I've done this trick before.

Me: I've been practicing my telepathy and I can read minds now, Jeff.
Jeff: Sure. Okay, fine, what am I thinking?
Me: You're thinking . . . *pause* . . . that you don't really believe I can read minds and I'm making all of this up.
Jeff: *long pause* Okay, well, what am I thinking *now*?
My dad: *cracking up laughing*

Labels: amusement, family, jeff

As promised, a handful of photos of Kelbi I snuck between doctor visits and wrestling matches. Enjoy. :)

Labels: family, jeff, kelbi

Congratulations to my brother and my sister-in-law on the birth of the first grandchild in my immediate family, Kelbi Marie (6 lbs. 12 oz., 19-3/4 inches). Mother and daughter are doing fine, and everyone is tired. My parents are very happily enjoying adding "grand" to their accustomed titles.

UPDATE:



UPDATE 2:

Labels: family, jeff, kelbi, shandra

Ah, holidays. We hardly knew thee.

- I was late for supper on Christmas Eve. By an hour-and-a-half. Whoops.

- The expected niece is no longer "Katelynn." Apparently my brother disliked the nickname "Katie," so he made up "Kelbi." I asked what everyone else was buying her, and apparently .22 rifles and camouflage dresses are actually on the list. The family laughed as a whole when I asked if I'd be the only person buying her books, so I'm taking that as a "yes."

- The Christmas haul was excessive, but at least I didn't have to figure out how to fit four folding chairs into my car this year. Favorite gift? My mother hand-wrote every single one of her recipes into recipe books. Four times. So we'd each get an original. Apparently it was her "a few hours a night while watching tv" project for several weeks.

- I scandalized my family with my artistic nudity portfolio. The majority of the crowd at my grandmother's on Christmas Day thumbed through it. People said they liked it. I think some of them were just being polite because I was standing there, but a couple of my cousins asked for the link to see the rest of the portfolio. Most of my immediate family passed; I think it's weird for them.

- The Chili's in Scottsbluff needs to have its salt privileges taken away. I've discovered that excessive sodium can lead to headaches.

- I toured the farm house of my sister and her husband for the first time. It's within sight of Chimney Rock, which is cool.

- Haley nearly won the Trivial Pursuit game we played at Linde's house (losing by one pie to Linde), despite boldly stating that our neighbor to the north is "Canadia" and London is in France. I earned the "geek award of the night" for knowing the definition of the word "prehensile."

- Haley took me out to an abandoned farm homestead in the Sand Hills to take photos (which are still on the camera). It was a great outing, except for the 8-degree wind chill and the fact we both walked through a cactus patch.

- I visited with my father's parents for a few hours. They're holding up for being in their mid-eighties, but they can't hear each other talk so I nearly ended up with vertigo from trying to carry on two conversations at once.

- I brought magic berry pills for my family. My brother was adamant about not participating, but once I talked him into it he ate most of a lime by himself and asked where to order the pills.

- One of my aunts pulled a used sword scabbard out of a junk pile somewhere and gave it to me for my sword collection. My brother looked at it and, referencing the sword I gave him as a graduation present years ago, said "My sword is *way* too big to fit in that. Mine is huge." I asked him if that was a euphemism, which earned me a blank look and a "what?" in response, accompanied by stifled laughter from the rest of the dinner table.

- Quote from an unnamed family member: "You can't use the shower yet. I have to get my crescent rolls out of the dryer first." (They were, in fact, in the dryer, using the heat from the last laundry cycle to make them rise faster.)

- The trip back was uneventful. I averaged an astounding 47 mpg (unheard of for a 10-year-old non-hybrid car) through careful hypermiling and new tires. I verified (by not stopping for gas) that I can make the entire trip from Oshkosh to Omaha (about 375 miles) on just under 3/4 of a tank (as long as I don't mind a nearly 7-hour drive).

I hope everyone had a peaceful and happy holiday.

Labels: family, haley, holiday, jeff, mom

To my dearest younger (and only) brother. :)

Labels: birthdays, jeff

As promised, a (low-quality to keep the file size decent) copy of the slide show I made for Jeff and Shandra's wedding. A high-quality copy will be included on the final DVD, for those of you getting a copy of that.

Labels: jeff, shandra

Excerpts from the wedding trip:

- I averaged 43 mpg on the trip by hypermiling.

- The wedding went off without any serious hitches (I think the most pressing issues were the non-dance-friendly nature of the bridesmaids' dresses, two of the three of which broke and/or came undone during the reception, and the near-unfortunateness of planning the reception for 200 people and having 196 show up).

