Biking, or the lack there of

I just went out yesterday and purchased a new set of gears for my bike, and had them installed of course. I also purchased a tool that will help me readjust my rear bike tire. I believe I've hit one too many bumps and the tire is unaligned. Which is the real reason why I haven't been riding. I noticed it about 2 days ago, after a ride out to my grand parents house in Korkren (that was about a ten and a half mile ride one way). 

As soon as I finish adjusting my rear tire, i'll be back on the road, and now that it's a great deal colder outside in the mornings, the ride will be better, at least in my opinion. I never really was much for heat, more of a winter/cold person. 

***THE ANIMATION***

Dan and I were talking today about it and decided that, since neither of us have really been working on it and he can't get next weekend off of work to meet in Menomonie and follow threw with the stakes of our bet, we will call it a DRAW and finish the movies at a later date.

WHICH lets me get back to work on my website. 

Sorry to all of those who were biting you nails to see the video. Maybe next time you should post comments on my blog so that I know people are actually reading it...

::Good way to turn the blame around onto the readers of Jared's Blog::

WOOPS!

Anyway, Fallcon this weekend at the State Fair Grandstands. Getting my comic list together so that I know what I'm looking for this time. More updates will follow with how things are going with the site and how the comic convention went. 

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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.