10 Years Ago

Like I've said in a couple previous posts, I'm way behind in posting photos. Not 10 years behind, but in collecting all the pictures I still want to post from the last couple of years, I found a folder full of pictures from my old flip phone from 10 years ago! So, in the interest of archiving them for myself, and sharing them with whoever might be interested, I decided to make a blog post with them.

First up, apparently a rare selfie from me. Not sure why I took this, but here's a picture of 22-year-old me, from February 2009.

*Content warning* I am in a bathrobe doing a bathroom mirror selfie. Why? I literally have no idea. Just thought you should be warned, this is a shocking image.

I miss that phone. I mean, I wouldn't get rid of my smart phone for a flip phone again for anything, but I did love that phone. I loved the color, the snap of it closing was so satisfying... I wish there were a way to get the best of both worlds from today's smartphones. Is it too much to ask for a dark purple smartphone that can snap closed in a satisfying manner?

A bunch of these pictures were ones I had taken at my job. From early 2009 to mid 2010, I worked in the kitchen of Elm Crest Retirement Community. It wasn't the greatest job, (some days it was downright awful) but there aren't many options in Harlan. The worst part of the job was usually the dishes. Specifically the dishes used to cook and store the food. We could use a dishwasher for all the plates, cups, silverware, etc. (Thankfully) But everything else had to be done by hand. By me. And for some reason I decided to document that one night.

To this day I still hate doing dishes. ESPECIALLY in a commercial kitchen.

Another thing I took some pictures of at Elm Crest was a vault I found in the basement. I mean, it's not like they were hiding it and I discovered something they'd been keeping classified, but no one ever told me about it, so when I walked down this particular hallway, it felt like I had discovered a secret mausoleum, hidden away from the public's eyes.

When I was a little kid, my family was part of a homeschool choir, and one thing we would do was go to sing for the seniors at local nursing homes, usually at least twice a year. The choir disbanded years before I started working, but some of us, and even some who hadn't been part of the original group, would still try to at least get together around Christmas and go caroling. We did that in 2009, and we included Elm Crest as a stop, and I took a picture of the event schedule they had hanging in the assisted living wing where I usually served dinner.

The last picture on the phone was taken in January 2010, after a big snowstorm. There was a tree outside the Alzheimer's unit that had lost a huge limb in the night.

Through all of my teenage years and into my early 20's, my family had a lot of cats. They were frequently the targets of my camera, as they were pretty much the only animals we had around that I could photograph. I have lots of pictures from old cameras, but apparently I took a bunch on this phone too.

It's been so long, and we had so many cats, that I can't remember their names.

I think these were taken through a basement window.

We had one named Polar Bear. I think this was him.

Po for short.

Mom always acted like she didn't want any cats in the house.

**ACTED** like she didn't want them in the house.

Incidentally, there is currently, as of June 2019, a stray cat that my parents have named Mr. Friendly, who they now let into the house on a semi-regular basis. So...

One of these days I should get a picture of him up on this blog. Next time I go home I'll try to make it a point to get some pictures.

Anyway, these were all the pictures I had on my phone. Plus a bunch of blurry things, and pictures I couldn't figure out what they were supposed to be or where they were taken, but I decided against sharing those. So this was an interesting look back at a year in my life, through a cell phone camera that I barely used. Will this be interesting to anyone but me? If you're reading this, I guess it must have been. :p

Random Picture Update!

So, I haven't posted any pictures on this blog in awhile. Like, real photos from my real life. In fact, let me check and see just exactly how long it's been!

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Well, I guess it was like 6 months ago if you're counting funeral posts, but it's been almost 2 years since I posted pictures from my graduation! And as far as non funeral/wedding/massive life event pictures, from what I can tell, I haven't posted any pictures since March of 2016! Three years ago! And those pictures were from the trip I took with Shaina and Sasha to visit Uncle Nathan and Aunt Ruth in Colorado, in 2014!

Edit: (A few days later) I found a few other more recent picture posts, but the most recent one still seems to be from mid-2017, and they were all catch-up posts containing several-months-old pictures as well. So either way, it's still been awhile, and either way, I'm still bad about posting pictures. I mean, I got right on the "Big Event" pictures, but I knew there were a lot of people waiting for them. To this day looking at my analytics, they are among the most viewed posts I've written.

So, for the past 5 years, I haven't done too much with pictures. At one point it was the main thing I posted. I even had, have, a photography blog, but I just checked there as well, and the last post was from the end of 2016. And that was also some pictures from the Colorado trip.

