my new cam cam

As you all know, one of my silly little hobbies is to make "movies." Recently, I'd been wanting to step up my game by bringing a better camera into the equation. At first I thought I wanted a strictly video camera, but after some research and especially after having used Lexi's swanky Mark II for "Rain is a Good Thing," I realized that the DSLRs with video are just as good quality, but with the benefit of obviously being able to shoot stills as well.

I had been eyeing the Nikon D700 for quite awhile, which is on my list as #59. Unfortunately, it doesn't have video, so I found the next best camera that does in the D7000. Costco had a bundle special, so I went for it. I've been quite pleased! I'm still working on figuring out how to best control focus especially on moving objects.  I practiced on my pups (which move like crazy), and the below is the result of that exercise. Still need a lot more practice, but it's fun!

a little bit of cheating?

So, two items on my list I didn't do, but they still got done. This past week when I was back home for Thanksmas, Mom fixed the button on my jeans (#31). I didn't help at all, not even give moral support because she did it while I was sleeping. What a gem.

Also, back when I was just getting into the list, Brian solved the mystery of the rattling noise in my trunk (#39). It was just a stinking baseball! Somehow it had gotten into the spare tire storage area, and any time I would break hard, for instance, it would make a noise like something important was loose. Such a good boyfraaaand.

Maybe I'll come up with two bonus goals to do, since I didn't really have a hand in these. Until then, thanks guys!!

JnJnWaldo

2 for 1 tonight folks, aren't you lucky! This one is a recurring goal, which is to keep in touch with/visit Joe and Jannell who are our dear friends (do only grandmas say 'dear'?)...who are our awesome friends that moved to Louisville. Brian, Storm, Turkey, and I went to see them over halloween weekend, and it was a blasty blast. We wore our Waldo costumes to a Mighty Kindness festival, did some serious geocaching, ate a burrito as big as your head, ran the dogs around the park, and devoured some otherworldly icecream and Cuban tapas. The trip, though fast, was simply delightful!

Where is Waldo?!?

Gosh, there he is!

Still don't totally know what this fest was all about, but it was undeniably mighty and kind.

Did you know that Jannell plays the fiddle? She's freaking awesome at it. 

Here's one of her solos with her band Keltricity (rad, right?) at the fest:

We even dressed up the dogs in Louisville.

I didn't get a picture there, but here they are in Jackson.

See, I wouldn't lie to you

and this one just plain cracks me up. :]

golf with dad

oh man, it's almost been a month since I've posted anything! sorry to all of my (three) loyal readers. :]  I have quite a few goals to catch up on that I've accomplished here recently, but first we go back to Arizona...

So, my dad has been taking a little early retirement. He seems to be loving it, and one of the biggest benefits is the time for golf. I knew he liked to play, but I didn't realize how much I guess...he's been playing nonstop!  It's very cool to see him so into it. I also have caught a bit of the golf bug here recently (heck, I was even on the winning team of Hunter's scramble this year, check me out. ;), sooo I thought it would be fun for he and I to play a round together. (#82)

And play we did! We went to Mountain Shadows mainly because it was practically the only course in the whole valley that was open. (Everyone and their mother was seeding the grass.) It's a super short course, but we still had fun. By "we" I mean Dad and I of course, but also Mom and Steve (Lexi's bf) came along. There was some good boys vs girls smack talk going on, but the boys def came out on top. Here are the pics!...

Stevie and Camelback

Get it Gurrrl. She got a golf ball stuck in a palm tree; that takes skill.

Ahhhh, to be in shorts right now! It's freaking 43 degrees here!

the winners

While taking this picture, Dad shouted, "It's a hole-in-one!"  I had to look; what a sucker. :]

apple annie's punkin patch!

Lexi is a senior this year down at the UofA, and I wanted to visit her because I haven't since she's been in school. Soooo, when I was in Phoenix a couple weeks ago, we planned for a day that would fit her schedule and I found 3 road trip buddies to join me: Barbie, Chels, and Jenny...a Moody girls adventure! The night we arrived we got to see her house (so cute!) and meet her roommates (so fun!), and then we headed out for Mexican (so good!). That was followed by some geocaching on campus and then a slumber party.

