Category Archives: Suzie

Bill, Black & White, Derrick, Eric, Faust, Formal Portrait, Jen, Sara, Suzie, Willy

The Archives: Edition Twenty-One

These pictures come from: Backup/Old My Pictures/Labels

I once had an idea where I had my friends do a little exercise in self-realization. I asked them to pick a word. One word that they wanted the world to think of when the world saw them. Then I had them write that word on a piece of poster board and then I photographed them.

I was going to follow this up with a project where I had them pick one word that they thought was how the world perceived them.

I sometimes think about bringing this project back. Perhaps if bring back the BIG birthday party next year.

These are pictures from the Labels Project.


Sara - Labels

Jen Ensley - Labels Project

William McAlpine - Labels Project

Bill - Labels Project

Corey - Labels

Derrick Gorshe - Labels Project


Next Week’s Folder will be:

Backup/Old My Pictures/Master Wentworth

Baier, Becky, Candid Portrait, Commercial, Dawn, Derrick, Event, Music, Shannon, Suzie, Willy

Family Night

Last Friday was Family Night for Ames on the Half Shell. By all measurable criteria the event was a smashing success. More than twice the amount of children made it to Family Night this year than last.

Plus I got to see many of my friends and their children. Take a look at some of the fun that was had on that evening.


Family Night - 06-06-08

Family Night - 06-06-08

Family Night - 06-06-08

Family Night - 06-06-08

Family Night - 06-06-08

Family Night - 06-06-08

Family Night - 06-06-08

Family Night - 06-06-08

Family Night - 06-06-08

Family Night - 06-06-08

Family Night - 06-06-08

Family Night - 06-06-08

Family Night - 06-06-08

Family Night - 06-06-08

Of course there are about 80 more pictures in on my website in the AOTHS Gallery.

AMES ON THE HALF SHELL

Here is a Family Night Fun Fact. Despite the fact that there were 5 times the amount of children at Family Night than there were for the first night of of AOTHS and Red Monkey was free for children, less than half the amount of Red Monkey that was consumed on the first night was consumed on Family Night.

If you picked up what I was laying down with that big run-on sentence, you might be wondering how that was possible. The fact is that I am to blame. I laid off the Red Monkey during Family Night because I thought the youth of Central Iowa would pick up my slack. They did not. Now I have to hit the Red Monkey doubly hard this Friday night to make up for lost time. But I mean really, what is wrong with this generation?

I also learned a few things on Family Night. I learned that Shannon can’t blow bubbles. I learned that if you sign up to run the 5K during Scandinavian Days they give you a pretty sweet free shirt. I learned that Becky proved that she doesn’t know anything about hats because she wore a balloon hat around most of the night. I learned that even if you have somebody watching the bounce house, children will get in a fight and scare other small children. I learned that the Baier children will take their tats like men when the time comes for them to get their tats. I learned that security is such a tough job that I didn’t get a chance to talk to everybody nearly as long as I had hoped.

Of course I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that Ames on the Half Shell will happen again this Friday night. This week the band is Burnin’ Sensations and they are excellent. If you have a hole in your schedule between 5-8, this is the place to be. Also Friday is somebody’s birthday. I don’t wish to embarrass them (yet), but at the very least it is worth the price of admission (79 cents less than a gallon of gas) to wish her a Happy Birthday!*

Plus it is Friday the 13th. I’m not a superstitious person, but it might be a good day to be in a large crowd.

*That exclamation mark is not a random choice of punctuation.

Alexis, Art, Derrick, Eric, Holidays, Jay, Jeff Kewer, Jen, Monica, Movies, Sara, Suzie, Teresa

Memorial Day and the Crystal Skull

Memorial Day wasn’t really meant to be a good-time-feel-good holiday. It was established to honor Union Soldiers that died in the Civil War and was first known as Decoration Day.

Regardless of its original intentions, this solemn holiday has become a chance for most Americans to barbecue and enjoy a 3 Day weekend. I’m not different than most Americans. I just wanted to have a good time on Memorial Day.

My day started out good enough. I watched 4 straight hours of Animal Planet with Alexis in the morning. Jay came over and we had tacos and nachos for lunch. Then we headed over to the Cinemark to catch a matinée of Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull with Derrick.

+++SPOILERS+++

Usually I’m not the type of person that gives away spoilers about movies. I want people to see movies on their own, but this is one movie that I don’t feel the need to protect any of its secrets. This movies is a piece of garbage.

I’ve alway been a big fan of the Indiana Jones movies. Sure Temple of Doom blows a little bit, but the other 2 are excellent. Crystal Skull is an insult to all 3 of those movies.

