Just got back

We just got back from Duluth. Gretchen's family and I left around 11am on Friday and Returned around 5 or so today, Sunday. Had a pretty fun time. I can't remember the names of all the places that we went to but at one of them we went up a ski lift to the top of this area to see a huge view off all the different colored trees. It was pretty cool. Also Took a short cruise around the Duluth harbor on Lake Superior. Learned a few things on that. One thing was that the anchor on a huge ships, like the ones that come into the harbor, doesn't actually keep the ship where it is. The chain weighs something like three times as much as the anchor does, so it's really the CHAIN that keeps the ship where it is... I didn't know that. I also learned that everyone else on the ship can't withstand cold as much as I can. At the beginning of the tour the whole bow of the ship was full. By the end, I was the only person out there. 

Went to a couple comic places in Duluth as well. One with really great prices and cool deals, the other with overprices comics and no deals at all. I wonder which I'll be going back to next time I'm in Duluth...

Sorry, didn't take ANY pictures this trip on account of my mother borrowing my camera to shoot a wedding. 

Maybe next time. 

Flash Obtained

My mother recently asked me if she would be able to use my camera for a wedding she wants to shoot this weekend. Naturally, I said yes. Although, I cautioned her that my Canon Rebel XTI might not get the job done as well as she hopes. It's stock lens and lack of flash would make it quite difficult to shoot in any dark areas, which most wedding are. 

I told her that there are a few ways to take care of this. 

1. a lens that lets in more light that would be able to take better pictures in darker areas.

2. an external flash that attaches to the top of the camera to throw more light in the room or simply on the subjects being photographed. 

At first I was skeptical. "Mom," I said, "I don't know that you really want to spend all this money just for a wedding... Unless you're getting paid." So, after some discussion, she decided that she would rather go with a flash than a lens...

$150 - $400 SAVED

A new lens would have been nice but also the more expensive route. 

After some research, time spent on line and in National Camera Exchange, I found that National Camera Exchange had the best price on the Promaster 7500EDF Electronic Flash. 

I think she'll love it. As far as I can tell from playing with it for a while. I think it will be more than sufficient for the wedding...

but a lens wouldn't hurt. 

The Glenn Monster

So, for those of you who don't know, my grandpa Glenn is in a place that helps him recover from the HIP surgery he had the other week. He had his hip replaced. I guess the doc said that it was, by far, the worst hip he'd ever seen. But the surgery went well, as far as I was told. And now he's recovering with the help of the fine people at the rehab place, although Glenn will tell you that they are torturing him.

I've only been to see him once. Hopefully I'll be able to go up there again before he heads home. Although I am going to Duluth this weekend so I don't know that that will be possible. 

With any luck, Glenn will be home and reading this very soon. We're all pulling for you Glenn. 

Eagle Eyed

Tonight, Justin, Carl, Michael and I all went to see Eagle Eye. I ended up getting free ticket from my comic book shop again and we all went to see it at the Rosedale AMC. I enjoyed this movie even with the unbelievable pieces. Shia LaBeouf did, in my opinion, a pretty decent job in this role. At first I was skeptical about him for this, but overall, not bad. I'd say it's worth a trip to the theaters for this movie, but if you don't make it out, do watch it on DVD once it's released. 

More Biking

Today I went for a bike ride up to Minneapolis. Ended up going to Robot Love where my trip. read 16 miles. I then tried taking another route home and ended up going a very long other way. Once I got closer to home I called Michael and asked if he would be interested in joining me for lunch at a little pizza joint called Davanni's. Very, very good place. Hot hoagies, Pizza, cheese bread.... can life get better? I submit that IT CAN NOT!

After lunch I was on the fence about getting a ride home from Michael, I finally decided I would ride my bike the rest of the way home, but when I got outside I noticed the sky turning very dark. SO I ended up getting a ride.... at least I went about 33 miles today. 

longest yet...  :D

After a shower and change of clothes I ended up going to the comic store and picking up a few back issues and a mystery box. It only cast $5 and it contained at least 100 comics, closer to 125, AND Dan wanted to split them with me so we only paid $2.50 a piece.... but he ended up making me take them all... there were just some HORRIBLE comics in there. but still....

Chevis and Dan invited Gretchen and I over for a sort of birthday dinner for me, since my birthday is in 2 days. We ordered out for sushi from Mt. Fuji. It was SO good. I really can't explain how good it was to have a tiger roll. I have really been missing them. We also ordered a rainbow roll, 2 Philadelphia rolls, a California roll, and a Deep Impact roll (which was shrimp tempura inside and spicy tuna outside)... That was probably one of the best sushi dinners EVER. 

THANK YOU GUYS FOR THE AWESOME NIGHT!!!!!

After dinner Chevis made brownies while Dan and I talked comics for a while... a sort of foreign language to the lady folk. Just before the brownies were done we began playing board games. We started with "men are from mars and women are from venus" Dan and I won that one. The next game we played was some weird one that involved each player to wire what they thought the definition to a word was, or a movie title to a description of the movie. That was pretty fun as well. GAWD we had a good time. 

Now it's off to bed so I can get up early, go to breakfast, work on my site and/or video, and get into all sorts of new mischief.

p.s. - my mom just got home from a business trip to Missouri. Didn't get to talk to her tonight, she was already asleep when I got home. Tomorrow it will happen. 

so i lied

So I lied... my friend Dan asked if we should take another week for our animations, so I agreed. 

Therefore, another week it shall be. 

HERE is a half assed attempt to tell you all about what has happened since my last post.... here goes.....

