Our web diary

Marlene and Kitty

Marlene and the kitty on the couch. No, we have not decided on a name yet. I have always called cats "Kitty"or named them for their personality. His personality seems to change everyday as he becomes more comfortable with his environment. So hopefully we will decide on a formal name soon.

Investing Kitty

Cats are so funny to watch. I turned on the TV set in my office and kitty was absorbed with CNBC.

Mitzi

Well with the new house comes another new addition. We picked up this little guy, a 2-3 year old domestic short hair, from animal control today. His is currently scoping out the house and hopefully will settle in nicely. He is a very affectionate kitty, but needs to aclimatize to his new home.

I am sure we will have dozens of pictures for you once he settles down.

Addition to the fleet

Our Honda Accord was stolen the third time from the parking lot at Providence Square Apartments. This happened the day before we were moving to the new house. Just another added stress to go with everything else that had been going.

They found the car about a week after Easter. Our insurance company dedcide to total it, so we had to find something else. Marlene was in various rentals cars for almost four weeks. BTW, I cannot saw enough about Priceline for car rentals. It is a great way to get cheap weekly rentals.

Anyway, so we had to wait to really start shopping until Sean came back from Elizabeth City. We were basically looking for something that Marlene liked and could l drive daily to and from work. She really enjoyed the two Hyundai Elantra's she had used as rentals. The 2007/8 models Elantra is a very nice car. Very much like a new Honda Accord in styling and handling. It also comes with more standard features. We also liked the value that the Kia Optima represented. Kia has come a LONG way from their econbox days. The Optima has some very very nice standard features.

We ended up with this Corolla. It did not have half the features of the Kia or Hyundai, but it is a car that we can feel comfortable owning for 10+ years.

95 Years

Finally have the pictures up from Grandmother's 95th birthday.

Before and After Living Room

A before and after picture of the living room/great room/kitchen in our new house.

New Tractor

Sean on our new lawn toy..

New House

We closed on our first house on Wednesday. We are now in the process of doing renovations to our 1970's Ranch. You can follow the renovations by visiting the gallery section of our website.

2008 - Happy New Year

So far the new year is following the same course as its predecessor -- each week speeding past into a far too short weekend.

We're experiencing some very cold days in Charlotte -- I know I know its not nearly as cold as January in Toronto -- I do not miss those days even when I miss the city itself. At any rate we've had a snow flurry or two and it's below freezing out there, and we actually have had to put on jackets in the afternoon.

This year brings a new frontier for us, looks like we will be in a house in March.
Once the deal has been inked and is for real we'll be sure to post about it in detail. We may need to start a new category or two "Before & After" and umm "Not even close to After yet".

We've already started running conversations about kitchen cabinets, flooring options, kitchen appliances etc etc

I finally started to pack up my Christmas stuff today and am already feeling overwhelmed by the idea of packing everything else....

Boca Java II

We have created a gallery That contains some pictures of our 3pm Coffee Break from Boca Java. The main reason for this is to allow people to comment on the reviews. While comments are disabled on our main site, they are allowed to registered users in the gallery area.

We have had four of the coffee packages so far. We were surprisingly disappointed with the first two coffees we tasted. There coffees were Boca Mocha Java and Boca Sunrise. Marlene and I drink a pound or more of coffee per week. We grind them that day for brewing and prefer fairly strong coffee. We thought our bad experience with the first two Boca brands might be either stale production or maybe we needed to use less water.

To the test the comparable water we used the coffee measure that came with our KitchenAid burr grinders. This measure has a cup guide from 2-12 cups. We normally use the 8 cup level for our coffee maker. The Boca minis come up the 9 cup line. So, in theory, they should be slightly stronger. Well not for the first two. Maybe it's a productions problem.

Boca sells itself as custom roasted coffee. They say that your order is roasted and package within 2 days of your order. I thought the Boca-minis might have been roasted in batches and then filled earlier in the year. We called the company and Boca says that they are custom roasted and that any leftover minis at the end of the week are taken home by employees or donated to charity.

Maybe we just are not used to the weak coffee. We have also had the Expresso and the Ocean Drive. The Expresso was brewed with two fewer cups of water in an attempt to make it strong. That had the effect of making it better, but I would not say it was as good as what we use daily.

