Category: Recollection

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 Trail Haunts Awaken Again – Part 2 of 2

Well, now that you know how much work goes into building our haunted trail, let’s focus on the fruits of that labor for today’s topic. The full trail experience is too much for a post, so I am only going to feature a few of the shots here. If you want t0 experience the entire trail both from a day and a night walkthrough, please check out or web gallery on Smugmug (Eddiesoft.Smugmug.com). Even with the condensed version, this post is full to the brim with pictures. Rather than type a lot, I’ll just try to point out a few things along the way starting with the daylight shots

As mentioned previously, we try to start the trail off with more family friendly decorations.

Haunted Trail 2015

These are Pauls’ air Frankenstein’s. Think this is the first time he has put them together – a family that scares together stays together.

Haunted Trail 2015

More blowups further down the path. Paul had another nice touch putting the thin ghost in between the other ghost themed items. That thing never wants to say up so he fixed that problem by tying it to the larger blowups on the sides.

Haunted Trail 2015

Hit the jump to see the rest of the trail pictures .. including the walk in the dark!

Continue reading The Trail Haunts Awaken Again – Part 2 of 2

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

The 1100 Payoff

In the final week and three posts to go!  Thought it was good time to give a break on the bird posts – a short break, but still, some relief for those out there that prefer their birds on a plate.  Today’s post was prompted by last Sunday’s big step in my running career.  For the first time ever, I finally crested the 20 mile mark on a training run.  Damn near killed me, but a notch is a notch.  One of the things that keep me going on long runs is thinking about blog posts.  This particular one was helping to motivate me through the hell my body was going through!
2015 Peoria Half Marathon

For the second Sunday in a row I was breaking personal running records.  Yesterday was a distance record, the previous Sunday was a speed record.  As you can tell from the swag above, I ran the Peoria Half Marathon a week ago.  This was supposed to be a final warm up before tackling a much bigger endeavor planned for the end of the month. The intent was to go out at a comfortable pace and simply relax to the end – slow and steady and more importantly, not cause injury to anything that would jeopardize a bigger goal.  Well, that was the plan.  The morning started off as an answer to a runner’s prayers – it was downright cold out.  We left the house at 29 degrees!

2015 Peoria Half Marathon

No worries about overheating that day.  I even decided to pull out the tights knowing it wasn’t supposed to break 40 until after my expected finish time.  My training partner Ryan was toeing the line that day as well – he prefers to run a lot cooler than I do as you can tell by his attire.  A hat and long sleeves means it is definitely cold out for normal people.  Linda was complaining I was not smiling in this pre-race shot.  Wanna know why –  I WAS SHIVERING.   Luckily my grimace was countered by the happy photobomber hehehe.

Hit the jump to see how the frigid start turned out!

Continue reading The 1100 Payoff

Celebrating 26 and 25 and 24

Time for another post from the road, but unlike last time, this time from a muuuuuch lower elevation.  Our mountain portion of the trip is over now and I should be back to work on Project Auuurrrrnnnnooold very soon.  The Annual Halloween Cookout date is approaching fast and so much to do before then.  My ambitions of animated decorations may be in jeopardy but at least all the Posey’s (link here) will be able to make their debut!

Living in the moment, let’s get to today’s topic.  Here’s a hint

AC/DC Concert Sept 15th at Wrigley Field

All classic rock fans out there should have just flashed up their devil horns!  That’s right, Linda and I had the opportunity to see one of our favorite bands in concert … again.  We had the privilege of seeing them in St. Louis a number of years back and we both consider that one of the best concerts we have seen (yes, that one equals if not tops the Stones concerts we have been too – sorry Jagger but your concerts are slightly tainted due to the price gouging you have to go through to be able to see them.  This time we went North to see them in a place that makes all Cardinal fans shudder.