- I was originally supposed to video from a second floor (through a window), but my previous scouting of the spot was done on a day when the air conditioners were *not* running; the proximity to those behemoth noisemakers made the recording location worthless, so I ended up recording from the side of the crowd on the main floor (an inferior viewing angle, but at least you can hear things . . .).

- It was nearly 100 degrees. October weddings, people . . . (I've been told that's "football season," whatever that is.)

- Certain unnamed culprits (of which I was not one) vandalized my brother's house during the reception. I don't have a complete list of insults, but apparently they involved removing all the light bulbs in the house, removing the labels from all the canned goods in the pantry, putting Icy Hot on the toilet seats, putting sugar in the bed, writing on the mirrors with deodorant, rearranging the furniture, toilet-papering the outside of the house and putting all of my brother's and sister-in-law's underwear in plastic bags of water in the freezer. There is some confusion as to why exactly my brother left his house unlocked, but there is no confusion about the fact that my brother quizzed everyone involved and is keeping a list of names for future references (none of the culprits is currently married . . .). He asked me for prank advice. I suggested an inflatable kiddie pool full of Jell-O and random objects from the house in the middle of the living room floor.

- I actually danced. Albeit only with people to whom I'm related, as there were no single unrelated women within 10 years of my age (either way) to be found.

- My mother refused to dance at the reception. So Haley and I requested my parents' wedding song (Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle") from the DJ. You can't really say no to your own wedding song.

- I prepared a 90-slide PowerPoint photo show for the reception (using primarily old photos from physical photo albums that I had to scan and clean up; how quaint). It was well-received. The Shakespeare quotes were less of a hit than the final Ogden Nash quote ("To keep your marriage brimming, with love in the wedding cup, whenever you're wrong admit it, whenever you're right shut up."). I may try to convert it to a video file later and post it (I'll have to do it eventually if I want to add it to the wedding DVD).

- I spent half an hour trying to fix my mother's EarthLink e-mail account before its user-unfriendly nature irritated me enough that I bought her a domain name (as an added bonus, now I can build my dad a Web site for his company, although he says he has so much work that I have to leave the contact info off . . .).

- Linde joked while setting up the reception hall about cheating to catch the bouquet (her solution was to tie fishing line to it and just pull it into her hands). When the time came to throw it, certain people (again unnamed) were vandalizing my brother's house and were not available, so the toss was put off. I wasn't in the room when it was later tossed, but I'm told Linde caught it fair and square. I'm also told Haley's boyfriend told her to sit down when she joined the group . . .

- I printed about 75 photos from my portfolios and put them in a photo album (not all of my family has the Internet or is familiar with Flickr . . .) and passed it around at the various events. It was generally well-reviewed. Several family members have expressed interest in hiring me to do (or guilting me into doing for free) their photography (senior pictures/wedding photos) in the future. There were several slight pauses from various reviewers, however, due to my inclusion of two pages of photos from my human studies portfolio (I picked photos that don't actually show nudity, but it's clear the models are nude). I took a lot of jokes for them . . .

- I encountered multiple people I had not seen in 10 years or more, including former teachers, friends of my parents and second cousins. It's interesting how some people change and some people stay exactly the same.

Labels: family, jeff, miscellany, photography, shandra

Pictures are finally up. I took about 800 while I was there. After you remove the several hundred I took that didn't relate to the wedding, the duplicates resulting from my photography style (taking bursts of three for any scene involving people), the out-of-focus and blurry ones and the ones I just plain didn't like, you end up with around 75. A few still need post-production work; the rest I loaded with minimal or no Photoshop tweaking. I was shooting mostly indoors without a flash, so the faster shutter speed and prime lens made for decent but still a little grainy photos. I'll have to buy more equipment (IR-controlled synched flashes) before I do any serious wedding photography.

Congratulations again to Jeff and Shandra!

Labels: congratulations, jeff, shandra

To my brother and his new bride on their wedding! Congratulations, Jeff and Shandra. :) (Pictures soon, I promise . . .)

Labels: congratulations, jeff, shandra

Thanks to Canon's new "FutureShot" technology, I can now download and view pictures I'm going to take in the future. Take this shot of my brother from the year 2023, for example.

I haven't had the heart to tell him about the picture I took in 2029 of the constitutional amendment that banned hunting yet.

Labels: amusement, family, jeff

To the Redneck Ninja(tm), who turns 24 today. :)

Labels: family, jeff