Loser

I'm such loser. I always have good intentions to post more frequently, and then I get sidetracked and do other things instead. Actually, this time I have a good excuse. I have been preparing my web page. You can check it out at this link. It should actually be up and running at jenniferlynneventphotography.com by Friday night. I won't be home though (we're going to Brown Co. again) so I'm not sure if I actually will have to do something to "launch" it, but if I do, I won't be doing it till Sunday when we get home.
So I was getting the horse trailer ready for the weekend. At the barn (and anyone who knows horses will understand) usually in the past has had normal size bales of hay. Like, ones that while heavy, can reasonably be lifted by at least a somewhat capable person. Well this year, they baled hay into these super bales. They need to use the Bobcat just to move them around the barn. This presents a small problem when needing to load one into a 2.5 foot wide horse trailer door. So I broke the balling strings, and just loaded the hay flake by flake (a flake is a section of hay for you city slickers) into the trailer. I had my doubts about this setup... hay tends to make a huge mess when it's not contained. I was right. When I got home, I opened the door to see my neatly stacked flakes strewn across the entire tack stall in the trailer.
Awww, damn! So I spent the next 30 minutes or so stuffing garbage bags with loose hay... I sure hope this isn't indicative of the rest of the trip...
Anyway. We have relatives coming to watch the monkeys so we can get the hell out of here for a while... I need to make some dinners for them to heat up. I'll report when we return.

Party On

We had a party last night for Brian's birthday. Here is what it looked like this morning...

As you can imagine, everyone had a really good time. At least it seemed that way. And given the fact that we drank nearly all of the alcohol I had in my entire house, I'd say we had fun. I'm probably getting cussed in four counties this morning though! Everyone slept in little (except for me - see photo) and we got off to a slow but comfortable start this morning. It really could be a lot worse. So I was totally UNMOTIVATED to do anything all day. People coming in and out of the house tracked in all kinds of crud and grass and stuff, and I sat and looked at it all day. I was living in squalor. It was great :)

So we laid around the majority of the day and did mostly nothing. Well, at least until Brian looked at the hot tub from last night. With all the kids and what not in it last night it was, well, a little funky today. Usually it cleans up pretty good with chemicals, so we started that project. Brian wasn't paying attention and instead of putting clarifier in, he poured in filter cleaner. The only problem is that you don't pour filter cleaner directly into the tub. Instant foam. So we proceeded to drain the hot tub... truthfully, I'm somewhat surprised one of my smart ass friends hasn't put laundry soap in it yet... and don't get any ideas. The first one to do it will be here cleaning it all day - and I'd find out... I'm a detective.

The yard held out pretty good, especially seeing as how it was a total sponge from all the rain we've been getting. I'm just glad it didn't turn out like Woodstock.

Alright, I'm tired. I can't imagine why. I haven't done anything all day.

Uh, Hello? God?

God? You there? Do you think this is funny?
We have had a thunderstorm just about every night for about the past week. The problems with this arrangement are 1) they always seem to occur in the peak sleeping hours of the night and 2) Vincent is guaranteed to wake up in hysterics at each one.
So now, my once good sleeping child is now up all night, even if its not storming, because he's scared it's going to storm. Last night it was from 12:30 am (at the first clap of thunder) till 4am (about 1.5 hours after the last clap of thunder). This really is not funny and I am NOT impressed. I don't get it. Why can't these things take place at oh, say 2pm? Like when we are all awake already - yeah - that would make sense.
I've had it. I just came back from the second re-placing back into bed in 30 minutes. I need a drink...

One Hot Mother

I bet you all thought I was referring to myself.... well, not today anyway. Ever since we put up our pole barn, we haven't had a garden. Usually every year I use the millions of peppers and tomatoes that we produce and make a huge batch of salsa. No fear, salsa lovers. Our neighbors have enough peppers to supply Mexico in theirs. So anyway, I raided their garden (with permission of course) and harvested a bunch of tomatoes. Additionally, I stole batches of tobasco, Thai, jalapeno, and habenero peppers.