The next day was when goal #28, shooting pictures with Lex, was fulfilled. For those of you who don't know, Lexi is a very talented photographer. You can see some of her work on her blog here. I've wanted to shoot with her for awhile now so that I could learn some of her techniques. What better place to accomplish this during the fall than at a pumpkin patch! Chelsea caught us both in action:

It wasn't just pumpkins, there were also sunflowers

overexposed, but they're so darn cute that I had to include it

also multi-colored pepper plants

mom is such a beauty

our pumpkin wheel barrel

we ended the day at apple annie's orchard

here are some of lexi's shots

the apple pie the 5 of us (almost) took down 

beautiful, right?! I still have a lot to learn...

turns out I love to garden

Before I ever tried, I thought gardening was difficult and a lot of work. I figured there would be a slim chance the seeds would even take, and if I was lucky enough that they did, then I'd probably mess up the watering. Or even if the watering worked out, then I'd probably not tend them properly and they would get overrun by weeds, fried by the sun, or something along those lines. Luckily and thankfully, that hasn't been the case for me. I've found that gardening is easy and fun! Maybe it's just the low expectations for results and only having 3-4 things planted at a time, but still! 

Last year, I took over a little planter space in our condo's courtyard. A neighbor started it the previous year, but moved, so I thought it would be fun to keep it going. It was a salsa theme, and we had great success with jalapenos, cilantro, and chives. Even a couple bell peppers came out towards the end of the season. The only tragedy was the kale which was overrun by caterpillars. (Perhaps they knew that these didn't fit the theme.)  

Fast forward to this year and accomplishing goal #55- start a new garden. I wanted to continue the hobby, so I made sure to add it to the list. There was a twist this time around though, as the courtyard space became a community garden. My enthusiasm and flourishing "crops" garnered admiration from the neighbors and they wanted in too. This was awesome because I didn't have to be the only one to remember to water, but also kind of lame in that my least favorite neighbor didn't contribute but still helped himself in excess to the bounty. (As in, not only did he take the biggest, ripest pickings, but I'm pretty sure he uprooted an entire freaking basil plant. The only one. Seriously, who does that!?)

Clearly, I could go on and on about gardening (I'm pretty sure this is my longest post yet), but let's move on to some pictures and a little summary of season: I planted the seeds back in April...

The cilantro was the first to come in. This is my favorite food to grow. I put it in everything!

The chives were a bit slower to start, but they stayed strong and steady all season. I'm sure I took pictures of these at some point, but I don't have access to them right now. Turkey chewed up my external hard drive cord this week.  :(

My last space was for the basil. These seeds didn't take at first outside, so I ended up starting some inside in my handy dandy little aero garden. When one sprout started to mature, I transported it outside. It took well to its new environment, and grew into a healthy bush. One day I wanted to make some bruschetta so I went to pluck some leaves....grrrrrrrrrrrr.

The coolest thing this year was that a pepper plant came up but I hadn't planted any new pepper seeds! I almost plucked it because I thought it might be a weed, but then I realized that the leaves looked familiar. I moved it from underneath my neighbor's squash plant to give it more room and it ended up thriving!

mmmm, Sunday's chicken salad

and omelets!

I love plants!!

documentary night with the Campbells

Gb, aka Glennbruce, aka Gangsta-bruce, is one of the coolest people I know in Memphis. He has an equally awesome family and it's always fun to get together with them to have dinner or a movie night, or in the case of Saturday night, both! We have a shared appreciation of documentaries, so that's what we tend to watch. Unfortunately, it had been quite awhile since our last movie night, so I added this goal to the list so that we could get them going again.

The movie was 'Between the Folds' a documentary about origami, so we had a bit of theme going this time around. Gb's wife, Jenn, is an enthusiast like myself, so she brought over some cool books and papers. I even pulled out my dollar folding book which the boys got excited about, and Ari made a really nice stingray. I thought about it afterwards, even the dessert the Campbell's brought was a folded peach pie delight!

Here's a preview of the movie. I'd highly recommend it even if you're not crazy about origami.

