Snow

A look at the snow falling outside.. still..

Yum.

If you click on these photos you can actually smell how good it was!

So every month or two we get the super treat at work of having Chefs from the Whole Foods store come in and feed us very amazingly good food, and this time they actually shared the recipe! They fed us what you see above, a butternut squash quiche. Only I actually made that tasty quiche in the photo myself for our dinner tonight! It tastes every bit as good as it looks too, even without bacon. (haha)
It was relatively easy with exception to skinning and chopping the squash. That is the huge pile of squash skin after I finally finished peeling in the top photo. Of course the onions were the most painful part. I still haven't put my glasses back on, but the vinegar trick seemed to help out a lot, I should have tried it much earlier into the chopping.

Roaming Photos

Our latest assignment was to roam around the campus and take photos for a collage. I went for the old rusty stuff since there is always plenty of that kind of thing around. I have some really interesting shots, but they might gross out the average viewer. (and its only rust!) Above is the top of a fire hydrant, I don't know if they painted them such a blah yellow, or they have faded that much over the years.

What is happenin?

Busy as always trying to balance work and school. This weekend is the MS Bike Ride, which I plan on doing half of - 80 miles. We will be riding from Peculiar To Sedalia, and stopping for lunch halfway in Warrensburg MO. Our cycling team from work has dwindled to two people, so we are going to try to ride with the Cerner group, which should be huge. There were over 1700 riders pre-registered for the event, it should be a lot of fun!

Here is another GD project, combining two or more images.

Well Hello!

I haven't been blogging, because it usually relies upon me having a camera and running around taking photos of things. Well, the camera has gotten a probably deserved vacation this summer, and nothing really exciting has happened yet. I have started my newest year of college with a change of scenery at Park University, in quaint little Parkville MO. I hopefully will have one more year after this one, with my Graphic Design degree, and possibly an English Minor.
Here are some fun little projects from my intro to graphic design software class.

Bored & Jobless

I never did like not having a job, and I still don't. Even when I had paid severance from Grapevine I still preferred to go out and get a job. So it stinks that the only job I have is looking for a job! Between job hunting I've decided to enter some Graphic Design contests for everything from kayaks to post/invitation cards. Above is a miniature of my kayak design, except I do not know if the kayak name is appropriate, it is a new watercraft for surfing river rapids. The actual design in Illustrator is over 7ft long and takes up about 44MB of memory.
I hope I get a job before my free trial of Illustrator/Photoshop/Dreamweaver runs out..

Happy Moms, Grandmas, Aunties etc!

The one & only Grandma Irving!

Powell Gardens

Today provided a much welcomed break to the trend of daily summer job searching from the confines of the basement. Since I am unemployed still I tagged along with Mom, Grandma, and a bunch of other folks from the Church for a visit to Powell Gardens. I haven't been there since Booms & Blooms last summer, and my camera & I have really missed it. It was a shame the sun wasn't very cooperative for photography but I still had fun.
Here are a couple of photos I will drop some more in a later post.

Hmm

Hmm... now that I am back home I guess I will have to change the description on my blog since Kansas City isn't exactly the middle of nowhere. I wonder how hard it will be to keep up with this since I am home too. I know I have a lot more photo practice I want to be working on so I have that going for me.
Otherwise, I have spent most of my time unpacking slowly and searching for a good summer job.. or even a random summer job. I may try something completely new just because it is going to be a tough market.
Professional dog walking here I come!

Great Bend

Here are a couple soccer photos..

At Last

I don't know what he was thinking rounding third base with such an expression, but I think I feel the same way. I'm rounding third and getting ready to head home! I was surprised they played Friday the dugouts were mud bogs and they put some boards down to walk on which didn't really help.
The weekend is pretty much over, we spent most of yesterday in Great Bend, KS for a two game scrimmage between Sterling, Hastings, and Great Bend. Although our team got whooped I think they had a good time playing; several new recruits and a few alumni players came along to play.

Finals again..

Regular classes have officially come to an end! Finals start on Monday and will be over for me by Wednesday; we get today off for "reading day". I personally don't plan on reading anything school related but some students might I suppose.
It will be a busy last weekend depending a little on the weather. There is supposed to be a baseball game at noon, but when I drove by this morning the field and dugouts looked pretty mucky; tomorrow there is supposed to be a soccer scrimmage between Barton and Sterling which will probably be canceled or someones fields will end up ruined. Sunday afternoon Godfrey is going to speak at Westbrook Baptist about Kenya and the Compassion program-which the church supports.
The wild looking image above is my final project for painting. He made the mistake of telling us we could do it however we wanted as long as it had lots of color. I took the Picasso approach to mine and really had a lot of fun doing it.

