Happy Star Wars Day

May the 4th be with you, always.

Easter: The Third Day

Third in a 3 part series of art based on the Easter story.  Resurrection

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I hope you have a good Easter weekend, regardless of your world view.  Cheers!

Easter: The Second Day

The second of a three part series of images inspired by the Easter story. The second day Jesus was laid in a tomb with a stone rolled in front of the door, guarded by the Romans.

Easter: The First Day

This is the first piece in a three part series of art inspired by the Easter story.  Day one:  The Crucifixion.

Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanza, Happy Hanukah, or whatever your particular holiday tradition may be. Whatever gives you the warm and fuzzies during the winter solstice, I hope yours is the fuzziest.

Happy Canada Day!

Your country may be awesome, but is it "Mountie Riding A Velociraptor" awesome?  Didn't think so.

Happy birthday to the Great White North, eh?  Beauty!

Happy Thanksgiving

I haven't actually ranked all of the holidays, but Thanksgiving, for me, ranks high among them. Mainly because it is a simple holiday.

It is celebrated simply by sitting down with your friends and/or family,  consuming a ridiculous amount of turkey and stuffing, and feeling thankful for all the good things in your life (which often includes the friends and family you're eating the food with).

Thats it.

There are no religious, or nationalistic overtones, and no one feels the need or social pressure to buy gifts, beg for candy, or send "greeting cards".  Its just pure unadulterated thanksgiving. Even folks that do not have a tradition of celebrating Thanksgiving can easily get behind the idea.

If I was a sentimental man, the beauty in it's simplicity would bring tears to my eyes.  Since I am not such a sentimentalist, I choose to celebrate with this Ron Swanson meme:

It sometimes surprises my American friends that Canada also has Thanksgiving, and its celebrated pretty much exactly the same way as in the United States:  Friends, family, and a  ridiculous amount of food.  The only difference is it tend to include less football afterwards, and it happens in October. Otherwise, pretty much the same deal.

Since we now live in the United States, my family and I celebrate Thanksgiving with them (it is only polite, and lets face it, southerners can cook up a fantastically delicious turkey).

So for all my friends out there in blog land, regardless of your faith*, nationality, traditional backgrounds, or hockey fan status, I wish each and every one of you a very happy Thanksgiving.

Now, please pass the stuffing.


* Unless you are a Nihilist, in which case the most appropriate thing I can say is "meh"

Happy Halloween!

Happy New Year!

Your next adventure is already waiting for you, out there, somewhere.

Here's to an exciting 2014!

Have A Merry Happy Holiday

Happy Canada Day!

Happy Canada Day, eh?  Way to confederate!

Merry Christmas To All, And To All A Good... yada yada

Enjoy the holidays, and may the Jolly Fat Man forget about that thing you did last summer...

Reasons To Give Thanks

It is Thanksgiving in the United States, and since I live here I am celebrating it today with my american friends and family.   It is important at times like this to reflect on the things that one is thankful for.  Since I am a blogger, I chose to do this reflection online - something you can feel thankful for (hopefully:)

The question is what strategy should I use for this post?. I have many options.

I could go sappy, and say I am very thankful for my lovely and completely awesome wife, Debbie, who I am insanely in love with. I am also thankful for my two awesome kids, Zeke and Abigail.  They can be trying at times, but when it comes down to it, they are awesome little folks, and they make be laugh every day.  I am very proud to be their father.

Or may go professional and say that I am thankful that I have a job at one of the most amazing companies around.  My job doesn't always feel glamourous, but in aggregate we have literally changed the world, and for the better.  Insanely proud to be a Googler.

Perhaps I'll go hobbyist and say I am thankful that I have stumbled across an amazing hobby like geocaching, that has taken me on more adventures, and more places, that I every would have gone on my own.  I am also thankful that I fell into photography so I have another avenue to stretch my artistic muscle.

I could go there, but I think I'll go a different direction.

The thing I am most thankful for this year is that Canada saved the twinkie.  Thank you Canada!  Once again, you prove you rock, and in the most unexpected ways.

Fathers Day: Avian Highway Edition

1400th find.

Yesterday I came home to find that my wife and Zeke made me a Fathers Day cake (detailed on her blog here).  It looked unintentionally Seussian, but it was really delicious.

She then asked me what I wanted for Fathers Day.  My first thought was a Porsche 911 Turbo.  She sadly said "nay nay".  My second choice was to go geocaching with the family and getting my 1400th find milestone.  This she agreed too (and got her many extra wifey points)

So after church this morning we piled into the Geocaching Van Of Destiny (it always makes things more adventuresome if you name things this way - try it!) and drove for 90 minutes to to the Cowans Ford Wildlife Refuge in Mecklenburg County North Carolina to tackle the Avian Highway power trail.

A power trail is a series of caches that are placed together just over 528ft away (the minimum distance between physical caches according to the Groundspeak cache placement guidelines).

Normally I don't do a lot of power trails, but this one was short, just 12 caches (barely a power trail at all - more like the 9v battery of power trails), and along a really nice stretch of dirt road, so it seemed like a great way to kill some time and hit a milestone.

1400 looks kinda like this.

My 1400th cache was the 5th cache along the "highway", and was a red bison tube hanging on a tree.  It took us about 45 minutes to do the entire highway, and I had a great time along the way.

At the end of the highway is an observation deck, where we stopped to kill some time, feed Abigail, get Zeke a cache that I had found previously, and give my wife a chance to try out her new camera tripod.

Once we finished there we went over to the Latta Plantation, a nature park a couple miles to the east, to snag a few more caches.  We then headed back home to get some much needed child nap times.

All told I snagged 17 caches today, and spend some quality time with the family.  Not a bad way to spend a Fathers Day.

I'll leave you with some more pictures from the day, including those two little humans that call me dad.