Unfortunately, I didn't remember that this was on my list (#99) until after the fact, so I didn't take any pictures.
However, Jenn left a crane behind, so here's a lil' taste of our night.



las tortugas deli mexicana

 

Yep, tortugas are turtles, and definitely happy ones.

For lunch today I went to this unassuming eatery in a little strip mall type of place by work. This restaurant had been recommended to me so many times that it had become embarrassing that I hadn't been there yet. People would say..."Oh, it's so fresh!" "The tortas are the best." "The guacamole is to die for!" and on and on and on. In a meeting right before lunch, Christine noted, "That Las Tortugas is my new addiction." Austin agreed, "Yeah, it's so good and the owner buys all the ingredients himself." OK GUYS, JEEZ, I'LL GO ALREADY!

Even though it had a lot to live up to, I was still impressed. The food was very fresh and delicious and you could tell that they really are passionate about what they're doing. The owner's son took my order and even though there was a long line, he took the time to explain where they buy their meats and cheeses even though I didn't even ask. And because I was a first-timer, he insisted that the cook ladies give me some free guac to try on the side. Mmmmm and I'm so glad they did. Not quite as good as Mom's or Lexi's, but def up there. My only complaint was that it was a little pricey at $12 a sandwich, but I'll always cough up extra dough for fresh and local. Two thumbs up!

cockadoos

They had me at BBQ omelet. The combination of my favorite egg preparation style with my favorite Memphis specialty?...SOLD! Actually, despite my initial enthusiastic interest, I was bit nervous about it. Could these two separately amazing foods meld into a delicious hybrid? The answer, my friends, is decidedly yes!

Cockadoo's is officially checked off of the-places-to-eat list (#100), but that def doesn't mean I won't go back! :]

Clockwise from top left: 1)Sweet potato hashbrown nest with marshmellow eggs- cute factor definitely outweighed taste factor. 2) mmmmmm! 3) Cheese is gross. 4) "It's my birthday weekend, whoop whoop!"

haboob!

Such a funny word. I bet it's hard for the weather reporters to say it with a straight face. If you're not from Arizona, let me explain... a haboob, "strong wind" in Arabic, is an intense dust storm that is really only common in the middle east and southwest US. The interesting thing about these storms is that you can literally see them rolling into town in sort of an apocalyptic kind of way.

Here's a time lapse video to give you a better idea:



Crazy, right?! So, as you might imagine, everything gets plastered in dust.
Lexi took this picture of our patio table.



My mom's car wasn't in the garage on this particular evening, so it was in desperate need of a wash. Since you now know about my interest in shooting car washes, I happily volunteered to get it cleaned. You wouldn't believe the lines at the Clean Freak car wash. They were making some bank!


haboob mess

poppin' caps with pops

Can you even pop a cap with a shotgun? Maybe only if you're a gangsta, haha. Anyway, another goal that I'm overdue in writing about is #92, going to the shooting hole with Dad. Unfortunately, the hole we went to as a family a few years back was no longer set up for shooting, so we went to a new place close to Taylor. It was a pretty spot with boulder clusters, a variety of brushes, and a big, bright blue sky. The clays didn't have much of a chance against the likes of Mom, Brian, Pops, and I. (Ok, they had a decent chance against us, but a 0% chance against the boulders :)

the master shows us how it's done


a natural


bang! bang!


Don't be fooled by her petite frame, this lady is a beast behind the trigger.


Like mother like daughter

cache.money & azcachemoney unite!

Still catching up on writing about goals that were achieved on my trip to Arizona over 4th of July...

One fun one was #25 geocaching with Chels! She's my only sibling who gets excited about caching like I do, so it's awesome when we can go out on the hunt and get our geek on together. We had prime opportunity for this when we were in Pinetop. We were in fresh territory with bountiful options all around, even some walking distance from the cabin! We went 4 for 4 around the lake with help from quadromom (Mom), Jennythedevil (surprise, Jenny), ucantcacheme (Brian), and Copper. Success!

azcachemoney!


signing the log


ucantcacheme looking focused


Copper pointing at a cache (or probably just a bug)


happy cachers!