend first and then they’d have to work very hard. This job isn’t a handout. My text messages are known for their quality. No slippage would be allowed.

3. Tell friends and family.

Not all my friends and family, but the inner circle. Or to completely (and shamelessly) steal a phrase from a friend: I’d tell the ones that have the key to Monicaville. I do know exactly who is on this list. That is one of the quirks of living the life I’ve lived.

After telling this small group of people, then I’d be ready to turn the ticket in and collect my winnings.

4. Have the best lotto winner’s press conference ever.

I’m going to let the people that are going to come out of the woodwork looking for money, not to bother. Boone Booster Club. Yeah, I’m not buying you a new football stadium. You have enough money. What’s left of Boone’s Music Department, you can expect a big check. University of Iowa, don’t bother calling. Iowa State University. There is a check coming your way.

5. Pay off debts of immediate family.

I don’t care if they owe $100,000 or $10. If you are in my immediate family, you no longer have any debts.

The question you might want to ask is this: How do I define immediate family?

I won’t tell you now, but there will be a day when I write about this subject and the people who taught me what family means and how that word is properly defined.

I’d also pay off my debts as well.

6. Give max tax free gift to friends.

If you didn’t learn about my winning the lottery at my awesome press conference, then I’d be giving you the maximum amount of cash that I can give you without you having to pay taxes.

There are no strings attached. You want to use that money to buy hookers and blow. Whatever, floats your boat. If you want to use that money to buy Nebraska season football tickets, you aren’t getting any money next year.

7. Buy block across the street from my church.

“My” church is fairly landlocked right now. However, there are several crumbling buildings across the street from it. We actually own one of those buildings and when what happens to that ruin gets decided I expect their to be lots of fireworks.

So I’d just take this controversial topic off the docket of all future church meetings.

I’d buy all the buildings across the street. Tear them down and build a new building with a full-sized basketball court. A real basketball court. None of that carpet on the floor of the court garbage (I’m looking at you Open Bible). The rest of the building I’d let somebody else design, but it would be designed as a place for youth activities and any other program the church wanted to run.

I’d also be righting large checks to the American Diabetes Association and the American Cancer Society. Crawford Hall would probably get a decent check at this time.

8. Invest in the businesses of friends.

I’m probably not going to throw a ton of money their way, but for my friends that run their own business I’d throw a little Angel Investment their way. I would possibly consider helping a couple of friends who are amazing cooks open restaurants if that is something they would like to do.

If that is what it takes to get Scottie D.’s pulled pork pizza, then that is what I’ll do.

9. Call Jamie Pollard.

I’d  want the same football seats. I don’t really like sitting with rich people because it has been my experience that rich people don’t really like me. Something about being able to form my own opinions rather than cow-tow to their opinions.

However, I’m going to need good seats for men’s and women’s basketball. I don’t need my name on any buildings, but he could put my Mom’s name on the training table.

I’d also like to see what kind of donation it would take to consider getting rid of the terrible I State logo and going back to something cool. Walking Cy!

10. Quit my job.

I’d give my current employer 2 weeks notice.  I’d want to be paid for all the PTO I’ve banked. Yeah it is a drop in the bucket compared to the 800 million I have in the bank, but I earned that money. I value that more than money I won. After all, one of the greatest evils in this country is unearned (inherited) wealth. I’m not that guy. If I ended up broke so be it.

I often here people say that if they won the lottery they wouldn’t quit their job because they wouldn’t want to lose their health insurance.  If I’m starting with $800 million in the bank, I think I can afford my own health insurance.

Plus I can tell that my dog misses me during the day. She’d be super pumped.

Sure I’d miss a few of my co-workers. That is why I would take the ones I like on an all-expenses paid vacation once a year. I’m sure they’d be fine with closing down the Network Engineering Department once a year. Right?

 

I think that about covers my first 10 actions if I’d won the most recent lottery. Now the next 10 things I’d do… Some other time.

Next week’s list will either be my 10 favorite Photography 139 images or I’ll rank the Rocky movies from worst to best or something else.

