The upside down house.

That's what we live in right now...because everything is being turned over and cleaned and re-arranged to make room for the babies. At least it feels that way. We only have two more rooms left in the house to clean and arrange, so I guess we're doing ok. My outdoor gear and stuff is making it's way into a storage cabinet in the garage sometime this week, which will clear out pretty much an entire closet. That will be nice.

While Lauren works furiously to clear junk out of the house, I'm busy trying to fill the garage with old two wheel'd gadgets. I found a great deal of a road bike on Craigslist last week and it followed me home, so Lauren let me keep it. It's a nice, older road bike to ride around on the backroads around my house. 14 speeds of fun.

My search for an OLD roadbike was still on, though, so I started asking around here at work and wouldn't you know it, one of the guys had an old Schwinn in his garage, scheduled to go to a yardsale at his neighbors next week. He said if I came to get it this week I could have it. Sounded like a deal to me.

It's purty and yellow at the moment...a little rusty and covered in some cobwebs, but give me a couple weeks and it's gonna shine like a new penny.... Or at least like a 10 year old penny. The bike is from 1975! It's 4 years older than me! I think that's part of the allure of it. Anyway, the old bike is going to be converted to a fixed gear bike, or a singlespeed....I haven't decided yet. Whatever I can do with it and spend less that 10 bucks is what my aim is. We'll see.

Tonight I attack the beast with wrenches and sockets, taking all of the junk I don't need off, and maybe trying to get it down to the bare necessities to see exactly what the bike is, and what I can do with it.

When it's done, with rattlecan paintjob finished and shiny, it will come with me to work and maybe live here part time to act as town runner bike. I do a lot of little errand running here - out to grab a rare take out sandwich, run to the post office, run down to the camera shop for a battery or gizmo...all of which could easily be done on bike. Maybe with a little luck and some e-bay hunting I can find some old fenders for it and even keep it around for winter jaunts - if it's not dangerously winter-ish outside, that is.

So I've got big dreams for the old yellow bike. I just hope with enough effort and know-how, I can get it to where I want it!

Pictures of progress to come soon!

Picture of the day - a little aloha for your day.

Ok, I've been slacking some on the pictures. I shot a whole wedding full of great photos this weekend, though, so maybe with a little luck I can get them organized and get a few up here (with the bride's permission, of course!). Blogger has been acting up with me every time I've tried to post pictures this week...so that's my excuse.

Until I get some wedding images approved and up...here's some photos from our trip to Hawaii a while back. I haven't taken any new photos to use, so I thought I would just play with these and put them up to keep the tradition going.

enjoy!

Picture of the (every other) day.

So I slipped up yesterday and didn't get a photo posted up there. Please refer to my first post about how I was going to TRY to put a photo up every day...that's no guarantee that it will actually happen.

Anyway, here's today's entry. It's a photo of the gears cassette on my bike. I, of course, did some destructive photoshoping to the image to give it film grain and contrasty black and white look, because I'm into that for fun these days.

I'm still hunting for an old road bike frame to tinker with, so if anyone knows of an old mens ten speed in a shed somewhere, or you see one out for the trash, let me know! I'm going to convert it to a fixed gear bike to keep here in the office to ride around town when I have short errands or just need to get out of here for a few.

I've got about a $20 budget to git'r done with, so please let me know if you have an old roady laying around that you can donate.... :)

Oh, and here's the photo!

Picture of the Day-O

Ok Kelly....here it is. Please stop hounding me about it now.... :) Only kidding!



This is an image I whipped around a snapped while taking formal portraits at a wedding this weekend. I was standing there, and the bridal party was yelling for more cocktails or something, not paying a darn bit of attention to what I, or Debby, who was in charge, was trying to make them do. The guy had found a bench off to the side and was looking for something. I didn't want to spook him, so I just held my camera at my waist and snapped a few frames. I was a little frustrated that I cropped him this way at first, but I like it now...it gives a sense of mystery to it.

I converted it to B&W and added the grainyness and harsh contrast with photoshop. I think the more nice digital work I get, the more I miss the look of trusty Kodak T-100 black and white film. The shame - you pretty much have to develop it yourself these days since the labs want a small fortune and your firstborn to do it...and I just don't have that kind of time (or money to spend on the chemicals....)

Hope you all like this one!

New header.

So, today I was supposed to get clobbered by some new project coming down the pike, but as usually, things are dragging out.

Waiting is always the worst. Especially when you know things are on the way, and as soon as they arrive you're job will be to get everything done by the deadline - no matter how late the client is with the delivery of their end of the bargain.

