Happy Holidays!!

This is our Xmas card this year, but we’re so far behind I thought I’d put it up here. You will get the photo eventually, so don’t bother trying to print this one.

Hope everyone had a great holiday, and if you’re not back to work yet, hope it stays great.

I-Xmas!!

I-Xmas comes to The Legends of the Falls!!

Beginning Christmas Eve, after the kids go to bed (maybe late) link from the image below to spend some time with your NJ I-kin. Who knows, you might see Santa Claus!

Cartooning

While watching an old Christmas movie with Charlotte this weekend (an animated film, done in Claymation style, but with puppets) I started describing to her how animation is done. I explained the idea of lots of slightly different pictures using puppets, or clay, or hand-drawn, or computer-drawn. She totally understood, so i took it a step further and showed her how she could make her own on the computer. So she did a test (and I emphasize a test cuz she did, she wanted to test the idea, but not put a lot of effort into the drawings as it was getting to be bedtime).

Here’s her cartoon (click to link).

And Lex did one too:

Santa Crawl 2006

We had our third annual State College Santa Crawl last Friday. I was so busy trying to keep the group organized that I didn’t get my normal quantity of photos so I had to wait a few days to collect photos from others on the tour before making this post.

We started at out normal spot – Hooters. Hooters is located on the east end of the College Avenue, the main drag in State College. For those who haven’t been to town College Ave is actually the divider between the town on the south side of the street and the University which is on the north side of the street. Most of the downtown bars are located on or between College Ave and Beaver Ave which runs parallel to College. We traditionally start at Hooters and “crawl” our way westward ending the evening at Cafe 210.

This map should give you an idea.

The bars that we hit on our route and their block number on the map are as follows:

Hooters – block #12
The Lions Den – block #9
Gingerbread Man aka G-Man – block #24
Adam’s Apple at the Tavern – block #5
Shandygaff – block #5
Bill Pickle’s – block #3
Allen Street Grill – block #3
Cafe 210 – block #2

Here’s a photo taken at Hooters as we started

and here’s one of the group onstage at the Cafe at 2:00 am.

I was particularly proud of how many managed to make it to the end. I usually lose control of the group as we cross Pugh Street (that would be between the Shandygaff and Bill Pickle’s) as people decide to branch off to other bars not on the planned itinerary.

We probably had upwards of 35 people participate at one time or another and seven people actually made it all the way through.

To see more photos of our crawl, try this link.

To see photos from past crawls, try the links at this page.

To see photos from SantaCon events worldwide, try this link or this link.

Wonderful World of Winter


A beautiful day at Steve and Mary Fall’s on Friday the first. We had 12″ of snow which started last night and as of about 10:00 am the first day of Dec it is still snowing. I don’t have a name for my snowblower (as Gary has), but it still does the trick. Seems the last two times I have gone to a concert we have been hit by a snowfall. Last year was on the way to a Hot Tuna show. This year we were coming home from Bob Seger. Not really a fan of his, but had some friends who wanted to go and we tagged along. I will say though I was quite impressed. If you like him I suggest going to his show. It was good.

Anyway, here is my first attempt at attaching a picture. Actually, I guess if you wanted to get picky you could say my second as I tried earlier this year to attach a picture of my trip to Mesquite, but since the picture was deleted from the computer I couldn’t do it. At least this time I know the picture is here as I just downloaded it from the camera.

More Thanksgiving




Not much more, really. Basically just some photos. Not enough time to compose an eloquent essay of our trip. We had a really great time. The kids did too. They seem to appreciate seeing family. (Maybe Shannon or Marilyn will tell about Lex’s spontaneous hug of Shannon.)

And we loved checking out Shan’s piece of America. Nice choice, Shan.

BTW, Sorry for the long loadtime on this post. The blog isn’t working correctly (making corrupt resized images) and I had to tweak the html manually to get these posted. If I have time I’ll fix it.

Fall Family Champion

There is a new champion. Ron, Steve B, Nick (Ex champion), and I played Tuesday. We had three pretty nice days of weather here. Anyway, we played a points game. Six points for low man, 4 for 2nd, 2 for 3rd and zero for 4th per hole net.

Nick started slowly taking only 2 points in the first 4 holes, but made a charge on the last 4 holes of the front nine. I believe he picked up around 17 point for those holes. He was still trailing Ron and I, but was defending valiantly. Unfortunatly, he started the back nine about the same way. With five holes to play Steve B. and Nick were pretty much out of it. I was trailing by about 5 points and could have jumped to the top of the leaderboard if I was just able to knock down a couple of putts on the next 2 holes. Too bad for me, I wasn’t up to the task. On 16 I pretty much handed the championship to Ron by knocking 2 tee shots OB, but Ron let me back in the game by moving a 20 ft chip about 1 foot. He took 3rd on the hole for 2 points. I got zero.

Two holes to play and I was down 5 points. (By the way this is all by memeory so I may be a little off.) Ron bogeys the hole to lock up 2 points. I have a 6 foot parr putt to tie Nick to give me a much needed 5 points. MISS AGAIN, DAMN. I tie Ron and we both get 3 points. I need a miracle on 18. It doesn’t happen. Ron wins and is now the proud owner of 2 shirts and a hat. We still need the 2nd shirt embroidered Ron. Congratulations to Ron.

Get ready for your chance next year boys and girls. You know you can pretty much depend on an opportunity to win this coveted title at The Battle of Battle Creek. For those not aware I beleive The Battle will become a mandatory 4 day event next year.

I figured out photos!


Now that I’ve figured out that the photo feature doesn’t like when there is punctuation in the name of the file, I can upload pictures of the house. Unfortuately, a lot were lost when my camera phone bought the farm. Here’s one of me ripping down wallpaper and plastering in one of the rooms in the house (I torn down wallpaper in 6 rooms). I think it’s my bedroom.