Project 365 - Week 34

Week 34. Thanksgiving break.


Monday. Last Friday, after I found out that I couldn't return my lemon, I called Dell and finally got somewhere. They were sending parts to fix it! The guy came by my work on Monday and worked his magic. Read the blog post here.


Tuesday. Spent most of the day at the Missourian busy, and stayed longer than I expected to make sure that everything was ready to hand the reins over to Meg. Originally, I had planned to leave early to drive up to KC, but in the end, I chose to drive up on Wednesday. This is what the Missourian looks like during Thanksgiving break. There's a few people there, mostly over at the print desk, but hardly any people.

Love This Picture

Just wanted to include this picture on my blog, because I absolutely love it. It's by my friend, Mike, featuring his dog, Indy. I met them via Flickr and he has always been really great about giving me feedback on my images. This image makes we want to take my boys for a romp "among the fens and spinneys, when the twilight bathed the hedgerows like a lambent flame..." (that's a throwback to this awesome Frasier episode. If you'd like to see the script, click here.)

A Family Group Thanksgiving

Here's some selects from our family group Thanksgiving celebration. (Doesn't plate look good? Yes, yes it was.) We held it the week before Thanksgiving at the Herbolds' house, so that everyone would be there and this year, we actually *had* Thanksgiving fixin's. Last year made me a little sad because we had something like soup and chili. It really didn't feel like a Thanksgiving celebration. It more felt like just another family group gathering where we ate something (just like always).


I really liked this picture of Darce because I like how satisfied she is with the display of the table.

It's a Beautiful Day...

It is a very beautiful day. While it's a slow day at the Missourian, it's a wonderful day in laptop land. Last Friday, I contacted Dell because the laptop I purchased at Tiger Tech would do all kinds of funky things that were really frustrating - like a magically jumping cursor for no apparent reason; a finicky touchpad which, according to its mood, may or may not recognize my finger; a USB 1394 port which refuses to recognize my external hard drive, and an eSATA port which sometimes recognizes my external hard drive if the mood strikes it right and I don't move the entire time I'm interacting with the drive...


Wonderful Dell client infrastructure representative David Merrifield came to The Missourian and disassembled my laptop, replaced the mother board, key board, and something else that I forgot the name of. He was kind enough to let me photograph him at work so I got some cool innards of my computer pictures.

Project 365 - Week 33

Week 33. Celebrate Good Times.


Monday. It's actually a picture from Sunday, but I got one of my migraines and didn't think about taking a picture. And I loved this picture of Daniel being goofy watching people play the Kinnect.


Tuesday. Shawn came over and hung out with me and the boys. I've had a special place in my heart for him ever since I taught him in kids class. He can be so hard on himself and I wanted to do something to help him feel special. He really liked playing with and brushing the boys. And we ate mostaccolli. Monique brought him a sandwich and salad, and I did make him eat it, but we ate the pasta first.

Grammer Luvers of the World Untie

So eye was trying to fined out weather a reeder's correction:

"a mostly sycophantic media..." As a plural, the noun "media" cannot take a singular article.

was correct. It wus extremely dificult to fined my answer.

Serching four 'adjective agreement with media' I found lots of foreign language sights, their two teach me about grammer.

I tryed 'modifying collective nouns' and found things like The GrammarBook.com's discussion of homonyms, CliffsNotes.com's discussion of plural adjectives, Fun with Words: Collective Nouns, and Collective Nouns courtesy of a sight in Grate Britain.
Eye also came across this won:

Somehow, Eye also found: Russian lesson modules MasterRussian.com. While I dew love my Russian, that has nothing two dew with what I'm searching four...

I came across this list of -isms and -eses from YourDictionary.com. Did ewe no that laconism is the tendency two ewes few words two express a grate deal rather than beeing inflicted with the curse that turns ewe into a werewolf?

The University of Wisconsin-Madison provided a rousing detail of subject-verb agreement.

During my search, I came across a lesson four building a better vocabulary. I also discovered that their is a 'Royal Order of Adjectives' which delineates what order ewe list different kinds of adjectives. I'd never heard of such a thing.