... vs. McDonald's

I really like to follow Photojournalism along with my Graphic Design because they fit together quite well; the whole images and words things. Great photos and stories are fun to follow anyway even if you are not into the technical nerdy side of things. I was reading a post between some of these characters whom discovered that the average McDonald's salary is higher than that of a photojournalist. Most joked that it was even a better deal because they would get free meals, and they were already very familiar with the product line.
Check it out..

It came from KS...

Actually as hard as the wind was blowing yesterday this specimen could have come from anywhere. I was out shooting the baseball game, and this scary spiney bush blew in and got stuck on the bleachers. I hope to never visit where something like this grows, and if I do I hope I have some good boots on. The wind was terrible, it kept blowing off the pitchers hats when they threw the ball, but it was at least blowing the proper direction to assure over the wall home runs...just not for our team. I dug dirt out of my ears on the drive back home and even after I scrubbed with the wash rag I could still get some out; there is probably some floating around my brain it was so windy.
On a more normal note I'm happy to get to go home again this coming weekend, and I hope the weather holds out so I can go play kickball with some friends. Two weeks of Sterling College left to go.

Mm Mm Free!

Yesterday was the Grand Opening for the new student run Quiznos in Sterling. All of the students and faculty were invited for a free meal throughout the day. The line was out in the parking lot everytime I went by but a group of people in the art dept decided to go about 2:30 so I tagged along. I indulged in a free Classic Italian sub, which strangely, was not prepared by any of the students.
I spent the rest of the day, 7 hours or so, tackling my latest graphic design project. It is really weird to have to design something with only 3 colors: black/white/gold, and have it not turn out looking like it came out of a Dick Tracy cartoon.
Oh, gosh the ugly thing to the right is one my still lifes from Painting class. I figured, I should put one up since everyone wants to see them so much. Yes, it really was an ugly pink bowl.

Resume Nowhere

I think it is funny how they tend to shovel snow here in Lyons particularly around the main square. There was definitely a larger amount of snowfall here than what we got back in KC. There is probably a good 3.5 ft drift in the back yard, and a foot on the roof of the neighbors side of the duplex. I downloaded a cheapo panorama maker and threw this photo together of East Ave & Main. This pile is actually smaller than some of the others.

It is that time

For Spring Break!
It began for me yesterday really since all of my Professors kindly canceled their classes for Friday. Godfrey was not so fortunate; he has an exam to take today. We will be heading back to KC Saturday morning. No real significant plans so far. I will get a guided tour of Park University on Tuesday and hopefully meet some of the Prof's from their Art/GD departments. I might try to go see a High school soccer match, but it looks like it is supposed to rain the entire week. Will probably do a little summer break job hunting while I'm home too; can't start too early with this blah economy. There is a softball tournament here this weekend but I'm not sure I want to go out there, it is not exactly warm out, and it looks like it could rain any time now.

At Last

I'd like to say it has been a slow week but it has not really been. Probably because Spring Break begins this Friday is why time is "slowing".

In Painting we are doing a full blown abstract piece; you could not have found a happier class of people when they were told they could throw paint randomly on a board. Our teacher encouraged students to use a giant brush and their palette knives or other objects to create their paintings. It is certainly a nice break from the continuous still life works.
We have also started a new project in Graphic Design class: the Matchbox holder. It is one thing to have to create a design for a flat purpose, another for the menu.. but this, is a Challenge! We have to design something that actually folds up into a display box to hold objects. We each selected our package designs out of a monster book of cut-outs the Professor has. I think I spent about 30 minutes trying to figure out how to put mine together to determine what folds which way and where and which sections will the graphics appear on. It is by far the most difficult thing I have had to do.
(The photo is from a softball double header yesterday, they beat the other team so bad they ended up mercy ruling both games!)

Well then..

This was one of those strange busy unexciting weeks. I spent most of the week working on a group presentation for my Sociology class. We had to present on the topic of Families; specifically within the Sterling community. We surveyed and video'd a wide variety of people: students, single moms, adopting families, old folks, young families etc. Of course I turned all of our information and images into a Magnificent Powerpoint - yes, I might be bragging.The Professor really enjoyed it but it took too much of his class time away from him.