AC/DC Concert Sept 15th at Wrigley Field

Thanks to Linda being on the ball and reserving early, we were able to get a hotel room less than 10 blocks from the field.  This took a lot of the pre-concert stress out of the equation by not having to deal with the Wrigley area parking.  The seats were not as close as they were in St. Louis, but still not too bad.  We opted for the outfield seats which were covered – rain wasn’t going to dampen our night.  This is the shot from our seats.

AC/DC Concert Sept 15th at Wrigley Field

I left the ladies arm in the shot at the bottom to remind me to mention how drunk this woman was in front of us.  There were two couples seated two rows down from us.  Both ladies had been drinking long before arriving – one lady (the owner of the arm above) was totally smashed and kept falling all over the place.  When she wasn’t picking herself off the ground she was dancing to the music in her head… and only in her head.  The lush was pretty much the jester for everyone that could see her.  People were even walking by specifically to take a picture of her on their phones.  It got so bad during the concert that her husband (I think) was continually yelling at her to sit – pulling her belt down into her seat when she didn’t comply.. didn’t matter, she would pop up 3 minutes later to continue dancing to her inner song.

Hit the jump to read more about this awesome concert!

Continue reading Celebrating 26 and 25 and 24

Springdale Redemption

Before I get into this post, I’m going to warn you that I am currently high and cannot be held accountable for how this post comes out.  Oh.. on second read I better clarify that before you get a wrong opinion.  By high I mean ALTITUDE, as in the neighborhood of 10,000 feet.  Unfortunately, my body is not taking it that well even though I’m probably in the best cardio shape in my life since hanging up martial arts.  I recall a previous discussion with a doctor in Breckinridge where I learned the better in shape you are, the worse altitude sickness can affect you – that time was a lot more serious than this trip (thus the prompt care visit).  My main problem this time is just a slow nagging headache and inability to get good sleep.  The latter is good for attempting to get caught up on my posts this month.  So, today I bring you an update on my race season.  On September 13th I once again participated in the Illinois Valley Striders Half Marathon in Springdale Cemetery.
IVS Half Marathon 2015 in Springdale Cemetery

Avid readers of my blog should be familiar with how difficult this race is.  There are three hills in each of the two loops of this race that can make a grown man cry – if they have not properly trained (or “practiced” as my brother likes to refer to it as).  Two years ago, this race put me on my knees (link here).  That was not a fun experience by any means and Linda will often reference that event when wanting to make a point about my obsession for long races.  She would of course refer to it more, but now she usually leverages “the episode” from last year to drive the point home.  Last year was suppose to be my redemption year.. supposed to be.  Once again Mr. Humidity showed up to remind me that he still owned me.  Sure, I made it through the race much better than the year before, but then I put a punctuation mark on it by throwing up on the way home (link here).  This year was going to be different.  I had trained too hard this season to let this happen again and then there’s that whole threat from Linda on the consequences if I pushed myself over the edge again.  Nothing like a little more pressure to pour on the day seeing how there is a bigger goal that would be in jeopardy should something go wrong at this event.

IVS Half Marathon 2015 in Springdale Cemetery

Unlike most of my races .. err…more specific all but like 1 short one, Linda wasn’t going to be there to cheer me on and more importantly keep me from getting too worked up about it.  Nope, she was leaving me to my own accountability, which quite frankly isn’t the wisest decision to make, but she had a dog commitment meaning I was flying solo.   On race day I woke up at 4:50am and took a gander outside to see what I was in for.  Unlike the last two times, there was a definite chill in the air.  The temperature read 48.  Good thing I was alone then because I broke out my very rare happy dance.  Things were looking up and I hadn’t even wiped the sleep from eyes yet.

Hit the jump to see how things turned out!