I didn’t understand why so many Star Wars fans were upset with the prequels that came out a few years back. True, they weren’t very good, but the first 3 Star Wars movies stunk as well. What was the big deal? Instead of 3 movies with terrible acting and writing now you had 6 of them. Star Wars fans should have been elated.

I still don’t understand Star Wars fans, (there are certainly much, much better science fiction movies out there, I refer you to the two that Stanley Kubrick made 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange just for starters) but now I can relate to them a bit. I’ve seen a movie franchise that I love torn to shreds before my very eyes.

On Sunday when we were driving down to The House of Bricks Willy told me that Crystal Skull was not very good. I told him that I could handle it if it wasn’t very good, but I would not be able to handle one thing. If they tried to set up a series of sequels starring Even Stevens, I would be angry. I would leave the theater in a rage.

I should have seen the warning signs. Even Willy would be the first to admit that I have much higher standards for movies than he does. The dude loves Van Damme movies!

Despite my bold proclamations, I left the theater angry. In fact, I haven’t been this angry leaving the theater since I sat through the misogynistic propaganda piece masquerading as entertainment known as Sin City. I was madder than when I left the theater after Transformers. Another example of taking something I loved from my childhood and making it suck. Incidentally also starring Even Stevens.

The one good thing I can say about Crystal Skull is that they didn’t end the movie by setting up sequels for Even Stevens. They came close. They made you think that is what they were going to do. At the end of the movie Indy’s hat blows off a hat rack and rolls to a stop at Even Stevens’ feet. As he bends over to pick up the hat, Indy picks it up before him and puts it on his head. Me physically vomiting in the aisles was averted.

I suppose that I don’t have time to write on all the things I hated about this movie, because there are so many of them. I’ll try to keep it to just two.

ALIENS!!!!

Are you kidding me? Could Lucas and Spielberg not turn the last Indiana Jones movie into a science fiction movie? I now fully expect that the next Spielberg WWII movie to involve aliens in some way, shape or form.

CGI!!!

CGI has already, for the most part, ruined most summer movies. It was as if they had missed the point of the first three movies. They were an homage to old time serial movies and they were done with trick photography and stuntmen. Crystal Skull is an homage to the other 3 movies basically, only with way too much CGI. I should have known it was coming when the first shot of the movie features a CGI prairie dog.

My day was ruined from that point on and I don’t think that there was much that could have happened to turn my day around.

+++SPOILERS OVER+++

My day did turn around though. I headed out to Roland for Monica’s barbecue. The only low point of the barbecue was having Happy Birthday sang to me for the third time in 8 days. I’m glad I won’t have to hear that again for some time. Although Monica did make me a sweet Jello birthday cake.


I don’t really like getting presents all that much. Unless it is something the person has made, like a sweet painting or piece of stained glass or cake or rhubarb pie or a card.

Teresa sent me this birthday card.


There is the occasional exception. Sara got me this sweet gift:


The camera is 30 years old and still is in its original box. This will look great on my shelf of old cameras.

Boone FUMC, Candid Portrait, Jaycees, Jeff Kewer, Lowell, Monica, Music, Suzie, Teresa

False Snake Hype

I have been looking forward to today for quite some time.

After church Lowell and I attended a Methodist Men board meeting. I learned a lot about our future activities. We are serving the food at the Mother-Daughter Banquet this coming Saturday. We are serving Fellowship in the month of June. We are running the Church Food Stand for some Cattle Shows coming up. We are serving breakfast during one of the days of the coming tractor rally. So there are a lot of things going on this Summer. The convenient part is that most Methodist Men activities take place on Saturdays so it won’t be a scheduling conflict with Ames on the Half Shell.

At 2 PM Teresa and I showed up for an Exclusive Series Preview of the upcoming season at Stephens. I was a little bit worried that we had wandered into a nursing home tour when we got in line to get our packet of information. We were the youngest people in the line by at least 40 years. Well by 50 years for me.

The presentation was on the stage at Stephens. I haven’t been on the stage at Stephens since High School. From the stage you can really see what a beautiful auditorium it is and can tell why it is the Building of the Century.

