Photographic Expedition No. 1

Yesterday I went on my first photographic expedition. I thought there would be many when I purchased my new camera, but life has conspired to delay my first one, as life often does. I felt that an expedition should involve a quest, so I decided to make my first quest the U.S. Brig Niagara, which is a recreation of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry's flagship and is based right here in Erie, Pennsylvania...

When I got downtown to the ships birth, there was no tall ship to be had. I know it had been here on Wednesday when I had passed by this place... I wondered where it had gotten off too and decided to look around for it...I found many sailing vessels, but not quite the one I was looking for...I even found old sailing ships, though they were still not quite the tall ship I was looking for...I looked out over the bay, and though I found Perry's monument over on our peninsula, Presque Isle, I did not find his ship...
I even zoomed in on his monument, thinking perhaps it was hiding (though how could you hide such a large vessel? I just like the zoom feature), but alas still no ship...I searched the waters of the bay for this ship, but found only ducks...And more ducks...I found a new Convention Center being built...I found a tall tower... and I thought, if I went up in it, I could see the whole bay and find this missing ship...Yes, a very tall tower...But alas the tower was closed so I could not use it to find the Brig... Where else should I look? I decided to journey around the bay, and go out onto the peninsula, where I could see Lake Erie, and perhaps find my lost ship out there plying the waves, as tall ships often do...On my journey I found a clown fish, though there are many fish here...I found a big blue frog, there are many of them here as well, if you know where to look... This one's in love...I finally made it out to Presque Isle and looked back to where I had come from, thinking perhaps it had come back, but still no tall ship...I found Perry's Monument that I had seen from the other side of the bay, but his ship was still not here... I grew dejected...I peered out onto Lake Erie and my heart rose! There were many boats here, perhaps one was the one I sought...But I found only beautiful sandy beaches, and the blue water of the lake, and no tall ship...
I found many colored flags fluttering in the wind, but these were not the big white, square sails and the rigging that I was looking for...I even found seagulls flying in the breeze, but they were not really seagulls at all... But a mere illusion...

So, sadly I headed home... My grand quest a failure... and when I got home I checked the Brig's website, and found that the Niagara was off visiting neighbors... Which had I checked before I left, I would have known she was not here, and there would have been no need to go off on this foolhardy expedition. I could have saved my self all this time and trouble...

Afterwards I realized that journeys do not always take you where you thought they would, and you do not always find what you are looking for...

Sometimes marvelous things find you instead...

"It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end."

-Ursula K. LeGuin

Not Knowing...

After my fathers funeral I went over to talk to my oldest brother who was outside of the church where many of us had gathered. He was holding the folded American flag that had draped my father's casket (my father had been a World War II vet). The flag was originally presented to my mother after the ceremony, but later she chose to give it to my brother for reasons only she knows. I said to my brother "Every string in that flag represents each time our dad paced through the living room and screamed at the television during the siege".

I had to explain this to him because apparently no one had ever told him the story. I was very young, about six, and though I remember it quite well, I can't really say I understood what was going on at the time. It was during the Vietnam War when my eldest brother was a Marine stationed at the base in Khe Sahn. The base had been surrounded and for many days the Marines were trapped in this very dangerous place, often fighting hand to hand. During that war, freedom of the press meant that every night during the evening news the terrible pictures of war were flooded straight into the homes of Americans all across the country. Every night my father would come home and pace back and forth through the living room ranting at the television "why can't we get those boys out of there!" The truth... why they couldn't get my brother out of there. A type of insanity had taken over my father, so worried he was for his son. Yes though I was very young I remember the ranting, and raving, and pacing very well, and I remember my father asking me questions, not that he expected any kind of an answer from a six year old, but just because he needed someone to ask, these questions that had no answer, and I just happened to be there.

My brother seemed very happy to hear this story, though I was surprised that no one had ever told him it before. During the siege there were no letters, so, no story was ever relayed, and by the time he came home, most people just wanted to forget about the war. I think it was a good time to tell him the story, certainly better than had we been able to tell him during the siege, because simply put, sometimes you are better off not knowing, no matter how much you desperately want to know.

