dear blog.

So, wow. Hey blog. It's a little bit weird seeing you like this. All un-updated and shit. It's not like I don't like you anymore, really. I mean, it's totally not you ... it's me. I've just been busy and things around here have been going pretty well. And I know that sometimes when we're apart it can feel like I've forgotten about you, as if I've moved on to do other stuff. But that's totally not true! Maybe it's just that the contents of my pockets have become rather redundant. How many times can I post a picture of receipts and trash before it isn't cool anymore? There's gotta be a hundred photos of my pockets on here and I would wager that after the 3rd or 4th one it got kinda lame. Add to that the fact that I routinely forget the funny stuff I was gonna write about and all of the sudden you're here: staring at some bored guy's random thoughts. You could pretty much do that anywhere on the interweb.

So, here's what I have been doing as of late instead of updating the blog.











And my current favorite:



I figured with all the traveling I do I might as well take some pictures along the way. I picked up an old Nikon FM2n from my father in law, a Nikon N80 from another guy and I just bought this:



A Kodak Brownie Hawkeye Flash box camera at a church yard sale for $2! Just loaded some film into it today so we'll see how they turn out.

If you wanna look at more of my pictures just hop on over to the flickr.

Pockets, and the nightmare car

It's been a while since I posted any photos of my pockets. Even though I haven't been updating a lot my pockets are still just as full as ever. It's just I get sidetracked by stupid mess pretty easily and end up posting stuff about doritos and dick ponds. So in honor of this blog's title, here's a pocket picture and also some other mess.



Ok, the other morning I ran out to the petco to get the dogs some food and while I was there I saw the most wondrous car ever. Parked next to me was this 4-door Saturn packed to the brim with garbage. The entire back seat was full from door to door, floor boards to roof and rear windshield all the way to the back of the front seats. The passenger seat was also completely crammed and the dashboard had a solid 3-4 inches of crap spread across it. The only open space was an alcove seemingly carved out around the driver's seat, barely big enough for a person to sit. I ran into the petco, grabbed the dog's food and hurried as fast as I could so I could get out there before the owner. Unfortunately the car's owner was in front of me in line and beat me. Thus began the chase. I followed the woman down Wendover for a bunch of miles, trying to get next to her and take a good picture. The only one I got was at a stoplight and since it was raining/sleeting everything was foggy and I couldn't get a clear shot. Finally she pulled over at a gas station and proceeded to cram even more trash into the back seat, opening the door only slightly and bracing her hip against it so as not to lose any of the plastic bags or McDonald's to-go cups she had stowed inside. At first I thought this was my chance to snap a few quick pics and get out of there. But anyone capable of doing something like that to their car is most likely unstable and who knows what she would have done if confronted with some a-hole snapping pics of her car. She would have probably tried to squeeze me into the back seat or maybe take me back to her hoarder lair and that would have been that for Evbo. Filed between stacks of newspapers and garbage bags for all eternity. So rather than risk being hoarded, I opted to just head home, safe and sound.




File this under "Good Ideas That Will Never Work," along with eyeglasses with windshield wipers, umbrella hats and this thing:



I give you the "Magic Scraper!" Brought to you by the good folks at Auto Aid. It's also available from Lillian Vernon, so check it out.



All I know is that when you plug it into your car lighter it smokes, which isn't good. Also, it doesn't scrape ice, which is also not good. Please note that I did not buy this myself, it was given to me by my Mom, bless her heart. Actually, I think she gave it to Caitlin although neither of us ever intended to use it. But since it snowed so much the last few days I thought I'd give it a try. So I plugged it in and let it "warm up" for a few minutes, and by warm up I mean smoke. Needless to say the thing didn't make ice scrapping any easier, if anything it made it more difficult since now I was tethered to the car by a medium length cord. It took about 5 minutes for me to chuck the thing in the snow and just let the defroster melt the ice.