The Ocean Drive was a light roast coffee. It was weaker than we would have liked, but it was tasty. We also made this with less water than we normally use.

More coffees later.

Boca Java 3pm Coffee Break

I had been hearing Rush talk about Boca Java coffee on his afternoon radio show. We are always up for coffee so I checked their website out and decided to order their 3pm Coffee Break

From Boca Java
"'Who needs a coffee break?'' A common phrase heard in offices across the world. The 3 p.m. coffee break has become commonplace and we're here to make it more exciting for you! Enjoy a selection of 20 Sample packs, each of which make 8 steamy cups of coffee. There will be a new blend of delcious gourmet coffee to try every day. It will also give you a chance to find your new favorite blend! As an added bonus we're including a free snack to share with the office (and you'll be everyone's new best friend).
We've preselected 20 different coffee blends for you, but you may make changes, as well as choose a different snack, by clicking the ''customize'' button below.
"

You cannot order all of their estate coffee's and blends in this sample pack so we ended up doubling up on some items to avoid having to get flavored coffee(YUCK).

So now we are on an 20 odd day coffee adventure. Marlene and I drink about a pound of coffee a week. I am hoping that we might something we like enough to be an occasional coffee.

The Chickens are Coming....

The chickens are coming!! The chickens are coming!!

No. We did not lose our minds. This is a picture of a chicken that has decided to live next to our house. She appears to be hanging out between the exterior of our place and the shrubs. One of our neighbors stopped Marlene a few evenings ago to tell her that there is a hen roosting out front. We finally took a look today. Sure enough, we have a chicken out front.

We are not sure what to do about it. I am more of a live-and-let-live kind of person. We only use the front door to check the mail. I figure the chicken will move on at some point. Marlene does not care for birds to begin with, so she would prefer the chicken to be removed.

I was thinking about putting it craigslist under the free category..:)

SC State Fair

In the mood for a little Americana, we went to the SC Upper State Fair, and stopped in Gaffney on the way for some lunch and shopping at the outlet mall.
We stopped at Harold's, a small establishment in Gaffney, recently on the Food Network's Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, for chili sandwhiches.

On the way home we decided to go to the Beacon in Spartanburg, also seen on TV. Even though we were hungry, we could not have finished our "a-plenty" plates even if it was our only meal for the day. It was fun. It's easy to forget that there are still unique places out there, amidst all the fast-food chains.
Highly recommended -- not just for the novelty but the onion rings as well.
See pictures in the gallery.

Vacation Part II

Our second day in Staunton, we wandered through some of the smaller shops. Sean had to be dragged out of the hobby shop with the helicopter flight-simulator. It's one of those old towns that is steeped in history -- we wandered around instead of following the walking tour -- and there are some beautiful old buildings there.
There's a beautiful old bank -- still open today -- with a small museum area, an old grocery store and many striking brick and stone facades.
Before lunch we went to the Woodrow Wilson museum, but opted not to go through the house or library. The president's car, a Pierce-Arrow, has been restored. It would have been fun to get in, but alas, not allowed of course.

After lunch we decided to go for a drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway and ran into some fog -- very strange somehow on a hot sunny day. The view was obscured but it's beautiful up there.

Later we checked into the Stonewall Jackson Hotel. This historical hotel is one of the Historical Hotels of America on the National Historical Trust for preservation. It's been wonderfully restored, the lobby is gorgeous. All they need is for someone to restore the breakfast buffet, which was uninspired.

Pictures from our trip are in the photo gallery.

Summer Vacation Part 1

We hardly ever just get away just to get away. So we were planning on visiting Sean's father who has recently moved to Palmyra, and decided to spend a couple of days on our own first.

We were looking for something we could do for a few days before the weekend and decided on Staunton, VA.(Pronounced STAN-TON) We had never been there and the website looked cute.

Our first night in Staunton, we ate at Wright's Dairy-rite . This is a drive-in that has been family-owned since 1952. We are always up for something other than the chains, so we gave it a whirl. Sean ordered the dogzilla. The biggest hot dog we have ever seen. Pretty good stuff here.

After dinner we had malted shakes at Kline's Dairy Bar.