My father certainly would have been better off not knowing the perils that surrounded his son. It certainly would have saved a lot of wear and tear on my father's nerves not to mention to carpet in the living room. It may have even saved my father's and mother's marriage, though doubtful, that ended shortly after that. This madness surely served no purpose, and benefited no one, and if it in some way made my father feel better, had he not known the particulars of my brothers situation, there would have been nothing for him to have to feel better about.

My brother didn't need to know about the state our father and the family was in at that time. He was busy dealing with the situation that surrounded him and the last thing he needed was to be distracted from the job he was doing by news of his fathers "mental deterioration" (for lack of a better word). I believe he was better off thinking that everything was just fine at home.

Yes, I think that quite often one is better off not knowing, or at least there may come a better time to find out what you really didn't want to know about in the first place...


"Where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise."

-Thomas Gray


PS: If you have a poor opinion of the war, the men and women that served in it, or the things they had to do to get through it, by all means, when in my presence, feel free to keep your comments to yourself. Because in that case, I'm much better off not know what you think...

Still Standing...

This is not the post I wanted to write about him but sometimes life leaves us little choice in the matter.

A while back I wrote a post about my mother and I always said I would get around to writing a post about my father, but that has always been me, that I get around to doing things in my own time. We always seem to think that we have more time than we really do... but sometimes we don't...

The first thing you must understand about my father is he was not a perfect person or by any means a perfect father, but he did give us everything we needed. No, we are not talking in a financial sense, but much more important things. He gave us qualities of heart and soul that made us the people we are today. He gave us laughter, intelligence, strength and an openness of mind necessary to ferret out the truth. I see in my brothers, of whom I have three, the kind of people I want to be like, and there are no other people I would rather be around. It is very clear they get these qualities from him.

When we gathered at my one brothers house on Thursday and the reverend came over, he wanted to hear stories of my father, as he had never met him before, none of us held anything back. I'm sure my brother's reverend had done this many times, but I doubt he had encountered a family quite like this. We wondered, near the end of the evening, if he maybe thought we were a little bit wacked, but if he expected weeping and sadness and boasting of what a great man my father was, he was in for quite a shock, when he received honesty, and laughter, and maybe some stories that most families would have left unsaid to a man of the cloth. I'm sorry but my father didn't raise us that way. The reverend did know my one brother well, so hopefully that was enough warning of what he was about to encounter so that we weren't too much of a shock to him, or maybe he was surprised to find out that my brother wasn't unique and there were actually more people like him out there on this planet, either way I think the reverend handled it well. No, we are not saints and you will find that out very quickly after being around us a short time, but we are also very proud of who we are, the type of men our father made us to be.

The last ten years or so had been very rough on my father. It was about that time that his diabetes had gotten so bad that one day while out driving, his sugar dropped to such a low level that he passed out behind the wheel and hit a tree, breaking his hip and shattering his elbow on his right side. It was about then that he had to start taking insulin injections and could no longer try to hide his illness from the rest of us. A few years later we had to take his license away and shortly after that he had his first bad heart attack, the doctors said very little of his heart was still working and he must have had other small heart attacks before then. Since then, the diabetes had taken its toll on his body and especially his legs. We knew he was going down hill, and the family had plenty of warning to prepare themselves, but some people don't give up easily or go down quickly. If I have learned anything from my family, and especially from my father, it's that you are tougher than you think you are, and life is going to knock you down again and again and again, and damn it, you get yourself back up and face it until you have nothing left to face it with! Oh, and a good belly laugh in the face of all that adversity will certainly help you get through.

Three weeks ago my eldest brother went over to my dads place and found him collapsed on the floor. He was taken to the hospital where it was determined that he had had a stroke and another heart attack, and could no longer see or use his left side. After about a week they determined that little could be done for him and moved him into a home, where after ten days, he finally had nothing left to face it with.

This last Tuesday I finally got the call, my father, my very best friend and my one and only hero, who was almost 80, had passed on. This weekend the clan gathered to pay homage to a very strong man, maybe not a perfect man, but a very strong man none the less, a man who made all that knew him stronger. Yes there were tears, but they were all tears of laughter because life is going to knock you down and it may hurt you, but you never give it the satisfaction of knowing it did, and always get back up, until you absolutely cannot get back up one more time and after you get up, laugh in its face. You are much stronger than you can possibly ever imagine...