Usually I grow mild banana peppers to use, so I had to go to the store for mild "fillers" to add to the hot stuff. While making my first batch, I was chopping said peppers, and chopped one of the habaneros. I guess I never had a habenero, because as I was chopping, I was feeling the sensation that I had been sprayed with pepper spray. The fumes were making my eyes burn, my nose run, and my sneezer sneeze. I was a total mess, and this was after just recovering from chopping onions. I was planning on using a couple of the habaneros, but after that episode, I only used a small percent of one of them. Those are the leftovers in the picture, and they are as hot as they look.

I am actually afraid of them. If just the fumes were about to kill me, I can only imagine what a chunk of one IN MY MOUTH would feel like. So I made my salsa, Vincent helped. He actually got a whiff of habanero too. He decided that the perfect "cure" for the hots was to eat a mouthfull of sugar (where does he come up with these things), so that's what he did. I made a total of 5 jars, 3 medium, and 2 hot. The ones I'm calling hot have the remanants of the habanero in them. I'd hate to advertise medium and then have someone bite into a chunk of that stuff. I'll distribute later, and let you know what my most honest critic (Brian) had to say about it...

More BAD Weather

I think we quite possibly had the worst storm I can remember in a long time last night. It started off with just a lot of distant lightning, and then all the sudden, we were being pummelled. Big time. Of course, it was right after I put the kids in bed. Naturally.

Vincent came screaming downstairs. Jade remained quiet. Then all the power went out, and it started hailing. Big hail. Like, nickel size or better. I haven't even checked my car yet. I'll be shocked if it isn't dented to hell.

The sump pit was filling up rapidly, I'm in the house with two scared kids, a few candles, and seemingly, an impending tornado.

We hustled into the basement till it settled down a bit outside. Brian came home and helped get the generator running before the basement flooded. One problem. On the generator, only about half of our lights and outlets were powered. I have (well, had) no idea why, as the generator had always powered everything fine before. So now it was scrambling to figure out which outlets worked, and which didn't, and get the essentials running. The essentials = the refrigerator, the sump pump, and the sewage ejection pit. The well pump would have been a nice touch too so we could have some running water. We didn't quite get that far till this morning. As of now (almost 11am the next morning) we still have no power, and the generator is going on 14 hours of continuous running.

Thank God for it though... I'm sure our basement would have been completely underwater in poo and storm water if it weren't for that thing.

Now it's just a matter of getting everything restarted, reset, etc... if the power ever actually comes back on...

Ok, So They Were Staged...

Since Brian has been in South Bend all week for training, I have been home with the kids more than normal. I figure since he's not here, I can turn my home into a makeshift studio, and have it put back to normal (but what's normal?) by the time he gets home. It's the perfect setup!

I took a few more pictures in anticipation of needing a portfolio for my photography venture. Now all I need is a bridal party...

See, I have this really kick ass camera, so it helps me take good pictures. Not to mention that digital offers endless possibilities for adjusting images and adding special effects. The creative possibilities are virtually endless.

This blogger upload feature is going to be sending me syntax errors (read: profane messages). These pictures are almost 13 megapixels. I think the blogger system was set up mainly for people with camera phones. I swear, it takes about 3 minutes to upload each of the pictures.

Even if this makes me a net profit of $0 I am still having fun with it. There's something somewhat calming about taking pictures for me. Lord knows I need something calming here and there.

Ok that's too weird. As I was uploading another picture, the thing timed out and gave me some code for why it can't upload my pictures.

I'll put more on some other time, I guess. Thanks for looking.

Home Invasion

Vincent is at the age where he really likes to dress up. We've had regular visits from Mr. Incredible, Spiderman, Batman, and now, Elmo and Cookie Monster. The kids were playing upstairs when I was informed that Jade wanted to put on the Cookie Monster suit...

They had so much fun running around and around the island in the kitchen, I thought I had to take a picture. Jade wouldn't keep the hood part up, but she's still cute none the less.

I don't have a whole lot of new information for my blog today. Let's see... I have a horse show on Sunday, Brian has fireworks on Saturday all day, a birthday party, uh, what else? I dunno.

We've just been busy with that summer-get-stuff-done kind of stuff. I have to work later on tonight. Maybe something exciting will happen there. Oh yeah, they caught the escapee in Montana. I knew that wouldn't take long with as stupid as he was.