Are you ready for the best part? Caitlin just came in telling me how amazing that heated ice scraper was! In fact, she referred to it as "the jam." So I guess I'm the idiot, nothing new I suppose. I'm just always surprised to find out that, Yes, I am indeed a dumbass. You figure I'd know by now.

love

evbo

Go clean your room.

Trying to get Hudson to clean up his room is usually an exercise in futility. Normally he whines and complains for an hour or two and it rarely ends well. But this last time I asked him he just up and did it, no groaning, no bitching, just an "OK Dad" and off he went. Needless to say I was both surprised by his eagerness and skeptical that anything would actually get accomplished. I assumed after 30 minutes or so I would be presented with a brand new Lego creation and a room equally if not more dirty than before he went in. But the boy came through this time, it wasn't "Nana Pam's coming to visit" clean but it was markedly cleaner than before. One of the only specific instructions I had given him was to put all his dirty clothes into a laundry basket so I could wash them. I figured since he had done such and awesome job with the room as a whole that he had also put his clothes in the basket.



Nope. Only one sock had managed to find it's way, completely on accident I'm sure, into the laundry basket. But where are the rest of his clothes?



Oh, there they are. It never ceases to amaze me how a child that has to wear a uniform 5 out of 7 days could possibly have so many dirty clothes.

So, it's laundry time. And seeing as how Hud had sooooo much I figured I'd knock his out first. And that means going through his pockets and making sure no gum or markers or Lego men make it into the machines. So here's what I took out.



My favorite has got to be the those little fellas on the far right, leftovers from his brief yet annoyingly intense sunflower seed phase. It only lasted until the bag was gone but having to hear him spit every 20 seconds or so was pretty gross. That and finding chewed up shells all over the house especially mixed up in my sheets was about as aggravating as all hell. There were definitely several mornings where I woke with sunflower seeds stuck to my back. Thank god that's over.

As it turns out...

I'm a complete moron. I'm sure this isn't exactly breaking news to most but it is to me. I've always known I was a dumbass but a moron? Well, on my trip to Greenville, SC today I stopped in on this old camera shop looking for a flash for the "new to me" Nikon EM, and low and behold he had one that worked and it only set me back $20. I know in ebay internet world that's probably at least 4 times what they go for but I wanted to hold it in my hand and test it out before I bought it. Well while there the guy and I got to talking and after a few snaps of the shutter he mentioned that the film winder wasn't turning after the film was advanced. He suggested I make sure the film was loaded correctly. And guess what? It wasn't. Sooooo, all the theoretically great photos I took yesterday during our tour of the Masonic Lodge here in Greensboro didn't take, all the farting around photos of the dogs, of Hudson, of Caitlin, none of them took. And, being the moron I apparently am, I rewound all the film thinking I was at the end of each roll. Awesome. I had to google "how to load film" in order to realize what I was doing wrong.

Anyway, here are some pics of the "new" flash taken with Caitlin's new Nikon Coolpix S210. (She needed a small camera to take with her to Belize next week and we got a great deal on it, thanks Ritz Camera!) It's a Nikon SB-18 Speedlite, seems to work pretty well. But taking into account my severe incompetence, there's now telling how I'll frack this thing up.

New To Me Toy

Check out my "new" toy! A Nikon EM SLR from the late 70s or early 80s! Caitlin's mom got if for her years and years ago and it's been lying unused and forgotten at the bottom of our coat closet for at least as long as we've been married (4 years.) Prior to that I have no idea when the last time it was used. The batteries were dead, it had some old B&W film with god knows what on it and no one had paid any attention to it for soooo long I figured it wouldn't work anymore. But a little cleaning and two new batteries and she was good to go. After the obligatory Google searches and Nikon forum browsing I realized that this is a pretty neat little camera. Nothing fancy, I've seen it described as everything from "a great little workhorse" to "a Nikon for ladies." Either way, I think it'll be a fun camera to mess around with, at least until I can get my hands on a fancy DSLR. Now the only thing is overcoming the instant gratification of my digital camera. I haven't had film processed in years, I don't even know how much it costs, hopefully not much.





