Category: General

By Any Other Name

“Folks that throw dirt on you aren’t always trying to hurt you, and folks that pull you out of a jam aren’t always trying to help you. But the main point is when you’re up to your nose in shit, keep your mouth shut.”

Okay, I am going to give you a break from all the insect and wildlife pictures that have been dominating this blog as of late and bring you a rare topic – me ranting about something…err .. I mean something that doesn’t happen that much – me complaining about a service…err .. I mean a short comment at the expense of someone in service … oh screw it, I’m just going to pull out my well worn soap box and once again pontificate about something that happens to be a pet peeve of mine.  In some small part I have my parents to blame for a cringe that awaits me almost daily.  Most of the time, I sigh, archive the incident if it happens electronically and move on.  Then again, there are those days that it stares back at you for a truly annoying amount of time.  Just happens I have a couple of examples.  Take this trip to Panera back in March.

Panera Brain

Was going to make it a mystery and then realized I pretty much handed it to you.  I cannot even begin to count how often this happens to me.  I actually keep a Brain’s folder on my corporate email account that I copy in every time it happens at work.  Yes, I agree I am probably overly sensitive (call it my snowflake moment).  The problem is it happens ALL the time.  Dear Brain, How is Brain today, Hey Brain you pissed me off today and on and on.  To be honest, Brian is not that hard of a name to figure out.  In fact, both my brother’s name are fairly simple but I never see my brothers addressed as Ran or Don – nope, it seems the spelling issues originates as soon as there are more than three letters in the name.  Very few people call me Bri (pretty much reserved for my Mom and Linda), but since it is three letters I never get Bra or Brie.  So there I was staring at the receipt wondering how this was going to play out when they called me for my food.  Put the odds at 60-40 their brains (see what I did there hehehe) would automatically reverse the error or they would be too ashamed to yell out Brain.

That’s when I looked up and uttered “Dammit”

hit the jump to see the punchline

Continue reading By Any Other Name

2016 – The Year in Review

Welcome to 2017 everyone!

This month officially puts me in my 10th year of blogging and an anniversary I would have never believed would be reach when I started this little project (you can thank my brother Ron for getting me started on this journey thanks to his blogging over at Dead Reckonings – link here). Keeping with tradition, the turning of the calendar year means it is time to do my yearly assessment of my blogging production.  Over the last 9 years, the blog has gone through a number of transformations (hoping all for the better from a reader perspective).  Today, it is squarely more focused on our photography work at Eddiesoft Photography.  However, I do try to give a variety of other topics ranging from personal events to recollections, which are as much a historical documentation of what goes on during the course of a year in my little world as it his, hopefully, an entertaining read for you.  Kind of nice to have 9 years of writings to go back through whenever I get to a point where I’m wondering how all those gray hairs came to be.  No regular reader should have any question about my political leanings or my views on how our government should be run.  I’m fairly open about it, but usually try to spare you all the gory details but depending on the tone of the news that day it is likely a few barbs make their mark somewhere in the post.  Needless to say, I am optimistic that the change in the guard will bring good things – god knows it could not get any worse than the last 8.  Now we just need to deal with all these snowflakes from the participatory trophy generation.  Losing is character building and if you take that experience away… well you can see what you get – Generation Whine – hope the socialist academics are proud of their handy work.  .  See, there I go again – sorry about that but I feel the biggest drive in my life is competition – to overcome my weakness, to challenge myself to accomplish something more physically challenging than I am capable of now, to produce a better photo than the last.  That is my mantra, a core tenant that defines my existence.  And following that goal, my hope is to be sitting here next year with a better blog summary than this year – although I am pretty happy with this year both in the content of the blog and on the personal side having finally knocked off the full marathon on my life list.  There have been a handful of times in my life when I’ve had to look into the core of my soul and do battle with the demons that try to hold us back.  Those times are memories that are etched in my grey matter never to be forgotten – the last 4 miles of that Marathon are now on that list. I set my goals at the end of this month (gives me time to really thing about what I want to go after) and now that my life list is currently empty it is time to figure out what’s next.  Rest assured, like the rest of my personal challenges, you will get to experience the journey with me (I feed off your comments and encouragements).  Speaking of comments, once again I want to extend my heart felt thank yous for all the comments I have received again this year.  I know it takes time to read my ramblings and taking that extra time to provide feedback is extremely appreciated.  Keep up the good work and let me know about the things you like and definitely anything that could be better.

