This week’s Theme is “OPEN” and here is my submission for the week:

The sky is about to OPEN up and dump the rain

About the photograph:

Taken with STELLA, Canon XT DSLR

I was driving at the time with a huge summer storm getting ready to rain. I was hoping to capture some bolts of lightening since the skies were very active. All I got was a bunch of ominous clouds…

Click Here to find out the theme! Changes each week… get out and shoot!

The first project is Artwork for Farragut Christian Church. The guy who is charge of the artistic side of happenings at the church (e.g. worship band, etc) had an informal meeting after one of the services for all artists who would want to submit artwork which corresponded to the sermon for that week. The church is currently going through a year long stint through the book of Matthew. I was all over signing up to submit artwork, as in photography, for this. It gave me a subject matter, or at least a bible verse(s) to use as a reference, for me to go out and take new pictures. Although, the artwork that I submitted this past week was an picture from the Archives, but for the most part, I try to think of new material. More importantly, it gave me a deadline!

TO date, I have submitted 2 pieces for the church.  The first piece that I submitted earlier this year (and I have that as a separate entry) was for The Last Supper. The most recent on was for Matthew 6:26-34 about “Worrying”. Here’s a link to the Bible verse, if you are so inclined. I realize that The Bible is not the Go-To source for Regiliousness for all out there… and Lord knows that I don’t want to “offend” anyone… or Do I?

FCC Artwork for June 20, 2010

The second project is that I am planning on being available for-hire for photography shoots. I’m still in the planning phase on this one… as what will my niche be, what will I charge, when will I be available, etc…  More on that later…

One of the big difference between Virginia and Tennessee in the education realm, apart from the fact that Virginia is not battling it out with Alabama and Mississippi for NOT being the worst in the nation for education, is that Tennessee starts school in mid-August and Virginia starts their (public) schools after Labor Day, as in Today! On Facebook, I am seeing a number of my Virginia friends talking about taking their kids to their first day back to school. Our house hold, just starting the 4th week of school had the “Lovely and Talented Wife, it’s 6:51″ in the calm but alarming voice.

Bus is NEVER on time… they said they would be there 7:05am or so. It’s more like 7:00am or a few minutes earlier. And this wasn’t the case of our alarms NOT going off. This was a result of being very tired from the weekend trip and trying to get back on schedule. So with an estimated 9 minutes to get ready… The Elder was still in PJs… the adrenaline started pumping. The bus only had to wait for a minute or two as we tossed everything together and sent him out the door.

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My plan is to update my running happenings of the past 3 weeks with a Gravity@1053′ podcast episode. I had tried to record one earlier, but I could not find a AA batteries with any electrons to save my life! Sheesh!

My Sister -In-Law is getting married and so there is some Monkey-Photography-Goin’BackToCali things to address

I have pictures of my High School reunion… and it just wasn’t my class, despite it being our 20 year anniversary, it was the WHOLE school system… like since forever! The High School has been closed for a number of years, but there were 150+ people there.

I am working on my Personal Mission Statement, which I am about 90% done with. I’ll unveil that went it’s ready (or I need something to blog about).

And of course, some of the random things that happen…

Yes, this means there might be some pictures posted here, Flickr, Picasa and Facebook.

So on my (long) list today was to find out if I was chosen as a Pacer for the (Covenant Health) Knoxville Marathon. I haven’t done that much training to date, enough to manage through 10 miles or without much work. If I was going to be a pacer, I would be using Knoxville as a training run. If I wasn’t a pacer, I needed to Volunteer for a Race Day duty (heehee) such as Course Monitor or Course Monitor and I would even settle for a Course Monitor spot.

I sent in my application and waited until January 15th, the date which the pacers would be announced. I couldn’t find any information about it either on the KTC website nor the Marathon Website. I figured that I must not have been needed, as I didn’t get any notice in my email box regardless that it was posted elsewhere.

Today, I went to go email the coordinator and find out for sure. I needed closure… sniff. But I have an email that says “Thank You for Registering for the 2009 Knoxville Marathon”, so perhaps I am on the team. I don’t know… I have an email out. Will Keep you posted.

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Speaking of Running… I haven’t done a whole lot of it this year so far. But when I was in Arizona, I did noodle out my 2009 Schedule from January to Decemeber with the races that I would like to do. There are some others that I would like to do, but other engagements get in the way of them. There might even be some impromptu races that I might do as well, when the chance arises.

I do plan on having Guess My Time, Win Crap contests for these races. I do know that (if I a chosen) for the pacing team, that there will be a variant of the normal rules and it’ll be a straight Yea or Nea if I made within some confidence interval, the pace time. Also, the Flying Monkey marathon will be a Run Under The Bib contest, which I will attempt to run less than 4hr 38 min which is a reference to my lifetime bib # at FMM of 438. I do not (at this time) plan on running Rutledge, TN the week before. Once a Maniac, you don’t have to qualify for membership. Although…. they do this “Star” level thing and so I want to earn MORE stars… but that is for another year (maybe).

