Merry Christmas 2018

Another year with three Christmases... we celebrated Christmas at the Conrad's on the 23rd, then had our own Christmas at home on the 24th, then at my parent's house on Christmas Day. 

The annual sibling picture at the Conrad's Christmas:

On the morning of Christmas Eve I picked up donuts. Hy-Vee had Cap'n Crunch donuts, which was awesome and awful at the same time:

Time to open presents:

Dueling photographers:

We opened our stockings first:

Emily is a big fan of opening presents:

Rose is a serious Queen fan and was pretty stoked when Bohemian Rhapsody came out in theaters earlier this year:

Cynthia's first attempt at making kringla was a success! They are a lot of work to make:

Christmas Day at my parent's house. After opening gifts Cynthia and I made chicken parm and then dad and I did some target practice in the backyard. Later, we video chatted with Abby (and Ashlen) in TX and then played Telestrations.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Comet

Comet 46P/Wirtanen made its closest pass to Earth in 20 years tonight, so we nerded out and went to our favorite stargazing spot to check it out. It's a very faint green glow in the sky and super hard to find, but one of the 10 closest comet passes to the Earth since 1950. It took us a while to zero in on the spot where it should be, but we found the general area (thanks to the SkyView app) and even then we couldn't see it, but with a slow shutter I was able to photograph it. It was between Aldebaran (part of the Taurus constellation) and the Pleiades star cluster. Anyway, all nerdery aside, here ya go:

See it? No? It took a bit, but I think this is it:

That weird glowing spot just below a bright star – I think that's it and the interwebz seem to confirm. Also, if you look back at the first photo there's a satellite just coming into frame in the upper left. Nifty!

A zoomed-out photo to provide context:

Before we left, Rose and I took some long exposures of cars going past on the highway:

November 2018

It was November and we did some stuff... like raking a whole lot of leaves:

And Rose had a part in Spamalot at Franklin Middle School. See her? She's on the left:

And I came down with some lousy bug on my birthday, but we still rocked out and went to see Hairball after going out to eat:

Rose was recognized as an exceptional 1st quarter student at Franklin and got her picture taken with her favoritest teacher in the whole wide world:

And it snowed and we went Christmas shopping and ate breakfast and did other stuff. There's my hasty update for November. If you want something more to read, here's this thing I forgot to post before about one of my coworkers who is accused of being a cold case killer: https://wtop.com/national/2018/06/woman-charged-with-1992-southeast-iowa-beating-death/

War of the Worlds

My latest card stock project:

I used a small high-intensity LED that I positioned behind the tagboard and directed it through a hole that I cut in the board. The aerosol can of photography mist in the picture below provided some dramatic "smoke" in the shot. Behind the scenes:

This whole thing took longer than intended because I accidentally set the first alien tripod guy on fire!

You can see the flame just starting in that picture. Those studio lights get scorching hot very quickly. Lesson learned. It burned up the tripod and part of the tagboard in just seconds. I guess it was a fortunate accident because the LED light I ended up using provided more of a directional beam and I got the effect I was looking for on the first try... after some serious repairs, ha.

The photographic aerosol mist was cool, but pricey and it produced a faint mist without looking very substantial. I think a fog machine would work better. Maybe I'll try that for my next one.

October 2018

And just like that, October was over. We got our family pictures taken:

Had some fun sitting around the fire and singing loudly enough to annoy everyone in the neighborhood:

Trunk or Treat! It was a super windy day, so our scary trunk suffered a bit. Even though Rose defected and joined the youth group trunk, we still had fun. I guess. Emily was freezin':

TCS Bowling Night! We are awesome bowlers, especially with the bumpers up:

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice! Oh man, we spent so much time on those masks. They were made with a cardboard frame that we coated with a DIY plaster stuff that makes them look cool, but also super heavy. And they took forever to dry between coats. Worth the effort, though. As we were trick or treating with the Von Thuns several people asked to take our pictures, which was pretty cool. And then one weirdo who took an ambush selfie with me and ran off. Cynthia and I were Adam and Barbara Maitland, Rose was Lydia, and Emily was a skeleton:

Our pumpkins:

It was really hard to see out of those masks:

When we got back home after picking Rose up from youth group (she ditched trick or treating with us to hang out with the cool kids) we torched our pumpkins in the usual fashion (Emily didn't carve hers this year):

Good times! See you in November...