Category Archives: Holidays

Alexis, Boone FUMC, Brandon, Carla, Elainie, Holidays, Johnathan, Logan, Mom, Teresa

Thanksgiving

November 29, 2008 Christopher D. Bennett

I started Thanksgiving by helping serve the free Thanksgiving dinner with my Mom, Teresa and Logan. I was given the extremely important duty of collecting trays.

After my shift concluded I talked dogs with Karma’s former vet Jordan and his family. Even though I know when I get a dog again it will be a Golden Retriever, I was told by one of Jordan’s daughters to look into Bulgarian Mountain Dogs.

I really had no intention of doing this, but I was told (incorrectly) that I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t do such a thing.

So enjoy this little tidbit from Wikipedia about Bulgarian Mountain Dogs (AKA Caucasian Shepherd Dog):

Powerful and massive, the Caucasian Ovcharka can be a difficult breed for an inexperienced owner, because it respects and obeys only those that it deems superior to itself. They are good with children, but will not see them as their masters. The dog develops a strong bond with its owner but will rarely be submissive; this is truly a thinking dog which relies on its own instincts, sometimes even disregarding its master’s directions. A breed with a very quick reaction time and fast protection reflexes, it has even been unfairly described by some as somewhat of a “loose cannon”. With proper care, handling and training, this is a well-behaved and obedient family companion.

I have no doubt that such a dog would see me as being superior, but Golden Retrievers are where it is at.

I concluded my Thanksgiving by eating a wonderful dinner and dominating my family in Rack Rummy.

Here are some pictures from the day.

IMAGES LOST

If you break it down, I had 6 Thanksgivings to attend this week. That is a lot of good and unhealthy eating.

Carla, Holidays, Mom, Teresa

Too Crafty?

November 28, 2008 Christopher D. Bennett

Teresa’s latest project was too make individualized Christmas booklets for all the members of the family. Well, not for me, but for the other members of the family.

IMAGE LOST

I spent a fair amount of Thanksgiving trying to explain that I don’t really care what I get for Christmas. I’m the easiest person in the world to shop for because I like everything and I get too much as it is.

But the actual truth is that what I would really like for Christmas is to find somebody that can challenge me at the game of Rack Rummy.

Alexis, Art, Candid Portrait, FNSC, Formal Portrait, Holidays, Jay, Movies, Night, Scottie D., Willy

All Hallow’s Eve

November 1, 2008 Christopher D. Bennett

I had a pretty good Halloween.

I hosted FNSC. I made chili. I made cornbread from scratch. I made apple cider. Jay made a blueberry buckle. Willy showed up in a costume. We watched some movies from a bygone era that some people might characterize as strange. However, I think I might have found proof that rabbits will jump off a table in one of these movies. A classic from the 1970s known as Night of the Lepus. A phenomenal movie.

Jay’s annual sweet pumpkin.

I can not compete with Jay, so I made a stick figure to accent the disparity between our pumpkin carving skills. This annoyed Jay for some reason. I don’t often do things out of spite, but I might have to make the stick figure my annual pumpkin because it both annoys Jay and because the simple stick figure grew on me as the night went on. I don’t think it was just the apple cider impairing my judgment either.

The candles in Jay’s pumpkin.

Scott and Austin; Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of the Howard kids or the Davis clan. I’m going to get that done next year.

Jay carving his second pumpkin.

I had to buy a new flash recently because, well I don’t want to get into that story. This might have been one of those blessing in disguise type things. I really like my new flash.

Although I’ve gotten glowing feedback on my Cider, chili, little smokies and cornbread, I think I’m going to have to research a new recipe for pumpkin seeds before next year. They take a decent picture at least.

I think if Willy dressed like this every week, he would be irresistible to the womanfolk. He probably already is though.

I also didn’t get a picture of Alexis this year. I think she kind of phoned it in any way. She went to school dressed like Hannah Montana, but she showed up for trick-or-treating in her gymnastics outfit.

The best part about Alexis showing up was that she didn’t even ring the doorbell. She just walked right in with her friends and said:

“Where’s the candy?”

She was showing off for her friends just a little bit.

Becky, Candid Portrait, Commercial, Derrick, Event, Holidays, Jaycees, Jen, Music, Night, Shannon

Independence Day

July 6, 2008 Christopher D. Bennett

It was a busy 4th of July.

I started the day at about 9 AM by moving mortars into place. Then at 10:30 I went over to Half Shell to help set up and serve beer until about 3 PM.

Check out some pictures from Half Shell.

Shannon and Matthew

Scott with the 1st Beer of Half Shell

Becky and Jenny

I switched from my “Beat Iowa” hat to a “Beer Nuts” hat for this Half Shell.*

Burnin’s Sensations

Sarah finishing off the pepperoni pizza that she didn’t want to be “too eager” for.