SO anyway, to make a long story short, I'm waiting on stuff to land in my lap today, so I decided to crank out a new header for this site. Since I can't leave, and I can't exactly do anything work related for the next few minutes, I figured it was a good creative outlet.

Hope you like it.

Picture of the day - OFF

Picture of the day

Could be nothing less than photos of our wrecked autos.... Of course!


Lauren's CRV crunched.


My Camry, not as dramatic, but could still be hiding some damage under the dents and scratches.

A day in the life of our bumpers.

Someone has been going around and attaching "stupid people magnets" to mine and my wife's rear bumpers.

They work remarkably well, as in the last 6 weeks we've both been rear-ended. Both times we have been sitting at a light and this magnetic force has propelled these moronic cars into our bumpers.

Keep in mind, my wife is pregnant with twins. Both times she was in the car that was hit. This makes us both very nervous, but both times the babies have been OK as far as we can tell.

The first time I was following Lauren when this red Dodge Caravan stopped behind her... then for some reason gunned it - smashing into the rearend of her less-than-year old Honda CRV. Plastic parts flew and metal dented in. Of course, me seeing this and knowing Lauren was inside was horrifying. I threw my car onto the shoulder and run to make sure she was ok. OK? Well...she was standing in the road throwing obscenities at this stupid woman who hit her. The stupid woman made the mistake of throwing obscenities back at her. I came up beside and told them both to get back into their cars and had to play policeman until Carmel's finest arrived.

I could have knocked that woman out. The best part...she was a nurse. Yep, that's right folks...someone in charge of healing people... I wasn't impressed.

Last night was supposed to be a fun night. We were going to Panera in the new big mall by our house. It had been raining, but the roads were mostly dry. We were sitting at a stoplight when I heard screatching tires behind us and a fast moving red car headed my way. I had just enough time to look to make sure no oncoming traffic was coming and start to point the poor Camry in that direction when "POW" we were hit.

I'm sure I had to look like a man about to kill, because Lauren kept saying "Take a deep breath, take a deep breath..."

I got out of the car and the woman got out, again apologizing profusely and giving me the 100 excuses she had for hitting us. "My brakes weren't working...I was trying to turn...but couldn't, blaa blaaa blaaaaa". I asked her if her brakes weren't working why did I hear them lock up? No answer. Then I said "you know, your brakes were working, they locked up, you couldn't steer because a skidding tire won't turn a car."

"But there's no damage, so I guess we're all ok"

"No, there IS damage, do you see that dent, that paint flaking off, and this scratch" - as I pointed to my bruised bumper.

"Well, I'll get my insurance information."

Darn right lady.

So I stood there, quivering hands, and copied the info.

We went and ate dinner, then went home so she could lay down and make sure both babies passed the "kick count" test - ten kicks in an hour. They both passed, but it was scary.

To say the least, we're both paranoid about driving these days.

Picture of the day

I'm going to try something new. I'm going to TRY very hard to take a picture every day and post it up here. Just something...anything...that I see during the day and take a photo of it. I've been carrying my little compact digital camera around in my bag, and I've decided this is something I've wanted to do for a while. So anyway, here's the first entry. It's an old FD lens for my ancient (but still fun to use) Canon A1 kit. This lens is broken, because I tried to take it apart to remove some of the gunk that's built up inside the lens. It's junk now...but it was basically free when I bought the camera because of the gunk (it's mold...which is terminal to lenses because it can never be really taken care of without destroying the lens...).

I ran a halftone filter on the image, to give it an old catalog feel.

Twin Beds

Today my mom and dad came up to our house to assemble the twin's little cribs. They look really good with their little flowery bed sheets and pinkish-red bumpers.

Apparently we can use the bumpers with the babies until they are old enough to roll around, or move...which is probably just a couple weeks! After that it's recommended that they not have anything in the bed with them (including blankets and stuffed animals, and bumpers) that they could possibly roll over, on top of, or next to and suffocate. It sounds strange, but trust me, I have a list a mile long from our child birth classes of "DO NOT's" for these girls.

I can see now why parents worry all the time. There's just so much information out there to scare you!

Anyway, have a look at the new nursery for two. I hope the girls like it! The circles were painted on the walls before we knew we were having girls, so we may have to go back and paint some more circles in more of a girlie motif!

http://www.madflydesign.com/nursery_web/

What do you think?

Out like a light.

It just occured to me, sitting here hating life working on a recurring project here for a client I constantly have work from, that things could be much worse.