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Some unexpected turn of events happened for ASD Athletes, my non-profit organization to raise money for those athletes on the Autism Spectrum participate in athletics. But the mom of one of The Elder’s past schoolmates was talking with someone that puts on a fundraiser. The mom was going to piggyback The Elder’s Friend’s Birthday Party with the fundraiser (smart) and had mentioned ASD Athletes as a potential charity to support since the fundraiser is on march 28 and World Autism Day is April 1st.

Well, in the interview, the Fundraiser person mention that she was thinking of ASDa as a charity to donate money to and the media put that in the newspaper! I’ll have the article soon, but it’s like DAMN! We are getting this Party Started QUICKLY RIGHT?! So, I got some work to get done. I still have some paperwork to get ASDa to 501(c)(3) status. Is there anyone who wants to pad their resume with some “pro bono” experience with a non-profit organization. I am thinking about my Board of Directors and organzation structure and i think that I might want to have some “at large” peeps in there.

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Our 2008 Christmas Card is slowly working toward a 2009 President’s Day card. We haven’t forgotten about it… it bugs me everyday….

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Pictures are STILL on Stella. I KNOW! I should be taken back and shot with a Canon 5D or something like that… seriously… if it was in my college days, I might have even done some modeling for the art department… (wink wink nudge nudge). Of course, at that time of my life a model of me would have been “Bird-chest with Mullet”

Now that it’s twilight of January, that whole… Picture A Day. 365 Pictures from Terry CRAP is not going to happen. I thought about making a calendar of the pictures and post that as in “This was january… in PICTURES!” or something like that.

But the reason why THAT isn’t taking place is because 1) My Computer at work is slow and only a USB 1.1 which means slow transfer times for pictures (or anything else) and i am finishing up compiling the Family’s Computer Files. What once was on about 50 CDs is now on one computer and files are being archived and saved to USB drives for prosperity. This was started last year and of course, is on the USB 1.1 speed. So, it has taken a LOT longer. Plus, I have to take the files that I have done here at work and combine them with the ones at home… still a headache, but should go faster.

Then, earlier this month, I was in the process of getting ready to move all of my mp3 files to a USB drive to take home when I realized (actually, it was more that I remembered) that my MP3 files are in many organizational formats (locations of songs, etc) and so that was UNACCEPTABLE and so, I have been taking my music collection and have been sorting the songs with the approriate artist, in the appropriate Album Folder format and the proper File Name format. THEN I need to Mass Change the MP3 tags on all of them (thankfully, there are open source programs to do the bulk of this FOR me). I had to practice restraint on myself to ONLY classify files for a certain period of time, then move onto something else. I have been working, so far 16 hours on this… STANDARD FORMAT people… standard format!

And what makes it worse, is that has to look up information… Wikipedia is my friend… so that I know where songs go and if I have to know the order of some albums because of the way they were ripped from CD, the file names are vague to the actual title of the song… or the Track number. But on these sites, there is information about the band… Historical tidbits that are delicacies for my brain… sort of like Bon-Bons for my neurons and so I get absorbed on the sites reading about artist that once were… but I must practice… restraint. Somehow. And not read… much.

So right now I am up to “U” which means that I have 163 Folders left to do… some of which will need no work, some of which will need some and then some that will need overhauling. I expect to begin Tagging tomorrow sometime.

So that has been some of the things that have been going on and some of the reasons why I haven’t been blogging as much as I wanted to… stupid standard formatting.

So, I am thinking I may have had around 7 hours of sleep. Too bad it wasn’t consectutive.

My foot is much better today, I can actually put just about all my weight on it and instead of being in pain, I can just “feel it”. My finger is better too, so now typing doesn’t hurt and I don’t have to wear a bandaid that mashed extra keys when I type.

It was a fairly straightforward day, I had a decent day trading today and took some profits on some positions. I will be requesting the money that is dogearred for Elijah on Friday, so I can get that sent in.

I threw together an episode of Gravity. Mainly because I had worked on part of it, but thanks to My Lovely and Talented Wife, that has all changed for the fall marathon training. I didn’t want what I had to go to waste, so ir’s a short episode (10 min) and it trails off after the announcement.

Next week, I’ll post what I am going to do since I will be in Dallas next week and then training will start on August 4th for my marathon. I’m not sure how much internet access I will have next week and I wish that I could get my camera phone to send posts to my “secret” blog email and I would MoBlog.

Stella’s lens covers are on order, but not sure if they are going to make it or not. It’s not that I am too nervous because I can always purchase one from the local camera store. You never can have too many Lens covers when your Father in law is involved. Someone asked how that happened. We were talking and I had gotten pictures off of Stella and she was in the chair. He went to change chairs to better see the computer and knocked it off with his butt.

So is everybody ready for Friday?