I don’t know what is going on in this picture.

At 3 I headed back to the fireworks area to set up sandbags. Fireworks was a very educational experience. For starters, fireworks don’t look anything like I thought they would look like. I thought they would look like giant bottle rockets or like the big red rockets that Wile E. Coyote shoots at the Road Runner. Instead, they look like this:

Fireworks.

The main thing I learned though was that being in the pit or ground zero of a fireworks display is about a million times more entertaining and fun than watching a fireworks display.

To let off fireworks there is a dress code. You are required to wear boots, long pants, a cotton long sleeve shirt (polyester will catch on fire), a hard hat, safety glasses and ear protection. Even with all of that clothing and protective gear it is hard to put into words how powerful and loud the fireworks are in the pit. It is an intense experience.

I was really down in the pit to take some pictures. However, I was ordered to set off a couple of fireworks. So I set off three.

After we finished some clean up I went over to Jen and Derrick’s traditional 4th of July barbecue. I was asked the same question a few different times while I was there:

“Which fireworks did you light off?”

Shannon would usually answer the question: “The good ones.”

Although I enjoy her vote of confidence, that answer has no basis in fact. The truth is that you never get to see the fireworks that you light off. In fact, you barely ever see any fireworks at all. You feel them. You hear them. You never see them.

The steps to setting off the fireworks prevent you from ever seeing them. When you go to light off the fireworks you are handed a 5 or 6 foot pole with a road flare taped to the end. You approach the mortars with the flare pointed away from the fireworks. When you get near the fireworks you remove the protective sleeve that covers the fuse. Then you take a few steps back and light the fuse with the flare. As soon as the fuse starts to light, you turn your back to the fireworks, get low and move away from the mortars.

While you are moving away from the fireworks, there is another person acting as a spotter. The spotter tells you when it is okay to go light another fuse or to get down. Trust me, you definitely know when the shell has shot into the sky. You feel it. However, there are a couple of things that could go wrong. The shell could blow up in the mortar or the shell can come a few feet out of the mortar and then blow up. If these things don’t happen, you get to go back and light off more fireworks. But you never really get to see the fireworks that you light.

Here are a few pictures from the pit:

Joe packing mortars.

Charby moving boxes of fireworks.

Shannon putting foil on the Grand Finale mortars.

The line moving away from the explosion is the flare.

Fireworks.

More fireworks.

Peggy setting off fireworks.

Shannon watching.

Grand finale aftermath.

Of course there are about 80 more pictures in the Snapshot Gallery in an album named “Jaycees – Independence Day – 2008”.

Jaycees – Independence Day – 2008

When I concluded my evening at Jen and Derrick’s barbecue I found out that something pretty major had happened in my absence. However, that is not my tale. All I can tell you is that congratulations are in order next time you see them.

One last story.

While I was walking around Half Shell taking pictures two girls came up to me.

“Do you want to take our picture?” they asked.

“Why would I want to take your picture?”

“Because we are so cute.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah!”

“I can take your picture.”

I’ll leave it to you to make your own assessments about the level of cuteness these girls possess.

I have a feeling this is how the Girls Gone Wild guy got started.

*I bought a new hat for this coming Half Shell on Saturday. I think it is perfect.

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

Memorial Day and the Crystal Skull

May 26, 2008 Christopher D. Bennett

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.

Alexis, Brandon, Carla, Elainie, Holidays, Jason, Johnathan, Logan, Mom, Russ

Mother’s Day Barbecue

May 12, 2008 Christopher D. Bennett

Some random images from the Mother’s Day Barbecue

Brandon

Alexis

Brandon

Carla

Elainie

Jason

Johnathan

Teresa and Russ

Logan

“The Perfect Marshmallow”

Roasting Marshmallows

Russ

Russ Grilling

Russ and Brandon

Russ

Teresa

Since I know it would be missed if I didn’t post it, the picture of meat.

The Meat

I hope your Mother’s Day was at least 50% as enjoyable as mine.

Animals, Holidays, Work

A Couple Computer Mine Thoughts

May 2, 2008 Christopher D. Bennett

I’m not the type of person that grouses about their job all that much. That is mostly because I enjoy my job and I have only a modicum of responsibility. Plus for the most part, very few people can screw me over in my job. So the co-workers that I find annoying I can still view at a comical level because they rarely actually interfere with my job. They just annoy me on occasion.
Yesterday was May Day. It is a holiday that I thought only school children were forced to celebrate because it came near the end of the school year and most teachers were ready for summer vacation and had given up on teaching the current lot of savages in their classrooms.

When I opened up Outlook when I got to work there were already two e-mails wishing me a Happy May Day and a third e-mail wishing me a Happy Beltane. I’m not a grouch. I don’t get mad on certain holidays. Particularly when I get free food because of the holiday, but it did make me wonder why there was no love for International Worker’s Day.

