davejenbarnes

David and I have both been extremely busy lately… with band stuff. Saturday was the middle school district competition and next Saturday is the region competition. I like judging because I judge my lesson kiddos and get to take comments on their performances. Plus, since I’m not a band director, I get paid. Also in the band world is marching, and we will be travelling to the state marching band competition this coming week. I bought some 800 ISO film to try and capture some good zoom pictures of the event. Not professional quality pictures, but just from my viewpoint pictures.

Today we discovered that our kitty tower was infested with ants. We have fed them from up there for a couple of years now and the ants finally found all the kitty food. So now the cats are fed in the kitchen. It doesn’t help that both cats are constantly leaving half-digested-food-hair-balls around every other day. We are trying to ween them over to the Science Diet Hairball catfood. We hope it works with our two hairy hairball hocking kittys.

That’s about all we’re up to these days. The bedroom smells like ant killer spray, the laundry needs to be done, and the groceries need to be put away so we’ll catch y’all later.

So we voted tonight. We’ll be out of town the entire day Tuesday (San Antonio to the UIL State Marching Competition to support the CPHS band) so we decided to go tonight, the last night for early voting around here. After a trip to the mall, which did not have voting we found out, we ended up at the Williamson County Annex off Discovery Blvd. in Cedar Park. With half of the WORLD there as well. We stood in line for an hour and a half… the slowest moving line ever… with all kinds of interesting people around… talking all kinds of interesting talk… we just listened.

Once during our wait, the Head Lady In Charge explained what would be happening once we got to the beginning of the line and that only 0.5 percent of us voting at the Williamson County Annex in Cedar Park would be able to vote for the Rail (which would build a train system like a mini version of the “L” in Chicago or the Metro in DC) which David and I (having been to cities with a rail system) have already thought Austin could use something like that and don’t you know, we got to vote for it! Yeah! We were part of that half a percent!

So we voted. And it feels great having done so.

You know, I’m glad we had to wait in line. That means there were tons of people voting tonight, tons of people who care enough to stand in line in front of us and make us wait. That’s awesome.

Okay, I have to admit, David and I do not watch the news. We do not subscribe to a newspaper, nor do we read “news” sites online. We are pretty detached from “news” in general, including the mud-slinging of politics. David watched some of the Bush-Kerry debates but I did not. So I have a lot of research to do concerning the facts and educating myself for the upcoming elections. not just for the Presidential elections, but for all of the elections. Now, who you vote for and what positions you can vote for depend on where you live… but on the radio this afternoon, I heard of a website that reportedly gave just the facts. It’s not associated with a political party. It’s just what I was hoping to find.

Vote Smart and enter your zip to get the info. Check it out.

Have you ever stared at a picture so long that you feel like you will have it with you always? I am currently enjoying such a time.

I am blown away by the prints. I did not expect all of my pictures to turn out… yet they all did. And how beautifully! I have 180 postcard quality pictures. Mostly of Washington DC but also of our Fourth of July weekend. I have been picking the best to scan in and enjoy online, though eventually I would like to have almost all of them online. I’m absolutely thrilled at the results I got with my camera in DC.

It is late and a storm is rolling in, so I’ll simply add a link to the 16 photos already online.

Enjoy!

I just got paid, like, FINALLY, so our six rolls of film from our summer trip to Virginia for Jenn’s wedding (and our road trip to DC) will be developed soon. I’ve settled on Wolf Camera to develop the film simply because I know where one is and it’s not as intimidating as Holland’s … grr … that place intimidates me since I’m not a professional and I don’t even know how well the pictures will turn out! Well, I’m on my way to Wolf to drop off the film! Now the real waiting game begins. You know I’ll be scanning them in the minute I get home with the prints. Wish me luck!

edit:
Looks like I’ll have five of the six rolls back on Friday when I get back to Wolf Camera on my way back from dropping off my clarinet to be repaired in South Austin. The sixth roll will be sent off to be developed because Wolf doesn’t do B&W “in house” and that roll of film was my last roll of t-max which I completely shot at the wedding. I hope some of those turn out well.

Today is my busiest, cram-packed, most clarinetish day of the week. Not only do I teach a section of 7 bass clarinets before school (CPHS) but I also have thirteen students during the day. Well, today one of them knocked over my clarinet (it was even on a clarinet stand) and incurred damage that prevents it from playing. The good news is that it can be repaired. The bad news is that it has to be repaired in the first place, which costs money, time, and gasoline. The nearest trusted repairman is in South Austin. My preferred place of repair is all the way in Evanston, Illinois, where we used to live. Hopefully this local repair guy will be able to bend the bent rod back into shape without losing the fine-tuning of the Brannen work.

I have been extremely happy with the work that Linda Brannen has performed on my clarinet. I sent it to them when I was in high school and getting serious about clarinet playing and then again two years ago. The level of detail that they took in replacing corks, pads, teflon, etc. is just astounding. I would not be surprised if my clarinet has more precision in its moving parts than my car has in its engine. Well, until today. The sheer ease of playing that clarinet has spoiled me and its all due to the work of the Brannens.

I am sad that another person has to repair it for me now…

So, yeah, I made two sets of GIMP brushes yesterday. Both are downloadable from site where the images link.

The first, Swirlz, is from the font Curlz MT. I just erased and manually added the anti-aliasing where it was missing from the erased areas. The second was inspired by the hot sauce theme of this here site… it was in need of some flame. The flame set is entirely original. I used the bezier curves and cranked it out in the gimp then added some gradient grayscale fills and some rotations and ended up with four brushes. I also used the flames on the newest version of the header on this site.

And about the lipstick… My mom bought me the Most Awesome Lipstick Ever Created. Covergirl’s outlast lipstick truly doesn’t come off! This stuff is amazing. I tried it last night (I was that curious, yes, that I would try it right before going to bed) and it lasted all night and through the shower. I have not yet tried playing clarinet, but this is a good lipstick for me on Sundays. I do NOT like wearing lipstick but think my lips look funny without it. This stuff is like lip stain. It doesn’t feel like I’m wearing lipstick (I like that) but my lips look good (I like that too). Awesome.