An Irrevocable Condition

Often times when I put calendars out into the world, I worry about what kind of home it will receive. Will it be loved? Will it be adored? Will it end up on a wall with tons of writing on it?

Recently I received a couple text pictures of Photography 139 Calendars in their new homes.

While it might seem that I’m soliciting such images, I am not, but I do love getting them.

Here are those 2 images, Photogrpahy 139 Calendars. Home.



Colleen’s Calendar


Becca’s Calendar

I’m glad to see these calendars have found good, loving homes in Arizona.

With the Beefcake Pantyhose

You can look at this collection of losers for RED from the WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE in a couple of different ways.

Either I just wanted an excuse more pictures of my dog.

OR

Well that is interesting.

You see, there is a setting on my camera that drops out all other colors but red. It is far from 100%, but it creates interesting images.


RED-LOSER

RED - LOSER

RED - LOSER

RED - LOSER

RED - LOSER

RED - LOSER

RED - LOSER

RED - LOSER

RWPE - LOSER

RED - LOSER

RED - LOSER

RED - LOSER

RED - LOSER

Oh… also a picture of my trip to Hilton with Jen, Derrick, Evie, and Layla thrown in at the end there.

Kobe

A picture of something broken down and old. From my Aunt Linda’s farm.




As you all know E’s here to rule… No wait that isn’t right.

As you all know, I love rusted out old stuff. I will need to photograph this farm more thoroughly at some point.

PARTICULARS

CAMERA: SONY SLT-A65V
FOCAL LENGTH: 60mm (35mm equivalency – 90mm)
ISO: 500
APERTURE: f/4
EXPOSURE: 1/100
DATE: 11/20/15 – 14:44
NO GPS DATA

WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE – WEEK 16 – RED

There were a surprising amount of submissions this week for it being a holiday season. Hopefully we build on that this week.

Submissions for RED:


WEEK 16 - RED - BECKY PERKOVICH
Becky Perkovich

WEEK 16 - RED - CARLA STENSLAND
Carla Stensland

WEEK 16 - RED - KIM BARKER
Kim Barker

WEEK 16 - RED - CHRISTOPHER D. BENNETT
Christopher D. Bennett

WEEK 16 - RED - ANGIE DEWAARD 1
Angie DeWaard 1

WEEK 16- RED - MIKE VEST
Mike Vest

WEEK 16 - RED - ANGIE DEWAARD 2
Angie DeWaard 2

So what is this week’s theme?

Let’s have a look:


WEEK 17 - TEXTURE
TEXTURE

This should be an interesting one. It might be one of the more difficult themes, but I hope that doesn’t scare anybody away. As always, I’ll be excited to see all the submissions.

GENERAL HOUSEKEEPING NOTES

No new subscribers.
No movement on the secret handshake development front.

2015

So the walk down memory lane now concludes. With a look at the images that were in the calendar that early this morning will be taken down from kitchen walls (most common place I’ve seen the calendar hung up), office walls, cubicle walls, and placed gently in the trash with yesterday’s coffee grounds. 2015 Photography 139 Calendar I bid you a fond adieu.


2015 Calendar Cover
Front Cover

January - 2015 Calendar
January

February - 2015 Calendar
February

March - 2015 Calendar
March

April - 2015 Calendar
April

May - 2015 Calendar
May

June - 2015 Calendar
June

July - 2015 Calendar
July

August - Flower Calendar
August

September - 2015 Calendar
September

October - 2015 Calendar
October

November - 2015 Calendar
November

December - 2015 Calendar
December

If you ever get bored and want to take this walk down memory lane again, you can visit the Calendar and Postcards Gallery in the PHOTOGRAPHY 139 GALLERY. Link below:

CALENDAR & POSTCARD GALLERY

Since yesterday was the end of year and a holiday that many people celebrate (not me though, I don’t need the calendar gestapo telling me when to start a new year) I would like to take a quick moment to thank everybody that has continued to be an email subscriber to this here blog.

Off the top of my head and I apologize if I miss anybody:

These people are all original subscribers or at least haven’t changed their email since August 22, 2011. Which is how far back the records from off the top of my head go.