Special thanks goes to my brother Ron for all the time he has put in on the blog, on my projects and most of all for the enjoyment on those occasion when we get to out in the field and hunt down our feathered friends.  Hoping we can get out there a lot more this year (likely when it warms up for him hehehe).  We also need to give him all the encouragement we can to get his birding blog in full gear (link here) – he has progressed into quite the bird photographer and I’m sure everyone wants to see more of his work on his blog (besides, he needs to build his count up now that he has to abide by the birding rules for the official count).  I did take notice he is now experiencing what it is like to fall behind on the processing queue – he isn’t as bad as I am right now (over 2.5 years in the hole) but he is starting to inch up there.   If it wasn’t for my self imposed post quota, who knows how far I’d be down.  By the way, for the sixth year in a row I managed to hit my minimum 6 posts per month goal (yeah!).

It should be another exciting year around here at Life Intrigued.  The run training season is already in progress, new birding trips are being planned, Halloween projects are in their design phases and most of all… my radar is up and my observations are already being cataloged.  Assume there will be plenty of political fodder to comment on, photos to critique and that all important UB competition is just around the corner.  Hoping you will keep my little corner on the web bookmarked and visit when time permits.  Enjoy the details in my blogging summary below and raise a glass with me – to another year in the blogging books – here’s to wildlife that brings excitement and beauty to our world, to the creativity of others and most of all to the social experiment we call life that gets me up each and every day in anticipation of learning what it is that defines being human.

Thank You!

And now, the annual stats for the year’s worth of blogging.

Hit the jump to see the 2016 stats!

Continue reading 2016 – The Year in Review

Welcome 2017!

Happy New Year Everyone. It has been busy around Life Intrigued this year and thankfully this little project of mine is still enjoyable – although those quotas can get a little taxing at times. I’ll get my year end summary up as soon as I can (right now birding like crazy and filling up the queue with all kinds of new birds for the coming year). Looking forward to starting my 10th year of blogging and hope everyone has enjoyed my posts – if there is something that isn’t meeting your expectations or new topics you would like me to consider, just let me know in the comments and I’ll see what I can do. Take care everyone and be safe on your way back from wherever you are celebrating the dawn of a new year. It will definitely be an interesting time and I’m pretty sure I’ll be weighing in on whatever interesting things that catch my attention. Note, I should have extra time to spend now that my list of entertainers that will no longer profit from me has been growing at a logarithmic rate these last couple of months.

Gut Check

Well, today I completed the last race of the 2016 season (well, at least of the ones that were planned).  In light of that, figured it would be a good time to get a previous race posted.  I hate it when I get too far behind on the race posts mainly due to how hard it is to remember everything about the race once another one is in the books.  The runs are stressful enough without that added task of trying to remember what the hell I was thinking in between big gulps of air.  Getting right to it, One week after running the IVS Half Marathon (link here), I headed down to Springfield IL to participate in the Oak Ridge Cemetery Moonlight Marathon.

Oak Ridge Cemetery Moonlight Marathon 2016

This year the race coordinators decided to cancel the prediction element of the marathon and instead simply added a half marathon and a quarter marathon.  This meant we didn’t need to form a team which turned out to be a good thing since Ryan got hurt and Sung forgot to sign up (Sung also ended up getting injured as well not soon after that).  So, it was just me this year.  Linda ended up having a conflict with a dog show so it was me by my lonesome to take on the half marathon.  I wasn’t too worried about it since I knew the course and I knew I was trained up for the distance based on the results of the previous week.  However, little did I know at the time that this race was going to be a major gut check.  Race day prep was pretty uneventful.  The predicted rain had moved out and the early temps were in norm for that time of year.  Lining up for the race everything still felt fine.  First loop would be in the light and the second loop would require the head lamp.  All good and even reminded myself to stay in control having already experienced the treacherous hills in the cemetery.