Oh, by the way, have you heard the one about?...

It takes courage to live—courage and strength and hope and humor. And courage and strength and hope and humor have to be bought and paid for with pain and work and prayers and tears.

-Jerome P. Fleishman

Not Impulse Buying...

Yesterday I was watching one of my new chipmunk friends making a spectacle of himself on my back porch mere feet from me. He couldn't see me through the glass window of the French door so the first thought that came to mind was to grab my digital camera and snap a few shots of him, but then I sighed and said "why bother, the pictures won't come out well anyways."

My old Kodak DC3800 had become a real disappointment. It was a good camera in its day but as with all electronics these days, "Its day" didn't last very long. It had a whopping 2 mega pixels, an 8 meg memory card, and no zoom capabilities, that pretty much makes it about as good as any camera phone these days. It really wasn't all that expensive of a camera to begin with and I have really wanted to get a better one, but I'm just not a spender. I'm the person who always worries about the "what ifs". What if the car breaks down? What if I loose my job? So consequently I'm always saving my money.

I had finally had it with that camera and after the chipmunk incident, immediately hopped into the karaoke battlewagon and headed off to the store. Now this does not qualify (in my mind) as impulse buying, as I had thought about it for a long time, and it wasn't like I was at the store right when the "desire to purchase" came over me. Ok, so a new camera wasn't high on my list of "needed things" to get, it was more like on a separate wish list. There certainly are much more important things that I could have kept saving my money for. The thing is, I have been working a lot of overtime lately, and saving every dime (can you hear me convincing myself in my head), and haven't splurged on anything in quite some time, and so don't I deserve a "little" extravagance for myself?

Looking over the cameras in the store it pretty quickly came down to two, an Olympus and a Canon (their most expensive models). The best part was I had two of the girls in the camera department helping me out and it turned out one girl owned the Olympus and one owned the Canon and I managed to get them to argue over who's camera was better. The girl who owned the Canon (the slightly less expensive model) did admit that the other girls camera was better, but proceeded to rattle off a list of reasons why her camera was better, and she put up a pretty convincing argument, the best of which was that the Canon had a fold out LCD screen that you could point downward and shoot while holding the camera high over your head (she showed me a picture she took at a concert by using just such a method). The part of that which I liked the best was that you folded the screen face against the camera body protecting it; the Olympus' screen was affixed to the back of the camera, leaving it exposed. The Canon finally won out (I never buy the most or least expensive of anything and I was maybe feeling a little guilty about the money I was spending).

So after picking out a few peripherals, I left the store with my new "Canon Power Shot S3 IS" with 6.0 Mega Pixels, 1.0 gig memory card, 12X zoom and 0.1 second between shots (I missed a shot of some deer in my backyard the other day with my old camera because it took too long to be ready to fire again) in hand and also a DVD copy of "Apocalypto" by Mel Gibson (another thing I didn't need, but it was an excellent movie especially if you like Mayan and Aztec cultures like I do) and thereafter proceeded to go shutter happy (how was that for a run-on sentence?). I've spent most of the weekend (except stopping to watch the movie) taking shots, loading and playing with the software that came with it, and reading the plethora of materials that came with this complicated machine. There are a lot of different settings, which I am just starting to learn what they all do. I was very happy to find that it has a "Diopter Adjustment Dial" that allows you to focus in the view finder, just like focusing a pair of binoculars, because while I was in the store I was unable to admit that all the little icons in the view finders were blurry, and I thought it was just because I need a new pair of glasses (another thing on the list), and the girls might chuckle at my poor eyesight (you think about these things when you're a guy and you get... older).

So from now on my blogger posts should contain more and better pictures even though I still have to edit them for size (the pictures, not the posts), as no one wants to have to wait to download a 3 meg picture. I've included in this post new pictures of "Tunneler" the chipmunk who dug a tunnel under my sidewalk to my flower bed and has an amazing ability to "dive" into the bark in the flower bed and pop up somewhere else, also some better pictures of "Chubby" the groundhog and "Oscar" the red squirrel who live in my shed. I hope you all have had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend, I'm just glad to go back to work tomorrow so that I can pay for this shopping spree...


Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.

-Sydney J. Harris

My First Time (blush)...

So I've been tagged by the dearest Pobble, and yes that is the very first time I've ever been tagged so I guess that means I've finally lost my meme virginity, "Pobble, was it good for you?"

The rules of the tagging are as follows:

* Post a similar post like this one and add a link back to the person who tagged you.

* List 5 reasons why you blog about the things you blog on your blog.

* Choose your 5 tag ‘victims’ and tag them nicely.

(Hey pobble, just what qualifies as tagging nicely?)

* Write a comment on their blog letting them know that you tagged them.

Ok, this seems simple enough on the outside, as the question of "why one blogs" comes up occasionally, but I've always thought that "I really don't know why I blog". Since I have been tagged I must try to come up with at least some sufficient answers, so here goes...

1.) First and foremost "I like meeting new people and making new friends". Many bloggers feel they must write about "exciting things" in order to keep their bloggers entertained, but I've always just enjoyed hearing about the everyday "goings on" in people's lives. I become attached to the bloggers that I read daily and become saddened when a blogger leaves, feeling like I've lost a friend. It's all about the human contact...

2.) "I love to write". My biggest problem with blogging has always been trying to keep my posts down to a manageable size (and you thought it was my grammar). I spend a lot of time, when making a post, just trying to cut it down to something reasonable. If I ever posted my first draft it would likely fill up half of my blog page...Yes, I tend to ramble on a bit...

3.) I like "being able to speak my mind without interruption". Just let me say what I have to say, and then make your comments. I find quite a few rude people these days who will try to "speak over you" right when you are in the middle of a sentence, which I find quite annoying. I also have a dislike for "conversation hogs" that won't let you get a word in edgewise. Blogging, by it's nature, promotes polite conversation (Ok, down off of my high horse)...

4.) There is something very special about putting your thoughts up on the web and knowing that someone from half way around the world may be reading them at this very moment. I like hearing what people think "straight from them", not from the media telling me how people think on varying subjects...

5.) "I love the comments people put on your posts". It's when you find out that people all over the world really are just like you deep down inside...

Now for the tagging bit. I don't normally tag people when I put up a meme, rather I like to just let them steal the meme if they like it because I know some people don't particularly like being tagged, but "hey, it's part of the rules on this one", so here goes...

"Spider"

"Tai"

"Kimber"

"Liz"

"Hope"

I know a few of these bloggers have been absent for one reason or another (as I have myself) and a couple are "off on adventures" but who knows I may get lucky and get a response...

I want to thank "The One and Only Pobble" for tagging me and giving me the "hey where have you been" virtual smack upside my head. I know I have been absent a lot lately and I just want to let you know I'm still alive. I hope this posts, as my last post never found its way to the net. It still sits "in draft" as blogger refused to put it up and after three days of trying I kind of gave up on it.


Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.

-James Barrie

Afraid of the Dark?

When I was a wee tot about a millennia ago a bedroom became available in my house and my mother decided that it was time that I should have my own room. So they moved me into the bedroom next to the one I had shared with my older brother pretty much for all of my entire young life. Now when it came time to go to bed my mother thought that I might be afraid of the dark, though I had slept in complete darkness my whole life, this would be the first time alone. So to head off this problem she decided to leave the desk lamp on hoping that this would help me to not be afraid of sleeping alone in the dark. I screamed bloody murder.

The desk lamp threw-off garish shadows from the bed, closet and desk, which I was sure all the monsters in the world were hiding in. After several nights of this my mother decided to try it without the lamp, and I slept just fine. As it turned out I was maybe the only child on the planet who was not afraid of the dark but indeed afraid of the light. My entire life I have spent taking great comfort in the night, feeling very safe surrounded by the darkness, which I could slip off into and none of my enemies could find me. There has never been any fear for me when the sun goes down which seems to be a sentiment very few people on the rest of this planet seem to share.

