Culmer's Thoughts

My Blog Has Moved

2009-07-23T16:41:00.002-05:00

For those who follow on google reader or something else that's rss, I've moved! I finally went and got my own ".com" jeffculmer.com actually. So if your still reading this site there won't be anything here any more, so go to the other site please!

jeffculmer.com

Another Montage

2009-07-12T12:15:00.021-05:00

Well again do to being busy with things, I haven't had time to actually post about things, so I'll do another picture montage, (Alot of Pic's) of what I did the last couple days.

We cooked some good food this week.

I got in some xbox time while the wife was at work.

Started a new book.

I had a gig on Friday, it was interesting and a lot of fun, it was a showcase for this band, at a club/bar. That's Nick walking down our "loading dock".

We had some time after getting things set up, so we went next door to an old coffee shop, and got a snack while waiting for the show. I had a cream soda and a cookie.

If the squirrel would have attacked her, it would have been funny. I promise it would have.

It was at the bar, but I think it's a good idea for tech's to start putting tip jar out. People complain if it's not loud enough, or too loud, when the lights are in their eyes, or they can't see the talent on stage, but if it's good why don't you put a dollar in. Huh??? Why don't you!!

The Band had a super hero theme going on, so we had super hero masks!

(I stole this from Nick's Facebook, Lampa took the picture)
The Crew consisted of 3 of us, the band helped us load in and out, so we had fun with it. Here's Nick and I wearing the Transformers Masks.

Lampa. I mean do I really need a subtitle for this one, it's just to good!

Then it was time to work.

Yea that's right!!! Look at that LED in a club baby!! Those puny little par cans have nothing on me!

In a Club!

Works over, getting in some relax time watching the storms roll through. For those who care, I didn't catch the lighting with the "bulb" function on the camera I'm... just.... that... quick!!

Big League...

2009-07-08T16:54:00.003-05:00

I found this the other day, and it reminded me of being a kid, during the summer I loved playing and watching baseball, I still do. One of the things that made it summer time, was big league chew! I use to love this stuff, I would always think it made me a better ballplayer, I would stick wads of it in my lip, and would enjoyed the flavors while standing on the diamond, or in the park playing a pick up game with the neighborhood kids.

Why do I feel the erg to buy some dip?

2009-07-04T13:19:00.015-05:00

Today is montage Saturday with little explanation, not to steal the idea's of making a day of the week something like this guy does, this is a one time thing most likely, because I'm being lazy.

The Bus parked next to us. It actually got uglier the further back.

1983 Fire Truck, spraying the kids swimming in the lake. And some that were not swimming as well.

The Kids.

I wanted to yell Shark, but didn't, We're in Illinois.

No Fans, so I stood there and listened.

Storm Troopers get vacations too.

Reading Material.

FOH. Staying dry.

Hard at Work shooting the Flock of Seagulls wanna be's.

Hard at Work some more.

Hey dog, your mascara is running!

Am I Lazy?

2009-07-03T01:27:00.002-05:00

You ever feel annoyed about something, but you don't want to say anything because your to nice, or want to make sure that it's not just yourself being stupid, that's where I've been for a while now, I've been so agitated and frustrated with things that I haven't been able to catch some shots or moments of crew guys working, I've been wanting to start a blog just about crew, (I know all about some non-christian crew sites, not interested!) I've been trying to get other "band crews" to do it and some do but don't stick with it, and honestly I think some don't get the point of doing a "Crew" blog, it turns into a personal blog, nobody cares, they want to read about your day and the gear you have and the stories, not what you did with your kids, start a personal blog if you want to do that, in a way my blog has been a crew blog but not totally dedicated to just the road stories, there's something funny and great about what we do, everybody in our industry, in any industry love to hear stories from other gigs, that's what we talk about most as crew is other gigs, stories, gossip, it's what keeps us sane.

I've always loved taking pictures of funny moments in a crew persons day, like the fella's doing a white balance up top, to me that's kinda funny, it's so demeaning to hold the sheet and stand there, but it needs to be done, so he went to each camera and held up the white sheet, it's just funny, I've done it. It might not be funny to some but if your a crew guy, you might find it a little funny just the way he's standing there looking at nothing while the other guy sits on a road case shooting the sheet, waiting for the eng. guy to tweek his camera in.

That's the funny stuff that I've been missing out on, because I've been frusterated with things, and been complasent with how things have been going, I was asked the other day what hobbies I had to take my mind off of work, since what we do always centers around work, even when we get together outside of work we're telling work stories, or talking about future gigs, anyway I didn't have an answer, besides xbox, which I don't get much time to play that, so I said photography, but yet I use to take a 100 to 200 pictures everyday at festivals, practicing, or catching the guys doing something (i.e. running camera, or taking a break between acts) and now I'm lucky if I've taken 100 for the whole festival. I can't figure out why other than I'm just not myself this summer, I'm distracted by frusteration. But that could be a lame excuse, and the real one is I'm lazy.

Cooking...

2009-07-02T10:46:00.004-05:00

Last night I was getting the grill ready to cook the guys and myself some dinner, I'm sitting there waiting on the charcoal to heat up, ok what I was really doing was sitting there cursing the ready start charcoal cause it was taking forever, I look to my right cause I see smoke, and big wooshes of fire and there's the roof guys with their bbq it's roaring with fire, course the dude was spraying an entire bottle of liter fluid on it, (these guys .... lets just say they're not the sharpest tools in the shed) the one is smiling at me and motioning me over to their little grill site, so I walk over and he's like "Culmer, check these out", he reaches behind a caddie and pulls out 5 or 6 catfish on a string still gasping for whatever fish gasp for, he smiles even bigger and says "we're gonna eat them!" I asked where he caught them, "the lake", I was like "the lake that all these nasty kids take baths in through out the week?" He was like "yea!" I could tell there was no distrating him getting to skin these things and eat them.

I have to admit its pretty clever if your trying to save some money, and if you didn't have anything to do, or liked to fish which I don't, he was the talk of the backstage area, he had a nice little crowd while he skinned these things, course it could have been the other roof guy still spraying liter fluid on the grill making huge balls of fire every five minutes, all the while his brauts were on the grill, that could have been drawing some attention as well.

Myself, I made to order whatever the guys wanted, most wanted Cheeseburgers, some had bought some of their own special somethings that needed to be grilled, the best part of grilling last night was the burgers that I wasted, see here's the deal, why do cheap grills have such wide spaces between the .... grill? So here's the deal, I didn't know we had tongs in the rv all I found was a spachula, so I'm out there and one of the other guys was sitting at the picknick table eating his hotdog, and watching me grill, I'm flippen away like a grill masters master! That's right I am the grill master I'm thinking, then I flip a burger and the dang thing goes right through the openings of the grill and right down to the charcoal, I was like "Dang IT!!" Lee (the guy sitting at the table eating his hotdog) starts laughing, I come to grips that I just won't have a burger because one of them was mine, so I was like no biggie I guess.

I then came up with a new plan on how to flip my burgers, so they don't go down the stupid wide cracks in the grill, no more than 2 flips later I flip onther one, it hits my braut and starts to slide down between the cracks, I'm scrabling to save it, it was like slow motion, I stop it half way, blindly grab a plastic fork from the picknic table behind me, go to grab the burger, and again in slow motion as I'm going to poke the burger with the fork the forks end starts to melt from the heat, so now I'm stuck with this pokeless fork I try to poke it anyway as it slips from my grasps, and the 2nd burger falls between the cracks, Lee is laughing now pretty loud because it is pretty funny, I'm yelling at the grill, if I only would have tried and save the last burger in real time instead slow motion maybe the burger would have been eatable.

A Good Book..

2009-06-30T21:24:00.002-05:00

Well it's another week of work, thank goodness, we had a long drive yesterday, it wasn't overall to bad, we had some good conversation, and I got in some good reading time, it's been a while since I've had a book that's been just a great story, there for a while that seemed to be the only kind of book I could find, just good stories, my kinda of stories, I had had a great run then I started finding books that looked interesting, and they were but not really stories that kept you thinking about needing to read more, or when your sitting around the catering table your re-telling the stories because the people your reading about are some bad to the bone type of people.

Today we loaded in another festival, everything went well, had to fix some stuff, it's funny because every time I have a problem with piece of gear I work with it's always in the most inconvenient place like 10ft up, but it's all good.

Sometimes being a team player means you have to make sacrifices, and sometimes being a good leader is being the one that makes those sacrifices for the team. I'm always trying to be a better leader, I've been reading this book about a leader that's a little like where I'm at in my life, he's a Staff Sargent that's been in a lot of wars as a sniper, seen a lot of action during non-war time, he has ton of experience, he would be a superb leader in a hirer rank, but because he's enlisted he's as high as he wants, and the people he deals with that are above him in rank are green and well ... just basically kids, or people that have been paper pushers that have read about war, or tactics in a manual, which reminds me of some of the roadies now days, the book isn't about his trials dealing with inexperienced leadership, but just his time doing some extraordinary things, and even tho he's not in leadership, all the guys around him look to him for guidance, even some of the officers look to him with questions, and how he deals with that while maintaining the respect for the rank above him, Just good stuff.

Game...

2009-06-28T22:17:00.003-05:00

I don't claim to be a gamer, but I love the Splinter Cell games, well pretty much every game that has the Tom Clancey stamp on it is a good one but, the Splinter Cell games have been my favorite, when I use to have roommates, they went and bought the first xbox, and the first game I bought was the first Splinter Cell, it was awesome! And I was hooked.

It's been a while since the last one came out, I've played and beat it several times, this new game has been delayed for release several times, and then Ubi Soft decided to have a fan or something write the plot to the game, which took forever for the winner to be chosen, and blah blah... but finally it's ready, I mean it's not out yet, but in Oct. when the game is released (knock on wood) you can bet that I'll be in line outside Bestbuy by myself waiting for them to open so I can get a copy!

Cool Kids...

2009-06-24T20:27:00.004-05:00

I had another rant about a type of person all typed out and ready to go, and it didn't have anything to do with the picture, I liked the pic so I thought I would put on here, the rant was aimed towards "cool kids" that are now adults, but I'm not sure I'm ready to get that off my chest just yet, I think I'll bottle that up for just a little bit longer, until then you'll just have to remember or think about somebody in your life right now that is the "cool kid", they can be an adult now, I have someone that I know that drives me nuts cause the person thinks he/she is just so dang cool! Only thinks in one demention, but yet that person is in a position. Anyway I really didn't want to start in and I don't want to go any further... so now I'm going to yell at the people being loud at the pool at 11:35pm because it's to late for fun!

I'm just sayin'...

More Rain...

2009-06-18T23:58:00.000-05:00

This pretty much sums up the last two weeks, it smells like horse poo, and it's pretty much the whole lower bowl, the kids are loving it, and that's great... For them, but my feet are killin' me right now! From being soaked, to walking through the mud, to being on them all day.