Jumping ahead, the first loop went as planned.  Pace was right at where I wanted to be.  The quarter marathon was going off an hour after we had started the half so they were lining up to get their leg started as I completed my first lap.  Oh, almost forgot, like the previous year, after 4 miles into the race, it was as if I was on a solo training run.  There was no one visible in front or behind me with the exception of some union points in the course where the various routes came together.  Just me, the road and gravestones wherever I looked.  The second loop was a completely different story.  As I hit the first hill back out something started to feel wrong.  A dull pain was starting to build in my gut, but my pace was holding so it didn’t cause much concern.  By mile 8 that dull pain had turned into a serious pain in the stomach and a serious concern was swirling in my head.  By mile 10 it couldn’t be ignored anymore, forcing me stop running to walk up a large hill as I contemplated whether I needed to throw up to relieve the problem.  It also became apparent that the night air was not cooling as expected and the reality of overheating was a possible cause.  Walking during a race is like a swift kick to the nuts after training so hard to make it to the starting line.  At the top of the hill my mind told my body to suck it up – we were running again… but not for long.  At 11 the body shut down again and another walk was needed to calm the stomach again.  This was not good and the only thing that kept playing in my head was how mad Linda was going to be.  Taking advantage of a lull in the stomach pain, I was able to start running again and closed out the race (thankfully there is a long downhill in mile 12 that help out tremendously).  Short of the Marathon run (link here), this might have been the most relieved I’ve been to see the finish line.  Too exhausted to reach down and take the timing chip off, I headed over to a nearby wall to rest – race officials were busy running after me to get my chip but that was the last thing on my mind (they eventually got it off of me ha).

Hit the jump to see how this ordeal turned out!

Continue reading Gut Check

Your Eyes are Fine

New Blog ThemeWelcome everyone!  In case you are wondering, you are not in the wrong place assuming you were expecting to read the latest Life Intrigued post. However, you probably noticed the place got a bit of a sprucing up.  This change was not entirely initiated by my grand plan.  Nope, it was really a bi-product of my website hosting service having to be renewed.  The back story is rather lengthy, but the condensed version goes like this.  My hosting company doubles your initial fee at renewal – that translates in my $5/mo cost to $10/mo.  Sounds like a simple thing until you see your three year bill going to ummm one. two, carry 1 , divide by .652 multiply by 7.2 and then multiply by a complement matrix…… $360 big ones.  Nothing is too good for my loyal readers, but at the same time I figured that math out I was staring at their web page advertising a $5/mo charge for new accounts.  This tends to piss me off – for being a loyal customer for over 9 years I get to pay twice as much as a new customer.  This was not acceptable and after a rather lengthy time on support … I was paying the new customer rate… with one little caveat.  I had to move to their new servers.  Sounds innocent enough, turn on new site, copy files from old server to new and presto back in business.  Maybe in a perfect world ruled by flying blue monkeys… but not the reality I live in.  For the last couple of weeks it has been extremely stressful around here trying to re-implement my blog services, deal with address and domain changes while doing my best to keep disruptions down.  The good news (as you can tell) the hard part is all done now and the conversion is pretty much completed.  There are a few fringe issues that I’m dealing with, but it is operational enough for me to start posting again and allowing comments.  I hope you like the new look and feel.  For the most part I modeled it as close as I could to the old flow but sexed up a bit with a more professional theme.  Big thanks to my brother Ron who helped me get the kinks out while trying to adapt all my old customizations to the updated theme.  Let me know what you think and if you see anything that isn’t working right – no promises I can fix it, but pretty impressed with all the issues that have been resolved to this point.

