It's cold folks.

This is my temp gauge in my car. This photo was taken on thursday. It's weird to be back to this (taken 12/6/09):From This (Taken 12/6/08):

Brrrrr.

zdudzudzduuzdududuuudzzzdzuzu (teeth chattering)

It's supposed to snow 10-18" today-tomorrow. Damn it's cold up in this bitch. I don't mind, because I love the snow, but it's been a long time since I've been this cold for this long. I forgot about the snow.

10/27 at about 7:00pm^

10/27 at about 9:20pm^

10/28 7:00 am^

10/28 about 6:15pm

I know it's just snow and it's not that interesting, but i like before and after pictures. :) Goodnight all, and snuggle with your hedgies and your turtles. They need warmth too.

New post

I kinda feel bad for not posting for the last month, so I thought I would write and update what's been going on.

As some of you know, I bought a new car back in August. After my neon took a, well you could say it was a graceful dive into the downward spiral of sadness, I knew I couldn't afford to keep an american car with 108,000 miles on it (which is notorious for dying at 100,000 miles) going for cheap. So I opted to buy a new car. I don't want to post pictures here, because I don't know who is reading this, but I can tell you if I posted a picture of my car here, and you saw it around town, you WOULD know it was me. :D If you'd like to see a pic, let me know and I'll tell you how you can see it. I love my new car, and it has given me a new sense of pride and self esteem.

I have been working at a new bank, and I don't really like it all that much. I've been working there since the day before my birthday, and trying to find a new job since two weeks after I started. This has been difficult as my days off are often filled with tasks of playing with my niece and dressing her up like a dolly. She's just so cute, it's hard not to play dress up.

Other than hanging out with my family and enjoying my newish town, I haven't been up to all that much. I'm trying to get signed up for a bowling league or a softball team because I'm often bored, but I think really finding a decent job is a wee bit more important.

That's about it. I'm working on finding a brave soul to join me for costume contests later this month so I can win some $$$ (i'd share a little bit) but so far my search has died. I'm wondering if I can do it alone, but it might not have as much impact. I'd still like to have a body guard there to protect me. :)

I have thought about becoming a vampiress, and really doing the whole deal, but I think it would also be cool if I could talk someone into being Graf Von Krolock and I could be Sarah. Only hard core vampire followers (or musical fanatics, or even Tanz fanatics) would get the reference, but what a great way to break ice with other people. Plus I could sing all night!

And if I couldn't pull that off, I could always be Orihime, but I'd love to find someone willing to go as Ichigo or Kenny or someone else so I don't have to explain myself all night.

So that's about it. I'm pretty sick right now, so I thought since I'm taking it easy today, it would be great to sit down and add a blog. Have a good day everyone, and don't get sick like me.

Vroom!

Don't pull me over please. I'm only 14 and I really shouldn't be driving. :)
1934 ford pickup

Something my dad and i have in common is our love for cars and car shows. It's always fun to see the work and creativity that people have put into their cars. Now that I'm driving a new car, I feel the appreciation so much more than I have had before.

And I just love to be with my dad.

I went to a car show yesterday by myself. It was small because it was raining, but it wasn't nearly as much fun as it would've been had he been there with me. There were a few cars there that showed off their pin striping and hard work, but I saw a lot of rat rods and VERY custom vehicles. I am always impressed by two things when I go to a car show.
1. The amount of information my father knows about vehicles. It's truly amazing.
2. The people behind the cars (the ones who built them, own them, love them,) are generally cut from the same cloth. It's like oil seeped into their bodies when they were kids customizing their bicycles, and now they have bigger toys to play with. And they can do what they want to these cars. There are simply no limitations to how silly, funny, awesome, beautiful, or random a person wants to make their car. And the best part is, SOMEBODY will like it. If you take an ugly car to a car show, someone is going to take a picture of it and say, "man, this is really something." And that's enough for a lot of people. It's the recognition of the hard work somebody put into the car to make it so ugly. Or beautiful.

If I had the money and the knowledge I would love to build custom cars. I loved helping my dad with the truck back in the day, and even working on the falcon (although I was in college for a lot of it). But I loved it. As a kid I remember loving hearing the welder turn on and the fzzzzt fzzzzt of my dad and his welder. If he wasn't working on the car or truck, he was cooking up something amazing. It was a bug he had, and it bit me at a young age.
I don't think this is something I'll ever stop enjoying. The proud look of the people who took the time to restore, rod, or rat these cars is just contagious. Even if the car is in the middle of the rebuild, they are willing to tell you what's going wrong, right, and ask for advice, or just talk about "omg did you see that ugly car just up the line? What the hell were they thinking??" Actually, most folks in the car kulture are not quick to judge. And that is something I like too. People at car shows are always quick to help a fellow car lover out. I love car kulture. It's fun, friendly, and there are always hot dogs. And besides, where the hell else am I going to see a perfectly restored DeLorean?

Hot night

Just some lightning shots from tonight off my porch. Compression kills, so please, take a moment to click on these to see mother nature playing with fire. :)

Tonight...

The moon is a mirrorball.

Storms

I love to chase storms. Now, I'm not the tornado chaser you see on your Discovery channels and your weather channels, I do things a little differently. Since I chase mostly at night for lightning shots, I try to find places that are far enough away to get a great wide angle shot, but close enough that I can get some details of the storm. There have been times in the past where I have been entirely too close, and it scared the shit out of me. But for now, I just chase to get the beauty of the storm, as much as possible. It's hard to photograph lightning if it's right on top of you. Tonight was one of the best lightning shoots I've attempted in quite some time. The lightning was mostly in the clouds, but it came out and said hello every once in a while. There were peeks of sky coming through the swirling clouds, which were reminiscent of a dragon. Ok, so on with the photos, please click these, compression kills:

Yeah

Click it to make it bigger. This is just a glimpse, I'll post more when I've got a little more time.

Holy shit. I met tori.

Ok you're going to have to click.

These are very small, I imagine, but if you click on them you'll get a glimpse of my pressed penny collection! I've collected these through the years, and I continue to collect them. It's a neat hobby, and it's cheap! $0.51 a penny!


Now I want to collect more!!!

Humpty Dumpty rolled off the counter.

I don't normally do this, I don't usually cook, actually.

But today I stepped outside the box and made a non-recipe fried rice yum yum experiment. It went well. Except for the egg. That didn't go well.

So here's what I did. I started off by making a pot of fresh (non instant) rice. I think it was jasmine rice. So i cooked that, and while it was simmering joyfully in the pot, I cut up:
1/2 tomato (just the rind, I ate the yummy inside bits)
1/4 Green Pepper
1/4 Red Pepper
A bit of red onion
And 1 clove of garlic. It was a pretty big clove.
And I whipped an egg.
**EDIT** I made this again tonight and used long grain rice instead of Jasmine and added a bit of Cilantro and more tomato, onion, and garlic, and it was much better! The cilantro really added a nice kick.***

Then I took the rice that was cooked and dumped it into a skillet. If you make this you should really rinse the rice in a bowl or something to get the gunk off of it. Anyway, I dumped the rice into the skillet and after I moved it around with my spatula a little I added the egg. SLOWLY. I cooked the egg in there for a bit, and added some soy sauce. Add that to taste. I like a lot of it. I added a small amount of wasabi just for a bit of flavor, and then after the egg was cooked, I dumped in the veggies I cut up. I let that cook for a minute, added a little more soy sauce, and then served it up with Tomatoes!