Happy St Patricks Day

A Sugar sculpture created by Chef Paul from the Club at Longview

PPNC Tradeshow

PPNC (Professional Photographers of North Carolina) started their annual convention and tradeshow in Raleigh this weekend. I am a PPA (Professional Photographers of America) member, but have not joined the state chapter yet. I was interested in seeing the vendors at the tradeshow. So Marlene and I headed up to Raleigh to make a day of it.

There were about 75 vendors at the tradeshow. I was pleased to see representation from pretty much every large vendor I have made purchases with; B&H, WHCC, H&H Color Lab, and Canon.

Nothing really new from the vendors. I got to bolt a few Canon lenses onto my camera that I had not tried before. I have thought about 100-400 F4L zoom. I own the 70-200 2.8L IS and would not mind more natural reach on a lens. I am glad I put it on the camera. I do not like the push pull zooming of the 100-400. So I think might wait on the 300 F4L when I can justify the costs.

The tradeshow had quite a good dispersal of vendor types. I saw plenty of labs, framing shops, retail stores, prop companies, and album stores. It was fun. I ended up getting 580ex flash to replace my Sigma DG-500 Super and a few other gadgets. Nice thing about tradeshows are the specials..:)

We spent about 2 hours at the show and then headed to the NC Museum of Art. Marlene and I had fun playing with the statues. We also stopped by the BMOC (Burlington Manufacturers Outlet Center). This was one of the original outlet malls and you could certainly tell it from the layout. Prime Outlets does a much better job at presentation.

I took some snaps that are now in gallery section.

Vancouver/Seattle Pics

Sean and I stopped in Seattle for a day -- yes a day in the rain -- before heading up to Vancouver for Christmas. We just managed to post them this week.

Christmas at the Sperlings' was as bustling and loud as ever -- always new people at the Christmas table.
This year was our first Christmas with little Dexter, the son of Theo and Tara, born last August.

As you can see from the pictures in our gallery, he tends to be the center of attention.

New Year's resolutions include posting on the website more often. Maybe we'll get around to changing it up a bit too ... maybe even before 2008 rolls around.

Christmas Pictures are posted in the "New Gallery", link here. This is one of my favourite pics of me and mom, even though it's not very clear because I didn't bring an external flash.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Marlene and Sean with their nephew Dexter

Waynesville Art Show

We were in Waynesville, NC on Saturday for "International Festival Day" part of Folkmoot. Waynesville is about 3 hours from Charlotte, so we drove up and setup the night before. We stayed the Herren House, a lovely Bed and Breakfast that was only two blocks from the show. Highly recommended if you are travelling in that direction.

Herren House Waynesville, NC

Unfortunately, the weather was not that good the morning of the show. We didn't end up seeing the sun until about 2pm. There is another show up that way in October which we are going to try to get into so we will go again. This show would have been good sans rain.

Our very wet booth in Waynesville, NC

Muscle Team

Marlene's company was s sponsor for one of the Muscle Team MDA events at the Carolina Panther's Stadium. This is a photo of Marlene and Andrea with the Cowboy from Harris Teeter, another one of the MDA sponsors.

Art and Soul of South End

This is a photograph of the Rivnus Photography booth at Art and Soul of South End.

Vancouver Visit

Sean and I just got back from a week spent in Vancouver. We had decided to postpone the Christmas trip to March so we could use up air miles and have a better chance of a sunny day or two.
It was a wonderful visit with family & friends -- and it only rained half the time.
Together with Tilly we wandered too False Creek and the Granville Island Market, across to English Bay and back over the Granville Street Bridge. We drove to Fort Langley, "the birthplace of BC" and took the Albion Ferry from Langley to Maple Ridge. We spent a very rainy day at the Vancouver Aquarium, and of course enjoyed countless meals at Mom's. We also enjoyed a couple of evenings spent with Theo & Tara, my brother and sister-in-law and at the Kischnicks house. As always, the week ended too soon.
Sean has posted pictures in the gallery. Hope you enjoy them.

Vancouver

We have been in Vancouver last week. Here is a photograph of downtown Vancouver, BC from the Granville Street Bridge

Vacation Pics

Photos from our recent Virginia adventure over the holidays are now in our gallery.

