Category Archives: Becky

Special Olympics

I had a chance to catch up with an old friend of mine today, Kim Lively.

Kim used to by my lobby person when I was running Campus. She was competing today in the 50 meter run at the Special Olympics.

I found out that the Lively family was named Family of the Year. It doesn’t surprise me, I’ve known Kim and her mom for several years now and they are both such wonderful people.

I managed to get a couple pictures of Kim.


This year’s Special Olympics marks like the umpteenth time in a row where I left the Special Olympics thinking that I’m going to take time off work and volunteer next year. Now that I know that Becky (the most volunteeringest* person I’ve ever met) volunteers for Special Olympics I might see about making her my Accountability Buddy for making sure that I volunteer next year.

* I realize that volunteeringest isn’t a word, but bugger off the English language is constantly evolving and it will be a word soon enough.

The Most Fun You Can Have with Caustics

On Monday night I aided in the production of the newest batch of Little White Lye Soap. I thought I would share an inside look at the Little White Lye Soap factory floor.


Making Soap
The Mixing Stick (Formerly Ergonomic)

Making Soap
Becky Stirring

Making Soap
A Self Proclaimed Master Stirrer Finishing Up

Making Soap
Preparing to Pour

Making Soap
Pouring

Making Soap
Pouring

Making Soap
Pouring

Making Soap
Pouring

Making Soap
Shannon Preparing to Pour Again

Making Soap
More Pouring

Making Soap
More Pouring

Making Soap
This Appears to be Hard Work (Plus Might be my favorite picture from the night.)

Making Soap
Washing Up

Making Soap
Cleaning Up

Making Soap
Putting Away the Crock

The soap was locked up into a cat-proof room where it will cure for 2 weeks. Then it will be cut up into bars and then packaged. Then the soap will be ready for delivery.

It takes close to 4 hours of stirring to make the soap, so sometimes that can lead to doing things like torturing the cat or as the Bush Administration would call it, Enhanced Cat Interrogation. I’m sure they would also point out that cats are not protected by the Geneva Convention.


Making Soap
Baiting Franklin

Making Soap
Franklin Has Been Caputred

>I don’t want to go into details about what happened to Franklin, but he was unharmed and was only slightly angrier the rest of the evening.

Olivia’s Stitching Time

I went to the church on Wednesday to take a group photo of the stitching group that Teresa started in Olivia’s name. Here is the result.


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This picture is going to go in the church bulletin, so in the end it will end up looking something like this:


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I took a couple candid photos of the group.


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Then Becky grabbed the camera and took this picture.


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Olivia’s Stitching Time meets two more times before taking a hiatus for the Summer. It is a group for people to come and work on and share their sewing projects. It meets from 6:30 – 8:30 on Wednesday nights in the Parlor of the First United Methodist Church. All are welcome to come.

I also fired off a few other random pictures in the sanctuary.


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I might be prejudiced, but I think that we have a beautiful sanctuary. I’d love to seriously photograph it at some time in the future.

Sorting Mail

I was told a few weeks back that I had made an appearance in the Ames Jaycees Newsletter. I had kind of forgotten about that news until today when I was doing my monthly mail sorting and I saw my mug on the back of the newsletter.


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With Becky

Currently I think there are only 6 Jaycees that can identify me. I’m quite certain that most people that examined this newsletter and looked at that picture and wondered why they included a picture of some random guy from the bar in the newsletter.

The Church of the Inebriated Saints

Shorty often refers to going to church twice on the same day as building up credit. On Friday night I went to The Venue to attend the Church of the Inebriated Saints. I think by Shorty’s logic, I get credit for that and can skip church some time in the future.

I took several pictures of Inebriated Saints and I’m going to unload a large collection of them right here. I left shortly after their show concluded, but based on then names of the other bands, they sounded like yelling-screaming-angry-white-male-feel-sorry-for-me music, I’m just going to assume that they were the victors.


Inebriated Saints

Inebriated Saints

Inebriated Saints

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Inebriated Saints

It is a fact that many of these pictures aren’t really your standard picture and might be kind of artistically pretentious, but I felt the need to get a bit creative because bar photography is not my forte. There is limited light, so you are really kind of limited in your options. You can crank up the ISO, but that results in digital noise. You can crack out the blinding flash and my Top Photo Assistant can tell you, I don’t really like flash photography. The only other option is to get a little creative. Admittedly you will find examples of all of these in the photos above.

On a more personal note. This trip out to The Venue was my first trip to a Boone bar in almost 2 years. I saw some people that I hadn’t seen in several years. Anybody that has ever seen me knows that I’m not a big personal appearance person. (Although I have really gotten into color coordinating my beanies lately.) If I know somebody, I know them and don’t even really think about what their personal appearance might be saying to the rest of the world.

A couple different people came up to me and asked me: “You are Christopher Bennett, correct?”

One of these people was a muscular looking gent with a shaved head and a goatee. I had a brief conversation with him and then he returned to his job duties. I never thought of him as being scary looking. Although I might not ever be muscular looking, the clock is ticking on when I will be a bald dude with a goatee. The only thing to be determined is whether or not I will have the guts to keep the sideburns.

Shannon said that guy was really scary looking.

I thought, really? I mean maybe a guy that looks like that can be intimidating, but I only see Larry Sprecher. One of the kids (along with his brother Mike and Kelly Wilson) that I played G.I. Joe with.

Becky came to the concert with Shannon. This resulted in a bonus photo session that I call “The Get Your Picture Taken with Shannon Session”. Check out these bonus photos:


Inebriated Saints Concert

Inebriated Saints Concert

One other person that talked to me at the bar was Jamie’s friend Bonnie. She wanted to know if I had a “little, short, blonde guy with me”. She was referring to Jay. When I relayed that story to Jay on Saturday morning, he became distraught. It turns out Jay doesn’t like to be referred to as both little and short.

Journal Entry No. 200

This is the 200th post on this online journal. I’m kind of surprised it took me this long to get to 200. It has been well over a year since I started this online journal. I’m finally starting to get into a groove with entering things daily and keeping things nice and short.

Tonight I went to Willy’s home bar, Club Element. I didn’t go there with Willy because he would never lower himself to go with one of his friends. I’ve heard the legend of how Club Element is a little kids’ bar, but I didn’t see any evidence. There was no ball pit or water slide. My main impressions of Club Element were that it was ridiculously small and surprisingly well lit. It also had one of the ugliest interior designs of a bar I’ve ever seen. The pool table looked to be in pretty sad shape as well.

On the other hand, the seats were comfortable and the company was great. I went with Derrick and Jen to see a band called Inebriated Saints. The Inebriated Saints is fronted by the old lead singer of UnHingd Mike DiMarco. When we got to Club Element we met up with Shannon and Becky.

It was interesting hearing Mike’s latest incarnation. They played many of the old songs from UnHingd, but the sound was definitely louder and more distorted. It wasn’t as distorted as Against the Grain, but much more distorted than the dulcet guitar tone that Derrick Gorshe laid down when he was in UnHingd.

This marked my 2nd trip to a bar this year. There is a chance that I might make a third trip this Saturday to see 35 South. That is Dennis’ band. They are a southern rock cover band. Derrick is their official sound guy. I only went to a bar 3 or 4 times all of last year. I think I will have to take a few months off if I go on Saturday.

I’m not a fan of bar photography, but I have been considering purchasing a small camera that would be easier to take into places where I can’t lug in my big expensive cameras. Last night would have been a good night to have such a camera. I would have enjoyed documenting the Club Element experience. I could have proven to Willy that I was there.