Epic

So remember yesterday how I was complaining about having nothing to shoot and not really much motivation to get out and do stuff? Well, I may not have worded it that way, but I was definately needing something to do. I was doing jumpropes in my room, which should be physically impossible do to me being 6'4'' and my room being so small. I just tried not to scrape all the popcorn off the roof or knock my tv over in the process. But either way, rain or shine, I need to keep my ankle active now that I tore a ligament I need to soften it up so it can heal. Though it looks like surgery may be my only option at this point :(

Anywho, I finally got around to editing the pics  I took from friday's lunch break. take a look!



Notice anything different about the two pics? see if you can find all five differences. (basically the top one has 5 things less than the bottom one)




The first one was just his car. A mitsubishi lancer evolution, or as we call it, and 'EVO'. But for my homework this week I had to take a portrait of two people without a face showing, so I asked the owner, who happened to work with me in the office, to step outside and stand by his car acting cool. Then I HDR'd him with the car. YUP that's right, both of those pictures are made up of 9 different pictures blended into one, so luckily Ricardo (owner) stood still enough not to make ghosting or blurring effects.

As for the other portrait, well, I have about 130 shots from tonight to go through. The sun came out to play today and my good friend John called me back to go shoot at the beach with him and his girlfriend. So now I have shots of myself, his girl, him, and him and his girl together... and I only need to use one. sheesh this is hard!

On the way home from the beach I got a txt back from my friend Rosalie and went to hang out. I took her to pick her kids up from Awanas and then dropped them off as we went to Dennys for some biscuits with gravy, mozzerella fried cheese melt, and some french silk pie. AND OF COURSE ROOT BEER, DUH! After that we went to her house where our other good friends Krista and Aubree were waiting with the kids. We continued to play with bubbles until we got the amazing idea to start a game of volleybubble. Basically, since I'm the best bubble blower around, I blew huge bubbles and then everyone tried to blow it around and pass it to eachother. I got some video footage of it on my phone but am too lazy to go hook it up and load it to youtube and post it for you, but next post I will definately show you the carnage that ensued.

So all in all I had a pretty good weekend, despite my girl bein over in Las Vegas, I've been through enough to understand that time and separation can actually bring people closer together as they realise how much is missing in their life once they are away from eachother long enough, so I can't really complain, I'm just glad that she's happy and slightly jealous she got to go see Chris Angel and Phantom of the Opera live. (not at the same time obviously)

Well, gonna get goin to bed now, gotta get up for work in the mornin. Thanks for stoppin by and have a great week! Whoever it is reading this, don't be a stranger, feel free to make use of that comment box below. It's not for some stupid view count or personal acknowledgement thing, I just simply love when people take the time to show some love once in awhile. I mean, you got this far already, you must have spent at least a good 5 minutes if not more just reading all this nonsense, possibly 15-20 minutes if you paid attention and checked out all the photos on their actual webpages and viewed them large. So what would it hurt to say hello or some feedback on what you liked/disliked/would like to see about my writing, or at least simply to let me know you were here so I know I'm not just typing to one or two people with a bunch of other people reading a few words and being done with it, haha.

Well, take care!

~sw23

That's what she said...

And of course, the title has nothing to do with anything. Take that cliche expectations!!!!

So what have I been doing all week? Simple. Wake up, do a bunch of stuff, go back to sleep. And just for the record, the weekend was a BLAST! Momo came over and watched some movies with me saturday, then sunday I made it to church an hour late and somehow managed to pull off all the projection duties without missing a beat, even after the band skipped a song and changed the order. With four hours sleep I felt so on top of things! And then sunday night I went to Rosalie's house with 10 other people to play a game called Curses. I won, not by choice though.

So if you haven't played any of those quirky social ice-breaker games like cranium or shout or whatever, then here is a really funny one that you have to have a video camera handy to catch the idiocy in real time. Trust me, you won't soon forget it.

The basic breakdown is that everyone is an actor in the game. There is a deck of "challenge" cards. Everyone takes turns picking up challenge cards and doing exactly what it says, then the other plays have to vote on whether or not the act was convincing. If the majority votes no, then the failed actor mus draw a card from the curses deck and do exactly what the card says. And if at any moment during the game that player is caught not following their curse, any other player can ring the bell and call them on it, and they get a strike. 3 strikes and you are out. And you must obey ALL curses, no matter how many you draw, which makes things interesting if you have one that says to cross all your fingers while another one says to  scratch your back every time you read a card (as if picking a card from the deck isn't hard enough with the crossed fingers)