Vacation

Sean and I spent the week of Christmas and New Year's on vacation in Virginia.
We drove up to Roanoke on December 24th to spend Christmas with Grandma and Diane. On Christmas Day Grandma made a turkey dinner and we spent a lovely quiet day together. On the 26th, the Vanns came up from Winston-Salem -- a not so quiet day :-) They are an exhuberant but fun bunch.
I put together a Coconut & Whipped Cream cake in a jelly-roll form and it was a big hit along with Virginia Ham Sandwiches from Tinnell's market (thye have probably been making these since they opened in 1930), and Grandma's potato salad.

On Tues we decided to go see the Chronicles of Narnia, which was a good-matinee-kind of movie. Later Dad & Susan made it up from Georgia and we had a nice dinner with them at Grandma's-- Sean talked them into a portrait sitting, of course.

On Weds we left for Virginia Beach. Just shy of Williamsburg we stopped for lunch at the Candle Factory Restaurant. Sean used to go there all the time. It was their last week of business and they were closing as of the 31st -- so I also wandered around the candle factory store to stock up on some clearance items. Then we stopped in Williamsburg to wander around the old colonial town. It's one of those places I've read about in Southern Living that I've wanted to see. Apparently it's a fairly popular destination this time of year as there was a bigger crowd than expected.
After we'd checked into our hotel room in Virginia beach, we had to go to Frankie's for dinner -- they have THE BEST barbequed ribs I've ever tasted. We stopped for irish coffees at the "Jewish Mother" and wandered the boardwalk for a small stretch to look at the Christmas lights, lights, lights!!

On Thursday we made a day trip from Virginia Beach to the Outer Banks of NC -- Nags Head and Cape Hatteras to take photos of the lighthouses. It was raining when we left but we had a spot of sunshine when we arrived so the day turned out quite perfectly. We took a Ferry Back to the Beach, and as soon as we crossed the rain began again.
Later that night we had dinner with Jason, Sherri & Josh Clark. It was good to spend some time with friends we don't get to see too often.

And that was that, Friday we drove all the way home and by New Year's Eve all we wanted to do was watch a video, count down the last 10 seconds to midnight and call it a great ending to an interesting year. Sean has posted photos in our gallery.

I also added some pictures which Stefan sent me of Christmas in Vancouver. We decided to postpone our trip until the spring.

Happy New Year

Marlene and I wish everyone a Happy New Year. This photograph of the Bodie Island Lighthouse is from our Christmas Vacation.

Portraits

I finally got around to doing some portraits of us. Some friends of Marlenes were coming over to get their portraits done and I had the rig up so I thought "what the heck."

I need to get a mirror for these. It is very difficult to correctly pose yourself without being able to see how you look.

Art Show Season

We finished the art show season with a bang at the last show in Blowing Rock. To date we have sold 50 prints in various sizes and over 220 greeting cards.

We had a good first Season on the circuit. Next year I intend to do more shows that are out of town and multi-day shows. Right now I am looking art shows in Florida for January.

This is a photo of our new booth display.

Northeast Trip

We were invited to the 90th birthday celebration of Sean's uncle Koey in Philadelphia. Koey and Anne had made the long treck out to our wedding in Vancouver two years ago. Both of us had been trying to work out a trip to Philadelphia to see friends and this presented a great opportunity to get up in that direction.

Jason was the best man at our wedding. His family lives in Delaware so we got to see both the Rivini and the Clark's on this trip.

The birthday event was hosted at the Valley Green Inn in Fairmont Park in the city of Philadephia. It was well attended by more Rivini than I had thought possible. It was a great time. I took the opportunity to get the family photo below.
More photographs from the event are located in the galleries area of our website.

I have enabled the gallery to allow people to order prints from Shutterfly or EZ Prints. They are sized for 4x6. People can send me an email if they need larger sizes.

I also got to help Jason out with some images for his website redesign. Below is an image from an old Underwood Typewriter. Jason wanted something close in where the 'J' stood out from the surrounding keys. We exposed the image with a ambient light and a flashlight with a makeshift snoot focussed on the J Key.

The Riverbanks Zoo Columbia, SC.

