Grandparents and Grandkids

With everyone together in one place this weekend, I had to take the opportunity to huddle everyone together for a few pics. This was taken right on Rend Lake in Southern Illinois. Me and the kids were in town to see my nephew Josh Nelson getting married. My Dad was the officiant of the ceremony.
2013-09-21 16.44 Touched Up
Now for the nerdy part: This is actually a composite of 2 different photos. Each of the two pictures had 1 person who wasn’t smiling and/or looking at the camera. I used Gimp to blend the two photos together and make one good out out of 2 not so good ones. I’ll bet you can’t tell who those two were!

Here’s a few more pics from the trip:

Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue

It’s another one of those multi-subject, catch-up posts because I’ve been lax about updating the site. So in no particular order:


Something New

Here's the Avatar at the bottom of my stack

Here’s the Avatar at the bottom of my stack

I picked up an Avatar 4×12 speaker cabinet for my guitar rig last week. I’ve been keeping an eye out for one of these for a while now. They’re pretty highly regarded in the guitarist community. They’re well built, and loaded with the right speakers they have some killer tone! I frequently keep an eye on the used inventory of my local Guitar Center. I saw this one pop up and had to have a look at it. I grabbed an amp head and a couple other speaker cabinets and just had a field day swapping between cabinets to compare the sounds of each. This thing sounded better than any other cabinet by far. And to top it off, it looks like it’s brand new! Not even a dent in the tolex! So after a little price negotiating, I walked out of there with my new speaker cabinet for a fraction of what it would have cost to purchase it new.


Joe Orange Belt TestAnd just this past Friday, my son Joe tested for and advanced to Purple Belt in Tae Kwon Do! During the test, you have to break a board while demonstrating proper technique for a particular kick or punch. Last time Joe advanced, that part of the test gave him the most trouble. He was a little nervous about it. Despite his apprehension, he was able to break the board on his first attempt. Go Joe!
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