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Red Faced in Vegas

Just got done making another Halloween run.  Was able to pick up some very nice posable skeletons at Target reasonably priced.  I will have to watch those and pick up a few more when then go on sale after the season is over … unless they sell out.. maybe I should go pick some up later tonight hehehehe.  A quick run through the Party City store netted some nice pieces for a scene I was planning along with some silhouettes for a new idea that looks promising – not sure if there is enough time though.  Finally another stop at Menards to buy, you guessed it, more PVC pipe and connectors.  Also picked up a 4×8 sheet of foam as backing for the idea above.  The credit card was smoking tonight, but it’s my personal Christmas and one of the few times we (rather I) pull out the splurge word.  Now on our way back home.  Hate to waste time so popped open the laptop and went to work on the last post for the month.  You have no idea how much of a relief it will be to close this month out.

Going to shift a bit from Texas on this post and bring you shots from another trip that we took earlier that year.

Common Gallinule shot in Henderson, Las Vegas in August 2013

Specifically, we headed out to Las Vegas in August of 2013 – yes, that would officially be over three years ago so a new low point in my posting queue… actually to be technically correct, that would be a new HIGH point in my posting queue.  My queue pushes are exceeding my queue pops.  If only there was a for-loop for writing posts and then that sucker would be drained in no time.  While out in Vegas we managed to drop on over to our favorite bird photography hangout – the Henderson Bird Viewing Preserve.  Any frequent visitor to this blog will know the magnitude of check marks that site has added to my bird list.  This trip once again delivered some great viewing opportunities including this alcohol guzzling creature.

Common Gallinule shot in Henderson, Las Vegas in August 2013

Hit the jump to view a few more pictures of this red-faced dabbler.

Continue reading Red Faced in Vegas

2015 – The Year In Review

Welcome to 2016 everyone!  It is hard to believe that another year has passed already and even harder to imagine this little offramp on the World Wide Web is now officially 9 years old.  As is tradition around here, the dropping of the ball signals a time to reflect on all the hard work that goes into this labor of love.  I tried to expose you to a variety of topics through the course of the year but I will admit the focus has clearly shifted to more of a photography outlet than a world commentary.  To compensate, I’ve tried to sprinkle various comments and opinions within those posts and every once in a while you’ll get a post devoted to some complaint or observation that strongly intrigued me in one way or another .. usually as of late with this this administration it has not been in a positive direction.  The focus on photography has allowed me dive a little deeper into my art and pushed me to get better in the field knowing that my products will be put on display for all of you to critique.  Your comments throughout the year have been thoroughly appreciated and invaluable when it comes times to selecting the entries for the UB contests.  Last year also brought a new family challenge as my brother Ron fully immerse himself in the birding world cranking out new bird after new bird.  That friendly competition drove a lot of bird posts this year due to my birding rule that requires me to devote a post to a new bird before I can officially count it on my Life List.  I think it would only be fair if Ron also started up a blog to even out this competition a bit don’t you think? hehehe.  I do find it personally satisfying to know he is falling way behind on his processing based on all the grief I get on my backlog – a backlog that drove all the bonus posts in December.  For the fifth year in a row I managed to hit my minimum 6 posts per month self imposed quota.  Oh, and I should point out the new challenge I gave myself of at least TWO images for each non-general post .. well that was shredded like the Constitution under Bumbles.  This required a lot of posting from the road this year thanks to a running schedule that left little time for slacking.   Speaking of the running load this year, you probably noticed there were plenty of new runs last year including several half marathons.  One major running event went unfulfilled this year for a number of reason that might show up in a future post.  Needless to say, missed goals are a solid kick in the nuts around here and there is very little in the way of excuses that takes the sting off when that happens.  With that said, it was not entirely my fault and the journey to prepare resulted in setting a personal record that is likely never to fall.  I owe a lot of that to my two good running friends Sung and Ryan that helped me get through the year in the cold, the wind, the sleet, the snow, the rain, the hills and the injuries – a teaser for the future post.

There were several projects this year – some completed, some progressed like the one you are probably sick of hearing by now – Project Aaarrrnnnuuulld.  That project is nearly finished now – only ONE more phase to go and that multi-year project will be in the books.  Book recollections were woefully undernourished this year but a lot of that time was impacted by the increased running schedule.  If it wasn’t directly eclipsed by late night runs it fell victim as a result of being too tired to crack open a book before crashing on the bed.  The Posey’s made their debut in our Halloween Trail this year along with several new Halloween related projects which rounded out a number of the November posts.

