Favorite Shopping Spots

Kohl’s: They always have something on sale, and it’s so fun to find a great deal on their clearance racks.

Trader Joes: An upscale feeling grocery store that offers lots of unique foods and many organic choices. I hate grocery shopping, but it’s actually fun to go here- if only for the atmosphere. Their prices are surprisingly similar to the local grocery store too.

Target: Ours isn’t a supercenter, but they have a small grocery section so I can get some of the staples there and not have to stop someplace else. I love that I can find all of the basics here and they are usually clean and tidy.

World Market: So many fun and exotic things at this store. A great place to find decorative features for the house or a fun and interesting gift. I’ve noticed that Santa finds lots of fun trinkets here for Christmas stockings.

Home Goods/TJ Maxx: TJ Maxx is a great place to find reduced prices on name brand things like clothing and toys. I bring the kids here a lot to pick birthday gifts for their friends. They also have a lot of housewares too. Some stores are pretty ghetto and sometimes you have to dig through the piles to find a deal, but every once in a while there is a great steal. Home Goods is the housewares version of TJ Maxx. They have more big things like furniture. I used to love to go here in NC, and want to check out the one here, but haven’t had a chance yet.

Mervyns: They have super great clearance sales for the kids clothes. I go there and stock up at the big sales.

Joann’s: I have seen all sizes of these stores and the small ones don’t have much variety, but if you find a larger one it can be a crafter’s heaven. Anything you can think of sewing or crafting or framing, you will find it here.

IKEA: The BEST place to find inexpensive things for your home. They are all very affordable, and your home can look like you hired a decorator because things are designed to go together. The only downside is you have to assemble all of the furniture yourself, but it usually isn’t too difficult.

There are always other places I like to go, but these are the top of the list for now. I try to avoid malls because the prices are usually higher, and they are too spread out to trail the kids along. That’s why I haven’t mentioned any of those type of stores here. What are your hot spots?

I need your help with WhiteBinder.org

I just posted a new article on WhiteBinder.org. For anyone that doesn’t know, this is a site I created some time back to post all the spiritual thoughts, stories, articles and other church-related things I’ve collected since my mission. I haven’t posted much to the site in the last few months mainly because I’ve already pretty much run though all my “A” material.

The article I just posted is one I came across recently from Davis Bitton (church scholar and co-author of The Mormon Experience) called, I Don’t Have a Testimony of Church History. It’s really interesting. He talks about his experience being both an active member of the church and a historian. It reminded me that there are still a lot of great articles and stories floating around out there that would be great additions to the site. This is where I’m hoping you guys can help me. If you’ve got anything that you think would be a good addition to the site, please send it to me. You can email it to me in pretty much any format, or you can mail me a hard copy of it if that’s all you have. If you need any of my contact info, let me know in the comments and I’ll get it to you. I would love to really turn the site into a great resource for people to be able to come and get access to great talks, stories and other resources on the church.

The site actually gets a fair number of visitors without me doing much at all to promote it. The image of the map above is taken from the stats program I use for the site (it’s Google Analytics, which is a great, free program). Each orange dot on the map indicates at least one visitor from that spot to whitebinder.org in just the last month! The vast majority come through searches in google and other search engines. I also have a feature where people can sign up to get an email whenever new content is posted to the site and there are now more people signed up for it that I don’t know than ones I do. So, I think the site is providing value to people and I would love to keep adding to it and improving it. I hope you can help!

My History With Photography

I went to a photography studio lighting class about a week ago. It was the first time I have taken any photography classes since my University days, and I thought I would use the local community class to learn some new things. As many of you already know, I worked as a darkroom technician in high school at the local newspaper. My job was developing film, printing halftones (the process of printing photos made up of tiny little dots for printing in the paper) and printing photos that the community members would buy if there was a picture in the paper they wanted for themselves.

I became very familiar with the solitary life of a photographer, spending my time in the complete darkness opening film canisters and winding film onto little metal reels and then loading several reels into a metal container with a heavy plastic lid. I could then turn on the lights and add the developing chemicals and stand and shake the container periodically as I watched the clock. Once the film was finished I would rinse it thoroughly and hang it to dry. I would then use the enlarging machine to make contact sheets from the negatives for the photographer, which they would use to pick the photos they wanted to use in the paper that week. (I already feel like a bit of a dinosaur because now with digital cameras, printing is done so much more efficiently. I’m barely into my thirties and already saying, “back in my day…”)

Once the photos were chosen I would print the photos on an enlarger using a special screen to create the little dots that made up the picture. I would then inspect the picture to make sure that none of the dots were too big or too little, too close together or too far apart. If they were, I would go back and use the dodge and burn technique to increase or decrease the amount of light hitting the paper until I would get it right and send it off for use by the printer. This is how I became interested in photography and decided to major in it at school.

I applied to the photography department and was accepted. I only made it through the first year though, before deciding that it wasn’t for me. Partly because I felt very out of place among the others in my classes. There is a certain amount of arrogance among the creative types, and a greater amount of competition. All of our projects were critiqued by the class, and having really no training in taking photos, I was just plain overwhelmed. I changed my major and decided that it would make a better hobby.

I have still kept an interest in photography, and although I also worked as a photographer’s assistant, I mostly did weddings which are a completely different genre than studio work. So this is why I signed up for the class last week. I went there expecting a bunch of novices and found myself feeling just as I did when I was a freshman— in over my head. These people all had their awesome cameras with the huge lenses and many were making their livings as photographers. I really enjoyed the class, and learned a lot about studio lighting and equipment. I would now know what to do in a studio if I ever get the chance to use one, and there are many lighting techniques that will be useful in the photos I’m taking now of the kids etc. I decided to play the role of the “clueless one” in class, and asked a lot of questions and observed. Of course there was that guy that thought he needed to tell me everything he knows about photography. I expect there is a guy, or girl, like that in every class. In many ways I miss being a student, but in so many other ways I don’t miss it at all!

