Category Archives: Jay

Candid Portrait, Flowers, Jay, Macro, Mom, Road Trip, Still Life, Teresa

Kalona (Part 1)

October 14, 2008 Christopher D. Bennett

Some pictures from the trip to Kalona.

The beginning of the trip was a little bit sad. It turns out that one of my favorite restaurants, The Kalona Cupboard, has went out of business. We tried out The Parlor Cafe, but it was not anywhere near as good as The Kalona Cupboard. In fact, they microwaved everything. I mean everything.

If you don’t know, I have a pretty big prejudice against food made in the microwave.

On top of that, the “chef” (who both took your order, microwaved it and put it on your plate) asked me if I was an Iowa State fan.

“Yes.”

“How much did you guys lose by last week?”

Iowa fans. God love them, if there is any room left for how much they already love themselves.

After the disappointment of the Cupboard closing and the poor food from the Microwave Cafe, we at least found Yotty’s Ice Cream Shop. It was excellent.

Automobiles, Becky, Candid Portrait, Commercial, FNSC, Formal Portrait, Jay, Shannon

Euphonious

October 13, 2008 Christopher D. Bennett

Friday was an interesting day.

Of course there was the high of it being Free Gyro Day, but the rest of the work day went rather uneventful.

It was near 5:30, the time I was going to run out of hours and check out for the week, when my phone rang. This was a bit of a surprise and it caused my dart throw to completely miss the paper with the raccoon on it that has been put up as a makeshift dartboard in the hardware area.

I answered the phone and it was Shannon.

She asked if I was interested in taking a ride in the Ames Party Bus.

This was an interesting development because I had engaged in a few conversations with Becky earlier in the day about how she could put the rebuilt starter in the bus by herself. She had asked me what she should use as a jack to hold the starter in place while she tightened the bolts.

My answer had been simple: “Shannon.”

“Really.”

“She tells me how tough she is all the time.”

I don’t know if it was really my advice that she followed, but after Shannon got off work they managed to put the starter in and the bus started.

Below are some pictures of the adventure.

After the cruise around town, I headed to a special FNSC. It was special because Jay had made caramel apples.

It was also special because it was a perfect night for sitting around the fire bowl until 1:30 in the morning.

Unfortunately that left me a bit tired for the trip to Kalona the next day.

Birthdays, Black & White, Candid Portrait, Derrick, Jay, Jen, Olympic Sports, Sara

Happy Birthday Sara!

October 2, 2008 Christopher D. Bennett

Today is Sara’s birthday.

Rather than post a bunch of pictures of Sara for Sara’s birthday, I’m going to take a slightly different tact.

Yesterday I wrote about Sara auditioning to become a Photography 139 Photo Assistant. She got high marks for having a big purse. One of her few problems was that she doesn’t know the difference between a film camera and a digital camera.

I left her with 1 digital camera and 1 film camera while I moved up the river looking for a better spot to photograph Jen’s team. I told her that she could take pictures with the digital camera if she wanted.

About 10 minutes elapsed and I returned to her position and asked for the film camera.

She looked at Derrick awkwardly. He looked back equally awkwardly.

The she said, “There is a little problem with that camera. I didn’t know it was film, so I used up all the film.”

So as a tribute to Sara, I’m going to post all the pictures from that roll of film. The first few are from before I handed her the camera.

More convertible

Dock

Derrick and Jay

Derrick

Jay and Derrick

The River

It was at this point that I left my camera in Sara’s hand.

All in all, I think she did some pretty solid work. But I was still counting on having that film for later in the day!

So one final Happy Birthday Sara! I look forward to the party on Saturday.

Black & White, Derrick, Flowers, Jay, Jen, Olympic Sports, Portrait, Sara

My Saturday (Volume 2)

October 1, 2008 Christopher D. Bennett 2 Comments

More pictures from Saturday. Some of these pictures were taken by Sara as she was auditioning to become a Photography 139 Photo Assistant.

Relaxing

On dry land

Done

Oar duty

Guns

Oar Duty

Celebration

Celebrating with some juice.

Jen and Derrick

Sara

Banner

The Past

Back in the convertible

Shiny

Sara after winning a scholarship.

Classic Frozen Custard

All in all, it was a pretty good day.

Candid Portrait, Derrick, Event, Jay, Jen, Olympic Sports, Sara, Shannon

My Saturday (Volume 1)

September 28, 2008 Christopher D. Bennett

My big plan for Saturday was to journey down to Des Moines to watch Jen compete in the Des Moines Regatta. I have never been to such an event, so it was going to be a new experience.

I started my day by going to Ames to drop off a roll of real black and white film at Walden Photo. It seems to be more and more difficult to find a place to get real black and white film developed. I think it is down to Walden Photo and Pyle in Ames. I took this roll of film to Walden Photo. We’ll see how that turns out.

While I was downtown I stopped at the Downtown Farmer’s Market briefly to talk to Shannon. She was making soap there. While I was there I picked up a jar of jalapeno jelly. I already have about 6 or 7 jars of jelly that I don’t eat because I don’t eat breakfast, but I have high hopes that I will use this jelly on crackers.

I met Jay back in Boone and we headed down to Des Moines to meet Sara and Derrick for lunch. We ate at the Hessen Haus. It was somewhat of a disappointment. Fortunately, due to the poorness of the Hessen Haus, a plan was hatched for a future FNSC. That is exciting!

After watching Iowa lose to Northwestern, we hopped into the Mustang convertible that was being used as our form of conveyance and went to Prospect Park to watch the Des Moines Regatta.

Once we got to the park, we had a brief wait on some rocks for Jen’s team to come up the river.