I did take a small break from being on my feet this afternoon and got some soldering time in on a tile that needed some lovin'. But seriously getting back to it's pretty gross out, we're hoping that the next cohple days will be better but it's not looking good, it's not the worse tho, the worst was a couple years ago when I worked for a different led co. We were doing this country fest and it rained the whole time, then you mix beer, puke and pee into the mix and maybe some other things and it was enough that I gagged every time I walked out side the led trucks! Now that I think about that I wonder what I did with those pictures?

Working...

2009-06-16T13:31:00.004-05:00

So the rumor has been going around that I don't really do anything but take pictures when I'm on a gig, now it's not that that's not true, but to clear things up I just wanted to point out that in the upper left corner of this picture (not taken by me since I'm in it!), and it's a little blurry but that's me cleaning by hand the tiles, I had time and they were dirty. And lets face it, when your don't have to spend your entire day figuring out how to do something you have some free time on your hands, I think it's funny that tech's that have a clue, and get their gig done quick are tagged as being lazy or always doing something else like taking pictures, (I'm not saying I have a clue just that I work with the same stuff a lot) and not really doing their gig, but yet the guys that spend all day setting up, always get the respect. Or more gigs.

How is it, we in this industry tend to reward the stupid tech's.. or rather the tech's that can milk a gig the whole day with respect, or even better yet the ones that say they know how to do something but don't, or EVEN better you train them how to do something, but they spend more time on their phone cause their to cool. But the tech's that get their gig done and things run smooth, there's really no respect just a... "well anybody can do it mentality", because everything went so smooth, and it all worked the first time, or the little hick ups were taken care of right away because they know the gear, but the mentality is by the employer is now we can go and hire dinky doo, that has to call you every 5 minutes, because they can't get the equipment to turn on?

I could keep going but now my lunch break is over and I have to go and take some picutres.

2009-06-12T17:42:00.001-05:00

So we're heading to the festival this morning, 2nd day of the bands and the festival actually running but day 4 for us. We head to the backstage gate where we've parked for three years right be hind our semi... One of the things about doing festivals that makes interesting are the volesnteer security.

Road/crew guys always have fun with them because we're use to the one pass we have is all access, well in the summer time these festivals take it up a notch and have like 5 different all access. So that means your all access doesn't really get you into "all" the accessable places like where your semi is, or to catering.

Back to this morning this security volenteer that's just doing his job, wouldn't let us park where we always park because... He was given an inch of athority. And now he thinks he can be a jerk, so we said "ok... We'll park waaayyy out there where you tell us to park" we then carried the gear we had in the car to the stage.

We then went to the barn that gives out passes and got every different parking pass they had for the entire festival, put them on the dash, so no one could say we didn't have the right pass to be where we just came from.

Nota very good story but non the less I posted better than nothing at least.

The Shower...

2009-06-10T22:11:00.003-05:00

Next to the shower in the room is directions on how to use the shower, or rather to activate it,
1. turn on water to desired temperature.
2. Pull down on base of spigot (where water comes out) which will activate the shower
3. To disengage the shower, simply turn water off

Where the water comes out?! And the last one is awesome! Simply turn water off!
it's really not that uncommon, but it had been a while since I've seen it, and it made me laugh.

Today it rained a... lot! And that's all I really have for today, there wasn't any shows, just the other companies loading in, and it took them a while with all the start and stopping of work, with the rain and nasty storms, the merch tent that's bigger than the main stage blew down during the storm. And I ate some pudding.

It Was hot...

2009-06-10T00:05:00.004-05:00

Day one of Ichthus Fest. well, load in, we're a day earlier than everybody else's load in, we need the forklift and space, and today we got it all to our selves, it was nice it took about 10 hours to load in, I'll show you why tomorrow. We didn't get here till after lunch, and it was hot! I felt sun burnt with in the first hour, I had SPF 50 on too! I layered that crap on but still felst crispy, it was good day though, we finished up around midnight, it's going to be a good week.

There was a group of people having a meeting out in the field, they asked for plug in for there little work light, so we let them plug it in then, then we turned on our light. This whole sentence is cheesy, but it was fun light up the whole field with the walls.

We get to the hotel/college campus (I'll get to the hotel tomorrow or the next day, it's a good thing though) and I new that I stunk but when I actually got in a small space, it was bad, my shirt was soaked, all day you could keep track of me, just by falling the sweat trail, everywhere I was working even tonight there was sweat dripping everywhere! It helped me realize that, either one I work really hard, or two I'm really fat! I'm pretty sure it's the 2nd one! The reason I'm showing just how dirty I was tonight which isn't anything out of the norm for the summer time, is becacuse the shower doesn't drain very well, so I kept moving further back in the tub as the water filled up, I looked down at the end, and there I was standing in a dirty.... really dirty tub, that still had enough water to be filled above my feet, it was....

The Last Week...

2009-06-07T20:57:00.004-05:00

The last couple weeks this is what I've been up to, I haven't been out the whole two weeks, but what I've been working on is the LED in this shot behind the band, it's the newest LED that the Co. I've been working for has gotten. I've worked with it before and really liked it, when I heard that the Co. bought some I was excited. It's a lot of fun, there's a lot you can do with it, but it's taken up a lot of my time, not in a bad way just been busy prepping it to go out on different things and well this run of shows they have it out on, it took some time getting it ready and figuring out how to do different things with it, but in the end worth it when it turns on.

This last week has been fun, I haven't a whole lot to blog about, it's been busy and relaxing, I got a lot of time to spend with Patti. I've also got a lot done with work. The next couple weeks though I'm hoping to have more to blog about with more festivals coming up on the schedule, especially the next two, their fun and the weather also makes for some fun stories.

Scratch another off the List...

2009-06-03T20:27:00.004-05:00

Patti a couple weeks back had a great idea, she had looked at the schedule for the Cubs and saw that they were going to be in Atlanta this week, so she found some tickets, made sure I was going to be home and then bought 'em. We then decided since it was a late game to stay the night after the game.

It was a fun little get away, not long enough, but besides it not being long enough it was a lot of fun! We've been needing a little get away, we've both been busy the last couple weeks, well more like the last couple months if I'm not at work she is. It's been good to be working, and when we have been able to do things it's been with a group of people. Which is fine but sometimes we just needed some together time!

We showed up really early, like a couple hours early, we waited in line for the gates to open, just talking and hanging out. We sat in the outfield for batting practice, we came close to catching some balls, but no cigar if you will, but still worth it standing 40ft. from Soriano and Zambrano as they catch some fly balls together, was worth it. Big Z was suppose to pitch Tuesday night but you know suspension and blah blah blah, I was surprised to see him. He was actually pretty cool with all the Cubs fans there last night yelling in support of him, and the Braves fans not yelling nice things, he waved and smiled at the comments. I mean he was 40ft. from us, we could talk normal and he could hear us.

One of the cool things about Turner Field is the LED wall, it's one of the biggest LED walls I've ever seen, and one of the heaviest weighing in at 50 tons, and really clean looking.

Our seats were way up there in the upper deck, Patti didn't like it at first, it was her first time in the upper deck, (haha) the best part was walking in circles up the ramp to the 400 level, it felt like we would never get there, and then the steap stairs almost to the last row, once up there she turned around and had a holy cow we're way up in the air moment, it was awesome! For the price we paid the seats were great! There's not to many seats in a ball park that are bad, and I thought we had good seats, I mean I don't think the Cubs could hear me chearing them on from up there but I liked it.

The game went into extra innings, we got to go a great game, the Cubs lost but they were a head the whole game, it went to 12 innings.
$4 a ticket sevearly bottles of Poweraid and water, multiple hotdogs, a slice of pizza, a pretzle and a bag peanuts, $80 later and another Ballpark crossed off the list with my wife. That's the priceless part! It was awesome!! I can't wait for the next get away we have!

Rambling that won't make...

2009-06-01T22:54:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I feel like this bike, it use to be rideable until some musician left it behind the bus and then the driver drove over it. I guess my point is I work really hard and try not to complain to much, and yet I'm still in the same spot I was in before.

I heard today that successful people have a 10 or 15 year plan, are they successful because they have a plan? Or are they successful because they stuck to a plan? I think it's the first, I think people like the idea of having a long term Goal, so there for the people with the goals are successul because other people make them that way, heres the thing, the "other" (i.e. People that have influence or position in the world) people think this planned person is motivated and has a stick to it mentality. When in reality they just like talking about their "plan" but never really go through it, if we all went through with our 15 year plans we would have a lot more millionares out there.

I mean I have goals, I have a hard time reaching them, because like I said I'm working, some of my goals are work related, most are not like having kids with my beautiful wife.

How does one focus enough to keep one mind set for 15 years! And does having a plan or goal make you a better person in general? Or should you just live your life and see what doors open and try not to persuade them to open just so you can make your goal or plan happen?

What's that saying? Life gives you lemons, make some lemonaid.

I don't Know, going back and reading this it sort of makes sense, course my rant could be do to me being pissy because some of my favorite tv shows have been cancled next fall.

2009-05-27T22:14:00.001-05:00

Yea it's been a while since I've posted, it's been busy, the first festival of the year is always a good one but this year we had extra gear there, it wasn't all that bad just caused me to have less time to do things, and as you can see in the pic, the first day was fun filled with some replacing things, all part of it except when it's on the top row. I'm sitting a spanset standing on a 2" lip, my toes fell asleep, course I was up there for over an hour.

That was the begining to my week of hard knock times. But in the end everything worked... sorta, I got home home for 2 days of prep and now I'm on a bus. It'll be nice when I get home on Sat. Do a little relaxing!

Baseball...

2009-05-17T22:48:00.003-05:00

That's right folks, we're going to a Cubs game. It's going to be Patti's first MLB game, and it's the Cubs and Braves, the best part is she's the one that found the tickets, and the doubley best part is that we got the cheap seats for $4, you can't beat that. I don't mind the cheap seats cause it's a baseball game for $4 I mean come on people your going to see baseball! I'm stupid excited about the game and going with her. I love when we go on trips together, it's going to be awesome! And believe it or not I have never been to Turner Field, so that'll be fun to have another ballpark to scratch off the list, and I get to do it with Patti!

This week has been a long week, in a good way, I put in a lot of hours trying to figure out what to do for work things, and a lot of hours sitting in movie theaters. I saw Star Trek twice, once at the IMAX, and once in a regular theater, I also saw Angles and Demons, I really like going to the movies, to me it's just another form of relaxing especially when you go during the day when nobody is there.

Work was fun, Nick and I got a lot accomplished in just a couple days, it's always fun fabracating with sombody that has some road/shop experience, and enjoys doing what we do, which I needed help to come up with something quick and it needs to not be stupid. That's hard because I've spent a lot of time on things and then someone walks by and says why did you use/do that, when you could just do this, but when you don't have someone to debate things with you just do whatever comes into the brain first.

Early Shop time...

