I really should upload more photos to facebook.  And everyone knows you don’t touch the Poppy.

My DITL creation phase is on a break, but I should mention that I captured a decent amount of video for a TITLE (Tequilacon In The Life, Excellent) and a RITL (Roadtrip In The Life), but I have not made the time to do those the justice they deserve.  I still plan on it, but for now you can have some of my photo collection. 

Perhaps these would be better in something like a flickr album, or maybe a facebook thingy, but for now, they are whall.organisms.

Which one is geeky? BOTH! HA!

SagittariusBoy and LibraGirl

Bellaventa, OhSarahJoy and Libragirl. and drinks.

Hey look! It's that guy. and that girl. I think.

Pink, the adobe.

Some sort of neat thing I took a picture of

This was neat. Neat neat neat

Interestingly, this interesting thing was next to that other one

You might think this is a shot of an silver ornate bench, but really it's just a zoomed out photo of Ren. I'm not that good at photography.

Also, since I’m not a cool kid with an iPhone or camera-enabled Blackberry, you might want to make sure you follow Ren on twitter.  He can live-twitpic on demand.

Pre-BeerHer was a blast as we met up with early arrivals Geeky Tai-Tai, Bellaventa, Karl and LibraGirl for a quick snack, some social lubrication and*ahem* colorful discourse.

As you can see, all the guyfolk were making fun of my arm-reaching avatar.  All the womenfolk were just sitting there being hot.

Ren and I left that group after a couple hours and I waited  in the hotel for what felt like hours while Ren did a bunch of stuff on the computer, making us potentially late for our meeting, and I got all anxious and stuff.

We finally were able to leave.  Ren navigated while I drove (a good combination).  The unofficial BeerHer Pre-TequilaCon meet-up officially started with the two of us being the first to arrive at the Santa Fe Brewing Company, all alone in our lonesome loneliness, smothered in a blanket of solitude.  We scoped the place out a little and waited for the rest to show up.  Yes, you may now laugh at my aforementioned anxiety about tardiness.

Here’s basically what happened:

I met Dawg and laughed at his shirt.

Isn’t that shirt hilarious?!?!?!?  It cracked me up something fierce.  And it’s so true.   I shook his hand (paw?), said hello and then soon thereafter Ren took over and talked cameras and photo shutter speeds and exposurifics and lens capitals and flashonomics or something I caught a few glimpses of Dawg throughout the evening before he left.

Then I met TEH POPPY and got a great hug.

All I got to say about that is… it’s about time we met.  I was so looking forward to her smile, and laugh and funness, not to mention she’s smart and geeky.  Meeting her is truly one of the highlights I was looking forward to this whole trip.  Then Ren monopolized teh Poppy the rest of the evening by talking, you guessed it, camera stuff and this and that and features and facial recognizance and aperture focal planetariums and spot meets and what his focal length was and then she said goodbye.

Serving as the late-yet-incredibly-heralded arrivals, Marty Mankins and his lovely wife Reba showed up.

Although Marty and I differ on a few political beliefs, we have an online kinship that has grown over the last year, with video tributes, a shared love for music, and a mutual respect for each others’ technical prowess.  I was looking forward to chatting it up with him until Ren devoured their attention and cornered the market on MY friends while they immersed themselves in the one person at the meet-up I DIDN’T need to talk to and learn about, forcing me to wallow in the corner curled up in a fetal ball while I talked to my camera and consoled it telling it everything will be better tomorrow.  But then they left.

I also met the youngun of the group, ohsarahjoy.

L-R: Bellaventa, OhSarahJoy, LibraGirl

If there’s any cause in the world colossal enough to be worthy of an event like “BeerHer”, this has to be it – a soon-to-be-22-year-old drinking her very first beer, surrounded by people she’s never met in a city far away from home.

All-in-all, it was a good start to the vacation and I can’t wait for Ren to overpower my inconsequential presence at tonight’s blogger meet-up!

Usually, it’s me saying it.  And I fully recognize how lucky I am. You know, in life.

Examples? I’m getting to use the last of my rapidly-expiring frequent flier miles for a nice little vacation to Tahoe/Reno.  I have a great job that I love.   I have all my taste buds, and I don’t even know what hemorrhoids are.  I see these commercials for them, and corns, constipation, asthma, indigestion, “mommy I don’t feel very fresh” and all sorts of bodily mishaps and thank my lucky stars I cannot even comprehend what they’re talking about.