It didn’t take long for us to see Jen’s boat come around the bend.

I’m not going to try to using rowing lingo, but one of the members of the team missed the regatta because before they were supposed to get into the water, their knee was run over by a van. They had a member from the ISU rowing crew sit in with them.

FNSC, Jay, Jaycees, Jesse, Kalista, Kelly, Saydie, Shannon, Taylan, Willy

Shafted

September 19, 2008 Christopher D. Bennett

Friday night was the big Jay home cooked meal extravaganza. Willy choose not to join his brothers for this meal. Even though a week earlier he begged me not to go to the Ames on the Half Shell Appreciation Party because he needed a home cooked meal.

Although I was moved by his pleas, I had already made a commitment to attend the party and I was looking forward to getting the sweet AOTHS calendar that Shannon had designed.

Because I could only make an appearance at FNSC on that Friday Jay and Willy held a weenie roast in Willy’s garage. I stayed at the weenie roast log enough to eat a couple dogs and clean the gutters of Willy’s garage because… well if you know Willy, you know why.

Let us just say that because the gutters were clogged, rainwater was pouring out of the gutter and nearly falling onto the grill.

“What are we going to do about this?” was the question of the night. So I grabbed Willy’s ladder and unclogged his gutter and the weenie roast was saved.

I don’t like to brag, but the word hero was mentioned a couple times.

Jay rescheduled his home cooked meal for the next Friday. Willy decided he “needed” something else more than he needed the home cooked meal. He needed to race.

Well below is a very poor camera phone picture of what Wily missed.

You will have to trust me that it tasted much better than this picture makes it look.

Another highlight of the night was Auxiliary Member Jesse Howard’s presence. Plus Kelly, Kalista, Saydie and Taylan all became full Auxiliary Members. So despite the fact that Willy shafted his brethren, it was a successful evening.

Jay, Movies

Something Special

September 17, 2008 Christopher D. Bennett

I had a free night foisted upon me. So now I can get caught up with entries. So some of this might seem dated.

On Tuesday, September 16, the movie Young @ Heart came out on DVD. This would easily be my favorite move I’ve seen this year. The only movies that come close are WALL-E and Son of Rambow.

Back in 1993 Jim Valvano gave a moving speech while he was dying from cancer. He said something that I’ve always found profound:

To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And Number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you’re going to have something special.

I also consider these to be pretty good criteria for evaluating movies. Young @ Heart certainly does all three. Next time you are in your video store pick it up and give it a spin. You will not regret it.

Even if you hate old people (like Jay) you will love this movie.

Blogging, Football, Jay

Worst in Ames

September 15, 2008 Christopher D. Bennett 1 Comment

My website has moved servers yet again. I know anything related to PHP doesn’t work at all and I’m not really sure when it will work again, but I’m told FTP works again, so I’m testing that theory with this entry.

Jay is rather uneducated in the nuances of the Cy-Hawk rivalry. Last week he did some research and he sent me a blog that an Iowa fan wrote about doing things to a Cyclone fan’s mother. It was the type of unintelligent drivel you would expect to come from an Iowa fan, but I don’t wish to dwell on it. I just want to show a screen capture of part of the blog.

I take umbrage with one part of this blog. At least I was going to take umbrage with one part of this blog. I was going to say that Whiskey River is not the worst bar in Ames. I was going to argue in favor of Deano’s or The Fox.

Then last night I found out that Whiskey River has been condemned. I guess it is the worst bar in Ames, until the end of the month.

Candid Portrait, Faust, Football, Iowa State, Jay, Willy

Retribution (Part 1)

September 10, 2008 Christopher D. Bennett

On Saturday the Cyclones were able to avenge one of their losses from last year.

Once again it was a night game, so there are few images, but I’ll share a few.

Although Iowa State did right a wrong, their performance was hardly impressive. Well, it was impressive at times and scary at times.

Art, Black & White, Candid Portrait, Contests, Flowers, Jay, Mom, Nature, Night, Shannon, Teresa

Selected Pictures

September 6, 2008 Christopher D. Bennett 1 Comment

This year I took a different route selecting pictures for the Photo Contest. I put together 20 pictures and then had certain people select and name 1 picture from that list. I then entered those pictures.

I liked the way this process worked out. I will do it again in the future, with only a slight tweak here and there.

These are the pictures that were entered:

15 Minutes

This picture was selected by Shannon. The picture was part of my experimentation with light painting. This is an experiment that I need to start back up again. The name comes from the flower being in the spotlight.

Soaking up the Rays

This picture was selected by Teresa. This picture was taken at the State Fair.

Grains and Creases

This picture was selected by Jay. This picture was taken of wooden praying hands outside of a Baptist church in Paducah, Kentucky.

Deity Saturation

This picture was selected by my Mom. This picture was taken north of Boone. I actually named this picture. It comes from the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote: “Nature is saturated with deity.”

“The Last Dragon”

I picked this picture because one person I asked to pick a picture never made a choice. I really can’t remember what I named this picture, but it might have been named after the classic 80s kung fu flick Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon. It is also possible that I named it “Jay LeRoy”. This picture was taken while I was sitting on my back on the sidewalk in front of the basilica in Dyersville. There has been a glow effect thrown onto this picture.

The Last Refuge

I also picked this picture because I needed to switch out another picture that didn’t print very well. This picture was originally in color, but I switched it to black and white because I wanted to enter more than 1 black and white picture. The name of this picture comes from the Samuel Johnson quote: “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” This picture was taken at ground zero of the Ames fireworks show. This picture did get 3rd Place in the Black and White division. One more ribbon for the trunk.

I am currently taking application for photo selectors for next year.