2009-05-14T22:42:00.002-05:00

About 5am this morning I get to the shop, and once again I'm reminded how nice it is to have my 4 hour playlist on in the old head phones, and just plug away at a project. I've been a little nervous about all that's going on, I'm prepping 3 different LED things, for this one show, and because the gig is in CA. I keep double checking everything, I have this thing about being prepared, I hate getting somewhere and realizing that I don't have something, especially something that you can't just run to home depot and buy, so I've been trying to make sure I have everything all cabled up and ready.

I've recruited some help for tomorrow to make things go a little smoother, Nick is coming to help and hang out, I think between the two of us we might be able to get the one project that needs to be done tomorrow done, and I won't have to go in as early on Sat. I'm looking forward to it, Nick and I always seem to work well together and still be able to carry on conversations, usually their day dreams and schemes for the next tour and what would be cool, or about other shows that just blow your mind, but non the less a lot of fun!

Up Early...

2009-05-11T08:06:00.004-05:00

You ever have a lot to do but your like... Eh..! That's the way I feel about this week, I've forced myself up early this morning, well I say forced, I woke up with heart burn for the first time in a long time because of late night food, but instead of taking some tums and going back to sleep, I decided to head to all the places that nobody goes to in the early morning hours in a this fine community, Lowes and Home Depot, I mean there was nobody there, I had to double check the hours on the doors to make sure I wasn't to early.

This week is going to be a little busy for me, I think, one of the things about fabricating things special for "A" tour is you might get lucky and the next tour might want almost the same thing and you can kinda cut here and there without having to make a lot of modifications, which I was lucky, on the last tour I didn't have to do a lot of re-fabricating, well now things are all cut up, and the client wants what I had before I cut everything up, so I've been trying come up with a quick solution that doesn't look like we're a bunch of dummies piecing things together, I think I've got a solution.

Now that I've rambled on about that, back to being up at the crack of dawn, if I can actually get up I enjoy it, if I have things to do, I would rather do them early, I can usually get more done before 9am than I can if I were to start doing things at 9am, my phone doesn't ring, I don't have to check emails, I have nobody to call, (other than Mom, she's up earlier than me) and there's nobody around, it doesn't matter if I'm home or at work I prefer it, and one of the other reasons to get up in the morning is a Naked smoothie. And that's the whole reason for this post and the pointless information of why I like to get up and do things, or what I have to do this week, just wanted you to know that I really enjoy drinking the Amazing Mango Smoothie by Naked.

New Things...

2009-05-08T19:39:00.004-05:00

Since I've gotten off the last tour I was on there has been some changes around the Culmer house, and one of them is the way we eat. We've been meaning to start some new eating habbits, and we've finally found some reasons. The reasons... there are 2 weddings we are attending this summer, and both of them I'm in the wedding party, so we're on a mission to get better into shape, and I don't look like a the fat guy I am. Both of us have been wanting to get into a routine of exercising, it's hard to do together when I'm in and out a lot, but we're getting there.

We've been eating a lot more organic things, it's been fun trying new things, course not being able to snack on things has been the hardest (as I eat a little be piece of chocolate) but I'm getting better, the easiest has been giving up pop, surprisingly enough I don't really miss it, I still have an occasional sprite when we're out cause water at some places just tastes aweful, and I'm a bit of water snob! And I don't want to pay $4 for a bottle of water! It's exciting though having a goal to meet.

The other thing that is new this week for me, is this app for my iPhone, I don't download a lot of apps for my phone, and I for sure don't buy a lot of apps, until recently I've only bought like maybe 2 or 3 apps, I just don't want to spend money on these things, but! This one at $0.99 has to be one of the most addicting games. And if you've played this game then you'll know that my 127 high score (that was a fluke) is pretty stinking amazing! Come on give some props?! Seriously props please!

Backing Things Up...

2009-05-02T20:56:00.003-05:00

I have a lot of dvd's that I've backed up stuff on, mostly picture since I take a lot pictures, and I have discs from when I use to use my .... that other computer I don't want to say what brand cause this computer might... I just don't want to say it, but I'll give you a hint, the type starts with a "P". Well when I used that computer I use to back up all my files all the time, cause I never new when it was going to crash.

So, I have a lot of disc's like I said, and I labled them at the time I thought was a good system, and now that with hind site I realize that it's a bad system, because I don't really know what all is on those disc's, so now I'm going back through them finding out whats on them, and putting the info into this computer, but I find myself at the same point I was in then, and that's how to create a lable system that makes sense to me. Hmm...?

Orange Conference...

2009-04-30T21:17:00.008-05:00

It's been a while since I've done a picture blog, it's all I use to do, and now I just do stupid ramblings that don't make any since and I make grammar "errs". So I thought since I haven't really shared a whole lot from my week I would do a quick snippet of what I've done. Starting with of course sLite, the reason I'm here this week. And to explain the week a little better I'm doing "The Orange Conference" which is a youth pastors conference, or seminar if you will. I've been sitting at FOH for most of this show, and it's been really interesting and a fun conference, some really good stuff.

Well after I unlided all my sLite I was in hurry up and wait mode, and since the truss I was hanging off wasn't going to be ready till after lunch I decided to help out where I could, so I bolted together the PJ truss. What was funny about that was our PJ guy was .... it's hard to explain, lets just say I filled in for him for some of load in, I didn't take a picture but I put together all 5 screens, without hands thank you very much, all to help the cause of getting the rest of the rig up quicker. Not braggin or anything just poppin my colar a little.

After I got my LED up and at trim, I continued to help out the other company loading in, they seemed pretty busy and needed some help so myself and my other co-worker (Anderson) helped them out for a bit. To make it short we came up with a number that we ran over 6000 feet of just BNC cable for this one gig, which isn't a whole lot in reality, but when it's just 3 of us running it in a couple hour span, we were movin'! And that's not including all the power runs we made, Soco, feeder, edison, 4 pin.

I think it looks pretty good, the designer didn't do to shavey.

It's a cool pic.. so it made the blog.

Kinda what it looks like on, FOH is like 50 feet from the stage, so the all the LED when it's flashes is bright as all get out! I love it!! I have a pic of that but chose these two for some reason.

We got back to our hotel room this was in front of the door, we were like hmmm? We didn't have anything shipped to us, then we saw the little "Orange tags" that said our names, they were little gift bags of snacks and drinks and what not. Look below to see!This is the first Conference/festival type event that when we returned to the hotel they had something waiting for us, it made the 4 hours of sleep we got worth it. See it's the little things that make a crew guy smile and want to get up in the morning... Maybe?

2009-04-29T20:02:00.000-05:00

This week has been interesting, and fun so far, meeting some new people that we have mutual friends, which means same type of humor, and work ethic. My only job for this gig is LED, but the first day was full of surprises. I'll say more about that later. It's been kinda horrible for Internet, the venue has it everywhere but you have to pay $14 for it, which I don't really want want to do! And nobody wants to buy it and share in PO, so for now I'll just continue checking blogs and getting emails on my phone! Bless their hearts.

After proof reading this I realized it's a blah kinda post! Hmmm...

Another Birthday..

2009-04-25T00:49:00.002-05:00

My wife... I was going to compare her to something, and write about how she is like this and use a metaphor, but then I realized that there's no comparing her to anything, she's just amazing! One of the many things I love about her is, she's always making things fun, she always makes me laugh. The other day it was my birthday again, because I wasn't home on my actual birthday, so she was like Tuesday is your birthday now, so she can spend it with me, she had the day planned out for me, from lunch to playing golf, and dinner.

When I woke up that day, she had a scavenger hunt for my gifts planned out, it was a lot of fun, she had little clues for me, I was thinking well this will be fun and pretty quick, I want my gifts you know... well it was really challenging, I found them all but it took some thinking.

One of my favorite things to do is just sitting and talking with her, she always seems to say what she's thinking, and it's always funny. Sometimes she's being serious and I'm like "Yes ma'am", and I love every moment of it.

A Gift...

2009-04-23T09:47:00.004-05:00

My Parents sent me a package for my birthday. It said on the outside of the package "Jeff's Care Package for the Road", I didn't know what to expect, so I opened it and out came the most random things, and a homemade card. It's straight out of the MacGyver hand book for things you need to get yourself out of a predicament, it was pretty stinking clever, and a great gag gift. The contents are all things found in their junk drawer or from behind their dryer, I'm sure, there were two candles that we actually used for a cake, that are not in the picture. When I called my dad about it, he was like "I had a hard time giving up that nail, you never know when that's going to come in handy, did you eat the gum?". The booklet if your wondering is a how to guide on how to wrap a twisted ankle.

On the back of the card they put "Culmark"... again just clever. It was an expensive card tho $15.99.

My Birthday today...

2009-04-18T15:17:00.003-05:00

It's that time of year again, when I turn another year older. I'm in Cedar Rapids, IA. this year, but yet my Mom still found a way to get me a cake on my birthday.

I was trouble shooting some stuff behind one of the racks and I hear someone say "where's Culmer?" I look up and there's a guy holding a box, he was like "here's a box for ya".

Thanks Mom It was a really nice surprise!

PSP Time...

2009-04-16T16:47:00.004-05:00

It's been a while since I've played my PSP, but I thought I would break it out this weekend. I bought T-Woods 09 when it came out a while ago, played like 2 minutes of it and decided that it's confusing, and wasn't as good as the previous years. Well I'm trying it again, and it's still confusing, but I'm learning.....that I stink at this game, I've been trying to get better at the game, but I'm not. I've been in last place every time.

(Sigh) I'm hoping for my birthday I'll get a new game that isn't confusing. (hint...hint)

My Wife has a cold...

2009-04-15T15:49:00.004-05:00

My wife for the last couple days has had a cold, like held up in bed kinda cold, it stinks when you have that cold. I use to never get a "cold" till I got that pneumonia thing, now I get sick or colds a lot easier, since my lungs are scared and blah blah blah, so I've been doing my best to not catch what she has, and take care of her at the same time, which is always interesting for her I'm sure. Let explain why, for some reason when she needs to be taken care of, I forget everything about what to do, for example, I went to target to get her some stuff to make her feel better, well I stood in the isle for a minute then called my mom and asked her what I should get, even tho I know the symptoms she has, I'm not sure which one is the best for her, there's just so many brands, and everything does something different, so after hanging up with my mom, I decided to get one of each, and just kinda lay them out there for her. It's that stuff that I get all buggered up about. I just want her to feel better.

In my wanting to help out around the house, I thought I would do the dishes, which I help out with anyway when I can, cause I don't mind doing them, I mean you rinse them off and put them in the dish washer.
That's all normal, I try to help out in that area, but the one thing I don't help out with is the important dishes, I just don't touch those, cause.... I'm a guy and I some how screw things up, (My words not hers) I always feel bad, cause I chip something or whatever. Today is a good example, I tried to clean the really nice cake dish that she has (a wedding gift), and it slipped while I was washing it off, I broke it.

SHhhh.... Lets not tell her till I get on the road....

TBA

2009-04-14T16:29:00.004-05:00

Last week we had a band called TBA (To Be Announced) out with us, to take the place of the pre-show opener spot, I finally got the opportunity for the first time on this tour to go and take some pic's of the band playing. They were good, a lot better than I thought they would be.