I took a LOT of pictures in 2017, but I still have yet to post them. The summer after I graduated I lived at home, worked part time at Hy-Vee (Like I have for 10 years now! Good grief I feel old...) and I spent my free time doing things with Sarah. That was the summer I started my YouTube channel, so we recorded a lot of videos, but every couple of weeks we would make it a point to go somewhere, and do something, (usually free) and I took a lot of pictures on those mini trips.

And then I never posted any of them. Not even our longest trip where we hit three states in one day on our way to watch the eclipse. YouTube just kind of became the main focus of all my free time. I mean, I edited and shared a vlog from the eclipse trip, but still not pictures. And then when I got the job at the hotel, between that and Hy-Vee, I barely had time for YouTube either. Someday, I swear, I will get those pictures up. But today is not that day.

Today I just wanted to share some random pictures I've taken recently. I don't take that many pictures these days, but if something interesting is happening, I have my phone, so I take some pictures.

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The biggest thing that's happened around here recently is the snow. At the moment it has almost melted, but at one point there was a LOT.

Before I get to the good pictures, I had to share this one that I took one morning after work, when I went shopping. I didn't know it at the time, but there was a huge snowstorm in the forecast. This is the bread isle at Aldi. I just started laughing. The stereotypes are true! Apparently people panicked, and wiped out the bread! Good thing I didn't need any! 😂

 

This was really one of the worst winters we've had in awhile. Grandma even got a snowblower for me to use, which was a lifesaver. Until it broke right before the winter just went completely downhill. Technically I've seen worse than this winter in the past, but this was the worst I've seen in Ames, and the worst I've seen during a time when snow removal was up to me. So for most of February, I only had the shovel to rely on.

At its worst, the depth of the snow reached well over a foot in some places, and probably close to two feet at the end of the driveway, after the snowplow had passed. I took some pictures on the day the snow was at its highest. This one is the end of the driveway, the morning after the biggest snow. I work overnights, so I came home to a mountain in the driveway. I could not pull in to the driveway. And this snow was dense. This mess held my weight, I didn't even sink in an inch, when I climbed over to walk up the driveway.

 

And when I say two feet, that's probably how deep it was in the shallowest part. We had gotten so much snow in the days before this that the "Mountains" on either side of the driveway were over three feet high, and I couldn't keep the snow I was scooping from flowing back down at least somewhat, and I could just barely keep them apart enough to pull one car through. I'd taken to parking in the street on days I knew grandma would need to get out. Working overnights I sleep during the day, so it was just easier to park in the street than have to wake up to move my car for her.

This is the driveway the morning after the foot of snow fell. You can see where the newspaper people had walked up before I got home. They couldn't pull in either.

 

And now that I think of it, I think the snow had been falling for two days. It was snowing when I got home the day before, so I waited to scoop when I got up, but by that point it had grown to near blizzard conditions and I decided to wait until I got off work instead. Either way, the amount that fell all at once, was huge, and by the time I came home from work the next morning, this was the result.

At this point I didn't want to even be bothered with the snow. I just wanted to go to bed. I figured I'd scoop when I got up, but I wasn't expecting to even get close to finishing. There was no snow in the forecast for a few days, so I figured I could take my time and not kill myself on the two feet of snow-cement at the end of the driveway.

 

That afternoon I got up, got all my snow gear on and went upstairs to get the shovel, and found this!

I had told grandma how solid the snow at the end of the driveway was, and as soon as I went to bed, she went to the phone book, and found someone who was apparently right up the road who had some kind of industrial snow-blower, he came over with his son, and apparently their machine chewed right through the ice in the driveway! She said they had it clear in less than a half hour! I couldn't believe it!

Thankfully that one awful storm was really the worst of it, and the few times it has snowed since hasn't amounted to much at all.

My other thing this winter has been getting back into knitting. Apparently it's been two years since I started learning according to Facebook's memories feature.

I seem to do a little knitting around Christmas every year, but not much past that. This year I've actually made quite a few projects past the official holiday season. One of those projects was a late Christmas gift for my friend Rachel in Utah. I actually brought it to work one night after we lost internet access. 😂

 

I had my coworker Dominic take a picture of me to share with the knitting/crochet group that my sister-in-law Alex made on Facebook, but I thought it would be good for my blog too. :) And then Rachel sent me an Instagram Story after she got the package, so I asked if I could share that here as well. :)

Speaking of work, here's a random picture. Apparently a Red Bull representative left a case at our hotel for the employees to drink. It was a long night, so I decided to try my very first real energy drink.

It wasn't that great. I mean, It wasn't as horrible as I'd been led to believe, but it definitely wasn't good enough that I'd ever actually purchase one.

Oh, and here's another random picture I took recently. Not sure how I managed this.

I didn't take many pictures this Christmas but I did take a few cute ones of Jackson and Kadin.

I have a LOT of old pictures of my nephews from random events all last year. I'll probably eventually do a catch up post for those.