The Charlotetcameraclub decided to take a field trip to the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia, SC. Marlene and I had last visited the zoo in 2003.

It was funny when 10 or so of us went to get tickets. It looked like the photo crew from National Geographic had shown up. I had brought along my 70-200L 2.8 IS zoom with a 2 x telelconvter. There were a few people out with 400MM plus lenses. We got a lot of attention through the day.

The pictures are up in the Gallery. Marlene has added some as well.

Farmer's Market 2005

It's April and that means we are back out at the Charlotte Farmer's Market with the photographs. Saturday was our second week back. We sold one print the first week and two yesterday. I feel pretty good about the sales to date.. We changed the materials for this year and subsequently raised the prices. Getting three out this early in the season at the Market is a good start. I have also sold three prints and one framed image from the gallery in Charlotte. Hopefully we can keep it up for the year.

Here is a picture of our display stand at the market.

Easter

The photographs from Easter are now on the website.

I have also added three new photographs to the photography website.

Christmas in Canada

We just arrived back from a week spent in Vancouver, BC Canada. I wasn't able to get back to Vancouver last year because of the visa stuff so it had been too long since I'd seen my family.
We had a wonderful time -- there's never enough time to spend one-on-one time with those you love but it was a fun boisterous holiday.
More pictures have been added to our gallery.
Wishing you all a very Happy New Year.

Tilly in Charlotte

Marlene's sister Tilly has arrived in Charlotte safe and sound. Here she is calling her mom to say she got here ok.

Wedding Anniversary No. 1

Another milestone in our lives is around the corner. Sean and I celebrated our anniversary this weekend -- on Tuesday we will have been married for a year. We decided to forgo getting each other gifts and to spend the money on a weekend gettaway. We were hoping to try and re-create our honeymoon. We weren't going to make it to Sooke, BC Canada but we found a cabin rental in Boone, NC. A little cabin in the woods, with a hot tub on the deck, and a small stream gurgling next to us to replace the sounds of the Pacific Ocean.
We went to the Arts in the Park Festival in Blowing Rock on Saturday. Sean wanted to scope it out to see if it is something he (umm we...) want to do next year. Applications for 2005 need to be submitted by the end of this year so it was a good time to see who is selling what and what their displays look like.
Later we stopped for lunch at the Six Pence Pub and then wandered around the shops. I got my birthday present a little early, oh yes, did I mention my birthday is only 6 weeks away now...............?
We enjoyed a semi-homemade dinner on the patio of our cabin and happily toasted the occasion. The cabin itself had a few issues -- can we say dead animals on the wall and a mattress from 1949 but the spirit of the weekend was sweet. We've had our moments over the year, but it has been an incredible, wonderful and amazing year.
Sean posted pictures ... really ... in the September link of our gallery page -->just click here: (pictures)

Nashville

Last weekend we made the long -- and I mean long -- trek to Nashville, TN.
We left Friday afternoon and came back Sunday. Poor Sean was tired tired tired of driving by the time we got home on Sunday evening.

We went up for TCW's manager meeting and stayed at the Opryland Hotel. My goodness there really are no words to describe the large-scale of this hotel.
We had been to Nashville together last April just after Sean started with TCW, which was a good thing because there wasn't too much time to sight-see and it takes about 20 minutes to get from your hotel room to the lobby. I had made an appointment at the hotel's salon in the morning to have my hair cut and styled, something that has been long overdue. And after Sean's meeting we had enough time in the afternoon to walk over to the outlet mall across the street and make a quick circuit (with one or two stops along the way, you know I can't walk past the shoe stores) and grab a bite to eat.
In the evening we met with the the other TCW managers and their spouses for a dinner cruise on the General Jackson Riverboat. It was a lovely evening spent with some very warm and interesting people. The after-dinner entertainment was an acrobatic act from Peking. Pretty amazing flexible asian people whose talents I know I will never be able nor want to emulate. Sorry no pictures but out of context they just look very peculiar.

Some of the pictures Sean took will be posted in the gallery.