For a better look at who these guys are, you really need to go and watch this video.

Happy Easter...

2009-04-12T19:39:00.000-05:00

Thoughts...

2009-04-10T18:44:00.002-05:00

Late load in today, and yet I found some time this afternoon to reflect on yesterday, an old work buddy swung by the show, he's gotten off the road to an extant, and supper happy about it, I can't help to think about getting off the road sometimes, I mean just thinking, like what would I do, could I handle a 9-5 type job, the few times a month that I work in the shop for a whole week, I try to keep to a schedule and it wears me out. The morning traffic, the looking at my clock all day, thinking I could be doing other things, like the only time I can handle working in the shop, is when I create a work list of things to do. Other wise I can't just go in and getting on my computer and sit there and make money not doing anything, it's a waste of my time, even if I am making money, I would rather not make money, than sit there.

Back to my thought about getting off the road, would I be able too? He seems to be really happy, and said that he had the same questions that I have about getting off the road and is loving it, I just don't know if that's something I can do, he's just so.... almost like in to a schedule of life same in and same out of what he's doing in life, which is the same on the road except all the little things are a different on the road like how bad catering is today, that's an experience, or the backline guy jumping the monitor guy on a street legal scooter, or the challenges that come with getting a show into a place that you shouldn't be having a show at all, or not knowing if there's going to anybody that shows up for the show, and 18k show up, or hanging a 9k pound LED wall with all triple bridal points just so the weight is right, or even having the ablity to have a story to tell from every work day you have. Are you going to get that at your 9-5?

It's like the chairs...

2009-04-09T17:11:00.002-05:00

This is kinda how my day has gone so far, things are working but its like the chairs are kinda on the cart, but in all disarray, and just thrown on there. My figuring out skills today pretty much sucked, all fuzzy and disarray, kinda just throwing stuff out there hoping it works, course I finally just sat there for a minute and realized that my problem was an easy fix. I alway make fun of people that can't do simple deduction, if there's a problem it's not always step 3, which is where people go, they skip a couple very simple steps, because if there's a problem it has to be a big one.

Oh well at least everything works.

I miss my wife already! She would have been like "Duh, that was so simple" haha... I love her!

My Wife.

2009-04-07T23:01:00.003-05:00

I Love my Wife, tonight I had a fantasy baseball draft, which usually takes a couple hours depending on how many people we have, and just in case your wondering I did horrible, I got a few players that I wanted, but not as many as I wanted, I tried to stay away from having to many players from the same team, and I didn't stay in the guidelines of my own rules to drafting.

Anyway, I told her about the draft last week, and was like "I have a fantasy baseball draft next Tuesday night, it'll take a couple hours to do, I'm sorry". She was like "oh cool, don't be sorry", course I still felt bad, cause I've been gone a lot the last couple weeks, and she was gone last week, so our only full day together was today, and I had a baseball draft, that started around dinner time. So pretty much our evening was gone.
She never once complained about me doing this, I complained about doing it, because it was going to take away from our only full evening together this week, and she said that this was fine, and I should do this, cause I like doing it! And that's just 1 of the infinity reasons why I love her!

Eurovision...

2009-04-06T19:12:00.003-05:00

I'm a big fan of crew blogs, I want to hear and see pic's of what people are doing, I think it's cool to see what and how things going on other shows, and I love to hear stories, and I really like reading crew blogs when it's something way bigger than anything that I've ever been apart of, like this blog. Eurovision.tv is in Russia this year, the Production Manager has started a blog, about the setup process, it's really interesting to read. His posts are mostly pictures which is great! And some witty lines to go along with the pictures, you have to see it, he's taken pic's from unloading the trucks to the mother grid going up.

To be honest his blogging stile kinda reminds me of...... my blog, and the way I use to take pic's of the show days. Hmmm?.... Except he probably spells things right, and he proabably uses the right words to describe things, like when he plays b-ball in a gym not a jim. I'm such an idiot.

OKC...2

2009-04-05T16:10:00.002-05:00

Besides my wife's cake, this cake has to be one of the best cakes I've ever eatin'! Besides my wife's cake. It was a gift from somebody, Sam (Stage Mng.) is the one to really thank for this I guess he even cut the fruit on top.
I was scared to cut into the cake, it looked to perfect, I let Ryan ruin it.

OKC...

2009-04-04T15:21:00.002-05:00

Like I said in the last post, we had another video crew there, Daystar tv it's a channel on direct tv I guess, well we had it on the bus satellite so about an hour after the show they re-aired it, or played it for the first time, I'm not sure, the show started, and I saw something I haven't seen in a while, in our part of the video world, or maybe I've just never payed attention. The Star Filter baby, theres stars everywhere! I'm not a big fan of the star filter on camera's, it has it's moments when it's usable, but for the most part I think it's aweful, and should never be used for live concert events.

Well the show looked good except for the stupid star filters, I've yet to see the show or anything of the show other than through my monitors, or in pictures. So that was nice... Yea nice.

Today we're in Oklahoma City, I've been to this venue a lot, and every time I come here, I always gag on the loading dock, the venue is awesome, but the loading dock takes the cake for having the worst smelling loading dock anywhere, it's smells a little like fryer oil that buildings take out back and dump in a container, and it just sits there, and popcorn from 1988, and other things that are a mystery at the moment.

There you go, now go watch the show, we have some new bands on the tour, it's going to be fun I hope, a break from the normal.

Dallas...

2009-04-03T15:26:00.004-05:00

Before I get into the post about tonight, all I'm going to say is go watch this!! We had protesters last night (Baton Rouge) at the show, I didn't go out there to see what the deal was, for multiple reasons, but if you watch the video you'll get the point, I could go on and on about this. It literally makes me more red with madness.

Enough of that, tonight we're in Dallas, which is home town crowd for most of the tour, which means a lot of people just being here, which can be fine except when their in the way, of what we're trying to do, AND... Tonight the show is being broadcasted on some satellite company, Daystar or something like that, the point is their 70 other crew here with the tv co. with their own camera equipment, and all that jazz that comes with being a tv co. So things have been a busy, except for me, I've just been sitting here, say yes and no to things. Just in case you can't read what's on the case or on the floor, it says "SHOW PERSONEL ONLY BOYOND THIS". That's why I love our stage manager, he's all about the crew baby... Not that I care cause I sit in a chair upstage right for the entire show, and never really see anything else.

Go Watch the show tonight.

2009-04-01T17:21:00.001-05:00

I went back to the chiropractor this afternoon, and after a lot of stretching, poking things into my spine, then cracking my spine in 15 different places, he came to the conclusion that I did not throw out back but rather, it (my back) sapazzed out, or to put it in terms for an idiot like me, I got a Charlie hourse in my back, do to stress, and my diet.

It seems that even though I didn't feel stressed, my body was in hurry up mode for 2 weeks straight and all the business a couple weeks before that interupted all that as stress, which would have been fine, nothing out of the normal except all the junk food I've been eating, kinda set things into... Well let's say the junk food was the extra stuff on your computer that's bogging things down, then finally my body said I'm gonna crash now, and the part that crashed was my back!

It sounds stupid but, I guess it could be right... I don't know, all I know is what doesn't make sense at all is, the best way to start feeling better is to work through the pain and keep moving around.

I hate moving around.

Problems...

2009-03-31T21:33:00.002-05:00

For 2 weeks I've been lifting things, sleeping on a mattress that is practically non existent, and all the things that apply to being on the road, I'm home for a 1 night, I wake up this morning feeling pretty good, I take a shower go to put my shirt on, and BAM!!! I go down like somebody punched me in the gut, except it was my back that hurt, Oh.... what happen you ask? I threw my back out putting on MY SHIRT!!! I've haven't been in this much pain since my gallbladder was still apart of my body.

My frustration is beyond being pissed off, I just want to break something, except it hurts to move a lot, so instead I'll just sit here and smell like a box full of mints that have spoiled, if mints spoil? Either way Icy Hot smells awful and I'm not convinced it's doing anything.

Fresno, CA

2009-03-29T17:48:00.003-05:00

Last show for the week, it's been a good 2 week run, the shows have been awesome, at the beginning they were great shows, packed out just past the stage line, then all of a sudden we went from just past the stage line to sold out! Like the venue closing the doors, we're lowering in the back drop cause there's people sitting behind the stage sold out. It's exciting to see what's going on out here in that aspect, especially with the world the way it is with the money issues. And on the other hand I'm really excited about going home for a the short time we have off to see my wife. (that for the first time in a while has blogged)

If you haven't been watching the shows you should it's good stuff. www.therockandworshiproadshow.com/rstv

2009-03-27T20:53:00.001-05:00

We had some free time this afternoon, so we asked if we could play some B-ball In the practice jim, here where the Shaq place, which they let us, then it turned into a little 5 on 5 wiffle ball. I love playing baseball, or any form there of. So to say the least it was a lot of fun I don't want to rub it in who won but I think the score says it all!!

-- Post From My iPhone

Ontario...

2009-03-26T19:37:00.001-05:00

This is what we did this afternoon with our free time. It was a good day!

Sacramento...

2009-03-25T18:44:00.004-05:00

We had a day off yesterday in Sacramento, we get off the bus and the first thing I see across the road is an In & Out Burger, for some people it's no big deal, for those of us who don't get out here that often it's a great place to go and eat. If you want a good burger and fries with a pretty great milk shake as well, it's the place to go. And their open late so when we were in the mood for a milk shake last night, yep they were ready for us, and it was awesome!

One of the fist things I did when I got up yesterday was do some laundry, which can be an experience on the road, you never know what it the laundry facility is going to look like in these hotels, but by gollie if it wasn't pretty decent looking, and FREE!! As long as you had a room key, you could get in and if you had soap to wash your clothes with then you just pushed the button, it was pretty stinking cool!

I had to read the directions on the machine though to figure out what I do with the soap, and how to start the thing.

I've been going backwards in my story telling and the time line of the pic's but, oh well I'm trying to catch up. I have to talk about this place that some of the fella's swore by, it was a little Italian place, and by little I mean look at the pic, it's an house that could probably fit a family of 3 or 4 that's now a eating establishment. Looking at the menu's was different, it explained what things were in english and the name of the dish was in Italian, and the place ran the way they do in Italy I guess, which is you get a appetizer of olives, this hard bread stuff with some kind of green butter, cheese, bean salad, cold but already saute'd mushrooms and zuccini, (I'm pretty sure I've killed the spelling of these things) and some other things. Then it was followed by an anti-pasta, then the main dish, then salad, then desert. It was a lot of fun, diffrent for sure which was nice for a change.

Ashland, OR

2009-03-24T12:37:00.002-05:00

Yesterday we had a day off in Ashland, OR. It was a cool place, very just retro, or old and vibey, almost hippieish to it. We couldn't find anything other than Starbucks that was from the outside world, which made it cool, everything was very local. So our first stop was for lunch at Brothers', very hometown food kinda place, and very cool, I asked for a sprite and the waitress told me to get myself! I loved it.I got a steak sandwich, and I had to take a picture, cause it came with a orange slice, and a strawberry, just very random. But again I loved it!