Want more proof?  A friend of mine used some of her hotel rewards to get me two free nights at a nice place in Reno!  SEE??!?!?!?  I know!

And that’s not all.  I have a Zune.  I have a blackberry.  I have a decent laptop for work (this makes ALL the difference in my enjoyment of life).  I don’t mention the family much on ye old blog of whall, but everyone who knows me personally how fantastically great they are.  I don’t watch CSI:Miami.  I have both of my legs, arms, eyes and brains.  I don’t have bad hygiene.  I can read *and* write.  My parents gave me everything I needed but not everything I wanted and for that I am most thankful.

I could go on and on about lucky things about me and the great position I’ve been placed in life.  But I won’t.  And you know why?  Because I’ve contracted bribed begged convinced six (6) blog friends to do it for me!

That’s right!  I’m off on my little vacation and the next week or so will be in the capable hands of the following guest posters:

Karl Erikson from secondhandkarl.com on Sun 5th

Robin/Hismuse from roadlessunraveled.com on Mon 6th

Marty Mankins from banalleakage.com on Tue 7th

Cissa from cissafireheart.com on Wed 8th

SheilaCSR from charm-school-reject.com on Thu 9th

LeSombre from lesombre.ca on Fri 10th

???? Who knows? Well, maybe I do. <sneaky grin> on Sat 11th

If you need more evidence of the luck I possess, I don’t know what to tell you.  I guess I’d say; wait until I get back from Tahoe/Reno with all my winnings.

THEN you’ll see.

As you may have heard by now from my Twitter accounts, yesterday’s update, and some comments…. my all-time-favorite-band-of-all-time YES postponed their show in Dallas last night.  

The only good parts about it were A) I was told just before I got on the road yesterday afternoon.  It really would have sucked if I was already in the car driving up there, or had found out once I got to Dallas.  B) We had some severe weather in Austin, so I was able to be home with the family.  Nothing happened, but it was still a potential of tornados and high winds, and it’s just plain better that I was here.

Because of the postponement, if I had a working camera, I would’ve made a 3-minute DITL of me.  Just me.  Crying.  Crying over and over. WAHHHHH.

Good thing Jaden has my back.  He can do the crying for me.

You know what’s really weird?  I mean besides me using my son to gain electronic sympathy from the blogosphere.  I mean, Jaden was born in 2002.  However, the timestamp on this picture shows January 1st, 2001.  He looks to be about 3yrs old in this photo, and I’m wondering how the picture got the wrong time on it.  In fact, there’s a whole folder of photos from 2004 or 2005, and they all have the 2001 timestamp.  Weird.

To switch topics (slightly) I think I’m going to take a look at Chilly Willy‘s suggestion of a new camera (Olympus FE-20).  It looks like a great deal.  Thanks, Marty!  I’ll be back to making DITL’s in no time!

It seems this is the era of cancellations.  We’ve had our annual week-long coast trip to South Padre scheduled and rescheduled THREE TIMES since last summer, and we just got notification that it has to be canceled AGAIN.  Hurricane Dolly’s devastation on the island and some of the resorts is still to blame for some of the places not being ready to open.  Duran Duran’s appearances in San Antonio and Dallas were canceled in December last year (which my wife was looking forward to about as much as me seeing YES).  

Well, I guess the bright side is – whenever they decide to reschedule, I should have a working camera!

Like right there – inspiration.  ”go to the blog and write,” to me, is said Freddy Murcury-style from Fat-Bottomed Girls… “get to your blogs and WRITE!” and now I want to do a whole song about “whall-authored blogs, you make the rockin’ world go ’round”

Sigh.  I just don’t have time to make that kind of quality stuff.

Ooh, there was another idea I had, about petitioning Mike Myers to come back to SNL just so he could parody Rod Blagojevich.   Tell me he wouldn’t be perfect for that job…

And then there’s the MITL – Mac In The Life – that in my head would be so perfect but I just don’t take the time to make it happen.  I even have people pushing my buttons to do it!  So what do I do?  I just call in an utter or two – one impromptu song dedicated to Marty Mankins, Blogography and Poppycede and one soundless dancing video to test the recording and upload capabilities of the MacBook Pro.  Not quite what you’d call quality, right?

So maybe I’ll take the time sometime soon to actually make a blog post.  But for today, you just get these ramblings.  

Well, I’ll give you one piece of advice.  Make sure you back up your computer before the end of the week.  You’ll know why soon enough.  Just get a backup done, ok?