Camping Trip

It all started with just one simple statement. Let's go camping! Since we've been meaning to make a trip up to Whitewater Falls just past Highlands, NC why not drive up Saturday, and pitch a tent? This way Sean could take pictures of the Falls on Sunday morning bright and early. Well to go camping you need stuff ... sleeping bags, a tent, something to cook with, something to cook in, flashlights, coffee pot, bug spray, ice, food, marshmallows etc for s'mores and on and on. I still think a night at the Hampton would have been cheaper. Right now we still plan to re-use much of this stuff (can you say eventual grage sale?) so we may end up actually getting our money's worth. Where I'll store it is another question best left for another day.
It had been years since either of us has gone camping. Years I prefer not to count since my counselor days at Camp Squeah in Hope, BC. I can say it sure is easier to drive up to your campsite and unpack a car instead of having to hike it up with it in your backpack. We had our moments ... Sunday breakfast was a disaster ... as Sean put it it was a good thing the coffee was kind of thick since it least it stuck to our stomachs, but we will do it again. It was actually kind of fun. We went to Dry Falls and Whitewater Falls - mother nature at her finest. I think Sean got some great shots with his fancy filters and such but I had fun with my little camera too.
There are some pictures in the gallery to look at. Really you should go.

Charlotte Farmer's Market

We spent today at the Charlotte NC Farmer's Market. The State Department of Agriculture runs these markets to give local farmers a place to sell their goods. They also allow local crafts persons to sell their wares at the Craft Market on Saturdays.

I had contacted Frank the Market Manager to see if my photographs would be allowed for sale. They are of local flora and fawna. He said that would be fine and that the fee was $10.00 per space. So I figured what they heck. I need to start showing some sort of return for the investment I am making in taking these pictures.

Once I decided to go the Market I needed to make sure everything was presented nicely. To start with I had to decide on a product. Pictures are one thing, but packaging can help you get the sales. I figured that this is a flea market type atmosphere and as such people would not be willing to spend a lot of money. I was not going to be selling $100 prints here. So I made 4 x 6 and 5 x7 prints and then matted them to standard frame sizes. I found a really good supplier of mats, mat backing, and poly bags for this project. I am keeping that a secret because I can't give away the costs. I sold the 4X6 prints for $3.00 and the 5X7 prints for 5.00 with discounts on multiples.

After getting the inventory together, I needed a good way to display the pictures. I had originally thought about putting hinges on three pieces of peg board. This is pretty common at fairs and such and allows you to position the pictures easily around the surface. However, I didn't like any of the hinged solutions that I found so I took another root. I purchased a Savage Port-A-Stand background stand kit from Wolf Camera. The contains two light stands, a crossbar, and carrying bag. The idea was to hang the peg board from the crossbar. I decided on using rubber quick ties vs. hooks. They are incredbly cheap and easy to thread through the holes in the peg board and over the crossbar. A table is supplied with our rental fee and I purchased 2.5 yards of 44" wide black fabric to drape over the table. Then I found some red and black crates to hold the finished works.

The original idea was to have people look through the "browse bins". Later in the day we just laid the pictures on the table. This allowed people to see everything in one pass. I think it definately helped our sales.

Marlene was a real trooper. We both had to wake up early to make sure we got a good spot in the barn. She very helpful in getting things set up and organized. The background stands worked pretty well. We were able to get up and down in 10-15 minutes.

We didn't make a whole lot for the day, but it was a good start. We sold over 10% of the inventory and at least covered the rental. There were some craftspeople there that didn't cover their rental. It was a slow day because of the holiday weekend. In the end we did have fun. I really enjoyed hearing people speak about my work. We may not have made gobs of money, but we had a good time. The other craftsmen were entertaining and the people watching was fabulous. We are planning on doing this again next weekend.

Here are some pictures from the day.

Diapers

You will probably want to get a cup of your favorite beverage for this entry.

Ok..now that you have a drink of your favorite beverage you can click to see the extended entry.

A friend of ours is going to be having a baby shower shortly. Marlene and I got to talking about the cost of diapers. On average, a baby goes through 3000 diapers a year. What a load of crap. That is almost 10 diapers a day. Marlene was thinking about giving the gift of a diaper service, but that ended up being a little expensive.

