So I’m sitting here listening to some Avant Garde Jazz and something about the mood of the song caused this image to jump out at me. Psychedelic man.

I snapped this picture yesterday while sitting for 15 minutes outside of a Long John Silver’s drive-thru. (not for food for me) (nope, I wish I liked seafood but I just don’t) (if you can even call Long John Silver’s seafood… but then again, I’m no seafood connoisseur.)

Anyway, I snapped this picture largely on accident while I was adjusting my settings on my camera to take a picture of the poor car in front of us that was billowing smoke. Truthfully, a thought flashed through my mind that it might be the last photo I ever took coming mere seconds before the car burst into flames and exploded. Thankfully, the lady turned her car off and we sat there for 10 more minutes in silence.

While adjusting my settings on the camera the shutter fired and I had got some sweet motion blur that distracted me from taking the shot of the car smoke I had intended to photograph. Side-tracked, I played around for a few minutes and ended up with this frame being my favorite. I think it happened around, oh,… I think 6:50pm.

Anyway, word to the wise, be weary of pulling in behind clunky cars in places that operate under the guise of “fast” food. And as a side note, if you are ever driving and your dash begins to look like this picture, pull over.

Seriously.

Cheers, my friends.

In high school, someone once told me I had “Australian Eyes.” Though, initially, I didn’t exactly know how to accept that observation as it came from the same girl who also told me I never breathed through my nose, I did eventually decide to take it as a compliment.

I liked the compliment largely because of my boyhood hero, Jim Craig, in the movie, “The Man from Snowy River.” He was Australian and if I looked like him perhaps there was hope for me yet to tame a wild brumby mountain horse.

In college, I did have the opportunity to visit Australia and New Zealand for a summer and found that not only did the Australians have cool accents but also great sarcastic senses of humor. I learned to play Cricket and also became enlightened of the specifics of Rugby.

All of this perhaps has led to the point that I now have a new favorite show that KB cares less and less about. HGTV’s new Outdoor Rooms with Jamie Durie (who happens to be an Australian) is moving up the ranks of my favorite shows on HGTV. KB gets annoyed by the drama between Jamie’s employees as they attempt to digest a vision of the outdoor room that Jamie’s always spews out in his Australian accent. Thankfully the sarcastic Australian sense of humor always pulls through for me and eases any annoying drama and tension and usually results in some amazing outdoor rooms being created on that show.

My favorite part of the show actually comes in the beginning parts of the design creation where Jamie Durie travels to a variety of exotic places with a camera and makes  photographs of all sorts of amazing plants, colors, and textures.

With all of that being said, today I spent the early evening pretending to be Jamie Durie searching for inspiration for an upcoming project. Unfortunately, my travel destinations are a little less colorful but no less textured and interesting. Check it out:

I’ve excited about pushing my new toy to the limits this week.

The forecast of warmer weather may give me just the motivation I need to get outside and really test the capabilities of these small remote firing bad-boys…

For those interested, there are really great articles done by the Strobist on these RadioPopper JrX’s here:

Not a very clever title, but I didn’t really come home in a clever mood. In fact, I came home in a cranky mood.

KB and I love a phrase we learned from our friends Sheldon and Haylee, “Don’t poke the bear.”

We have used that as our warning phrase, as if one is needed, for times when we are moody or just cranky. It usually makes us laugh and eases tension because it is our confession of the fact that we know we are being difficult. Well, KB has learned very quickly that one solution to “Don’t poke the bear,” is to “feed him.”

I had a pretty good day over all today, but I just came home tired and apparently pretty volatile. I went from hugs, kisses, and jokes when I walked in to flat-out-sulky in minutes.

Thankfully, I have a wonderful wife who knows better than to poke the bear. Instead, we went out and followed through with a plan to purchase a long-awaited food processor that KB has wanted for quite some time. Man, am I glad we did! Our first creation was a healthy spinach dip which topped our homemade hamburgers. It was taste explosion! So good, I had to snap of pics of KB in action! She is so wonderful!