I felt it was time for another strange photo so, this is an edit of Dario playing tennis at school.

about that storm..

So, we spent all day Saturday at the ball fields watching a double header which ended around 5 PM. There were some clouds rolling in, but they were not the normal ominous storm clouds you usually see in KS when you are about to encounter a substantial thunderstorm. Apparently not many others thought they were menacing either. As we were leaving it started to sprinkle, and then all of a sudden it switched to straight torrents of hail. I had to pull off the road because the road was completely covered in ice. You would think these were winter photos, but it was still over 50 degrees when this stuff started coming down. We saw 3 motorcycles, and we stopped to ask this guy if he wanted to sit in the car until it stopped. I think he was actually enjoying himself though out there in the chaos. Our friend Jordan had also taken his motorcycle to the theater in Hutch to see The Watchmen, when the tornado sirens went off he said they stopped the movie, and he went and got his bike and pushed it into the lobby of the theater before heading to the storm shelter. It was a strange storm, it never got very dark, and there was very little thunder or lighting where we were at when it hit.

More Graphic Design

Our current assignment for Graphic Design is to make an interchangeable dessert menu for a fictional restaurant dreamed up by the Professor called Granny's House. Basically it has to be made so that pictures of the desserts can be switched out whenever the special changes. This menu would be a tri-fold display on every table.

I whipped this out in one class period!

More about this later

This an image from yesterdays storm.. yes that is hail.

Dinner to Go

I didn't feel like cooking anything, and wanted something wih lots of veggies so I decided to go to Subway for dinner. I also felt the need to take advantage of the nice weather; so I elected to walk to Subway, and then eat at home. It was a nice walk, I observed some rather clumsy pugs in a gated yard. One was walking around the porch where a lady was seated and it randomly tumbled off the porch backwards. Then it figured out I was walking by so it came charging through the yard only to be sent somersalting by a patch of some kind of tall grass. After recovering it then tried to put itself through the fence which looked pretty uncomfortable. There was also an encounter with a sprinkler that was hidden behind an office sign. Overall it was a nice fun walk and took about 35 minutes.

Not Bad

Today was not quite as nice as yesterday which was about as perfect as it gets when it comes to weather. I spent about 2 hours outside chasing around soccer balls watching the womens (and a few guys) team play with the latest recruit.
Thursday also means newspaper day! I actually look forward to reading the paper now that I contribute to it. The picture with this is my little feat of joy. I am already wondering if I will be able to continue shooting when I transfer to Park next fall. Either way I will still be out there especially for soccer season. Watching that game from the photo was kind of awkward I felt like I should be rooting for both teams.

Warm!

Yes, I am pretty excited about the temperature expected today. So excited I had to dig out a nice flower photo to go with it! It could get as warm as 86 degrees outside. I am going to go watch a new recruit play this afternoon who as the coach says is "very good"; a rather ominous yet positive description.
Things have been busy as usual here; yesterday was advising day so there were no classes. I spent the entire day working on my project for 2-D Design so I don't have to stay through my one class on Friday. The mens soccer team has another tournament this weekend and the movie "The Watchmen" comes out so this will be a very entertaining weekend!

2 for 1

Two posts are better than none, and better than one! Since the last one did not have a photo I felt compelled to add another. These are

two of my 2-D design pieces from this semester; my two latest ones are on the "wall of fame" still. I am kind of bummed that one of them is upside down on the wall, but oh well. These are made from paper, card stock, and foam board. They are not very easy to photograph either..

The top one (blue) is our Monochromatic (one color) study, and the bottom one was an Analogous study. Until our last project we were not allowed to create anything recognizable.

Another sport bites the dust

So I was strangely excited that Sterling's first Tennis match was supposed to be today. I emailed the coach to find out where they play since could be either the college or highschool..no reply. Before heading to the weekly newspaper meeting I noticed that there were no people gathered around the Tennis courts so I decided to pop into the coach's office to see if the games were cancelled. I didn't know if Tennis is one of those "fair" weather sports and it is still pretty chillly today. (After all they cancelled Baseball & Softball already due to weather - thank goodness because it was too cold to stand out there with the camera.) After a brief conversation I discovered that the Tennis season had been scrapped, for reasons unknown to me still.
Strangely this is second sport that has mysteriously disappeared since I've been here at Sterling. Womens golf vanished without a word from anyone, not even a courtesy email to the students. I just happened to be perusing the web site one day to see that it had been removed.
This College has an interesting habit of causing things and people to go away.