The order of the adjectives is as followed:

1.Determiner- a, an, her, five, many, much several etc.
2.Opinion - pretty, ugly, smart, cheap, etc.
3.Size - big, fat, thin, tall, large, small etc.
4.Shape - circle, square, tall, short etc.
5.Age - old, young 10 years, a year, a week, new etc.
6.Color - yellow, green, pink etc.
7.Origin - American, English, Asian,Middle Eastern, African, European, Chinese etc.
8.Material - cotton, wood, plastic, cloth, glass, gold etc.
9.Purpose/Qualifier - hat box, sleeping bag, computer table, safe island, football field

And something I've never really encountered: English irregular adjectives.

Eye eventually got closer to an answer with:

English Mistakes Are Welcome
The Grammar Slammer!
Hyper Grammar

And I think eye came to this conclusion (after looking at a couple of dictionary definitions). Because the media was used a collective singular noun, the correction maid bye the reader was incorrect.

Project 365 - W32

Week 32.


Another day where I worked a lot at the Missourian, so I decided to take a picture of the light switch in my room. It's really meant for the bathroom (where it matches a cup, soap pump, towels, and shower curtain), but I was missing a cover, so I put it in my bedroom, instead.


Tuesday. One of those odd things you find campus. I never thought I would see a club devoted to hula hooping, especially with a boy involved. He was seriously good, too. I was walking by to go to a CPOY judging and saw them and thought, "How odd." I also thought, "well, I guess my assumption that hula hooping is good exercise is wrong" because more than one of them did not have muscle tone and were just a little bit overweight.

Project 365 - W31

Week 31. Republicans everywhere!


Had my first orientation meeting for traveling abroad in Brussels, Belgium. Now I'm stressing about my finances, because the scholarship I hope to be getting will (max.) only cover about 1/4th of the cost. I'm kinda stressing about this semester, too - some of the expenses related to this program have put a drain on what I've budgeted for the semester and I'm trying to not worry that my bank account will last. I really hope the financial stuff I've tried to arrange will work out. I really want to leave for Brussels not having to worry about how I'm going to support myself.


Tuesday. Midterm Elections. I spent the evening covering 2 watch parties. Brian asked for volunteers to help with the coverage and led to me first attending Laura Nauser's (pictured) watch party. The Republicans, unfortunately, ended up winning alot of the seats that they were running for (Nauser was one of the exceptions to this, though). It was really interesting overhearing the conversations, since I am not a Republican and pretty much disagree with most of what Republicans stand for. But the watch party was interesting to be there for. We (me and other photographers) transmitted pictures from the field back to the newsroom. Many of my pictures made it into the slideshow for the Missourian. I almost made the front page pic with this picture, but Sarah got a better one.

Jump! Jump!

So at church today, after a morning of teaching kids' class (1 & 2 grade), I was standing around the fellowship hall and was struck with an idea: some of the kids were jumping off this carpeted platform and I thought it would be fun to catch them in air. These are the pictures.

Participants: Reece & Jace, Corey & Kaylie, Shawn & Vannie, and Garrett.


It looks like he's taking a dive off the platform...


Falling through the air...

Project 365 - W30

Week 30. "Wonder twin powers, activate!"


Acting goofy at Bible Talk. I almost used the picture of Monique dressed like she's from 19th century Scotland Yard, or channeling Jessica Fletcher, but I liked this picture of Corey better.


To save on money, my roommate, Tracy, moved in with some other friends of ours (a married couple with a big house/furnished basement). So, it's just me and the boys in the house again. This is the orts she left behind (with part of Cullen in the picture, too).

Picture Story: Kasey Ryan

One of the other stories that I thought about submitting, but ran out of time to do so, was on Kasey Ryan, a recently-divorced woman who was embarking on several new beginnings in her life: beyond being newly single, she was opening a new restaurant and had recently gotten baptized into a new faith. This picture story highlights her journey:


Kasey Ryan unpacks some of her glassware as she works to ready her new business on Sept. 24, 2009. Recently divorced, Ryan recently decided to open a restaurant as an extension of her catering business as a means of supporting her family of 4 children.


Ryan (right) scrubs a window clean as her friends from her church group help clean and organize in preparation for her restaurant's opening in 2 weeks. The restaurant will be an expansion of Ryan's catering business.