I was awakened from a dream to a thunderstorm occurring outside my window here in Waco. And after watching a mini-marathon of Storm Chasers shows this past weekend, I want to grab my imaginary photo gear and start making pictures as the rain hurtles to the ground and as lighting brightens the night time sky. I also want to go downstairs and move my car outside to have all the dust washed off it. But I don’t think that’s going to happen.

The end of the year is close and I am counting the days until I am reunited with my dog, parents and the rest of the family members. Spoke with my Mom the other night and it turns out she is just as anxious as I am to see the reaction of my blue heeler Annie of when I walk through their door. This time last year Annie, my dog, was very joyous to see me and I hope to see same reaction from her. It’s hard to believe that I’ve gone a year without seeing my dog. Six more months or so and I should have her back living with me. But I am also very thankful for my parents taking care of her this past year as I’ve moved around the country during graduate school.

Well time to shut down the computer and enjoy natures show.

Besides human babies, puppies are something that everyone seems to be drawn to.

So for those of you who are like me and currently seperated from your pet {for whatever reason} this webcam is for you.

If you are a Scrubs fan, then this is for you.

So I walked over to the student union building on campus yesterday to help a student set up for a video interview. And I was completely surprised by something.

On the second floor of the SUB there is a huge open room where they hold events and such. In the corner where the room they were going to use was reserved was a grand piano. And no, this wasn’t the surprise.

Students can just walk up and start tickling the ivories anytime they want to. I think that its pretty cool. Nope, not the surprise either.

Anyway, as I was walking away from the reserved room to go downstairs for a snack a student was playing the piano, quiet beautifully actually.

What stopped me in my tracks is that instead of using a play book or sheet music to learn the song, he had a laptop where the sheet music would have gone and was learning from a YouTube video.

I talked with him briefly and he said that when he was in high school he played the tenor saxophone. But he really wanted to continue being musically active (well thats a summation there) and that reading the bass notes of piano music just didn’t work with his brain.

I can totally relate. Growing up my parents had both my brother and I take piano lessons. It’s one of the childhood rites of passage. Anyway I remember her saying “if I could get your brother to play the bass notes and you to play the treble, then you guys could play the piano with both hands.”

For the record, he went on to play the trombone and I the alto, bass and soprano saxophones. Too funny.

Back to the story: So anyway since reading and feeling comfortable about reading sheet music was an obstacle, a friend recommended to this student to go to YouTube and visually learn how to play the piano.

I don’t want to get into a discussion about the pro’s and con’s about how rich of an education he is giving himself, but it was a joy to listen to him play.

Timmy, center, celebrated his third birthday with his friends. They all wore hand made capes as they rushed from one air filled toy area to another.

I had a great time at my niece and nephew’s big Super Hero birthday party blowout in Hutto Saturday. [update: click here to view a slide show of a select, raw images from the party.]

Children and adults alike donned capes and spun super memories of chasing each other around. It was a fun filled two hours. And while I attempted to make pictures of everyone having a great time it was crazy trying to take pictures with all the other proud, excited parents. There were times were it kind of felt like (but not quite) a photoj scrum when the two coaches shake hands at the end of the game. Especially when my niece was all smiles sitting among all the plastic balls. I also realized that I will not retire to be a children’s photographer. It was still a ball of fun and then some to photograph everyone doing their thing. I do wish that I had had more time to become familiar with the camera I was using just so I could take the pictures better, ya know? Some day I will have my own gear again to tote around and act like I know what I am doing.

Sunday we had fun playing with all the new toys. Timmy had a friend come over so we went to the park and played there. Erik and his son Timmy even had a light sabre fight. It was hilarious. They vanquished all the “evil” batman balloons and made their home safe from Republic fighters. I was able to hastily do an audio recording of them sort of beginning the fight after Erik took Timmy’s picture  as Timmy held  his fancy new light sabre. The light sabre is way cool. It lights up and if you listen to the audio piece you can hear the noise it makes.

On the way back to Waco, I stopped at the Center for American History at UT since I wanted to check out some materials to do some research on my masters project. It was closed. Instead I went into the LBJ library and was pleasantly surprised by some new installations in the museum. I’ve been stopping into the museum ever since the late 90’s when I was on my “let’s be a politician” career kick. Plus, LBJ was such a fascinating person. Some of his generation would even go so far to say he was a crude individual.

I also splurged time on visiting the outlet mall that is located north of Austin. I’ll be stopping back after Thanksgiving (suicidal I know) but they had some kids birthday gift ideas that I want to try and get.

It was a good weekend. Heck, I even was able to do some homework despite the CAH being closed.

Time for me to go rinse out my super powers. After all, Aunt Robin will be back in action soon.

LIfehouse’s performance on April 1 of this year on Live with Regis and Kelly

LOL. I wonder sometimes why I even flip the switch on the stove or oven for that matter.

This morning as I was rustling up some chow (well, I am back in Texas after all) I was trying to fry up the eggs for a quick bite to eat and, well, I lost an egg.

As usual I am not sure how it happened but one minute I had the egg on the griddle, I looked away and then when I looked back it was sort of on the griddle, a lot on the burner and some egg goo going further somewhere I’m not sure.

Really? What I want to know is why did everyone else in my family get the cooking “gene” and myself the pre-made don’t-burn-it-in-the-microwave-or-just-go-out-and-get-a-bite-to-eat-gene.

Oh yeah I’ve been banned from two newsrooms from popping popcorn.

Back to not cooking my meals.

I had logged onto the Sportsshooter’s message board to pass along a link to others about an iPhone update and, still stunned to be honest, found out that a friend had died. I knew through his last twitter that he was going in for some surgery but didn’t expect to find out that he hadn’t made it.

His obit: http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=222400

My posting on the members message board: http://www.sportsshooter.com/message_display.html?tid=31336

The images I had been promising Ed to post but never had the time nor made the time until now: http://www.sportsshooter.com/members.html?id=2863

http://goincase.com/products/detail/EC20003/4

and then there is also

http://www.iphonebuzz.com/iphone-dev-team-says-dont-upgrade-to-22-yet-175193.php

It’s good to finally see a combination charger, battery power help and protection in one unit. I think I might be gifting this to myself.

And come on Apple. Help content spread with the ability to view Flash materials. After all, it would only help users want to use your product even more often.