I have never bought diapers before so, being a bit technical, I went googling for diapers. I found one company that sold Huggies in groups of 228. That is a pretty big load to haul around. I kept looking and found these at www.drugstore.com. I said out load "That works out to about .50 cents a crap"

Marlene thought that comment was so funny that she lost her coffee through her nose. Hopefully you aren't cleaning the screen off now.

We still have not decided on a gift but diapers are in the running right now.

Memorial Day

We went down to Columbus, Ga for Memorial Day weekend. I had taken Friday off from work to make it a four day weekend. I needed the break from work and it was a good change to see the parents. Pictures can be found on our website

This picture is near the entrance of the Horticulturual building at Callaway Gardens in Pine Mountain, GA

May Portraits

I finally got around to shooting the May portraits of myself and Marlene

Queens Cup Steeplechase

April 24th Marlene and I attended the Queen's Cup Steeplechase in Mineral Springs, NC. The people at the Queens cup asked the members of the Charlotte Camera Club to volunteer Photographers in return from free adminssion. They use us to suppliment the professional photographers that they hire for the race.

There were three of us there and we divided the track up into different territories. We all were supposed to shoot the races from various vantage points and I was detailed to work the tailgating crowds.

The tailgaters were a riot. The had a tailgating contest sponsored by Dickens-Michener I asked if I could accompany the judges in hopes of getting good pictures. We ended up mostly judging people in the Meadow's section of the racetrack. These were primarily company sponsored locations so they had pretty good spreads. Who knew that bribing judges was legal..:) I ended up getting some good pictures as well as 5 free beers and two mixed drinks. It also allowed me to pass out to some cards in hope they might purchase the pictures later from my event photography website.

All in all it was a good day, albeit a bit hot. The temps were in the high 80's low 90s so I ended up being a little red for the day. The following is a shot from race 6. The rest of the pictures are on www.rivinus.photoreflect.com which can also be reached from www.rivinus-photography.com

More pictures will come later. I seem to have misplaced the cable for Marlene's camera.

Ribbon Winner

Sean is a lucky guy in some ways. His photography hobby is both something he loves and something he is very good at. For the last few months he has been going to the Charlotte Camera club. Yesterday he submitted a couple of pictures in their in-house contest and both got ribbons. It might not be a "big" thing but it is nice to be recognized by your peers.
Yesterday I hung a couple of the pictures he has taken of some Gerbera Daisies in simple clip frames. They look truly marvelous and very artistic.
Many of these pictures he posts in our photo gallery and others are in his photoblog.

Vonage

We received our Vonage box today. Our long distance bill can be quite high between my calls to friends and Marlene's calls to Canada. We usually end up spending around 60 dollars a month. I had seen an article on the Colonel's site on Vonage. I kind of brushed it off because the last time I had checked they did not offer service to Canada. Well now they do and their long distance plans included Canada at the same rates.

We signed up for the 500 minute plan at $14.95 per month and 3.9 cents per minute past that amount. That is a 35 dollar a month savings after taxes. I still have the Bell South basic line if the Vonage does not work out. We also have two cell phones. We will pull the Bell South line if it works well enough.

The setup was pretty straightforward. You hook the Vonage unit into the Cable modem and then out to the router. The Vonage box takes about 5 minutes to download updates from their server. When the light is green, the line is clean and ready for service.

I like things that work exactly how I expect them to work

Here are some pictures.

Vonage Box	Cable modem left Linksys Router right	Cable modem with Vonage box on top. This plugs into the phone.  Yeah, I know it is a spaghetti mess.

Driving Lessons 2

After another busy day of working on the move, we finally got Marlene back to her driving lessons.

Marlene concentrating on driving.

Picture of the parking lot Marlene is starting in right now.

Marlene and Sean Rivinus

The March portrait pictures of Marlene and Sean have been updated on the website.

Two and a half men

Marlene and I were watching sitcoms tonight. We started out with "Everybody Loves Raymond" which led into "Two and a half men." The premise for the show is one of Charlie's old girlfriends, Jill, wants to "see" him again. Charlie, being the typical hornball, has other things in mind for the meeting. Well Jill had a surprise for Charlie.