Then we were off to a candy shop, that was death by chacolate type a place then lots of walking around, taking pictures of random things. Overall an interesting day, but good.

And dinner... It's hard to explain the coolness of this place, it was in a back ally, a small house, and I couldn't pronounce half of what was on the menu. Very Itialian, very good food.

Points...

2009-03-22T17:30:00.002-05:00

I'm so confused.

Washtington State...

2009-03-21T16:49:00.005-05:00

Show 4, and things are getting better naturally, the venue is .... interesting, I've been to worse, the loading dock has a little hill to contend with, overall not a bad place, we were up pretty quick today, course that was video, and we don't hang anything from points in the air, the people that needed to hang things in the air waited for a while today, I'm not really sure what the deal was, I heard the building had some first timers up in the air, that might've had something to do with it.

I posted a pic of the loading dock from where the trucks sit, cause the internet is super fast, it's nice having blogger nerds around here, cause it's a must we have internet, and for some reason it's fast, it's been really nice, I'm not use to having internet that's just smoking.

What's funny is I have stories from this tour already, but when I go to blog I just seem to forget them.

Boise...

2009-03-20T18:16:00.002-05:00

Scott and I decided to go for a walk to check out the scenery, during our 15 minute break, we got around to the front of the building, and saw the line of people waiting to get in, it was encouraging, seeing a line of people that stretched far enough that you can't make out the end of the line in the picture, this show is doing something different, no pre-sold tickets, all tickets $10 at the door, so people have been lining up since 6am, that's what they tell me at least, because we didn't get here till 10am.

We're on show 3 today, and we already have a ton of stories, it's been a lot of fun hanging with this group again, it's most of the same crew that is always out with these groups, or we've all tour together at some point, so it's been straight to joking around from day one.

A Day Behind...

2009-03-18T23:11:00.002-05:00

So I'm running a day behind out here, this was suppose to be yesterdays post, but I don't get a chance to get my computer out during the day, unless it's to look up some kind or work thing. Since I was talking about work, thought I would share with you some work things, first like I said in the last post from my phone, we're broadcasting on the web every night, well "we're not" but Brody and his side kick are, we're doing the imag for the show and he's borrowing a feed from us, anyway this tour is really unique in a lot of ways, it's hard to explain it, on here cause I'm not good with words and making sentences, so I say the best place to find out about it is on the tour blog which is "the rock and worship roadshow" the show will be up on there every night we're doing a show, so I would say tune in and find out for yourself whats going on.

It's been a good out here, I've been really busy, it feels good though, I haven't really been stressed out, just been really busy trying to get the first show up and running, and all the little things that fall through the cracks came up, and that keeps me busy, I was able to get out my camera for a little bit yesterday and take some shots of the crew working and the LED walls out here, which was relaxing. I'm hoping tomorrow goes really smooth we have a lot of cleaning to do on the cabling, some looms to make load in/out go faster, but I'm hoping everything just goes together quick.

This was hanging outside the Production office in Billings, MT. I thought it was funny, cause you don't think about all the driving we do for a tour, unless your bus driver sucks then you think it about all the time cause your tired and grouchy. But for the most part if you have a good driver then you don't think about it cause your sleeping. And you don't care how what direction you go as long as your not late to load in.

1st day

2009-03-17T12:48:00.000-05:00

It's been pretty busy the last couple days we started tour rehearsal, that's right 1 day. So it's been a little crazy, but for those of you who care, you'll be able to watch every one of our Shows on the Internet! Like I need the cratiqueing. I'm posting from my phone, so I can't post a link, just go to www.therockandworshiproadshow.com and you'll see links for the show on there somewhere.

-- Post From My iPhone

The Last Week...

2009-03-13T20:24:00.002-05:00

I use to think that duck (Gaffe) Tape couldn't fix, well I have a new vice, and that's vel-cro, the tour I'm headed out on has a pretty cool design, but it's mostly well all of the LED is ground supported, which is a little different from our usual hanging everything from a truss which we're pretty good at, but we had to get a little creative on how some of the LED is going to be standing up, it surrounds 2 of the risers, and so we thought a lot about how we were going to stand them up right, without falling over, or taking up a lot of space, and neatly, cause you know? You don't want to be that tour that you (the Church techy) come to see and laugh at the tour crew for having stuff fall over, sometimes you feel like you need to come up a cool reason like U2 to stand do something basic.
Like them having a PS2 comtroller to control robo cams, which I want to one up by the way... I'm working on that one just need some time! Anyway after very little thought, and hardly any debate we decided to vel-cro them. Which I bought the thick stuff, since we're leaning this stuff up against a drum riser! That means the riser will be moving a lot! Maybe... that stuff is strong! The LED that's close to 100lbs is physically hangin in the air off of vel-cro! I love it!

Why I havn't been bloggin! Cause I've been playing that silly game of what bone conects to what bone, you know the hip bone conects to the....pheamer?, and people sing it or something? Anyway when you jump into pile of the unknown the best thing to do is to start lableing what you know! Then what you don't know you try and figure out as best you can, and lable that. By unpluggin things and asking what just stopped working? And then you have it figured it sorta, or you can go the old school rout which we did a lot of, which is following the wire from this thing to that thing, and the whole time your tugging and pulling lightly so you don't break anything.

It's all good fun and time consuming, but the thing is when you get out on the road, and nobody is answering thier phone, you don't want to be calling about the little things, it needs to be a show stopper in order for me to call someone for help, so I try and get it all the little things out of the way before I go out on a show.

And that's where I've been for the last week!

Anniversary #3...

2009-03-12T20:21:00.002-05:00

Last night was our 3rd Anniversary. Usually we go somewhere out of town for our anniversary, I can say usually cause it's been more than 2, right? But this year I've had to work, that's the reason for the lack of blogging, I've been stupid busy, which I'm not complaining, glad to be busy. So this year we decided to cook at home, we got a little indoor counter top grill as an anniversary gift to each other, so we thought it would be fun to grill some steaks and just hang out at home!

So I lightly seasoned the steak, Patti made a salad, baked some potato's, made a casserole, and served some shrimp cocktail as a pre-meal warm up to dinner, obviously.
Mmmm....
And then the dinner was served about 40 minutes later, it was amazing, the baked potato's were so big that they had to go on their own plate!!

Dinner Night...

2009-03-05T21:46:00.004-06:00

Well if this works, lately my blog has been NOT WORKING!!! Like it's just blank white, all I expect is I don't switch to another blogging site, and this one works!
Well, now that I've got that out, I want to share with you something positive, a couple nights ago (I think) we met at Nick's again for a cooking night, and some of Nick's homemade ice cream. We had so much food that it was a little crazy, two kinds of chicken, fillets, and that's just the main course. I have to many pic's of the food to actually post them all or choose one. So I'll just talk about the pure sugar and banana's, with some fresh cut strawberries, that was Nick's ice cream, by the time we got to it, it was more like a milk shake, and it was really stinking good...

Then it was Guitar Hero time, we played if you had the lower points from a song, then you passed it off to the next person, and with no surprise, Patti seemed to find a way to win almost every song, I'm not trying to say that she was cheating, but.....

The best part of the night was when Nick and I starting taking pictures when we weren't playing, now it's not easy playing the game in general, but your playing and being yelled at to give us a rock-star kick it can turn funny, the funniest part about this pic to me is Patti almost falling over kicking, it almost looks like she's falling over.

YEA!!! that's right Rockin' it out!! (Haha) We were posing (Sorta) I kinda always play moving around to the music, cause it's hard not too! And Aj looks like he's posing like a Bass player!!

New Things...

2009-03-02T20:22:00.005-06:00

Patti and I went to the mall in another part of town, where all the rich people shop. We're not rich but their are some eating places over there that are good and a treat. So we walked around the mall for a bit before eating, it was warm inside so I took the jackets back to the car, when I returned Patti was waiting inside and when I got back she pointed out a small Cubs pillow in a store window, I was like that's cool lets see how much? For those of you who don't know I have an office/spare bedroom that is full of Cubs things, most of the things have been gifts, over the years people have known that I'm a huge Cubs fan so they will buy me the most random Cubs things, and I have to admit I love it, their all displayed in the office. Because Patti would have something to say about me buying so much random things, usually she buys it for me, but it's fun when she bus me Cubs things.

Well that was a bunny trail, I guess it was necessary maybe? The point is we went in to the store to look at the price of the Cubs pillow and found the coolest pillow cover ever! It's the symbol of the MLB logo, you don't find the MLB logo a whole lot. So it was awesome! The lady at the store basically called me a big kid.

Problems...

2009-03-01T17:56:00.005-06:00

They say the first thing to admitting you have a problem is buying a really expensive shampoo to help with the problem.

Yup, I've been worrying and hoping that maybe it's just a season but thinning hair is not a season, I use to have such thick, curly hair, that all the ladies seemed to love. Course they were my grandma's, aunts and their friends that were all in their 80's, but they loved it non the less.

But now without a doubt it's slowly disappearing, I don't want to end up like that guy that was on the Andy Griffith show, you know the one, he went on to do another really successful tv show in his teens, and then go on to be really successful behind a camera, the key word here is "behind" the camera and wears a hat all the time! You know why? Because he had RED hair and now he doesn't. (Sigh) Granted he's made some of my favorite movies! And I'm sure he's a really cool guy, and I hope he doesn't mind me picking on him for losing some hair, it's not his fault, but, he's the only one I know that has had red hair and now is missing some red hair.

Saying all that, I guess what I'm getting at is I going to try and prevent, if it's a preventable.

Because lets be honest that's all I really got going for me, I hate for my wife to always say "do you have a dress hat to go with that suit?". Red heads don't look good with a shaved (bic'd) head. We're pale white. I would look ..... Stupid.

A List...

2009-02-27T20:13:00.008-06:00

I hate not being able to just spit out what I'm trying to say, here are some of the issues I've been trying to spit out into a full blog of their own and not sound like a jerk, for about a month now.

a. Communication: Why can't people just communicate.
b. Repetitiveness: I'm tired of hearing the same thing over and over again.
c. Bad Driving: It's been really bad lately.
d. Money and techs: This one I could do several blogs on, and it's not what you think it is.
e. The End of the World: I can go anywhere with this one. And not the stupid song from R.E.M. (no link love for them) I have to admit I first heard the song from DC Talk. Of which I liked, then heard the original and ....

A list of topic's sort of, that I would love to spend time on, and talk about but can't cause it just turns into frustration, and I'm dubious in all of the subjects even me publishing this post, or someone thinking that I'm having a bad day because, not just things that I would love to have an opinion about and share them, or I can go back to be languor in life. Even keep blogging about what I eat for dinner. And brag about how fat I'm getting.

Potluck...