When I originally moved into this house eight years ago with my now ex-wife there was street light in the back yard up at the peak of our roof which illuminated the entire back yard turning night to day. The switch for this light was down in the basement, not easily accessed, but since this large halogen light had a sensor that would turn it on at dusk and shut it off when the sun rose it was always left on. My wife and the kids were greatly comforted by this light and the only time I remember it being shut off was on a couple occasions when the ex and I went skinny dipping in our pool and at least one occasion when we slept out in a tent which was when I found out that our neighbor's young adult kids liked to skinny dip in our pool as well. The wife, kids, pool, and the neighbor's kids are all gone now but that light is still there turning night to day.

About two months ago I was down in the basement and I saw the switch to that light and decided I really didn't need it running all night long, so I shut it off. As with many people I have been trying to lower my footprint on the planet, to help in any way I can to put less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which means shutting off those unnecessary lights wherever possible. Now this may only be one light, and one might think that shutting off one light won't make much of a difference, but it can. As it turns out that one light, that I paid little attention to before, was responsible for 25% of my electric bill! Fully one quarter of the electric I consume was being generated for one light whose only purpose was to light up the back yard, and most of the time it was doing it was while I was asleep, benefiting no one! Now that seems like a good bit of savings, not only for the environment, but for my wallet as well.

Now its not like its totally dark out there at night, the street lights running up and down my street do a good job of turning night to day, because apparently the headlights on peoples cars aren't good enough. Out back there is plenty of light provided by the old shop across the field that closed down last year but still has a dozen street lights illuminating their entire parking area for no one except one guard, and has at least one of those street lights that burns both night and day. The moon and stars do a pretty good job of lighting up the night, what little of them you can see anymore, as they are mostly blocked out by all those lights we seem to have some need to burn all night.

Which makes me wonder are all the people still so afraid of the dark that they can't just let the night be the night. Are they still worried about predators in the darkness, even though we've wiped most of them out, that they feel a need to wipe out the darkness as well. Can't they enjoy the charms that the night brings, that any skinny dipper will tell you, has its advantages. After all, the only monsters I've found in the darkness seem to be lurking high atop those telephone poles...

Things that make you say "Awww Crap!!!" Part 2...

Did I mention that I had more of these? That's all of them I promise...

The March of the Penguins

Back at Christmas time I posted a meme and one of the questions was "What I wanted for Christmas". My response was "Would it be too mach to ask for the Penguins to make the playoffs". Apparently it wasn't too much to ask, because I finally got my Christmas present, Yes my Pittsburgh Penguins are in the National Hockey League Playoffs!

At the time they were lounging around 12th place in their conference (you have to be in 8th or better to make the playoffs) and though they were doing much better than their last place 58 points of the previous season (they are at 101 points now), with 15 teams in their conference, they still weren't anywhere near a playoff birth. Since the all-star break they have been absolutely stellar though, and have seen a very busy March schedule where they managed an amazing 12 and 5 record for the month, guaranteeing them a place in the playoffs. Right now they hold a tenuous 1 point lead in their division with 3 games remaining in the regular season and though they may not be able to hold onto that 2nd place spot in the conference, due to the fact that their remaining schedule is with much tougher teams, than the team that they are ahead of right now, they will manage to finish no worse than 5th in their conference. Still quite a turnaround from last year.

I've been waiting a long time to put up this post. I'm a little superstitious when it comes to my sports, and I didn't want to jinx them. If I tune into a game late and my team is winning, but then they start loosing after I've started watching the game, I will change the channel, figuring it was me that brought them the bad luck. Silly? Perhaps, but these superstitions were formed at a young age, when I spent many winter days on local ponds with other youths trying to "put the puck in the net", or in our case, the piles of snow that served as goals since we didn't have the real thing. The rule was whoever scored had to be the one to dig through the snow to find the puck so that the game could continue. If you had a really good slap shot you could sometimes blow the puck right through the "snow goal" to keep yourself from freezing your hands, having to dig through the cold snow afterwards to find the puck. I remember getting up early in the morning and lacing up my skates (with bread bags inside them to keep your feet warm), and skating up the road to one of the local ponds where all my friends would gather for the days games. We lived on a dirt road that would freeze in the winter and you could actually skate on it, so I could put on my figure skates at the house, no I couldn't afford hockey skates, but that was ok, since most of the kids didn't even have real hockey sticks, I was one of the few that did. Often these games would last all day and well into the night, if the moon was out enough to see by. We would return home well after dark, ravenous, having not eaten all day, and exhausted from the exertions of skating all day, and absolutely ready to get up again tomorrow and do it all over again. These memories are where my superstitions and my love of the game were formed and are held very dearly to this day.

