I've posted two photos so far, from the Dodgers Game today, though I have a few hundred more photos to post over the next few days. Posting them over on...

http://www.slate.com/id/2146218/?GT1=8483 I'll be damned if I'm throwing them out though. Someday they'll be worth something again! I...

Opening Day At Fenway! That's where I'm headed in a few minutes! Lots of pictures to...

So now that most folks know Natalie and I got engaged last weekend, it's time to tell the story of how it happened. A little bit of info on this past weekend, Natalie's mother's birthday was on the 7th of October, so we were all headed out to So Cal for the occasion. Her parents live about 17 miles from mine, but by California's roads that's about a 45 minute drive. We, Me, Natalie, her sister, brother-in-law and neice all went out to California for the weekend, to visit with her family and mine. We planned on everyone going to my parent's house on Saturday at 6:30pm, kind of a family gathering, have both sets of parents meet, and just have dinner and hang out all evening. I however had other plans and had Mom scope out locations on the beach for me a few weeks back. The requirements were a good view of the Ocean at Sunset, easy accessibility, and somewhere that 18 people could watch, without Natalie seeing those 18 people until after I asked her to marry me. Dog Beach down in Huntington beach was the perfect location, with two seperate parking areas so that Natalie and I could park, and walk ~1/4 mile to the sand below the cliffs at the second parking area. So the plan actually was for everyone to show up at my parents house at 5pm, and head down to the beach. Natalie and I got to the house around 4:30 and picked up the Triumph so we could drive down PCH with top down, sight seeing a little was the cover I used with Natalie. I had to double check on the location mom picked out, as dad early Saturday morning said the two parking locations where too far apart, after seeing they were nice and close to each other I let mom know via a cryptic phonecall we would be in the same location as planned. Natalie and I drove around Huntington Beach a bit, stopping to watchi a few kite surfers (probably the wrong term) and then headed back up to the first Dog beach parking lot. I took her down for a stroll along the beach, all along looking ahead to see if I could see anyone at the rendevous point yet. We ended up at the point I had planned probably 5-10 minutes before everyone else showed up. Not exactly on time as I had planned, but I think that worked out best as no one was around when we were walking towards where they would all be standing, I was hoping she wouldn't see anyone before I asked her. This whole time Natalie was freezing, the weather the day before had been 83 and sunny, but the weather saturday was getting overcast and windy, probably somewhere near 55-60 with a 15-20mph wind from the ocean. Though, even with the clouds and wind, we had a pretty good view of the sunset, which I had planned everything around, a 6:19pm sunset. We stood there for what seemed like an eternity, finally the family showed up, I had to wave at them behind my back to get them down to the area near the life guard stand (stand 22) that would give them the best view. Natalie actually asked me if I was waving at someone, I said no, I was just cold and shaking out my hands. :) Once everyone was in position I suggested she put her shoes down, she'd been carrying them since we got to the sand. After a few moments, and her wiping her runny nose from the cold wind on my shirt, I got down on one knee and asked her to marry me. She teared up, not saying a word, in shock. I had to ask her, "well, will you?" to get her to knod yes! I rose and gave her a hug and a kiss and then the crowd cheered, she turned and saw 18 people standing up on the bluff cheering for us. It took her a bit to realize it was all of our families up there watching :). Everything turned out great, Greg (my brother) and Dad had my still camera and video camera snapping and shooting away the whole time. We walked up to the bluff and took lots of photos together, with all the family in various arrangements. Afterwards we all headed to Mom and Dad's house in Long Beach for a few hours of socializing. It was a great evening, and special thanks to Mom for getting everything together...