Busy Busy

It has been as expected a busy couple of days. Yesterday was my B-day, so we went to the Potrillo for some food and watched some Euro Cup matches. I spent the rest of the evening working on my 2-D design piece then trying to figure out what was wrong with Stir's web site. (school paper) Today was equally busy, I spent most of the afternoon actually fixing the site, then headed over the the gym for the first night of Basketball Conference Tournament. The guys team won their first round, and the ladies will play tomorrow. The evening pleasantly concluded with watching the guys play some indoor soccer, which is always lots of fun. Now I get to finally go to sleep!

All Done

Well as far as I'm concerned this weekend is over! We spent all of Saturday out and about in KS. The mens soccer team played in an indoor tournament in Hesston KS, which was a bigger town than I thought it might be. They had an interesting indoor facility with half walls but still a big square. It was ok for soccer, but terrible for spectating. You had to elbow your way up to the front of the walls or find some short people to stand behind. I still prefer grass indoor to these weird tile floors.
(That is Henry on left in photo from the tourney)

After the tournament we drove down to Wichita in search of an appropriate Birthday dinner. We settled for Red Lobster which was fun because Godfrey had never seen lobsters in a tank before. I stuffed myself with Chedder biscuits, Shrimp, and Wood Grilled Salmon. It was a Fantastic dinner!

Chilly Morning & Flickr

We will be going to Hesston for an indoor soccer tournament today. I decided to create a Flickr site to throw all my baseball photos in since there are so many of them. I will eventually add other stuff but since there is a bandwidth limit I will probably stick to baseball for now.
It would be nice to get some indoor photos today, but who knows, this place is new to me.

Flickr Site (click here!)
I added a link over there on the right so you don't have to try to find this post as it gets older.

My Advert.

Our latest project in Graphic Design was to create an advertisement that might be found in a magazine or some sort of other publication. We had the option of using a real product or making up our own. With the Digital TV transition I thought it would be fun to create something related to the old tele's and antennas now wasting away out there. I was hoping we could use a lot of image for this one, but we had to have more text. The facts are real it was kind interesting research to perform.
My color selection is kind of weird; my intentions really were to make it ugly. I figured the abnormal colors would make it stick out and cause people to read at least some part of it.

Study Break

My brain is weary from studying for my Sociology test so I thought I would take a break and throw a couple more photos up here.

Both of these are cropped a little abnormally. I wanted to show Cooper Hall in the background of the photo on the left; it is a really neat old building.

One Fine Day

Once again we are graced with a single day of good weather here in Lyons/Sterling KS. I took full advantage by going out to the Warriors baseball game, and snapping a photo or two hundred. As usual for Sterling the wind was whipping around like crazy and I feel like all of my skin is covered with a nice layer of dirt. The Warriors easily defeated Central Christian University.
After the game I came back to Lyons and spent some more time outside walking with a little jogging too.

The rest of the week will be pretty busy; basketball, more baseball, and the Hesston indoor tournament this weekend. I hope the weather stays on the reasonable side for the remainder of it.

Funny Kids

The past couple of games I have had some amusing interactions with Coach Morris' daughter who is at the extreme silly age. I was kneeling down shooting photos by the entrance to the gym so she came and sat down next to me with a bag of popcorn. Obviously she dropped some pieces here and there but out of the corner of my eye I saw her snatch a piece off the gym floor and eat it. I immediately interrogated how she could possibly eat popcorn off the filthy gym floor.

"If I eat it fast enough it's Ok!"
Speaking of silly.. here is the home crowd doing the "Cheerleader Pose" aka Spirit Fingers
(Good luck for the free throw shooter)

When it rains

Depending upon age may determine your answer to that question, but in this case it is Play Inside.
This weekend was the annual Barton indoor tournament out circa Great Bend KS. I did not go and watch the girls play but from what I heard I was probably better off watching the baseball game. Sterling had two men's teams that entered and although some of the games were awesome to watch they failed to make it to the finals. I'm not sure why I took the camera since I knew my photos would not turn out, but we might as well try. There were definitely some photos that I really wished would have worked out because they would have been awesome!