I'm Better Now

Ok, I'm better now. I just had to get that out of my system (see previous post). It's true though... anyway.

This past weekend was our 6th (woo-hoo) wedding anniversary. We decided kinda at the last minute to say in Indy for a night. By the way, I figured if someone really wants to stalk us, they'd be able to do it with the information I've already provided, so have at it. Really. I dare you :)

We stayed at the Omni Hotel Downtown and had dinner at Ruth's Chris SteakHouse. I'd say we ate very, very well. I highly recommend it to anyone who can justify spending $180 on a steak dinner. We spent the evening moving around downtown, stopping off at several of the fine microbreweries scattered about. RAM brewery was our first stop. Their "Big Horn Hefeweisen" is outstanding. Just make sure you get it with a lemon wedge. Then we had dinner. After that we went to Alcatraz Brewery, where we indulged in another wheat. Not as good as RAM's but drinkable. Third stop was tried and true Rock-Bottom Brewery. They also have a very good wheat.
After we had our fill of alcohol, we retired to our very luxurious king suite at the Omni. I had never stayed in a hotel quite this nice. I'd have to say the service, atmosphere, and everything about the room screamed luxury. Overall, it was a kick ass weekend. As you can see, I attached a few pictures of the room, as well as the view of the street from it.

I found something very strange about Indy. On select street corners, they have these orange lighted kiosks. On them are dancing/walking people. I thought it would correlate with the walk/don't walk signs for pedestians, but they don't. The dancing girl keeps dancing and the walking (rather, strolling) girl just keeps strolling. I can't quite figure it out. Brian said we should check at about 3am to see the drunk people dancing with the dancing girl. Another strange thing about these kiosks is that the girls are very scantily clad, for an orange kiosk image, I guess. Short skirts and walking boots. What kind of image is the city trying to portray? That, and they don't follow the pedestrian flow signs. They just keep walking and walking or dancing and dancing. You can't see it in this picture, but there is one of them (the dancing girl) under that tunnel in the distance.

The weekend was a good get away for us. Unfortunately, it's back to reality now though. Work, kids, pets, vacumming.... oh well. It give us character, right? Not to mention I'd go broke in a big hurry living in that city...

It's Official

It's official. I am now a photography business. I decided to call it Jennifer Lynn Event Photography. The "Event" portion is in there because jenniferlynnphotography.com is already being used. As you could probably guess, I have subscribed to my very own website as well. It's not up and running yet, but I have secured the domain jenniferlynneventphotography.com.
Short and sweet, huh? Hopefully, I will be able to start designing it in the next few days.
Anyway, aside from creating a new business, I investigated a prison escape today. Not a jail break, a prison escape. From the big house. Here's a link to the story.

The very very scary thing about all this is that it was WAY TOO EASY. There are two rows of fencing at Westville. The first is about 10' high, with razor wire on top. Not so easy to scale. The second row, with about 8 feet between the two, is again about 10' high, with two strands of barbed wire on top. Now, I'm not a prisoner, but I've been in plenty of prisons. I guaran-damn-tee you that if I'm looking at 20 years in WCC or taking on two strands of barbed wire, I think I'm taking my chances on the barbed wire! The problem is that the geniuses that built the building and/or the fence, butted the building up against the first razor wire fence. The razor wire goes along the roof line, but, as this felon noticed, all you have to do is kick out the back panel of a pole barn (something Vincent could probably do if he really tried) and you're past the razor wire fence.

Believe me. This took absolutely no skill. And all that was left of him was a torn piece of prison khakis on top of the fence, attached to a barb. It was so easy in fact, that I climbed the fence, and got the piece of clothing off the top of the fence for evidence. Now, if my fat ass can climb this thing, a desparate inmate would have absolutely no problem. Obviously.

Not to mention, they placed this building at the back of the property, where people are not, and incidentally, the building it so tall, you can't see the fence section from any of the guard towers.

Unbelievable.

This couldn't be something cool like "Shawshank Redemption." This was just an opportunistic criminal doing what he does best... avoiding accountability and consequences for decisions he has made.