So I've know I needed to replace the rear tires on the Z for a while now, they wore too darn fast, but I'm honestly not sure why. So Thursday I ordered some tires from the Tire Rack, the were supposed to arrive Friday or Monday. Thursday afternoon we head to Kansas City to see the Red Sox play. Well, long story short, the game sucked, the Sox lost. Right after the game it started pouring rain. I thought, great, this will be fun to drive home in. So we leave the stadium, go the long way out, but avoid pretty much all the traffic in doing so. On 70 and headed for St. Louis. So it's not the funnest of rides, actually pretty scary, holding on the wheel just hoping the backend doesn't stap around on me. I'm honestly thinking we'll be alright if I can just make it past the storm, knowing it's only been raining for 15 minutes. We end up stopping at exit 28 and crashing in a hotel for the evening, not worth the risk of driving on those tires to try to make it home. So Friday morning we wake up, to more rain. We trek on to Odessa Missouri hoping to find some breakfast, a break in the weather, or some new tires. Odessa is a pretty small down, and none of the tire dealers had anything that would work. So we ate breakfast, and I dropped the tire pressure in the rear tires hoping to gain some traction and make the trip safe. We hit the highway again, less rain now, but the further we go, the more rain we hit. About 40 miles from Columbia the car gets stupid again, not wanting to stay on the road, so I slow it down to ~40 miles per hour, on the highway, flashers on. We stop in Columbia, and $350 and one hour later I have two new Falken Ziex ze512s from the Sears autocenter, not to mention the money spent shopping in the mall while we waited! So we leave Columbia, and guess what we found the whole final half of the trip. Sunshine, and not a single drop of rain.... Lesson learned, replace your tires earlier! Photos of the game up later...

So, ever since google earth came out I've been trying to find a satellite photo of one of my cars. Well, I found MSN's Virtual Earth this evening and I think I've found one! Here's a link to Swank, follow Walnut Place west of Jefferson, out in front of the second building (swank being on jefferson as building number 1) just out of the shadows there's a white car, with a black top. I believe that's my old Camaro Z-28.  I could be wrong, and this could be a really old picture, but looking on the eastern wall of that second building is a black area between the building and the parking lot, I believe that's the left over asphalt from the Swank wiring...

Here's Pylon's new playpal,...

Andy and I made it to Denver and back. I went 1800.8 miles since I filled up with gas on Thursday night, we left Friday at 4am. The car did well, Andy was in the lead after the first day, but slipped to 2nd on the second day. I finished in 7th both days. Not a great showing for myself, though Andy picked up $200 from Kumho's contingency $$. I took ~800 photos, I'll link those later as there are some server problems right now. I also broke the Digital Rebel, so I'm headed to Best Buy this evening to see how they are going to handle the warranty on that...

Well, I made the trip back from Salina Kansas yesterday afternoon. 410 Miles in 5 hours and 10 minutes. You do the math. Stopped at the toll booth to get my ticket, then at the next booth to pay my toll, didn't have to stop for gas or any other breaks to the whole trip home. The weekend was good, hot 95-100 all 3 days, but at least Salina gets that good Kansas wind, it kept the heat bearable. I ended up winning my first Divisional of the year, and only the second win I've had over Andy this year, the first being the Walnut Ridge National Tour. We do it again this coming weekend. We'll be headed to Peru Indiana for the National Tour out at Grissom. Looking forward to making that trip again, it's quite a bit shorter than...

I've posted some of the photos I took from the reunion. You can see them here at the Vanden High School web site I setup a while back. I'm hoping to get copies of photos other folks took at the reunion as well, and post them on the...

Microsoft has just released a beta for their pixel/vector based graphics software package called Acrylic. I'll have to download it and try it out this...

Natalie is competing at the SLADS (St. Louis Area Dressage Society) show this weekend. I'm going to go out there and take some video and photos of the competitors, see what all I can turn...

If you're looking for a dressage trainer, clinics or private lessons in St. Louis Missouri and the Midwest check out Natalie Hammond (Ottiger) Dressage at NatalieHammond.com. Natalie is the premier professional dressage rider in the St. Louis area and is available for clinics and private lessons. Use the contact form on her web site for more...