2009-02-25T19:21:00.008-06:00

Last night we got together with some friends, Nick and A.j., over at Nick's place, we've been talking about a potluck get together for some time now, where whoever is hosting makes the main dish and the others bring drinks and a side dish, or salad or dessert or whatever, it's a good way to get together and share how you make things, and try new things etc.
So last night was the first night, as you can see Nick getting really close to make sure his fish on the Barbie are doing what he wants them to do. It was great, cause he bought this grill before we got there, it's always good be the one that helps in the breaking in process of a new grill.

Patti, had made an appetizer of fruit dip stuff that's amazing, whenever she makes this, it doesn't usually matter what event or get together she brings this too it's usually a hit.

Presentation

We made some pretty good food, eating on a card board table, was a laugh at first, but... it was a lot of fun, the salad that A.j. made was really good, everybody played their part in bringing something, A.j. with salad and drinks, the salad was awesome and simple, Patti with the pre-dinner, a side dish, and dessert, and Nick with the and it turned out really great!

Patti's dessert, a little something she whipped up just before we went, she thinks it looks disappointing but man was it good!! I had a another piece before.

Last Minute..

2009-02-22T11:28:00.005-06:00

The other night I was on the phone pretty much the whole afternoon moving into the evening helping out where I could for some techs that were out on the road having some trouble with LED, finally I get off the phone and then realize that I'm going to need to head out there to help get things up and running. So I book a flight on Southwest which I love, got a 6am the next morning to Baltimore, MD, and then mapped out a rout to get to the show in Salisbury, MD.

I thought ok its a little over 2 hours away not to bad not ideal for flying in to fix something, and wanting to be there for load in to help. But not bad, I get there and find out how beautiful MD. is, I've only really seen Baltimore, I've been to MD. several times but have only seen the back of the venue we were doing a show in. So driving threw the state that morning was pretty amazing. Course once I got on the 55mph road (no interstate where I was going) that took me for the 1-1/2 hours of my 2 hour drive, and being the type of person that doesn't speed I had plenty of time to site see the back country of MD. I kept wondering what kind of venue I was going too, wondering what to expect, coming up with contengincy plans if things were really messed up, looking for a starbucks for some keep awake liquid. I just couldn't get over the scenary, just amazing.

I finally showed up at the venue, still not reconizing the outside I walked in and looked up and rememebered that I'd been here, I actully blogged about this place as you can see here, it was the place where the ceiling starting falling, and I kept telling the riggers they had the chains in the wrong spots yada yada.. the funniest part was that the ceiling still looked the same, just look at the pic's from a year ago.

Its was good, 1hr 40min. flight, 35min getting to the rental car locations, 2hr 19min getting to the venue, for 30 minutes worth the work is priceless! and then making the trip back home in reverse order was a good adventure, especially driving on the back roads of MD in the middle of the night trying to find my way to the hotel in Baltimore.

Family History...

2009-02-18T22:39:00.002-06:00

My Mom has been working on her family history, it's been cool finding out what she finds out, its always fun when somebody else does all the work, but whats interesting is that my Grandpa's family is a mystery, she's been tracing back my grandma's family, even found the boat they came over on from Germany. But my grandpa stops with my him! And she can't remember him talking about his family, its so cool, normally when you trace your family history you can get pretty far, especially when you pay some internet company $9.99 a month, but when you pay the fee and there's nothing there its really interesting! It makes family history even more exciting when there isn't one at the moment!

I was going to blog about work, but I didn't, the picture is of Mitrix labeled to the ninth, and something funny about the kid doing it. But I can't stop thinking about family history its such a mystery! I wonder if I should call Unsolved Mysteries?

Power Cable...

2009-02-16T22:00:00.006-06:00

I had someone new to train today, really good guy wanting to learn everything about the gig, writing things down, taking notes, I guess that's the same thing, I felt like Ryan Reynolds in that movie where he takes on an assistant, he says something then says "write that down", that's what I felt like today, I would tell him something then, say "write that down". We labeled some stuff, actually we labeled a lot of stuff, then I mentioned that its a lot of things to remember in just one day, especially with loading out on Tuesday, so you should go over your notes tonight and we'll go over it again tomorrow.

I had to make some calls, or call backs if you will, that and I was so thirsty, so I was like "I have to make some calls" and run to the gas station and get a drink, so as I was leaving the band stopped for a brief moment just long enough for me to talk in a normal voice, I said, "good job bro!" looking at all the labeling he'd been doing, then explained about the processor, said there's only three cables you need to worry about on a daily bases and one of them is the power cable! "Because if you don't have a power cable then you don't have power!?" he sorta laughed, but didn't really have a response, and looked at me with a blank look, after a second I said "you should label that too, just so there's no confusion on what goes where!"

And... He did.

The Last Couple Days...

2009-02-15T00:00:00.007-06:00

The last couple days have been good, we've had to get creative on some things, as you can see in the pic's, on how to hang some LED, but it's been good, not really stressful at all, just really long days, it takes time to make things, (profound I know) pre-production is a lot of hanging something then stand around and look at it, then talk things out, or in this case a lot of well if we hang the LED like this or from that it'll hang just right, everybody grabbing tape measures, rattling off numbers, and then looking at me like I am a stinking math whiz or something, I'm like.... I'm a LED tech not a MIT grad. Course the highlight was when the lighting kid asked me if he should meter the power before turning it on? I was like "lighting or video?" he replied with "lighting", I then followed by staring for moment to see if he was joking, then said "you should probably meter it........every time."

These are the only pictures I've been able to snap off so far, I've been to busy listening to math equations and climbing ladders, labeling everything you can possible label to make things easy, idiot proofing something when your an idiot is hard!

I've had so much on my mind lately, stuff that I want to blog about and have saved multiple drafts, but can't seem to get it out of my head on to the blog, which could mean that it's not suppose to be on here, basic concept of the 400 word blog that seems to be nothing but rambling, has allot to do with my work, and people that I've had the chance to sit and talk with lately about life and career's. But again it just doesn't seem to make sense once I put on here, so maybe later....

Valentine's Day

2009-02-13T21:45:00.002-06:00

Ah yes... Valentines Day, is one of those days that I try to be romantic but, by no means is there an ounce of romance in my body, I try, but it always seems to turn into some kind of joke, or I'm just an idiot and say the wrong thing, I've watched "You've Got Mail", I've seen "Noting Hill", and still, I can't get it right.
I guess I'll keep trying, maybe one day my wonderful wife that deserves the world in her hands for putting up with me will get a glimpse of romance, it's not that I don't try, I bought some flowers at the beginning of the week for her, and today I drove all over looking for some chocolate, I looked at cards then realized that the cards are all stupid, so instead of looking somewhere else I chose to forget, and move on to work related things, and.... I guess that's like the cardinal rule, you have to have a card to go with the stuff you buy for her. Oops... (sigh)

But she still loves me, and I love her, for the card and the gift she got me!

Woken to Early...

2009-02-11T09:25:00.003-06:00

This morning we wake up to hammering and somebody sawing things right outside our window. Your first reaction is being pissed off, then next you move to wanting revenge, then finally just bitterness, I hate that word, bitterness, its the word defines holding a grudge, do to bad experiences, like the one we're having with our complex, we've never wanted to move so bad till now, 3 years with the same place, and now they decide to remodel the pool, a couple days ago, and now the outside of the buildings, and to be honest its pointless what their doing, we're watching the progress, and it looks the exact same. And I've looked at what their doing to the outside of the buildings, the new stuff compared to the old, and there's nothing wrong with the old stuff, (Such horrible management!) I guess they forget that people LIVE here!

It's like if I did all these things outside their place they would call the cops, or complain, but since they work here and make really bad decisions like having these people doing this without so much as a memo saying we're sorry in advance for the inconvenience but it's going to get noisy.

Instead they don't tell anyone, and people like my wife that works till midnight has to be woken at 8am on the dot by people just trying to make a living, I know its not the fault of the people doing the work, even tho in my tiredness I want to harm them, (i.e. punch them in the face) but more the fault of the complex, who should have at least sent out a memo or at least compromised and tell them not to start till 10am that's a little more respectable time to be woken abruptly.

There for the week that's me complaining.

A Good Work Day...

2009-02-08T22:31:00.006-06:00

Today was one of those days that started early, Slaughter was flying in before a gig, so we could go over some much needed pre-programing of the LED stuff, course I had to get some things finished at the shop before slaughter got in. Course when I started getting things done the computer (a PC) it didn't want to work right, I'm beginning to realize I'm really PC ignorant, and some times new software isn't the best solution, and that's all I have to say about that!

It was a good day though, we talked and told stories, getting stuff done at the same time which is crazy, that doesn't happen very often. It wasn't the official set up prep, just layed some stuff out on the floor and played with the layouts and mapping, we're doing something a little different for the content, again, so we needed to check some stuff, which I'm glad we did cause it was an all day thing mapping and what not.

What we really did is just stood around and stared at the LED... waitin' for it change color.

A Fun Day..

2009-02-07T23:20:00.004-06:00

Today was a good day. Had breakfast with the wife, which is always awesome! Then once she left for work I cleaned a few things around the place, played a little xbox, Then it was off to hang out with the fellas, today was this guys (Randy) b-day, or rather yesterday was his b-day. Go say a belated happy b-day!!

I get this text saying to meet him and Brody at a place downtown, so I head to the meeting establishment. I park in front of the store front, get out of my car looking for the scooters they were riding all day, not seeing them I decide to head in the shop, seeing two ladies sitting in the window of the shop next to the door, I get almost to the door, reaching for the handle I get a text from the fellas saying they are in the parking garage across the street, first floor in the corner.
I read my massege then look up at the ladies their now looking at me, I look left, then right, then behind me seeing the parking garage, I turn around and cross the street, once across I look back while walking into the garage, noticing the ladies still staring at me wondering what I'm doing? I then think I wonder if their thinking this is really wierd and suspicious? Walking to the back corner finding them standing next to their scooters, we stand around for a minute and talk then decideing to start our journey to our next destenation, I start walking back out the garage, they get the scooters fired up, (haha get it, there scooters! They don't need to be fired up) I walk out alone, cross the street, and look to my left and see the same to two ladies looking at me with coffee in mid motion to the mouth, their not talking, just staring, I sit in the car for a minute then make a U-turn behind the scooters as they pull out of the garage.

I had to laugh following the fellas down the back roads of TN, thinking about the two ladies, I've been wacthing to many spy shows on tv and in movies, that and I've been playing splinter cell (a spy game), so I had to laugh cause it did seem pretty wierd, me walking up to the shop stopping at the door, getting a text right when I reach for the handle, and stopping to read it, then crossing the street to a parking garage!

But then I didn't laugh for long cause I had to focus on the road cause we were heading to a little town in the back woods, I followed in my car, and I'm pretty sure we went from civilization, to the childeren of the corn, then back to civilization, only to find my self zig zaggin through the rabbit whole of suburbia!

Over all it was out of the norm for a sat. night for me, and it was lot of fun!

Cake..