Continue reading Springdale Redemption

Book Recollection: Think I’ll Take Advice and Give Up

Think Like a Freak

Welcome to the fifth installment of “It’s not a bird” posts.  I can feel the love from all you bird haters out there hehehe.  Clearly my reading as of late has taken a backseat due to having way too many projects in progress at the moment.  Luckily I was able to get a quick book in during our last vacation to the Georgia swamps.  Today’s recollection is their third book in the Freakenomics series from Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner.  The first book was extremely entertaining and informative.  I recommend it to all my friends and anybody who wants to understand the power of economics to solve everyday issues.  Then came Super Freakenomics which I listened to via audio book.  That was a bit of a letdown but I still had some takeaways.  I am not as apt to recommend that book to people unless they are absolutely craving additional economic insights.  To be honest, I thought it rehashed too much of Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers offering (link here).  If you want to know what it takes to be a pro or tops in your sport read that book instead.  Then the third book came out and decided to put it on my wish list.  Linda ended up surprising me and getting it for me as a gift so I saved it for the upcoming trip.  First thing is the book didn’t last me the trip – only about three short days of travel and I was done with it.  This was especially irritating since I had not brought a backup which resulted in wasted reading days.  The second comment is it was found wanting.  In my opinion, a definite step down from the other two offerings.  It felt like they were just cranking out a book with material that didn’t make the other two and decorating it with a narrative about how you could learn to think like a freak.  Now that I’m done with it I can summarize my key takeaway as .. quitting is a viable option.  Apparently to think like a Freak means to consider quitting endeavors.  I can’t even begin to tell you how much this contradicts with my personal philosophy.  I do not believe in quitting unless that is the absolute last option and I’ve given everything available to try and push it over the goal line.  It isn’t so much the effort at hand as it is the impact it has on everything you undertake from that point on.  The minute you let the option of quitting get added you have involuntarily added that as an option in everything you do.  Miss a post quota – eh, I get it next month.. next month.. well, it doesn’t really matter since I already missed it last month and next thing you know you are Googling for the next time I am Cait instead of looking through your picture archives for interesting material.  As soon as you give up on a race every time it gets difficult you’ll be debating the option of stopping instead of putting the next foot in front of another.  Convince yourself you don’t need to go out and train for a race and quickly find out you’ll be hitting the snooze button instead of putting your bib on.  It may take longer, it may not look exactly as planned but to the very best of my ability it is going to have a bow on it.  To look forward to this book only to read a contradictory philosophy is a nasty kick.  Note, it isn’t that I do not get their point but they fail to understand the benefits that would have been obtained by not quitting – just example after example of someone who did something else.

There were a couple of interesting chapters.  The concept of admitting you do not know something is a refreshing approach to difficult decisions/expectations.  There are times when you do not have all the information or knowledge to weigh in on a decision.  It might take some extra time to obtain that or need to consider some alternatives before jumping to conclusions.  Whenever I hear someone that I trust admit they do not know the answer at that point in time I inherently trust them that much more.  This is something I’ll definitely take forward.  The other story took a fact I had known to a new level.  Somewhere in the past I read how ulcers were not due to stress (the early hypothesis) and instead became treatable with antibiotics.  This brought an end to a multi-billion industry that was treating the symptom and not the cause.  Turns out there was more to the story.  It is too disturbing to really go into detail here, but let’s just say the discoverer of this solution found it by testing HIMSELF.  This topic eventually drove down into a concept of shit swapping or more clinically sounding transpoosion.   This is probably a good time to get to the takeaways.  There were more than expected, but a lot of them were more reminders for future Trivia Crack questions as to true takeaways.  I’ll leave the choice up to you, but I’d probably find another book to invest time in.  It is always a bigger let down if you let your anticipation get too high which is probably coming into play here.

Hit the jump to read the takeaways

Continue reading Book Recollection: Think I’ll Take Advice and Give Up

Missed It by a Hat

Been a hectic week trying to hold off all the flooding that is going in our parts.  Looks like for the second time Serenity (link here) has been completely underwater.  It is definitely taking a beating but fingers crossed it is still hanging in there.  It will need some pillar work when the water subsides and maybe a couple more coats of protectant.  At the moment I have it lashed to some large trees just in case something lets loose.  You think you know power until you see the force of angry water.  If you recall, last time I promised my next post would not be about birds.  Keeping commitments is kinda my thing so sure enough, today’s post is not about our feathered friends but rather a recap of the latest event in the running season.