A nice day for Ball

It was plenty nice out today so I actually put on the sunscreen and headed out to catch a double header for the men's baseball team. They delivered a brutal 19-1 win over Hutch Community College in the first game. I got bored and was hungry waiting for the second game to start so I headed back home to enjoy the rest of the day with some pizza and a nice long walk.

Coffee Night

I spent last night doing a photo shoot for the newspaper covering the CAB (campus activities) Coffee Night. It was actually pretty fun to hang out at.

It was a little difficult to take photos because they turned off most of the lights except over the performers and left little tea candles and Christmas lights on the floor for people to get around by.
The music was great; several people played guitar, piano, and an amazing spoons and poetry performance. It kept me up a little late but that's ok because they had a wide variety of Coffee, Hot Chocolate, and Apple Cider to keep everyone happy. (and some really awesome snacks!)

More Winter Darn!

Wow there are so many things to blog about today!
Obviously today is Groundhog Day, the holiday that could be either good or bad depending on the weather. This year it turned out to be double bad..
1. It is really cold this morning.. bah
2. The Groundhog saw his Shadow..No early Spring.. Bah!
In other news the Super Bowl was awesome to watch even though I was rooting for the Cardinals and they lost it was still quality entertainment right down to the end! Pepsi had both the Best and Worst commercials in my own opinion.(raise eyebrow now) I was highly disappointed with the MacGyver spoof attempt with R Dean Anderson trapped on an exploding ship. My favorite being the Diet Pepsi commercial with guys randomly getting beat up by their friends; good old slapstick for the win.

More stuff to Blog about but it is time for me to go back to class!
The image is my desktop background, something I threw together real quick this weekend.
Nakupenda is "I love you" in Swahili.

Entertain Yourself

There isn't really any reason for me to be inside right now, because its the last day of January and it is a whopping 65 degrees outside already. Could old man winter be setting us up for a disappointing Groundhog Day? Probably so..
Godfrey is also one of those strange people that is obsessed with the arms length self photograph which I think I will never understand why people like to do. If you have a giant megapixel camera, why do you want hold it right in front of your face? Oh well.. here is one of his photos cropped and tweaked to make a little more abnormal. Ok, a lot abnormal.

Tea!

Gosh, it is pretty much February already. How time flies when its too cold to do anything but sit inside and think about how cold it is outside. Of course when I sit and think about how cold it is I usually have a piping hot cup of tea handy to ward off any of those accompanied chilling feelings. So not much has been going on otherwise. Go to class listen to lectures, paint, graphic design something. This semester is quite different from all of the others I've had; homework is pretty much non existent but I am constantly having to read something almost every day.
I am happy to have completed my first project in Graphic Design 3, a newsletter. We were allowed to create the newsletter about anything we wanted so I of course chose Tea! Pardon the strange picture that is a screen shot of the pdf so some of the text is a little weird looking. It took quite a long time to make the entire thing; the text itself obviously took the least amount of time. It is nice to spend hours working on something you actually enjoy. Wish I could say the same for some of my other classes, yes, I'm talking about Painting oh those endless still lifes are boring.

Have a Nice Day!

It is always nice to have a break from the frigid wind driven below zero temperatures. The last two days in fact have been quite reasonable!
For a change we decided to drive to McPherson to see a movie, since it is actually a much shorter drive time although a little less populated and exciting than Hutch.
Movie of Choice? Gran Torino!
A truly fantastic, funny, sad, and real movie. I hate to spoil it for folks so I'll just say it was one great flick.
The photo is compliments of Godfrey who now lives with me in the Duplex thanks to the not so great office politics of the college. We operate on completely different time schedules so by the time he is eating breakfast its almost lunchtime for me. I was sitting at the table watching him eat and making faces.

The Facts

Here they are be excited!

1. Now in year 1.5 of College at Sterling College, of Sterling, KS.
   
2. Classes this semester: Sociology, Graphic Design 3, Color & Design, Painting 1, E-Commerce, Phys Ed.
3. I will be working for the College Paper this Semester: The Stir.
4. I have "Retired" from organized soccer.
5. Man is it cold and windy out here!

Things I already miss from home!

1. Family & Friends
2. My Bed
3. The Dogs
   
4. A Movie Theatre much less than 30 miles away
5. Wii Raving Rabids TV, and Yoga
6. The better food selection

Kansas City from the Liberty Memorial