2009-02-05T22:22:00.003-06:00

Am I fat?

Ok so I know I have a problem, it's just that chocolate cake is so good, especially with a glass of milk!

Milk...

2009-02-03T23:10:00.003-06:00

Tonight, Patti and I went to dinner with some friends, (Schwarz & Robyn) like usual, the girls were talking about normal stuff, and schwarz and I were talking about stupid things for the most part, and some how it got brought up, that I always dreamed of taking a bath in milk, joking of course, but it made me think, how much milk would it take? And would you want it cold or warm, nobody likes cold baths that I know of? After talking about it for several more minutes, and joking about having some chacolate cake there, and what it might do for your skin, the girls not buying it at all, even with schwarz and I trying our hardest to sell it we moved on to something else to talk about it, like some famous lady that washes her hair each month with beer and honey, cause it does something to help it, apperently she also washes her hair with caviar.

So maybe if the rich and famous do crazy things to help their apperence maybe I'm on to something. Maybe it'll help my apperence?

Some Visiting Time...

2009-02-01T17:47:00.006-06:00

When I'm working close to where my parents live, we try to get together, at least for a meal, usually I'm working a one day show, so they (usually just my mom, it's to loud for my dad) come for lunch or dinner or both then stay for the show, depending on the show if I can talk during the show or not. Well this weekend I just had a load in a couple hours away from them, so my mom came up for breakfast before my flight, this morning was nice though we met at almost dawn, and just hung out near Disney, ok we hung out at Downtown Disney and ate at one of the hotels that has amazing all you can eat breakfast buffet!

Course there was a lot of celebrities hanging out, signing autographs, which made it a little distracting, some of the people in the restaurant didn't really eat much, they were too excited.

So the first commercial of the 09' Super Bowl that I see, made me about as excited as some of the people at the restaurant were getting to get autographs. For those of you who know I get excited about movies, especially ones that I've been waiting for! Like this one!

2009-02-01T14:37:00.000-06:00

I miss my wife, It's been a couple days, and I'm super exited about getting home to her!

Continuing the Sorta Working...

2009-01-30T21:21:00.004-06:00

Today I accomplished something, I didn't just stand around and watch people working, trying to help where I can, I actually did my job which is.... Well, if I told you, you would realize how easy it is to do my job, and then I would be out of one, but I can tell you since the three people that read this that some days I'm a rock star and some days I'm not, and sometimes both in the same day, today I was neither, just another tech setting up my stuff, for the most part by myself, I had some help in the labor part, but the rest of it was just me doing my thing, it was relaxing, it gave me time to think about things, it also gave me time to eavesdrop on peoples conversations....

It's not nice I know, but its a good way to learn how people in "leadership" positions make decisions, and see how that pans out. If I can learn from that, then in the future if I get put in that situation I'll be better prepared, today I learned....

After actually doing work today I thought I would treat myself to a little Frazolio's chease cake with strawberries on top! Yea that's right.

I Sorta Worked...

2009-01-29T20:39:00.007-06:00

It's been a while since I've done one of these blogs, and since non of the other blogs that are crew blogs have had a lot to blog about lately, things are slow, this time of year, I've been thinking about starting a blog that has to do with the people I work with, in the summer time it turns into a sitcom for sure! We travel in a RV for half of it, (A really nice one at that) but one of the things about it that makes it fun and sitcom(y) is the different personalities in the RV, we all get a long, just different back grounds. I usually share some of the stories on this blog about the summer adventures, but I hold back on some of the stuff, and just share the stuff that I think I have the time to blog about, which turns out to be the basics, but I promise I could fill pages of stories and pictures of the unconsciousness and some what daze some of us have in the midst of the conversations on the long drives, that sounds fun doesn't it? Blog worthy? Probably not but it sounded fun to talk about it.

Enough of the rambling... On to the Blog
We started our load in today, well sorta, it was more like we unloaded the trucks and then I stood around chipping in where I could to help the other departments set up since I can't do anything till they have their stuff up since I'm hanging my screens from their stuff...

Course I did accomplish getting my feeder buried, I mean I didn't do much, I just stood there while a couple of the guys took all the nails out of the ground and peeled back the carpet (I did help with that) that's covering the floor of a the tent, a tent that has to be one of the biggest tents I've been in, ok the 2nd biggest, but big non the less.

Digging the mini trench...

Trench done...

Trench filled...

And yet I'm tired as it I did something today....

Stop And Go...

2009-01-28T20:19:00.005-06:00

So after flying on a flight that made me laugh, I sat in rush hour traffic for an hour or two, not really thinking it would take as long as it did to get my rental car, and of course I forgot to bring some Toll Road money, so after looking for a bank, (it didn't take to long, I love my iPhone) then giving some of it to the State of Florida, I sat in a pretty decent rental car searching for something on the radio that didn't have a twang or from the mid 70's genre of "what is this?. In traffic that wasn't stop and go, it was mostly roll a little and then stop.

Have you ever forget to do something, you can feel that you forgot to do something but when you remembered your like shoot now its to late to do anything about it, like take the cake out of the oven so it burned, or whatever, for me I don't forget to do things very often, but Patti and I have been talking about how much I either don't listen very well, or forget things, I was hoping the cause would be that I had stuff on my mind, but nope.

In the industry I'm in it's mostly done in memory, somebody tells you how to do or fix something there's not a lot to right on when your fixing it or doing it, I remember most all of the venues I've been too, what show or all the shows for the most part, I can remember when in a city that there's something in walking distance (i.e. Starbucks) but here lately I've been forgetting or not paying attention to conversations. It's not that I'm busy cause I'm not anymore than usual, I feel like I'm still on top of what I do, remembering conversations with clients the boss, people I work with about work details, but outside of work I've been forgetting some little details, stuff from places to get for the house, or .....

.... I don't know just throwing it out there I guess and rambling cause I haven't had anything to really blog about that is stupid so I thought I would ramble a little since I'm sitting alone in a hotel room I thought I would ramble since it's been a while!

Stop!

2009-01-27T23:10:00.004-06:00

I'm not sure if the statistics are true or accurate, but for the last couple weeks I've been really annoyed with people while their driving their cars. Right out side our residents, there's a 4 way stop that mostly leads to a business district, and well the people that use the stop sign don't really stop, we (Patti and I) have been on the defense driving at our own little area, cause people don't care and or pay attention to the stop sign! It's like they figure the guy in front of them went so they'll just follow, or in several cases, they just slow down enough to look around not looking to see who was there first, at one stop I almost got side swiped, a guy didn't even brake for the stop sign, I saw him coming down the street and I thought he looks like he's going awful fast, and just flew right through the stop sign!
And that says it all! If the public doesn't want the Police to stop people for rolling through a stop sign that means that they (the public) doesn't stop at stop signs!

So I've been doing some of my own questioning, asking some of my friends if they stop?

Hmm....

To Much To Do...

2009-01-25T19:11:00.003-06:00

Everyone has different kicks that they go through I guess, one of mine at the moment is books, I've been doing pretty good for the last year or so trying to read a book a month, but one of the problems I have is once I get into a genre of book, I start to find to many books that I want to read, and being apart of reward zone thing, I get these coupons for so much percentages off, and well I'm like how can I not do it, there's something about not paying full price for something, so when you can save some money you do. The problem is over time the books that I've wanted to read are starting to pile up.

It's not that I won't read them, it's just that I get more coupons than I get time to read, and I don't read very fast, I've blogged about that before, the thing is I have to many things that I want to get too, tv shows that I've started and trying to catch up on past seasons, 360 games that I've wanted to play or play again, and now books that I want to put on the the shelf as an accomplishment of the fact that I can read!

(sigh)

More Food.

2009-01-22T17:46:00.004-06:00

I've noticed the last couple of posts, the pic's have been of food, its not that food is the only thing I've done for the last couple days, its just that all I've done this week is work and sit around the house when Patti is at work, so when your bored you snack on things, and when I'm bored I take pictures, but seriously these little Dove candy things are amazing.

I just haven't had a lot to blog about that isn't the normal "what I've been doing at work" or "What I've been doing at home", cause all that is the same, work cleaning and fixing LED stuff, home playing xbox, and hanging out with Patti in the kitchen while she cooks deserts and dinner or lunch which ever.

I read other peoples blogs, they have something their thinking about, or something that happen to them, or something they did, I just haven't had a whole lot going on, and I haven't really been thinking about whole lot either. It sounds crazy but I haven't.

Mysteries..

2009-01-21T19:05:00.003-06:00

I like watching "unsolved mysteries" on tv, I especially like it when they show you a mystery then the tv says "update" and then they show you that the mystery has been solved, that's fun when a mystery is solved! Everybody likes it when a mystery is solved, wheather its a major crime, or when you find that key to that paddle lock that you've been looking for, or when you find your faovorite pair of shorts.

Or like why my Power supply cable is finally on its last leg, just out of the blue, gosh darn it!

It does still work if I just don't move....

"Tv"

2009-01-17T23:05:00.003-06:00

I've got good news and some bad news. I'm feeling better, for the first time in a week I feel like myself again, and that's the good news, the bad news is for the chocolate cake that Patti made tonight, it doesn't stand a chance!

Being sick is something that never use to happen to me, but you know people change our bodies change and yada yada, anyway one of the things I did this week besides a little reading and sleeping, was watching tv, I usually watch tv through out the day, when its my day off, and at night when I'm getting home from work or whatever, but usually I don't "watch" tv, I'm on my computer doing something, or playing video games, or talking to Patti, just keeping busy, but not like just sitting there with nothing else to do, but most of this week that's what I did, I just sat there and watched tv, no computer, no other distractions, and it was stupid, I feel like I've wasted this entire week! But at least I feel better now.

Starbursts...

2009-01-15T22:45:00.002-06:00

My wife has a plan, when she grabs some starburst, walking out the door to go to work, in somebodies home candy jar, a single roll at the store, she grabs pink starbursts first, and once she's eatin all the pink, then follows the red, orange, and finally yellow.

I Love her for that...

Sickness..

2009-01-13T23:11:00.003-06:00

The last time I was sick, I had a piece of my insides removed, that apparently I don't need, well this time it started out like the normal good old fashion flu, and turned into 2 different kinds of flu, I hate to go into detail, but I'm sure you can get the idea.

I hate being sick, I can't hang out with my friends, I can't go outside and play, and I feel worthless for the most part, and the worst part of it is, I've been feeling so crummy that I haven't even played xbox since the start of this thing.

Patti seems to think that boys no matter how old they are, are big babies when they get sick, all of a sudden a switch turns on and they turn into the little kids they use to be. (She's not complaining just making an observation) Which I have to admit, I ask for a lot more things when I'm sick, like a straw to drink my water, and apple sauce, all the little things we like when we're sick. Course I probably have a little whine involved.

But I just can't help to wonder if it's all guys who turn into boys when their sick, or just me, and since I've never really been home when Patti's sick or I don't think she's ever been really sick if girls are the same way?