Last Saturday was the running of the Steamboat Classic in Peoria, IL.  I’ve been running this race for sometime now and most of those have been of the 15K variety.  Maybe a quick clarification there – the Toughest 15K in Illinois variety.

Steamboat Classic Race 2015

For those not familiar with the event, they have a 4 miler and a 15K interlaced in the course.  We all do the first 2 miles of the 4 miles and then the weak ones turn back and the crazy ones head on up a merciless hill.  Do some fairly flat roads up on top, come back down a steep hill and repeat back up that devil spawn hill again repeating that loop until we head back on the rest of the 4 miler course.  No sugar coating it, that hill will test your will and your fitness.  Fortunately, this Sung, Ryan and I eat this course for breakfast throughout the training season throwing in some Jubilee Park runs to make sure our legs are sufficiently tortured the time race day rolls around. Sung opted out this year, but Ryan and I toed the line on what turned out to be a perfect starting condition for the traditionally HOT Steamboat.  To say a temp in the mid 60’s was godsend would still be putting it lightly.

Steamboat Classic Race 2015

The weather has been pretty kind to us this year .. so far .. which is a bit bittersweet.  Training in cool temperatures is nice but sometime you have to pay the piper and get your heat conditioning up so you are prepared for race day conditions.  This is especially true with me having experience “the incident” last year when the Heat Miser showed me what it meant to “melt in my clutch”.  The goal was to run the race at 9 or under since training this year has been focused on distance at a cost of speed.  Once again, my trusty UB was taking pictures for me.  It never ceases to amaze me how serious people are at these races.  No one forces you to show up.. enjoy it, you trained damn hard to get here

Steamboat Classic Race 2015

Hit the jump to see how the race turned out!

Continue reading Missed It by a Hat

Unintended Consequences

Killer Jeep
Figured I would give my blog readers out there that are not as fond of our feathered brethren a break and go old school for a post.  That’s right, I’m going back to the early days here at Life Intrigued when men were men and images were built with blood, sweat and tears… and a lot of Paint Shop Pro.  These days the trusty Nikon is leaned on heavily to produce the artistic feel of the posts.  Feel free to translate that to the author just being too lazy to go through the manual work, preferring to just push down on that little silver button that makes that shutter slap sound indicating the image is in the tin.  From an observation perspective of blog maturity, the photography shots are generally getting a LOT better but based on this effort my manual graphic skills are getting even suckier.

Let’s not go any further without making a quick disclaimer – the Jeep image was lifted off a stock marketing page on the web. Ownership remains with the marketing org that produced it and merely borrowing it to comment on what I consider a design flaw.  Oh, and for the record, this Jeep is depicted with optional accessories that may or may not be available in your area – who knows, there may be a big demand for bumper teeth somewhere in the free world.