*Sold the rest of the comics on ebay. good stuff. made some money... now just waiting for people to leave me feedback so that I can get the money into my account. 

*Dunny Series 5 came out. I ended up buying a case and when I got home I looked through the boxes again and found a golden ticket. Golden Ticket has a number on that back that is redeemable for one of 600 Huck Gee 3" dunnys. 

*Went to see "Burn After Reading". Wasn't as good as I was hoping for. Funny at parts but not AS funny as I wanted. 

*Found some video games on craigslist.com. Ended up picking up Rock Band, Halo 3, and Grand Theft Auto 4 from the guy. He works at a Sprint store near the Mall of America so we (gretchen, michael, and michael's girlfriend lauren) had to meet him there. Then we went out to eat at the Old Spaghetti Factory in Minneapolis. 

*Been riding bike for the last few days. Went 20 miles on monday, nothing on Tuesday, 30 on Wed., nothing on Thursday (continued below), and I hope to do 40 tomorrow which will be Friday. we'll see if it happens.

*CONTINUED from above. TODAY, THURSDAY, woke up and went garage saleing with Michael. Probably going to the Robot Love Trading party tonight to see if I can get rid of any of my older dunnys. Probably won't happen. But we'll see. 

I hope you enjoyed that. If I remember anything that I may have left out I will post it later on. 

And now, back to your normal updating from me. 

video and site should be up soon. 

ebay selling

Yesterday was the comic release day. And my favorite comic, All Star Batman and Robin: The Boy Wonder #10, was released. So I picked up a few issues along with a few variant covers. When I got in line, the guys that worked at the shop told me that this issue might get pulled from the shelves due to some swear words that weren't fully blacked out during printing. I looked inside the books and sure enough, you could read the swear words through the black boxes covering them up. So I bought a few more copies. 

Later that night I decided to see if anything was going on on ebay. And sure enough those were selling like hot cakes. I posted a few, all for 'Buy It Now' prices, $50 for the normal cover and $90 for the variant cover. Within the first 3 minutes of them being up, I got an offer for $70 for the variant cover. I got scared and declined. Good thing I did too because I ended up selling one of the $90 ones and two of the $50 ones just last night. We'll see how the rest do. 

In other news: 

I just started my animation for the contest that Dan and I are having. I am also getting closer to posting my website every day. My next post will be to announce the launch of site and/or post my finished video. 

Peddled my ass off

Yesterday I went for a bike ride with my uncle Tom. We rode for about two and a half hours or so and went 30.5 miles round trip. The first 20 or so miles was very fun, as was the trip overall, but around mile 20 or so we hit some insane hills, not to mention it started raining.... poring... bone chilling COLD. I can't remember the last time I was so cold. I can't remember the last time I was so tired. I can't remember the last time I was SO hungry... 

After a hot shower, Gretchen, my cousin Chevis, her husband Dan and I went to Ichiban's in downtown Minneapolis. ALL YOU CAN EAT SUSHI. As soon as we got seated we started grabbing all sorts sushi off of little boats that float around the sushi bar. It was so cool. I've been there probably three or four times now and I've never been disappointed. I'm glad Chevis and Dan liked it as much as Gretchen and I do. We actually have a date to go back there next time Dan's friend and former coworker, Chris, comes to town. 

A Challenger Approaches

name: Dan Jensen

nick name: Savage Hobbit

degree: Bachelors of Fine Arts

graduated from: UW Stout (same as me)

blog: Murmurs From The Shire

Challenge: 

Animation Duel: Create an animation containing at least two characters. The animation must be between 30 and 60 seconds and does not have a specific theme. A two week time period is allowed for construction. Deadline is September 19. Animations must be uploaded by the end of the day (midnight) to Newgrounds.com. The newground members will be the judges. Go to Newgrounds.com and create a username to rate each video. 

updates will be posted...

I guess NOT

Well the latest dunny release was Wed. night at Robot Love so I didn't get to work on the site too  much, but over all it's coming along. I find myself changing my mind as soon as I'm ready to put the site up. I keep deciding that it's not what I want. I just need to put something up and stop dealing with the rest of it. 

but it'll be up soon.

finished HEROES

sorry to say this but ALL day I sat on my ass and watched the rest of the first season of HEROES. I actually really liked it. With each episode it just got better and better, until the last few. Kind of a disappointing ending, but I guess they had to leave it open for the following seasons. I'm working on getting season 2 but I've read REALLY mixed reviews. So I'm not expecting much. 

back to the site tomorrow

also:

almost to 1000 views on my blog. We'll see if i can get my site up before then.

:D

website... and HEROES

Lately I've been working on my website.... like I said I've been doing for a long time. But now I've moved passed the "planning" stage, and I've moved to the "getting it on paper" and "putting it on the computer" stages. We can expect to see the site up sometime this week... I'm not promising that it will be completed when it goes up, but it will be up. 

IN OTHER NEWS...

I just started watching the new show "HEROES", and I must say I greatly enjoy it. I know that things I say involving reviews need to be taken with a grain of salt sometimes, but if you like anything "superhero-ish" you'll probably like this. I was skeptical at first but it really turned out to be something that I wasn't expecting. It was actually better. Each episode just gets deeper and deeper and the story just gets better and better. There are actually quite a few well know actors and actresses in this show... not the kind who's names I know off the top of my head, but I could name the movies that they've been in. 

As of right now, I'm only 6 episodes into the first season. But I can tell that this is one I'm going to have to keep up with. Probably just as regularly as The Office.