Lauren IM'd me and asked if today was the day that so-and-so was going to be induced. The day that her baby was going to be born. I didn't know. I think it is, but I'm not sure.

And then it hit me.

Babies just come into the world and start living. Life starts just as fast as it can end.

What if today was the day that so-and-so doesn't come home from work? We don't think about that aspect of it until it happens.

Maybe that's bliss in ignorance.

Maybe I should just keep that in mind and be happy to be here in the first place, forget about the boring work I'm doing (that pays the bills...) and be extra careful going home from work. I'd like to do this again tomorrow.

Motorcycle Racing Photos

Yesterday I spoke about my weekend shooting sport bikes. You can check out the site I made to sell images and look at the pictures by going to:

http://www.madflydesign.com/mig

Enjoy!

Zoom Zoom

Yesterday I photographed a motorcycle race for a local club. I spent the entire day there, and covered 3 corners. Unfortunately I wasn't able to move around as freely as I'd have liked, but I guess they have rules and can't make exceptions. It was fun being out on the track, though, right where the action is.

By the end of the day my eyes stung from the exhaust fumes, my skin was covered in grime, my core body temperature was elevated way over what it should be from the heat, and there was a big toothy grin on my face from being out and surrounded by motorcycles all day. It doesn't get much more fun...unless I was the one riding, of course!

I'll be posting the photos on a site for the contestants to purchase in the next few days, and I'll put the link up here for you folks to check out as well if you're interested in seeing the action!

My smoke detectors have it in for me.

Something's been lacking in my life lately...

...and it's a full night's sleep!

I've been thinking it's just all preparation for the upcoming onslaught of sleepless nights once the twins arrive. Everyone knows that new babies don't sleep - at least not at night and not for the first few weeks. Being the involved parent-to-be that I am, I am just guessing this recent stretch of insomnia is my body's way of giving me a glimpse into the near future. Sympathy insomnia. Whatever it is, though, it's just not right.

Last night, I went to bed and turned the TV off right at 10:00. I was beat, but for some reason I couldn't fall asleep. I kept getting hot, then cold, then Lauren would wake up and turn over and I'd be awake again. This went on and on until sometime around 12 or 12:30 - I can't quite remember the last time I saw the clock before I actually fell asleep.

I'd just gotten through my REM cycle and into good, restful sleep when ...

BEEP BEEP!

"What the H*LL was that?" I thought in my half awake stupor...

"Nevermind it...just go back to sleep." I told myself.

Ok...back to sleep again when...

BEEP BEEP!

"Do you hear that?" Lauren said.

By the time she had said "that" I was already out of bed with my glasses on. It's a sound that only happens between 2 AM and 4 AM. It's the sound of a smoke detector telling you it's backup battery is dangerously low and needs to be replaced RIGHT NOW.

AT 3:20AM!

HURRY!

So I begin the always delightful adventure of finding which smoke detector it is that is needing it's battery changed. This requires a tremendous amount of intent listening to silence and patience. Two things I have zero amount of at 3:20 in the morning.

I start by standing in the living room to get a general direction of the beep. Of course, it only happens once every two or three minutes, so I'm standing there about to fall asleep when BEEP! There it is.

Ok, it was coming from somewhere in the hallway or the bedrooms, or maybe the living room. Let me explain something now. My house is SMALL. Like 1200 square foot ranch house small. But we have no less than 9 smoke detectors in the house (and 1 in the garage). They're all wired together and run the on the house's main power. They still have backup batteries, though, for if there is a fire while the power is off.

Having said that, you know that 9 smoke detectors neatly stuffed into every nook and cranny called a "hallway" in this tiny house makes for finding one little beeping one a bit tricky. Especially when the quick little beep bleats out at a deafening loudness. Especially loud at...

you guessed it...

3:20 something in the morning.

So, I'm standing there in the "hallway" the joins two bedrooms and a bathroom. There are 3 detectors in this area, no kidding, 10 feet apart.

Finally, after listening to the beep a few more times (and about 10 minutes) I decide that it HAS to be the one in the middle, because I've changed the other two within the last 3 months or so. So, I take the battery out of it and go back to bed. Not a peep out of this detector all night, and I peacefully sleep out the remaining 2 hours of my night.

I just got a call from my wife who said she's at home now and the beep thing is happening again. I have an hour of tape to record here at work before I can go home to fix it.

A phantom beep? Maybe a jealous detector wants ITS battery changed TOO?

Who knows. But I swear they're trying to kill me!