This year was a year of firsts for me. On Thanksgiving morning, I ran a 5 mile Turkey Trot in Miamisburg which I am really stoked about.

Another first this year was shopping with all the crazy people on Black Friday! We really didn’t have a lot of things we wanted to buy, we just wanted to participate in something dramatic.

We started the morning at 3am. I woke up after sleeping 3 hours and realized Kristie pulled an all nighter, isn’t that nuts? There is no way I would have made it, especially after running 5 miles at 8am on Thursday. Our goal was to go to Sam’s Club and get a Wii Bundle for $224, not realizing that the ad we looked at online was a typo and not from Sam’s, and in fact the bundle cost $425! Ahh!, That wasn’t the deal we were going for, and we already had bought a Wii a couple weeks ago on Amazon for $225.

By the way, you may notice in past posts that we talk a lot about the Wii, which is something we play quite regularly. It wasn’t ours though, but instead the one my mom bought for the family 2 years ago that Kristie and I just hog. We even had bought Wiimotes, and games for a console we didn’t own! We did this partially because of how difficult was to get our hands on a Wii. So we finally broke down and bought a Wii on Amazon two weeks ago, then looked at the “ad” on a website dedicated to Black Friday sales. When we saw we could get a Wii Bundle (4 Wiimotes, 4 Nunchucks and 2 Games) for $224 ($25 less than just the Wii), so we decided not to open the one we bought (so we could return it) and waited on the sale.

I bet you can guess we were slightly bummed, when we arrived at Sam’s at 3:30am to find out the price on the bundle was actually $425, which wouldn’t have been a bad price, except for the fact that we already owned a lot of stuff and only needed to buy 1 more Wiimote. No problem though, we used the money and finalized our kit with another Wiimote, couple games and a charging station.

From there, we went to Walmart to fight it out with all the people. I bought my first GPS (Garmin Nuvi 200), which I am super stoked about.

Wow, this post is so looong, if you actually read all of it, I condone you! We have been playing Guitar Hero World Tour, Wii Fit and Sonic all weekend. It has been awesome!

I am not sure if this is old news to everyone or not, but I thought I would share a video that made my day a little brighter….

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

To find out more about Matt, go to his website.

If you haven’t heard of him yet, you might be dead. Vincent Laforet is an amazing photographer based in New York. He has won many awards, including a Pulitzer Prize in his career, but he may be most notable to the general public for the video he made with a Canon 5D MKII called, Reverie. As for me, I have been his blog stalker for a while. I became a regular on his blog back when he headed to Beijing to cover the Olympics.

Focus Photo Club and Canon were able to get him to come and talk at Stiver’s School of the Arts tonight. His presentation was amazing, I was really impressed. It mainly covered his aerial work and the stories behind the shots. Like I said, amazing. Very inspiring!

Thank you, Vincent!

Like I promised, here are some of my faves from Sophia & Shane’s wedding on November 1st, 2008…..

My Mom made the mistake of showing me some old photos that she found at my Grandma’s tonight…of course I am going to blog about it!

Here is my Mom (on the right) with a  photo from July 1st, 1979 when she was 14 years old. This was the first year they let girls box at the annual 4th of July boxing match in New Lebanon, Ohio.

I wonder if this is going to embarrass her? Hope so, if she had a blog, I bet random pictures of me would show up on the internet too!

All jokes aside, after seeing some of these prints it hit me how vulnerable we are. Most people I know have old prints (including me) stored in a shoebox or at a relatives house, but what about the back-ups? It seems so easy to back-up now with digital files, but what about our prints?

Make sure you get them scanned and brought into the digital world. If you don’t own a scanner, you can easily take them to a photo lab to be scanned and have a CD made. Just make sure you make copies of these, and I am not sure just printing copies is the best idea….you should get them digitalized.

There is my public service announcement of the month….back to your regularly scheduled blogging!

ps:…….that sign off was lame ;p

My last post regarded Kristie’s latest installation piece. I am sad to say that after a week, it was vandalized and completely destroyed…

In some twisted poetic way, I feel that the art being destroyed is somewhat artistic. It just shows how different people “react” to art.

I guess it is easier to say, considering that I didn’t spend the time Kristie did creating this.

My lovely girlfriend, Kristie Pierce, just finished a giant installation piece that will only be up this week. It is an oversized mascara brush, modeled after a very iconic mascara brand. The piece resides at the Recreational Sports Center in Oxford, Ohio. Believe it or not, the brush is actually 10 ft. tall!

Go support her and see it before it is vandalized!

I had a blast documenting Sophia & Shane’s wedding yesterday in Dayton, Ohio.

Here’s a peak….