I followed Banna’s guidelines for alternate headlines (it was hard!):

“Amateur Photographer Bores Many With History”, “Lighting, and Cameras, and Classes,…oh my!”, “Chicken Out And Blame it on Arrogant Artists”

Enjoy, you may not see this again 🙂

1,200 Quotes, and counting…

I just updated the Simpson’s random quote generator on the site with a bunch of new quotes. We’re now up to just over 1,200 hand-selected, pre-screened, gut-busting quotes. Go ahead, refresh the page. There are new gems waiting just for you!

Also, because of my extremely generous nature, if anyone else would like to have the generator on their site, just let me know and I’ll send you the files. It’s a simple wordpress plugin. You could also customize it pretty easily to do quotes from other shows (but why would you want to!).

And Heidi, we need to talk. Come on! You can’t have a Simpson’s quote generator on your site and just name it “Random Quote”. As Ralph would say, “I’m bemarrassed for you”. Get Marky to jazz it up for you (and while he’s at it, you should get him to make the backgrounds of the images transparent. This is a classy plugin, after all).

I’ll leave you with a few of the best of the ones I just added.

Lisa: Do we have any food that wasn’t brutally slaughtered?
Homer: Well, I think the veal might have died of loneliness.

Homer: I’ll do the dishes when I pick it out of the chore hat and it’s not a practice. See, there it is. But that was just a practice. The system works!

Bum: Well, there are six schools of begging: bad musician, messed up vet, cripple, fake cripple, religious zealot, and crazy guy. I think you would do well with crazy guy.
Homer: Coke and Pepsi are the same thing! Wake up, people! [gibberish]
Bum: Wow, now, that is good crazy!

Kent Brockman: Springfield will have its first annual “Do What You Feel” festival this Saturday, whenever you feel like showing up. It will be a welcome change from our “Do As We Say” festival, started by German settlers in 1946.

Mr. Burns: Now a few more details about this year’s company picnic. It’s at the plant, no food will be served, the only activity will be work, and the picnic is canceled.

Martin’s Mother: While my son’s at fat camp, I cleaned out his room. How much will you give me for this? [hands Comic Book Guy a box]
Comic Book Guy: Probably nothing but let us see… Oh, a handwritten script for Star Wars, by George Lucas? Princess Leia’s anti-jiggle breast tape! Film reel labeled “Alternate Ending – Luke’s Father Is Chewbacca”!!! Oh! Oh!… [calms down] I’ll give you five dollars for the box.

Dr. Nick: With my diet, you can eat anything you want, any time you want!
Marge: And you’ll lose weight?
Dr. Nick: Uhh, you might. It’s a free country!

Rod: Is he killing that guitar, daddy?
Ned: Yes, son.

Principal Skinner: I know Weinstein’s parents were upset, Superintendent, but I was sure it was a phony excuse. I mean, it sounds so made up, “Yom Kip-pur.”

Thomas Hardy Novels

Rob and I just finished watching a series by A&E of the book “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” by Thomas Hardy. I can’t get it out of my head because the story is not typical of the era in which it was written. Hardy was born in 1840 about twenty five years after the Bronte sisters (Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights) and their well-loved novels. Hardy was different because he really gets into the suffering and the realities that were, and are still, a part of life. He was heavily criticized at the time they were published because of their strong, frank, content. He eventually gave up writing novels and stuck to poetry because of it. Although I’d like to hope that nobody’s life is quite as miserable as some of the characters he created, they certainly stick with you and make you reevaluate your judgements of others’ lives.

Rob and I listened to an abridged version of “The Mayor of Casterbridge,” another of Hardy’s books, on a road trip. These two novels are probably considered his best two. “The Mayor of Casterbridge” is the story of a man who creates his own misery by selling off his wife and child while drunk, while “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” is about a woman who’s misery is caused by a man that takes advantage of her innocence and youth, and she cannot escape the effects of his actions. In spite of her struggles, she still believes that she may find happiness and works diligently to find her own way to it.

Personally, the mayor’s plight is easier to swallow than Tess’ because it was his own doing that lead him down his life’s path. I don’t want to give away too much of the plot in case you want to read the book or watch the movie. Be warned, they are not something you want to watch when you’re looking for a warm fuzzy romance. However, I still recommend them because of the strength of the characters and the story’s ability to draw you in to their experiences. I feel like I’m not really able to get out on paper (or computer) what I want to say, because there are so many thoughts rumbling around in there. But, if you’re not depressed, and looking for a good read, or movie, give these stories a try.

Memories of Strawberry Shortcake

Not long ago, the kids were watching a recent version of a Strawberry Shortcake cartoon. It reminded me of an episode we had on video when I was a kid. I must have watched it a hundred times because I still know the words to all of the songs. And for some reason thinking back on that cute little girl and all of her confectionery friends makes me happy. I did a search to find it, and found that it was called “Strawberry Shortcake’s Housewarming Surprise.”

It aired in 1983, and features Strawberry’s move to a new house and a run in with the Peculiar Purple Pie Man. I found the full version of it that someone transferred from a video tape she had. She also has other fun episodes on BitTheDustTape.com of things like Care Bears and The Getalong Gang. I just had to share this bit of my history with anyone else that might have fond memories of these “vintage” cartoons.