They did a little program and announced the upcoming season:

  • September 24 – Sweeney Todd
  • November 2 – Vanguard Jazz
  • November 6 – Movin’ Out
  • November 9 – Jerusalem Symphony
  • November 23 – Lorie Line and her Pop Chamber Orchestra
  • December 3 – Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
  • December 18 – A Skaggs Family Christmas
  • January 25 – Goodnight Moon/Runaway Bunny
  • February 8 – The Peking Acrobats
  • February 13 – The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
  • February 20 – To Kill a Mockingbird
  • March 27 – Blue Note Records Tour
  • April 9 – The Drowsy Chaperone
  • April 14-15 – Stomp
  • May 1 – Australian Chamber Orchestra

From our preliminary discussions it seems that Teresa and I are slightly at odds as to what we want to go see. The one event I know that I want to see for sure is the Blue Note Records Tour. Teresa isn’t overly interested in that one. For some reason she thinks that Kenny G. and David Sanborn is jazz. Perhaps, I have a friend out there that likes real jazz that I might be able to persuade into going.

At the end of the presentation they asked everybody to look at the back of their folder. If you had stickers on the back you won a door prize. Teresa had stickers on the back of her folder. I was expecting some cheesy door prize based on the lousy corporate events I had attended in the past, but what Teresa won was pretty sweet. She won 2 free tickets to see the Jerusalem Symphony (over a $100.00 value) and a couple of their CDs. So on November 9th, we will be going to see the Jerusalem Symphony for free and you can’t beat that with a stick.

Roland

After the presentation we went up to Roland to check out the new house that Monica and Jeff are renting. When we got there we were warned to watch the grass because they had seen snakes everywhere in the yard. I was excited. I haven’t seen a snake yet this year. I looked all over the yard (even in a compost pile) but I didn’t find a single snake, let alone snakes. I was the victim of false snake hype.

I got the nickel tour of their new domicile. Monica, Jeff, Suzie and Cassie were painting. I grabbed a few pictures of them at work. I always love watching other people work.


05-03-08

Sweet Windmill. I think it needs to be sanded down and painted, but Monica thinks it looks awesome rusty. I respectfully disagree. It looks awesome rusty if you are going for some kind of Nouveau Texas Chainsaw Massacre look, but a splash of bright red would really do wonders for this thing, but it isn’t mine.


05-07-08
Suzie slacking off.

05-07-08
The bathroom color.

05-07-08
Jeff painting the master bedroom

05-07-08
Monica crawling.

05-07-08
Suzie playing with the master tape.

05-07-08
Cassie painting the living room.

I think it is going to a pretty sweet place when they are done painting.

Ames on the Half Shell

The Band Selection Committee that I was on that kind of half ass did our job and has completed its work. Here is the list of bands that are going to be playing Ames on the Half Shell.

  • May 30 – Redzband
  • June 6 – Murphy’s Law (Family Night)
  • June 13 – Burnin’ Sensations
  • June 20 – Vivace
  • June 27 – Box Brothers
  • July 11 – Saucy Jack
  • July 18 – Kountertop
  • July 25 – 3AM Band

If you can only make it to one Ames on the Half Shell event this year, I urge you to attend Kountertop. They are excellent. Unless you have small children. In that case, come on June 6 and see Murphy’s Law on Family Night. There are going to be a lot of cool things for small children on Family Night.

Animals, Eric, Monica, Music, Suzie

T Night

I went over to Suzie and Eric’s for T Night. I was pretty sure that the night would conclude with Suzie conceding that she was too far behind in the race for Monica’s Friend of the Year 2008 that she should just do the gracious thing and bow out of the race.

Instead the night concluded with a rousing round of video games. I have not played a video game in multiple years, but if you look at the pictures below, you might find some photographic evidence of an event that might not repeat its self for several years. I believe the game in which we were engaged is called Rock Band.


04-10-08
Monica

04-10-08
The Band

04-10-08
Rock Band Cat

04-10-08
The Band

04-10-08
Jeff

We ripped up some Nirvana, Oasis and Radiohead.

Art, Eric, Suzie, Writing

The Future of Gaming

I don’t know anything about the world of gaming, but Eric and Suzie are inventing a new board game. I have no doubt that they will do a bang up job in the creation of this game because it is something that they both hold a passion for and nothing in this world helps you see with more clarity than passion. Not even bifocals. Take that Ben Franklin!

I was privileged to view the initial piece of art from their game. I think it is pretty sweet, check it out:



Suzie even composed a little poem to celebrate my unshackling from the US Department of Education’s oar.

Paying less means spending more.
And sometimes knowledge seekers
can become the debtors’ whore.

It seems as if I am suddenly surrounded by poets and that is a good thing because I admire poets. I only wish I could be one.

Incidentally, anybody that knows a reason why I’m not worthy of a poetic tribute should keep said information to themselves. Things will correct themselves in due course. I will be worthy of poetic tributes in the future.