With that out of the way I can finally get to the heart of the post.  At first this post was going to be entitled, “Our Jeep Tried to Kill My Wife!”  Clearly this title alone would have allowed us to be booked on any number of late afternoon drivel shows.  Unfortunately, another bizarre event happened on Valentine’s Day that put me in a precarious situation.  Assessing the two events resulted in the realization that both were a result of unintended consequences which seemed like a more appropriate title – although not as likely to draw the oooohs and ahhhhs of a Springer audience.  Let’s start with Linda’s incident.  I received a call from Linda one late afternoon, who was in a pretty agitated state.  Her first words were something like “This DAMN Jeep just tried to kill me”  (Ummm, I didn’t say I came up with the post title, I just said that was almost what I used for a title).  Once she calmed down a bit she explained the situation.  She was crossing a major bridge across the Illinois River when a Frito Lay bag came blowing across the road.  As luck would have it, it managed to lodge against the front bumper of her Jeep.  Sounds innocent enough unless you realize that this vehicle is equipped with collision detection sensors.  The Frito Lay bag has a shiny reflective inner surface which apparently set off the collision sensor(s).  Linda claims the dashboard went blank except for a very clear alert message followed immediately by the anti-lock brakes engaging to quickly bring the vehicles speed down to avoid the errr chip bag.  This deceleration was significant to give Linda’s neck quite a jolt – so much that it cost us a chiro visit the very next day.  As much as I appreciate the safety intent of the engineers, the execution ended up have a completely different impact in the field that was likely not anticipated.  After talking to a co-worker there are other issues with that detection approach which caused him to disable the capability (it involves a parallel road to his driveway and it locking him up every time a car would be on that other road).  He had already done the research on how to disable it so that saved some time on the Internet.  Nice try but there needs to be some form of mass sensor validation to complete that detection loop.

Hit the jump to read about another tricky situation that I ended up in

Continue reading Unintended Consequences

Looking Back on 2014

What seemed like a whirlwind 2014 is officially over which means it is time to reflect on the year’s blogging efforts.  LifeIntrigued has now officially turned 8 years old, which is about 7 years longer than I ever expected to keep going with it.  The intent has morphed a bit since the early years having put more emphasis on photography and projects in the latter years – the early years focused heavily on day to day observations as I navigated this thing called life.  I’ve tried to keep the posting varied over the year mixing in projects, insects, recollections and such among the numerous bird posts.  Admittedly, I use my valued readers as free critique on my photography growth so very appreciative of all your comments this year.  For the fourth year in a row I hit my 6 posts per month even adding a ton of extra posts last January due to Project Chekov (link here).   It really hasn’t gotten much easier after all these years, but that is probably self induced with all the images that are worked up for all the posts – what is getting faster is my digital darkroom workflow as I get more accustomed to the tools and pretty  much know the look I’m going long before the work begins – oh, that sub goal of at least one image per post was shredded for another year – pummeled, stomped on, tossed around the room and ax kicked to the ground into total submission.  This year I’ll up that goal to at least 2 images for every non-general post! (I know, I know, even that should be an easy hit but it is good to have a goal you can own for the year to make up for any that might have slipped a bit.

Hoping this year brings the completion of Project Auuuunold – so close I can almost taste it.  No idea what I am going to do with all my free time once that project is wrapped up.  Book recollections were once again an underperformer this season but I think the project output makes up for that deficiency.  I am pretty proud of my Valentine’s project (link here) and Project Posey (link here) is close to becoming an obsession hehehe). Birding is still a passion of mine and looking forward to some trips planned for this year which should yield even more new checks in the birding list.  I’ve pretty much captured all the local birds in the area so travel is about the only way to shoot the new ones – luckily we have an RV now so that will come in handy for photo shoot outings.  I’ve always maintained that I only work out and run to make myself fit enough to go in search of birds in any terrain required.  Always enjoy it more when Linda can come with me to enjoy the process (and be my voice of reason when the thrill of the hunt starts impeding logic)

There is one element that makes this blog worth it and it’s YOU.  The time you commit to reading my meanderings and the extra time you take to provide your comments is greatly appreciated and invaluable to the progression of the site.  It is because of this commitment I push myself to give you the best quality of images and as polished a product I can muster each and every time – it also helps to distract from the pain of training since a lot of that time is spent planning out the next post.  Pretty sure I have enough left in the tank for at least another year and even some more ideas on how to liven up the blog a bit – one of those will hopefully be due to increased exposure as I’ve finally started to spread the word about my little corner on the information Highway.

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

Hit the jump to see the 2014 stats! UPDATED 1/6/15 due to some late comments!

Continue reading Looking Back on 2014