Jay Janson
Jason Baier
Shannon Bardole
Scott Degeneffe
Corey Faust
Susanna Funk
Jill Gorshe
Jesse Howard
Sara Lockner
Teresa Kahler
Nader Parsaei
Becky Perkovich
Bernice Verhoorn
Janice Peterson

Suzie Brannen – Since June 22, 2012
Eric Hiatt – Since August 20, 2012
Kim Barker – Since September 18, 2012
Amy Junck-Wallendal – December 18, 2012
Russell Kennerly – Since May 13, 2013
Tim Tucker (Not the one most of you are thinking about) – Since June 27, 2013
Michelle Haupt – Since July 12, 2013
Tim Tucker’s Woman (Sorry, never caught her name) – Since August 22, 2013
Geri Derner – Since September 30, 2013
Micky Augustin – Since October 10, 2013
Angie DeWaard – Since August 24, 2015
Mike Vest – Since September 9, 2015
Melissa Degeneffe – Since September 14, 2015
DaeHee Yoon – Since September 29, 2015
Monica Kewer – Since October 2, 2015 (Current email)
Carla Stensland – Since October 5, 2015
Joe Lynch – Since October 9, 2015
Jorge Rios – Since October 9, 2015
Anders Runestad – Since October 11, 2015
Elizabeth Nordeen – Since November 2, 2015
Laura Miller – Since November 9, 2015
Michael Houlihan – Since November 16, 2015
Dawn Krause – Since December 21, 2015
Joe Duff – Since December 21, 2015

Thanks for all the support and for making 2015 a successful year, by some sense of the word. I hope our little family here continues to grow. I’ll try and do better in 2016!

2013 Christmas Calendar

This is a look back at the photos from the calendar I gave as Christmas gifts in 2012. You’ll see many of the same images from the flower calendar. I have no doubts.



Front Cover


January


February


March


April


May


June


July


August


September


October


November


December

I’ve never done what one would call market research, but I did make a change to the 2015 calendar and then made a change back in the 2016 calendar. That is this. The 2015 calendar has big numbers for the dates. I found this to be aesthetically pleasing. However, some feedback I got was that this made it more difficult to write on the calendar. Therefore, I changed back to small numbers for the 2016 calendar.

I’ve also been asked why I don’t include birthdays or “different holidays” any longer. The reason for that is because of the diverse audience that the Photography 139 Calendar now reaches, I don’t know how many of those people need to know the date my nephew Brandon’s birthday (December 4). However, I could probably add International Talk Like A Pirate Day back to the calendar.

I’ve already stated that I’m going to go back to diversifying the subject matter of the 2017 calendar. I have this glorious plan of taking each photo for the 2017 calendar during the corresponding month of 2016. This means that my plan of going back to my plan of lining up certain subjects with certain months will probably go to the wayside. Sorry anybody that was getting jacked up for a frog in February of 2017. I’ll try to get a frog somewhere else… like April.

Any way, please leave any thoughts, suggestions, or ideas in the comments section. I might not act on them, but you don’t know until you try.

2009

Time to take another stroll down memory lane. This was the last time I appeared in a calendar. Probably will be the last time I ever appear in a calendar.



January


February


March


April


May


June


July


August


September


October


November


December

The last day to order a 2016 Photography 139 Calendar is approaching quickly. Very quickly.

WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE – WEEK 13 – GAMES

This week was perilously close to the first strike for the WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE. But there was a lone submission.

This week’s submissions:


WEEK 13- GAMES - CHRISTOPHER D. BENNETT
Christopher D. Bennett

WEEK 13 - GAMES - CARLA STENSLAND
Carla Stensland

Maybe next week’s theme will ring more bells. Maybe next week’s theme will be the first strike.

Next week’s theme:


WEEK 14 - BLACK AND WHITE
BLACK AND WHITE

Should be a simple and easy theme. Take a BLACK AND WHITE picture. Of literally, anything.

As always, I’ll be excited to see the submissions.