Monday, January 26, 2004

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday

Oops, I guess it's actually Monday now. My bad.

We made it back from NC yesterday, right ahead of the winter storm that's dumped several inches of snow and freezing rain on our vicinity. Snow report to come in later.

Just a quick update for now. More later.

Friday, January 23, 2004

And We're gonna go to Boone...

And then to Roanoke, and Lexington, and Charlottesville, and Davisboro, and Aiken, and Tampa, and San Antonio, and Beech Mountain, and then we're gonna go to Washington DC, and we're gonna take back the White House!!! YEAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Sorry, I've just spent the past half-hour listening to remixes of Howard Dean's concussion-- I mean concession speech following the Iowa caucus. :) If you want to hear some of them, click here. Some of them are pretty hilarious.

Anyway, if you've been to my honey's blog, you know that she's made it through her final jury before her final grad recital, and I don't know which of us is more relieved, me or her. Honestly, it's pretty rough being a diva's consort, let me tell you! :P

I promised a few words on the President's SOTU speech from earlier this week, and here they are as follows:

Ehh. Meh. Kinda goofy. Loved the reaction to his "parts of the Patriot Act will expire in a matter of months" line. I think it hurt him more than it helped. That's all.

On a sadder note, Bob Keeshan, aka Captain Kangaroo died today. It's sad to think that he and Mr. Rogers are no more.

More later. And seriously, dude, go and listen to the Deano Machino remixes.

Wednesday, January 21, 2004

Barking for Clark?

Well, I'm thinking about it. The button to the right is not an "official" endorsement (yet), but I thought it was a pretty cool site. Check it out.

State of the Union thoughts later.

Monday, January 19, 2004

Bwahahahahahaaaa!!!

If you haven't got the money or (I'm looking at you, Ombra) patience to go see The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, here's a quick 3-minute guide ot the movie:

Tightly Wound: Thumbnail Guide to RotK

Justice Flowing Down Like Water

An interesting weekend, to say the least. I had two photo assignments; one to photograph the proceedings of Lee-Jackson Day here in Lexington, and the other to photograph the Martin Luther King day celebrations at the town's largest African-American church.

A little background on Lee-Jackson Day, first. It was first celebrated in 1904 in Lexington to honor Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, both of who are buried here. Someone at the paper told me it started off as some kind of banquet, and that its appearance on the calendar has wavered on and off. It became a state employees' holiday in Virginia three years ago, and until the appearance of MLK Day was celebrated on the third Monday in January. Today it is celebrated on the third Friday of the month.

This year, I went out to Stonewall Jackson Cemetary to take photos of the graveside service in honor of L-J Day. I was late getting to the service, but siffice it to say, what I caught was interesting. About half the crowd was re-enactors in period dress. They sang hymns, said prayers, and played "Taps" as a coterie of re-enactors fired a three-gun salute in honor of Jackson.

It was a nice, historical kind of ceremony, although I couldn't help wondering who was there for the history and who was there as an "F-you" to integration. A little while later, the re-enactors marched down Main Street as they made their way to Gen. Lee's crypt (located, conveniently enough, in Lee Chapel on the W&L campus.)

As they were marching and I was taking photos, a man in civilian clothes walked by me carrying a Confederate battle flag over his shoulder I thought little of him until a few minutes later, when he decided for no reason whatsoever to yell "Hooray for the South! Everybody sing 'Dixie'!" At this point, he began to sing the song, with maybe a couple of other people singing along. Unfortunately, he got the words wrong, singing:

Oh, a way down South in the land of cotton...

when the words should be:

Oh, I wish I were in the land of cotton

That was when I decided that I had enough photos of the Lee-Jackson parade.

The next day I went to Lexington Baptist Church for Martin Luther King Day services. The minister of the church there was retiring after many years in the pulpit, and he preached a sermon that made the hairs on my neck stand up; it was that good. It was a pretty heady contrast to the L-J day services.

Oh, and also, today is mine and the Bunny Bear's six-month anniversary. Happy, Happy, Kathy! I love you!!!

Which Classic Movie am I?

Well, how about that:



A real post later on. :)

Thursday, January 15, 2004

There's a Sale at Penney's!

I promised an update on my so-called life, and by God, here it is!

Work's going okay right now, if a bit slow. We're currently running around like chickens with our heads cut off trying to get entries ready for the Virginia Press Association awards. I have four photos (so far) entered for VPA consideration, and that may increase if my editor Darryl decides to submit more stuff.

Kath and I are getting excited about our upcoming bundle of joy. She's almost moved out of her "morning sickness" phase and it shows on her face big time. She came to the office the other day to drop off some chocolate, and later one of the receptionists told me how she saw a sparkle in Kathy's eye and a glow in her face. :) Kathy kinda brushed it off, but it's true: she is just looking gorgeous (in my eye, anyway) in her pregnancy right now.

We had our first experience with a cleaning lady yesterday. Kathy has been used to one from when she was living with her mom in NC, but this is the first one I didn't have to call "Mom". She did a good job, although she wasn't able to finish everything we had on our "to-do" list. Still in all, the inside looks a devil of a site better than it did a few days ago.

Finally, we have a bad cat, and it's not the one we expected. Our oldest cat, Katie has been rather prominent in our daily lives lately (See Kathy's blog for some recent anecdotes). However, in the past few days, she has taken to wedging herself into crawlspaces and mewling until we get her out. Is it some kind of punishment for leaving her for 5 days while we went to Charleston? Is it some kind of cat intuition about the impending baby? Who knows? All I know is, if she weren't so darn funny, she'd be out on the street with a "FREE to a good home" sign around her neck. Goofy cat!

Well, that's all I got at this moment.

Bigoted Idiots

I was going to write a rather innocuous post this morning updating you on my life, but then I ran across this on a link in someone else's blog.

WARNING! Contains explicit and possibly upsetting language

You know, it's amazing how people will say that we don't need to worry about racism in this country anymore, but then we get a-holes like these e-mailers attacking someone's ethnicity just because she said something "mean" about the President.

I'm living in a nation of six-year olds!

UPDATE Margaret Cho responds.

Tuesday, January 13, 2004

Sorry, haven't blogged much

At least nothing intensely personal. I promise I'll have something up later on in the day. Right now, it's kinda tense here in the newsroom. More later.

Clintster's Fotoblog

Clintster's Fotoblog, ya heard?

My new photo-blog. Check it out, and lemme know what you think. :)