Charlies old flame Jill is now Bill. She has had a sex change. Now this is a funny enough premise for a sitcom. It's gets even better when Bill and Charlies mom hook up one night. So now you have Charlie, who has slept with Jill and Charlies mom sleeping with Bill. Talk about an "eww factor."

The episode was quite a riot I don't think I'll forget the line from Bill, 'They are made of teflon." You can guess on your own what is made of teflon. Hint it is not the pans...Though they are usually in pants.

Snow

We had a bit of snow in Charlotte, NC today. This is the view out of our front door.

More images can be found here

Happy Birthday

This weblog started out on this date last year with an entry about spaghetti salad

We started this blog with an installation of Greymatter 2.1 originally written by Noah Grey. The blog started out very hesitantly, posting only once every few weeks. We really started taking off when we added a RSS feed in October.. The feed seemed to get the ball rolling for more frequent posts. It seemed to be a good idea to post something for people to read on your feed.

The quest to improve the RSS feed prompted the move to Movable Type In January 2004. We am really enjoying the MT setup and are posting almost everday because of the easy to use interface.

We are now up to our 86th post. Site traffic has increased from 7 per day to almost 120 hits per day. February looks like it will close out with over 2500 hits from 1400 unique URLS. I am looking forward to see what happens with Our Diary over the next year. Until then,

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Weekend Trip

Marlene and I decided to celebrate Valentine's day by going out for dinner a week later. I decided that we would go up to the Virginia Beach area. This way she could see some of the places where I used to live. The pictures of Virginia Beach, Norfolk, and Portsmouth can be found here I have broken them down into various categories for easier viewing. More will be added tomorrow.

Disclaimer

Ok, I'll admit it. I often go through Sean's entries and edit them for misspellings, grammatical issues, incomplete sentences and punctuation. As you may have noticed our website has been changed and it's taken me a while to get used to the new software for the diary page -- sorry "blogs". After editing Sean's latest TP entry I thought it prudent to post a disclaimer on the website.
Therefore please note the following:

The opinions expressed by individual authors on the Rivinus website are the opinions and views of the author and not necessarily shared by other members of the Rivinus family (aka the wife).

As much as it may concern me that Sean would spend part of his day researching how much TP an average person consumes over the course of the year, I can be grateful that we don't have a website covering this, and only this topic. I can fix the spelling mistakes but if he wants to write about toilet paper so be it.

Just another quick note the Pictures part of our website, since some of you have asked, can be found using the PHOTOALBUMS link on the left.

Happy New Year

I just wanted to put in a quick entry to wish all of our 'readers' a happy new year. 2003 has been a big year for us, with the wedding, the move, job changes and losses :( and I thought I would take a moment to reflect on the year ahead.


Resolutions never work for me -- well at least not beyond the first few days of January -- so I won't go there. Perhaps I should just make resolutions for Sean instead :) :) hee hee ha ha. No that won't work either.


Well perhaps I'll get back to you about plans for the year ahead. In the meantime I wish you love, happiness and most importantly good health.


Marlene

Christmas Tree

Oh Christmas tree! Oh Christmas Tree! How lovely are your banches.... I bet everyone will be humming that for the next week.


We got out Christmas tree setup yesterday. Ok. I put it in the holder and Marlene did the decorating. The pictures of the tree are on the website.

Cousin's Wedding.

Marlene and I went to see my cousin Clara get married on Friday. The pictures are now up on the website http://www.rivinus.com/clara_and_williamswedding.htm

Thanksgiving

We went up to some of my relatives house in Winston Salem for Thanksgiving. My Uncle Luther picked up my Grandma from Roanoke and drove her down for the weekend. This let Marlene meet two more family members (Brian and Clara). She seemed to get along great with the family and we both had a wonderful time. Thank you very much Luther and Jenny.


I was going to post something earlier but my webhosting company Ipowerweb decided that Thursday was the day to move my website to a new server. I have spent most of Sunday trying to get things up and running again the way there were last Monday. I find it extremely unprofessional that they would move a website without previously informing someone of the move. I will be leaving them shortly for another webhost.


Lastly, I just saw a post from Jason Jclark.org saying he did not have dial up with Comcast. You should switch to Earthlink. They have free roaming dialup with all of their broadband connections. Marlene's sister is using it in Vancouver right now.