I don't know how far my Penguins will make it through the playoffs, I guess my only wish right now is that they make it through the first round. With players like Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Jordan Staal and Marc-Andre Fleury they sure seem to have the talent to go far in the playoffs, but you never know when they are going to run into a hot goaltender that can shut them down. This season very few teams have been able to totally shut them down and no deficit seems too much for them to overcome. Last night they played the Toronto Maple Leafs, and though "the Leafs" had a 4 to 1 lead in the second period the Penguins were able to storm back and score with 4 seconds left to tie it up and send it to overtime. The Leafs did eventually win that game in overtime (after a long delay because of a medical emergency in the crowd, I guess a fan got too excited), but they sure are fun to watch. Many of the Penguins away games have sold out, even in cities with teams that haven't been selling out, as it seems the rest of the hockey fans around the league want to come out and see these phenomenal young stars play. So even if you aren't a Penguins fan or don't even care about hockey or sports in general, I suggest if you get a chance to see the Penguins play, you do so, because with this team, hardly a game goes by without some miraculous, impossible goal being scored and no game ever seems over or out of reach until the final horn blows... "Lets Go Pens!!!"

Do You Have The Time?

It seems like lately 24 hours in a day just isn't enough time to get everything done that I want to accomplish. If Dubya really wanted to help instead of starting daylight savings time early, he should institute the 26-hour day. Between shoveling snow, keeping my pellets stove clean (it's been burning on high a lot lately) and overtime at work, time has been at a premium.

Of course any more daylight is always helpful and I do like it when it starts staying lighter later, though maybe that's just because it's spring springing. Last week I took some pictures of my Daffodils just popping their little heads out of the ground. Unfortunately that was just before it dropped down into the teens again and they got buried under more of that evil white stuff. The last couple of days have dawned warmer and more spring-like so hopefully this is a portent of better things to come, I sure am tired of shoveling. The forecasts are saying it just might be so, but of course that's what they said about last week. I've learned not to get my hopes up too soon and certainly not to speak it out loud, as I might offend "the Great God of the Lake" and bring "the bad stuff" crashing back down upon us. Never EVER Get the short sleeves out or put up the storm windows too early, as this is a temptation that fate just cannot resist. I'm hoping that hinting about it in a blog isn't going to cast us back into the frozen depths of hell. We'll just have to wait and see if the God is offended by my words and more punishment required.

On the brighter side I made Hope's Chicken Enchilada recipe, which she posted on her blog, and I have to admit that they are the best Enchiladas I've ever tried. They are a lot of work though, it took about three hours to put them together, but are definitely worth every minute of the effort (on a weekend). I tend to get "stuck in a rut" when it comes to my cooking, so it is always a pleasure when some new wonderful recipe is discovered. I really do believe that the food we eat can have a huge effect on how we feel about any given moment in our lives. For example, I've gone to Mexico twice and I still feel that the second trip far surpassed the first because the food at the second hotel was far superior to the first. The chefs and restaurants at the hotel on the second trip had a much wider variety with no two days offering the same menu. Entertainment and accommodations may have been better at the first hotel but in my book they don't have as much effect on your attitude as the food you are consuming. Either way, neither hotel had Enchiladas near as great as Hope's.

