mardi gras

Well the party has come and gone. Here are a few fun facts about the party:

• # of Guests – 107+ over the entire night
• # of Turkey’s fried – 2 for a combined weight of ~24 lbs
• amount of Oil Used – ~6 gallons
• # of empty beer bottles by end of night – 206
• # of flaming deserts – 2 Banana’s Foster Bread Puddings
• # of beads given out – 288+
• amount of male nudity – 0 (woo hoo!)

A good time was had by all for the most part. We really nailed the food this year. Not too much. Not to little. Nothing much left over! (which means I won’t be eating red beans and rice for weeks to come! And I finally deep fryed a turkey to perfection. Special thanks to Mike N. and Mike Z. for all the cooking help (especially for two people who are supposed to be guests) and to Roy and Courtney for the phenominal costumes. Hopefully I’ll have some pictures to put up. Unfortunately I didn’t take any. For some more accounts of the party check out Julia and Jenny’s blogs.

in other news

I had a great conversation with Cindy last night. I’ve agreed to be the videographer for the wedding. I’ve photographed a few weddings before, but this will be a first for me. Thankfully I have a lot of time to think about how to shoot this one. But I’ve promised Cindy and John that the results will be wacky and memorable!

quickie

My home computer seems to have developed a nasty virus. It’s sorta been an issue of when not if this was going to happen. Serves me right for running without virus software or a personal firewall. *Sigh* My procastination comes back to bite me again. Thankfully my files don’t seem to have been corrupted. Un the down side it’s remapped my keyboard. So that’s going to be a pain until I can fix it.

The Mardi Gras is further along than in previous years. I ended up buying two smaller fresh turkey’s to deep fry (rater than go through the pain on defrosting one large one). All the ingredients have been purchased as well. I’ll start cooking tonight and be done tomorrow ’round 6.00pm. Rock on! Hopefully, if I can lick that virus tonight, I’ll have a webcam up and running this year!

odds and ends

to escape work for a moment or two I finally took time to catch up on everyone’s blogs. Here are my comments:

• Heather just redesigned her blog. Very Cool (plus she lists me as a hero blog)!
• Tina made a comment about finding a website about TV shows Jumping the Shark (to understand the reference check out Tina’s site or jumptheshark.com). That website (and its being recently features on lots of radio/tv shows) made the term famous (which many claim caused jumptheshark to jump the shark). However Tina’s blog is as fresh as ever (no sign of a shark there)!
• Kristen updated her blog! yea!
• Joel registered hannahandhersisters.com (which I’ve added to my links!)
• 

  Which drink are you?

• Julia, Aaron was going to direct the wedding (including hiring actors to play us so the pictures would look good) and play the voice of God (who would deliver the vows). The solid gold dancers were for the reception. I’m tellin’ ya babe, you missed out.

a rock ’em sock ’em update

Last night my new gloves and focus mitts came in. Yea! Now I get to play in all the reindeer games during the Shootfighting class! I can pound on Aaron again! Watch out.

In other news, the apartment is pretty clean for the Mardi Gras Party this weekend. I went on the first shopping run and will start cooking officially tonight (although I did mix spices last night). I have decided to drop Crawfish off the party menu. It was just too expensive to drop ship them at this time of year. Also I’m trying to cook much smarter this year so I’m not burnt out halfway through the party.

There’s a new and very cheesy MP3 available to your left. I think I’ll put some better stuff up next week.

testing, testing, testing

because I wanted to support blogger and in hopes that I’d get more stable service I decided to sign up for Blogger Pro. The server is definitely faster and there are some interesting in-line editing options. For example, here’s a picture from a few days ago of myself and Ken on the top of Kodak Tower setting up the birdcam. This was inserted to the blog using the upload file tool which FTP’d the files and generated the HTML and everything. (Yeah I know it probably would have been quicker for me to do it by hand… it’s still cool… don’t rain on my BloggerPro parade!). Without further adu some birdcam pics:

This is from late last week. I was just clearing some gunk off the perch and wishing I had brought my clip on sunglasses (*squint* *squint*). In the background you can see the lot where I park my car and two of the Birdcam cameras. The large unit to the right is the one that we were up there to work on.

What a difference a week makes. This was Monday, during the snow. Kenn were putting the camera back up after we had taken it down to repair it. I’m wearing the super cool (and warm hat) that Jenny made me for Christmas!

Now I’m tightening the bolts on that camera. What you can’t tell is that I’m extended over the railing (an below that empty space) to do that. I guess my fear of heights is finally under control.

Here’s a view from one of the other cameras of my cool new hat as I continue to tighten bolts.

Kenn and I confirm that everything is in the correct position.

While I wait for confirmation that the unit is transmitting, I snap a last minute movie of the nest using my MC3. Note that I remembered to wear my sunglasses in order to maximize my looking cool cool and minimize the amount of glare (’cause there is oh so much of it during a snowstorm).

author’s note: Ok, while the upload feature is pretty cool, the grammer checker leaves a lot to be desired.

a poetic interlude

It’s my blog, so I can indulge myself and sprinkle in some bad poetry/broken prose. This is one that I’ve been toying with for years that seemed oh so appropriate today.

winter

For just a moment

the child holds the hammer

suspended

above her head.

A look of great conviction

crosses her face

and suddenly,

with a great exhale of steam,

she brings it

CRASHING down

SHATTERING

the ice

on the cold, concrete steps

of that small blue house.

She pauses,

again for just a moment,

to examine the damage.

Contented,

she looks up

to wave to a passing car,

and goes

to find her brother.