Every year I have to give complete credit to my readers for making the blogging commitment worthwhile.  This year is NO EXCEPTION.  Once again the drive to make my post commitments and the desire to make the images that appear here they best they can be is directly influenced by your commitment to reading my efforts and expressing your thoughts and opinions in the comments. Thank You!

And now, the annual stats for the year’s worth of blogging.

Hit the jump to see the 2015 stats!

Continue reading 2015 – The Year In Review

The 2015 Haunted Trail – Part 1 of 2 – The Build

It is a sad day in the LifeIntrigued household today – Some consider it the start of the Black Friday month, but around here it signals the end of my favorite month.  Why is that our favorite month … because it has Halloween of course!  To be more specific, it is the month we get to transform our house and woods into a celebration of the darker side.  The Haunted Trail was built once again for the enjoyment of our Annual Halloween Cookout.  Like previous years, the trail will be featured in an upcoming post.  Unlike the past, there’s a special treat this year.  Thanks to my brother we have pictures of the build process for the first time ever!

Haunted Trail 2015

Every year we strive to make the trail a little better – a little more scarier, a little more to experience.  Those new items are generally purchased during the  previous year’s Halloween markdowns (pretty sure I’ve not paid full price for most of my items – hit Menards, Spirit, Halloween City the week after Halloween and you can find some nice deals – just have to wait a year to enjoy them).  This year we rolled out all the new Posey’s that were constructed during the Winter months (link here).  – by rolled, I literally mean rolled hehehe. Ron thought the pile of dead guys in the cart looked spooky on their own – luckily we didn’t have to explain ourselves to any strangers.

The entire process of building the trail takes about 6 days.  The first day involves cleaning up the trails themselves.  Wandering branches are pruned, obstacles like hedge apples removed for the safety of our guests and probably most appreciative is the thorn bushes are cut back to prevent any unwanted bleeding.  The second day is trimming all the weeds on the trail themselves (the trails is too steep in some locations to get a mower in so that is all done by hand with a gas powered weed trimmer – this takes 6 to 7 hours to complete.

Haunted Trail 2015

Hit the jump to see how the rest of the days fall out.

Continue reading The 2015 Haunted Trail – Part 1 of 2 – The Build

Another UB Competition in the Books

It’s times like these I truly appreciate it when I get ambitious early in the month and crank out most of the quota before … well … today.  Par for course, I’ve been busy this month with some projects, training and even birding with my brother.  The good news is Project Auuurrnooold is coming along nicely.  The drop ceiling is going in much easier now that I’ve had one room to learn on.  Without a doubt, a third hand is clearly the next evolution stop.  To cap off this month we have the sweep in non-birding posts.  Thanks to Ron getting sidetracked on insects I have a little extra time before upping the bird list.  Besides, you want to hear about this year’s UB contest results don’tcha!?!

Sure you do.  Linda’s year of being the UB had come to a close.  From an assessment perspective she definitely gets kudos for driving me to birding locations both intra and inter state and even managed to get me some cool +1’s to add to the Bird List.  She did such a good job that I’ll even overlook a little incident in the Georgia Swamps.  There will be more on that trip in the future but as a teaser – Linda ..err, the 2014/2015 UB abandoned me out in the field.  Rather than stay with me and keep an eye on an alligator that was sizing me up for lunch, she ran.  She literally left me there as Gate Bait.  The UB guidelines are still being painstakingly reviewed, but I am pretty sure that might qualify as a violation resulting in defaulting another year of UB!

Fortunately, we do not need to wait around for the results of that review because this year’s contests came out favorable to yours truly.  This year we added a new venue to the competition – the Princeville IL. Fine Art Fair focused on artist in the area.  Each of us submitted entries into that event (my Cardinal and I think Linda entered a couple of her Jubilee pictures).

That event netted me a first place and Linda a got a second, third and a fourth.  A Doerfler sweep and 1 major point for me in the UB Competition.

2015 Photography Competition

Hit the jump to see how the rest of the results came out!

Continue reading Another UB Competition in the Books