International Worker’s Day is the holiday I celebrate on the First of May every year. I think next year I’m going to beat the other holidays to the punch. I’m going to show up with some communist themed food right at 7 am and have the first Happy International Worker’s Day e-mail out by 7:02. It will be a victory for the workers of the world.

I discussed this plan briefly with Lowell. By the time I got back to my desk there was a third Happy May Day e-mail waiting for me. It is this e-mail that actually kind of annoys me. Not because somebody had sent me a generic “Everyone” e-mail wishing me a Happy Holiday that I’m sure if I questioned the sender they couldn’t tell me the first thing about the origins of that holiday.

It was the style of the e-mail. I really should have done a screen capture of this e-mail, but I’m sure that would have been a violation of some kind of proprietary information agreement I might have signed at the beginning of my employment at The Computer Mine.

The person that sent the e-mail is no Hemingway. They aren’t even a Faulkner or a Kerouac. They aren’t even a Dan Brown. When the President of the Mine sent out an e-mail requesting that people in the company make their e-mail signature more professional, she changed her signature so that her phone extension is not listed next to the company phone number, but by her e-mail address. Last time I checked, e-mails don’t have extensions.

I know that she tries. The Computer Mine publishes a company newsletter that is just rife with the type of quality journalism that you would expect to see in such a publication. I have no doubt that some day this newsletter will bring home a Pulitzer. Last quarter there was an enlightening article revealing that this person had recently completed a class in Business Writing.

After reading just a handful of her e-mails on International Worker’s Day, I now want to meet the teacher that taught her that it is completely ACCEPTABLE to substitute smilies for punctuation, because you know what? It isn’t acceptable. Not even in non-professional e-mails. In fact, smilies are never acceptable in any situation or any circumstance.

On Another Note

I spotted Steve. However, I wasn’t able to get a picture of him. Well, I got this really lousy picture of him that looks like the type of picture that people crack out when they are trying to prove the existence of some cryptozoological creature like Bigfoot or Nessie.

Steve the Groundhog

I’m sorry it is such a terrible picture, but it was I could do. Steve is quicker than he looks and he made a mad dash for his hole when he saw me standing outside. I hope to get a better picture of Steve sometime this year. It will be a personal mission.

Alexis, Brandon, Carla, Christianity, Comedy, Elainie, Holidays, Jason, Johnathan, Logan, Mom, Nate, Shorty, Teresa, Tim

My Happy Easter

March 23, 2008 Christopher D. Bennett

I feel like posting some pictures from Easter.

Alexis

Carla & Mom Watching Egg Hunt

Egg Hunt

Neighbor’s Dog that Doesn’t Shut Up

Mom

Alexis Sorting Eggs

Teresa Displaying the Maturity of her Years

Brandon

Johnathan

Jason, Carla & Brandon

Elainie

Logan

Teresa Crocheting

Vacation Pictures

I also had supper with Shorty, Doris, Tim, Rebecca and Nate. Doris told us the joke that their Pastor (Pastor Rod) had told the congregation on that day. I thought it was kind of funny.

“The elders of the church decided that since Easter was coming up they wanted to have a really special speaker for the Service. They thought about it for a bit and they decided that they wanted the most knowledgeable Pastor they could find to give the sermon.
So they went to him and he turned them down.
They thought about it some more and decided they should get the most eloquent Pastor to give the sermon.
So they found the most eloquent Pastor and asked him, but he turned them down.
They went back to the church and thought about it some more. They decided that they should get the best looking Pastor they could find to give the sermon.
So they found the best looking Pastor and asked him, but he turned them down.
They went back to the church and thought about it some more.
Then one of them said: “Well we can still get Pastor Rod.”
They all decided that was a good idea and they came to me and asked me to give the sermon on Easter Sunday.
I told them, “Yes.”
After all, I had already turned them down three times.”

I hope you had a Happy Easter.

Art, Becca, Flowers, Holidays, Photoshop

Prettiest Present

January 24, 2008 Christopher D. Bennett

I wrote about the ugliest Christmas present I received this year, the prettiest present I got was from Rebecca.

Rebecca’s Hand Painted Bowl

She even matched her painting to my 4 Flowers picture.

Basketball, Holidays, Self-Portrait, Work

Broken

January 15, 2008 Christopher D. Bennett

I got one of the ugliest Christmas presents from Mary Beth this Christmas. I wasn’t really sure what to do with it, but in the end I decided to hang it up at work. Take a look:

Yesterday I picked up another cheap mirror. I sat it outside for the night. After sitting in the extreme cold for about 24 hours it broke just like I was hoping when I brought the thunder.