I am happy to announce that I have finally succeeded in defeating "Drakan: Order of the Flame"...woooo hooooo... I have played many different video games in my life but this may be the first one that I have actually taken all the way to the end. It's always a sore point if I have something started and left unfinished, but with video games that seems to be the norm for me, to play them for awhile and then put them aside. I know it's only a video game and not really any kind of an accomplishment at all, but they always seem to be, like a book left unfinished, or any project left uncompleted, that they add to the overall feeling of a lack of accomplishment in your life when they are not finished. Any project left uncompleted is somehow worse than one that is either not started, or one that is finished but not to your satisfaction. The only problem with this game is that it really isn't finished. The game ends with the evil "Navaros" escaping into another realm with "Delon's" body ("Rynn's" brother whom he has possessed and she is trying to rescue) and "Rynn" and her dragon "Arohk" diving in after them. So I guess now I have to go out and try to find the sequel, "Drakan: The Ancients' Gate", in order to find out if "Delon" is ever rescued. The best part of the game may not be getting to fly a dragon, but all of the wonderful weapons you acquire in different parts of the game. In the first picture "Rynn" holds aloft the "Runeblade" which is the strongest weapon you can attain, though I was partial to the "Mourn Bringer" sword, it didn't score as many hit points, but it was very cool to look at, as it had blood constantly "flowing" off of it, it was indestructable (sometimes after using a blade a while they would break) and it made a wonderful "death moan" every time you swung it. Actually for most of the game I did very well with a massive "Mithril War Hammer" (I was surprised to see that particular metal in the game, taken from LOTR) and of course the various bow's with explosive, magic, and poison tipped arrows. Definitely a game for someone who likes swords and dragons, though playing this could have attributed to my need for a few more hours in the day as well...

PS: Blogger actually coded this right from compose mode, has something changed for the better?

Bad Parenting

Forgive me but I found this to be very funny in a sad and morbid sort of way. So if you find this to be as hilarious as I did there is something really wrong with you...:)

I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too

Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.



i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

"That's Just Storm Snow"

Many people today were checking out the online weather sites that are showing a large winter storm coming our way out of the Midwest. They seemed a little worried that this system was going to produce a lot of snow. Though the radar sites did show a rather large storm heading our way, I just had to explain to them "this is nothing to worry about, it's just storm snow."

Living on the leeward side of Lake Erie we are very used to snow around here. Every winter we get a thing called "Lake Effect Snow", which is caused by the winds coming over the lake, picking up moisture, and then dumping it all over us in the form of large frozen white crystals.

Most people in the country require a storm to come through their area in order to get any winter precipitation, but for us it can happen almost anytime. All we need to get a good pelting of the white stuff is, a good north wind, an unfrozen lake, and icy cold temperatures, all of which we've had in abundance lately.

Up until three weeks ago winter had hardly even reared it's ugly head around here, and to tell you the truth most of us were quite enjoying it. Lake Erie, which is normally covered with a thick layer of ice before the end of December, hadn't even frozen over. We were beginning to think that we were going to have one of those rare "winters without a winter", but our lake can be a cruel and fickle mistress.

You see we get most of our lake Effect Snow before the lake freezes over. Once we get a good six inches of ice covering that great body of water out there, it becomes much more difficult for the wind to draw the moisture out of the lake.

So there we were happily enjoying the balmy weather but in the back of our minds we knew that without that ice covering, we were probably living on borrowed time. I guess our time finally ran out.

Three weeks ago the jet stream switched, the temperatures plummeted down into the single digits, and the wind shifted around to the north and that's when the beating began.

We have received 50 inches of snow in the last three weeks bringing us from well below our average to finally surpassing it this week. That 50 inches is also the official amount, measured at the airport, which is not in our traditional snow belt, some areas around here have received three times that.

I am fortunate to live in the northwest part of the county which gets a lot less snow than the southeast corner, the further you travel east around the lake, the worse it gets.

For three weeks now we have been getting pounded relentlessly with snow while some of the surrounding areas have had absolutely nothing. While other areas were enjoying sunshine, we had nothing but clouds and more snow. During that time it snowed day and night, barely ever taking a break, and that is the thing with Lake Effect Snow in this area, it doesn't require a storm front to come through in order to start falling. It can just start falling and continue to fall for weeks without giving us any kind of a break.

True I've seen far worse winters having lived here my whole life, I've seen winters that were much more frigid and winters with vastly greater amounts of snow, but I can't think of a winter that has been any more cruel than this one has been. I think we were all starting to have thoughts of spring and that maybe... just maybe... we were going to get away without any kind of a real winter at all this year, but it was nothing more than "the great god of the lake" playing a nasty little joke on us.

So now when people pull up the radar site and show me the "big storm" that is about to smash into us, all I can say to them is "that's just storm snow, at least it isn't Lake Effect, that little storm will pass through in a day or two"...

Things that make you say "Awww Crap!!!"