So a quick example of the first 2 hours of our night? Well, at the table, To my right was Aubree, To her right was Krista, Steven on my left, Candice Rose and her daughter and Krista's brother Zack were across on the other side of the table. Here's how the shinanigans went down.: Krista drew a challenge card that said something like "You are a Vet. Demonstrate to the other players how to rescue a hamster suffering a heart attack." She started acting like a surgeon, asking someone to hand her a scalpel and and knife. For fear of future hamster-hack-n-slash horror film scenarios, we gave her a unanimous thumbs down. She drew a curse card that read: "Any time you speak you must pinch your nose." And so Krista had a hard time breathing and laughing without popping her ears the rest of the game, and she sounded ridiculous. Next aubree failed her challenge and got a curse that she had to pretend she was being attacked by deadly mosquitos every time she spoke and had to swat them away.... Try to imagine someone flailing their arms around their face every time they talked... it was like watching a live enactment of TIMMA!!!! from southpark. Maybe. I had some interesting challenges. I had to explain to Steven why I wouldn't marry him. Basically told him he had a weiner and I wasn't interested.  Then I had to ask him to the prom... and then break the news to him that he was pregnant... WHY DID THE ONLY TWO GUYS IN THE ROOM GET ALL THE WEIRD ONES?!?!?! Oh well, I failed one and had to be cursed with the rock star curse. Every time I spoke I had to strum an imaginary guitar... Looked more like I had some kind of twitching disease. Near the end of the game, to sum it up, Every time Krista read a card, Aubree had to bark like a rabid dog while swatting away mosquitos, And every time anyone made an animal noise, Rose had to be really itchy and scratch, at the same time any time someone named a food Rose had to clap her hands. Then any time anyone clapped their hands, Steven had to stand up and take a bow, While candice had to sneeze and make an animal noise every time she spoke while pretending her wrists were superglued to her forehead (watching her try to eat was histerical until someone had to help her out). Eventually every time anyone did anything, everyone else at the table had to react like an idiot or risk losing the game. It was hilarious.

Ok, so back to Monday... yucky work day! After stayin up all night playin games and watchin The Princess bride with the gang, and talkin to Momo after she woke up feeling unwell, I finally got home around 4 am, edited some pictures until about 6:30, then crashed. The sunrise, I might add, was INCREDIBLE! Anyways.  slow day at work, I got lifted up in a little basket with the forklift and had to clean pipes on the ceiling of the 3-story-tall overhang. Total yawn-fest until I got my ipod out of my car and just let the time pass as the world dissappeared and I cleaned the same pipes at least three times. Finally got home and got around to uploading my latest picture to flickr. Check it out!
Just remember to click the picture link and see the description, as there are lyrics and encouragement along with the imagery. =D



Then while editing the picture my old friend Jessica decides to randomly start talking to me again and takes a sudden interest in my personal issues and my so-called love life. I fill her in, catch up with her a bit, then make the mistake of mentioning that I found someone who could be worth the effort and BAM, she's all over me, just buggin' the crap out of me until I agree to give her some info so she can go do what girls do best and talk behind my back about me. Lucky me. But then again, life is finally getting interesting again after a mediocre routine-driven relationship with someone else not worth naming. So hey, why not let things hit the fan once in awhile? It could be a mess worth cleaning up after =P

So finally, I'm all caght up with the weekend and am about ready to settle down and have some me time. What am I going to do? not sure. Probably go to CVS and get a 10 dollar desk heater so my room might actually reach above 45 degrees tonight. This house is alright, but it is broken and has no insulation at all, the window doesn't even close properly, so the three blankets I use at night only do so much good against the 36 degree morning dew. I'm thinking 10 dollars is worth it as opposed to the money I'd throw away on cold remedies and possible doctor bills as a result.

But don't get me mixed up here, not tryin to complain by any means. I learned some scary facts about where my dad was in Kenya and the amount of suffering most people my age would never dream of and here these kids over there live it every day. Random scary tribal tradition: In order for a widowed woman to prove that she was loyal to her husband during his life, she has to sleep with her husband's corpse or face public humiliation and/or death for being unfaithful to her marriage. No joke...America has way too many things to take for granted, makes information like that just send shivers down my spine thinking about the differences in cultures and traditions. Here's a photo my dad took of a boy no older than I am. He admitted that most of the teens and men his age have to inhale chemicals and get high in order to numb the pain in their stomaches caused by starvation. Most of them know that they won't live to see thirty, if they're lucky enough to see twenty. Now I feel stupid for ever complaining about my tummy growling at work.

So tomorrow, hopefully, will bring some good news and answered prayers. If not, then I'll just have to make the most of it and keep up the good attitude. Hope everyone else out there is having a great week, whoever you are! Get well soon Momo!

~sw23


(Update: I ended up at dennys around 2:19 a.m. by myself after getting my 10 dollar heater from cvs. It was delicious, but I caught a cold)