Day: February 8, 2011

Phoadtography: Vegas and Zion Trip 11/2010 Pt 2 of 3

It’s quiz time.  What has over 70 pictures, comes in three parts and has the ability to completely clean out your browser’s cache of all that pr0n you’ve been wasting your web time on?  Okay, that was an easy one.  Yes, I’m back with the second installment of the Las Vegas and Zion Phoadtography post.  Unlike last time, none of these are wall worthy which means they generally fall into the category of things that make you go “Huh?”.  I like to get the most out of my vacations and finding those interesting pearls puts the cherry on top.  Now that the Smugmug picture links have been captured, let’s not waste anymore time and get right to this set.

Linda and I stumbled onto this sign just before entering the Zion National Park.  Having to leave the children at home to go on vacations is always tough but I am sure they enjoy the Doggy Spa at the grandparents.  Maybe next time we head out to this park we’ll see if they want to come along – although if they find out they have to work on a ranch their pampered paws will carry them right back home.

It is no secret Linda and I enjoy vacationing in Vegas.  For two people watchers, that place is like steroids for the eyes.  Even with all our trips, the first time we ever saw the Welcome to Vegas sign was a couple of years ago at Linda’s niece’s wedding.  Their party bus took us out there so they could get some pictures under it.  Well, this year was the first time we got to see the downtown Leaving Las Vegas sign.  Our lives are now officially complete.

Hit the jump to see a bunch more Phoadtography pictures!

Continue reading Phoadtography: Vegas and Zion Trip 11/2010 Pt 2 of 3

Snowmageddon ’11: When Accu Does Not Stand for Accuracy

Take a gander at this weather forecast from our local Peoria Journal Star on January 30th 2011.

Pay particular attention to the Monday and Tuesday forecast.  Just taking a close look at the icons (which is exactly what I do 99% of the time) you would think that it will be cloudy on Monday with a few flurries and a mixture of sun and clouds on Tuesday.  This seemed a tad odd based on a report I had heard a few minutes earlier regarding a large front that was heading our way.  Maybe a closer inspection is required here.  Monday: Mostly cloudy, a BIT of snow; colder (okay match with icon).   Tuesday: Mostly cloudy, snow or flurries possible (this does not match the selected icon seeing as how I see no flurry symbols).  Note, this forecast was in our Sunday paper making the Monday and Tuesday forecast slightly harder than looking at a rock on the days in question.  At worst case you could look to the West, see what is happening on the plains and assume it will be on top of Illinois shortly.  But how could this be wrong, it’s from ACCUWEATHER (tm’d none the less).  For the entire rest of the day the local news and CNN were declaring “The Big One”  was on its way and would be hitting Illinois starting Monday and then pounding the entire state into submission on Tuesday.  How can this be, I’ve got ACCUWEATHER telling me to plan a picnic?   To top it off, the TV weatherman literally told everyone he expected us to be trapped in our houses on Wednesday.

So, want to know how accurate ACCUWEATHER’s forecast was?  How should I put this?  Let’s go with “A Pile of Feces”.  Monday actually turned out somewhat right in the sense it snowed a few flakes, but essentially nothing at all.  That day was not the one I wanted to focus on.  Tuesday started out with a rain and sleet mixture around 11:30am.  Shortly thereafter can only be described as a polar bear’s wet dream or an Inconvenient Truth for the gloBULL warming clown Al Gore.  From that moment on until early Wednesday morning, Peoria was in the midst of whiteout rivaling records set back in 1967 (a fantastic year by the way).  Once the storm moved out, we were left with about 18″ of the white stuff.

Score one for the TV forecast and a big fat ZERO for ACCUWEATHER. Sure enough we were snowed in. The plows never even made it out to us in the country until late Wednesday afternoon. Concerned about the amount of snow we were getting on Tuesday, I decided to do a pre-emptive plow late Tuesday afternoon in hopes of leaving enough space to put the rest of the snow. After two hours of this, the driveway was relatively cleared, but filling up fast from the blizzard. A last look outside before hitting the sack confirmed that the early plow was a wise decision. Well, a wise decision until I woke up the next day to discover all my work had been humbled by Mr. Snow Miser. Crap!!!

Hit the jump to see more pictures of Snowmaggedon

Continue reading Snowmageddon ’11: When Accu Does Not Stand for Accuracy