love evbo

Attempt at Professional Photography

These are some rough drafts of possible ads and postcards I made to promote the glasses I sell. I'm still playing around with colors, fonts, layouts etc... Any Keep in mind that I am in no way a professional photographer nor do I have a nice camera. These were shot with a little Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ7 P&S digital camera using a light box I made out of a Rubbermade storage box, some poster board from the CVS, some tissue paper and a couple of clip lamps from the bedroom. The photos were then edited using GIMP rather than Photoshop as the GIMP is free and open source and Photoshop costs something like $700. Polite and constructive criticism gladly taken.

Evbo

On the Road

The Town that Time Forgot:

In this modern age that which we live there are some things you don't see too often: horse drawn carriages, rotary telephones, bees. But every so often, with a little luck, you can stumble upon small pockets of the good old days. Places where progress hasn't had as much of an impact on daily life and the pace is maybe a bit slower than in the big cities. That being said, I would like to present to you... Erwin, NC: The Town that Time Forgot.

Erwin is a sleepy little town just off I-95, about halfway between Raleigh and Fayetteville. I first discovered Erwin, and it's sister town Dunn, back in the summer while Caitlin and I were driving to Wilmington. We took the back roads and went through tons of little towns but Erwin stood out for two reasons: 1) Roses and 2) Western Sizzlin.






I haven't seen either one of these place in years and we were both in awe that two seemingly extinct businesses had managed to survive. I hypothesized that perhaps the same phenomenon that allows animals such as the Yeti and the Loch Ness Monster to exist beyond the prying eyes of modern society had also enabled the Roses and the Western Sizzlin to remain open. Far away from the hustle and bustle of big city living, no one had given the good folks of Erwin the heads up that both of these place had long since vanished. So, they remained open and were allowed to flourish. The only thing that this town needed was a Sam Goody, and Caitlin swore she saw one! But upon a subsequent visit back to this land before time I discovered that it was not a Sam Goody that Caitlin had seen, but in fact a Goody's Family Clothing store. Which, in and of itself, is a pretty uncommon site, but not nearly as rare as the elusive Sam Goody. And if you go to the Sam Goody website and click the store locator you get this message:



The next time you are traveling south on 421 keep an eye out for these two rarities, maybe stop and venture inside and see what life was like back in the good old days.

This Is Your Job? Seriously?

Now I understand that not every job is glamorous or exciting, we're not all super models or guys with million dollar high profile careers. Some folks have to clean up messes at public restrooms and take out the garbage, it's a fact of life. We've all done it, gross stuff that maybe won't get mentioned in conversations about work. But you really have to feel for the guys driving this truck:



Everyday, they get up, get dressed, kiss their wives and kids goodbye and load up their equipment into the van and head off to work. Everyday. In this truck. The embarrassment these men must endure as car loads of teenagers and immature 30 somethings snicker and point as they drive by day after day. I can imagine Career Day at school, little Billy, proud of his old man, brings his dad in to tell all the kids about what he does for a living. "He builds towers!" Billy would say. All the while, out in the school parking lot is a big truck with the words "Erection Crew" in bold letters across the back. And you know some kid would go on and on about erections and ask Billy's dad how he "gets it up" or "how big his last erection was." Poor Billy will never be able to live down the shame.


Your Address is What?



"Ok Mr. Brennan, we just need to confirm your billing info and we'll be all done. We have your address as 123 Dick Pond Rd? Really? You live on Dick Pond Rd? That's so funny because my aunt lives on Vagina Creek Way! Hahahahahaha! Is that in Taintsville? How far from Grundlesburg do you live?"

Don't move to Dick Pond Rd, the jokes will write themselves.

Old Salem, Not Just for Grandmas and Candle Teas

Moravians aren't just all about thin cookies and candles, they also like to have a laugh from time to time!