2009-01-08T00:01:00.001-06:00

And I quote, "we are experienceing a total Internet outage for our service area, (All of middle TN and some of KY)" thank you Comcast. Thank goodness for my phone, but seriously think about that for a minute, what do you think people are doing without the Internet right now, I mean the tv still works but I mean the Internet is down! Anyway I'm to tired to really have a point, I was just amazed, usually it's like a zip code or area in a part of town that the hub went down, but nope it's a whole state!

And that's all I got, I'm to tired to blog about anything with meaning.

Dirt...

2009-01-05T20:11:00.003-06:00

This is how my day went...

About the time it was time for me to go, I kept thinking about that place at downtown Disney that that has the stinking amazing hot fudge sundays...
Yea it wasn't easy working today thinking about hotfudge sundsay's, especially as cold as it is for good grief what is wrong with me?

NYE

2009-01-02T10:36:00.002-06:00

Yup that's me on New Years Eve, I don't like wearing dress clothes, I have a couple different reasons why, one of them is that I never can find pants that don't come up to my shins when I sit down, the other is I don't own any black socks, and last I feel like an idiot. I use to work for a place where I had dress up all the time but I was skinny then, and that was a long time ago, I dress up like once a year now, and that's on our anniversary, and the funny part about that is I always have the exact same outfit on as the year before in our anniversary pictures.

The gig turned out to be fun, it was a gig that nobody wanted to do, it kept turning into a bigger cluster, but I think because the crew was the same as the last tour I did we made it fun, just joked around and tried to make the best of it. It was a lot of work, we worked for 23 hours straight getting things up and running, but it was worth it to have Patti with me, and spending the night working with friends.

Gifts...

2008-12-30T19:21:00.003-06:00

Christmas gifts, can be so much fun some times, I've already beat COD, and just started the other, what's funny about Endwar is it's primarily voice controlled so you say what you want to happen, which I find pretty fun, but then Patti came home from doing some shopping for the NYE gig tomorrow, and I felt like an idiot (haha) cause I kept saying do I sound stupid and she would giggle and say "yea a little bit", but its just so much darn fun.

I usually don't play video games when she's home but I'm getting so addicted to this game!

Don't need to say anything else...

2008-12-24T22:37:00.000-06:00

Merry Christmas everybody!

I Love This Area...

2008-12-22T22:41:00.003-06:00

Gosh I love this area, I lived here for a while, and if we got technical I kinda grew up here, I spent all of my teen years for the most here, and was on my own for a while here. I love this Sarasota, it doesn't matter what time of the year I come here it's always amazing.
It's so great taking pic's here it doesn't matter what you really take a pic of here, it just turns out great!

Patti and I along with the help of my mom, took some pic's yesterday out at the beach where Patti and I were married!

I'm still going through them but I love this pic.

To Much..

2008-12-21T14:19:00.003-06:00

Patti and mom doing a little cooking last night, I love the holidays, we usually spend it down here in FL, and since we use to live here, there's a lot of places that we have for eating places that you can't get anywhere else! Some local places that are awesome! But we just don't have enough meal times to hit all of 'em. Especially when we're doing a bunch of home cooking!

Florida style snowman...

More Vacation...

2008-12-20T16:33:00.009-06:00

On our little vacation we went to a little mini putt putt course, it was a lot of fun, Patti got 4 hole's in 1, and she started on the first hole non the less with one, which automatically brought out the trash talking.

Course not all the holes went in her favor, like this one, I have to admit that is a bit of a bummer.. I love that face!!

Before or maybe it was after we went shopping, we didn't really buy anything but it was fun just walking around and looking at all the lights, and making fun of all the crazy people...

Then after all the activities, we went to one of two of our favorite places to eat, at this place called the Wilderness Lodge, the lobby is massive, and they found a real tree to put in there, that is as tall as the lobby, and the food was pretty amazing...

The next day, we went shopping some more, we had a yet another big dinner planned so we thought we would split something, we looked around and then found a place we're used too... It was good... Patti took this pic I thought it was cool, it's got my ugly mug in there but it's all good...

Then it was off to find some desert, ok I have to admit we had already found this place, we took a menu back to the hotel and looked it over a couple times the night before, you don't mess around with Ghirardelli's... gosh I can still taste it, I want more!!

(She's holding up 2 fingers cause she putted the ball in in 2, and it took me 3 times)

Then more putt putt... and then off to a place that we don't have any pic's from this time cause it's so good that we just didn't think about, I did blog pic's about it last time we went if you click HERE to see what it looked like freaking amazing!

Beginning Of Some Down Time...

2008-12-19T23:16:00.003-06:00

We're on vacation, I'll give you a hint where we stayed for the first couple days...

I liked this bumper sticker...

Vacation...

2008-12-18T15:17:00.001-06:00

Vacation is one of those things that I've never really thought of as a big deal but this year has been busy for Patti and so we decided to take one, we were already heading to FL for Christmas with the parents so were like let's go somewhere and spend a couple days just the two of us! So we went incognito for a couple days, I'm trying to not work (talk on my phone) and she's just relaxin, it's been great! Just the two of us, we really needed a get away and both relax and go at our own pace. Just sit and talk and not have to be anywhere.

I have pic's and video of our little trip, it's been aawesome!!

Snow...

2008-12-16T09:47:00.001-06:00

For the last 5 weeks I've been all over, and it seemed like no matter where we went it was like we would leave and then it snow or it would be just cold and rainy, then sunny the next day. For example we were in Tulsa on sat. It was warm during the day cold at night and supper windy!! Like crazy windy, anyway it wasn't all that bad, well we go to Dallas on sun. Then back to Tulsa on Mon. And it went from sweat shirt weather in tulsa on sat. to 4 dagree's but no snow, just a lot of ice! So I was like that's a bummer I'm not going to see any snow before Christmas, and then I land in Kasas City for a lay over and it's snowing! And not just snowing but like SNOWING!! Which my excitment was crushed right away with concern about my flight home.

So here I sit waiting for my flight home, staring at the snow that I wanted to see before Christmas wishing now that it would stop snowing!

What Do We Do With An hour?

2008-12-13T16:58:00.005-06:00

2nd to last day of the tour, not a bad place to have it, Tulsa at the Mabee center, where you can Ma"y"bee get a entire show in the building, we were a couple hours late getting here, but I'm not complaining I slept really good last night, so whatever!

The tour was nice enough to buy some of us some Jamba Juice, gosh what a nice treat! So we sat around on our laptops watching the behind the scenes extra thing from U2, watchin' how big tours load in and laughing at ourselves, cause we're a little tour, and then pointing out gear that's in the back ground.

And that's about it, it's a early show, so we finished loading in about an hour ago, and now it's doors so I have to cut this short.

2008-12-12T21:06:00.001-06:00

Here's a pic of J.T. This picture cracks me up it's hangs in catering, my question is that Michael Jordan sitting there about to get kicked in the head?

So I'm in Houston tonight, just doing my normal thing, I go to check my gear (haha) it's doors so I thought I would make sure it all worked, I look over and here's a guy I haevn't seen since I was out on ATF, it's been a while since I did that, I love catching up with people see what their up too now, seeing if their still the same old person that I knew back in the day, some are and some ....... Aren't (didn't know if I was able to use that word) it was awesome to see this guy meet his wife, tho I never figured him to get a real job! But it was good to see him non the less.

S.L.O.B.

2008-12-11T15:19:00.004-06:00

I'm S.L.O.B. of the month, gosh this is so unexpected, first I would like to thank those who could make this possible, Mercyme for starting S.L.O.B., for all the other bloggers out there, man just keep clicking away, it's just a great way to stay in shape! And a Blog List is a great way to show some love!

Geez I would love to give a shout out to some crew blogs out there! Adverse city, Crowns, MMCrew, HOLLA!!!

2008-12-10T22:48:00.001-06:00

Do I read my book and get to bed early or do I stay up with everybody else and watch the new batman?

Napkin...

2008-12-10T00:16:00.003-06:00

Today was suppose to be busy, and it turned out to be just a whole lot of driving around, once we got tires put on our car, isn't that the worst when the things you have to do take a few minutes, but getting to each place takes forever, and to top it off its raining so people drive extra cautious, bless their hearts!

Anyway when things started to calm down a little, I was able to get together with Nick and talk about some more work, we didn't bring our laptops or a notepad for that matter so he improvised and grabbed a napkin, it doesn't look like much but there will be some pretty cool stuff going on with it, what's funny is that I think the napkin design makes more since to me than some cad drawings that I've been given, and the stage stuff probably won't look like that...

Anyway the crew blog has been updated, go take a look...

Recap..

2008-12-09T00:20:00.004-06:00

To recap my weekend it started in Nashville, doing a show here in town, Patti had the night off so it was nice to have her at the show just hanging out...

This is kinda how the next two days went...

Then we were home, that was the best part of the weekend!!

Henchman

2008-12-05T10:02:00.000-06:00

I've been playing some xbox, and one of the things that I've been thinking about is henchmen, I mean where do bad guys find them? How do you become a Henchman? Do they get benefits? I mean if I was job hunting how would I go about filling out a application to become one? What kind of pay do they get? I know this for sure I would want a paycheck at the end of each day, I mean cause you never know when your going to encounter your bosses arch nemesis!

And how can you be a bad guys right hand man knowing that your going to be either killed or captured, cause they never make a movie about how the henchman got away, or when the bad guy gets away he's all alone, all the henchmen are in jail or dead! Here let me show you it works in these pic's by showing you pic #1 the bad guy, is seen with the gun then scroll down to #2 and see what happens...

Some Time Together...

2008-12-04T14:25:00.006-06:00

Last night I had a night off, Patti had to work, so I was like what to do. I went and got some coffee with Nick, we talked about work and plotted out a picture book cause we don't like books that we have to read, then dinner, and then I thought you know it's been a while since I've had a whole night to myself, I'll have a little me and xbox360 time, things were going great I was beating all the bad guy henchmen. Then Patti called and said that she was done with work early, now I love spending quality time with the wife! It's like my favorite thing to do, so I stopped playing xbox cause I love my wife! And went back to tv and talking, but then she says "you want to play Guitar Hero?" And I'm like "I love you!" Quality time with the wife is the best!

New Things...

2008-12-02T18:54:00.003-06:00

Patti went to some party thing or something, and one of her friends had this stuff that you put on crackers, well she asked what it was? Her friend said all it is is this relish from Harry & David, and creme cheese. So we went to Harry & David and what a cool place by the way, we found the relish went and bought some creme cheese and bam!! We have a snack that is amazing, what was funny is I was expecting some elaborate fancy little snack, all Patti does is put a block of creme cheese on a dish then pours the relish over the top and it looks fancy and tastes amazing!! I'm like always craving it, it's that good!

I love trying new things, here lately I've gotten into cooking new things, it's harder than I thought it would be to try and cook new things, only because there's to many things to try, it's like choice over load for sure, I'm having to write down things and then just do a once or twice a week thing where we try something new, other wise we might go broke buying all the little things for each new meal that we try!