These kids are too cute. The paparazzi is always following them around. :p

Last year my cousins lost almost all their pets within just a few months. I took a few pictures right after they started getting some new kittens. I could have sworn I got some of all three, but for now, here's Sarah with Tadashi.

     

Tadashi loves my sandals. Also you can tell how long ago I took these, because I wore my sandals that night...

Anyway, that's all for now. Like I said I have a LOT more pictures. I just need to find time to actually do something with them. I think my next photo post will probably be more catch-up on family pictures, the majority of which will likely be nephews, but I do have other stuff coming. I may even try to do a photo-blog post one of these days. We'll see. I make no concrete promises, aside from that it'll happen. Some day. 😂

TIIA 22 (The Internet is Awesome)

Another photo-post is coming soon, but I'm still trying to catch up on videos, so here's another TIIA post. I'll have a real update soo, hopefully within the week.
Let's start this post out with another Evynne Hollens Disney song. :)



Depending on your tolerance for different covers of the same song, a lot of this post might get repetitive for you, so bear with me. If it helps, even though they're all exactly the same, they're also all completely different. :p

Dreamworks has a new movie coming out based on the old Trolls dolls from when I was a kid, but the movie has become completely overshadowed by the song that was released from the soundtrack earlier this summer. It's actually amazing, most likely more amazing than the movie itself will be, but I'll reserve judgement for now. Anyway, as with any song that receives massive mainstream hit status, it gets covered by YouTubers. Lots of YouTubers. :p

KHS and Co.



Home Free



Nick Pitera



And most uniquely, PMJ



And that's it. I'm sure there are a lot more, but these were the best. :)

Now let's completely change directions with this video that went viral awhile back, a strange German commercial starring cats. The internet truly is awesome.



Next is clip from the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, where he is interviewing the incomparable Carol Burnett. It is so good.



We'll end this post with another amazing song from Peter Hollens.

Chicago 2015 (Part 1)

Last year my cousins Shaina and Sasha and I went to Chicago for two weeks to visit our aunt and uncle, and also go site seeing. It took me a year, but now I've finally gotten my pictures from the trip edited! We're taking another trip next month, hopefully It won't take me a year to get those pictures done. :p

I did not bring my camera with me on this trip, so there aren't going to be a huge amount of pictures, but with the amount of commuting via public transportation we had to do, it was just easier to bring my call phone and just use that. But as you can see, my cell phone still takes decent pictures. They're not going to win any awards, but they'll do fine as vacation photos.

This is the Wheaton station. Every day we took a train from here to Oak Park, and then switched trains and took another one into the city. It was more complicated that way, but because of the fares, it was much cheaper to take the second train.

Sasha brought her walrus, Steve, to take pictures of wherever we went.

Our first stop was the Adler Planetarium.

This thing was cool, it was like a heat mirror.

Storm coming in over the lake.

This statue was a popular perch for the seagulls.

On one of the nights we all went to my cousin Chris and Becky's for supper.

Lucas is a bit camera shy. :p

Ethan and Shaina are very much kindred spirits. :p

At they end of the night they did not want us to leave and tried to block the door. :p

Two opposite reactions to a camera. :p

On this day we took a ride on one of the tall ships in the harbor at Navy Pier.

It was such a cool experience.

You can tell we were hot and worn out after that day, but it was a lot of fun. :)

On one of the days we actually got to ride the subway. All the trains are connected, but there is a part of the city where it goes underground and becomes a subway. I know it makes me sound like such a tourist/country mouse, but it was really cool to ride the subway. :p

We went to a modern art museum, but it was incredibly sparse as far as exhibits. What they had was cool and interesting, but there really wasn't all that much there. This exhibit was a room that was full of a hot air balloon that you could walk around in. That was probably the coolest part.

I had to take a picture of an incoming train at least once. :)

We went into Chinatown on another day, but we didn't find much to see at all, except for some cheesy little shops. We later found out that we may not have gone to the right part, because apparently there was a lot more there than we saw.

At least we saw this thing, and ate at a nice(ish) little restaurant. :)

In contrast with the modern art museum, the Art Institute of Chicago had a TON of stuff. We literally spent an entire day there, and I'm not even sure we saw it all. It was utterly enormous. They had everything from classical art, to modern art, and everything in between. I didn't take all that many pictures there, but I did make sure to get pictures of two of the most famous pieces they had. This one is, of course, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

And Everyone knows American Gothic. :p

On another day we went to the Morton Arboretum again. We went there the last time we visited, but this time they we hosting an exhibit of Lego sculptures. They were quite impressive.

That's all for now, this was just the first half or so of the trip. I'll post a second batch of pictures tomorrow.