Knoxville Skateboarding Saturday, February 07, 2009

Today, I ventured out to the Knoxville Skate Park. The park is great and has a few bowls, some stairs, rails and hubbas. It's a perfect mix of street and vert! The temperature got up to 65 today and there were a TON of kids (and 2 old guys) rockin' it out. Check out my Flickr page for more!

After hitting up the skate park, I headed over to The Board Room in fabulous Knox-Vegas. Some good friends of ours opened the shop this past Fall and I'd be willing to put money on it being the best skate shop in Knoxville. Some of the kids that were at the skate park must have knew I was coming because they were playing on the Xbox 360 when I showed up. After teaching them a lesson in s.k.a.t.e, I had them give me lessons in kickflips. I was able to get my board to flip, but just couldn't land it. All in good time. Here are some pics of the kids hitting up a rail in front of The Board Room.

The rest of the photos from the skate session at The Board Room can also be found on my Flickr.

Why do we live this way? Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Recently, I got to thinking..."a lot of the stuff we have is old and jankity". I voiced this thought to Sonya and we decided to make a list of all of things that we could categorize as such. If you know anything about the two of us, you should know that we both absolutely LOVE to make lists. It's one of our favorite things to do. Sometimes, we even make lists of lists that we want to make in the future!

And I digress. What I was getting at was the fact that we've got a lot of dated things in our collective life. Here's a short list of some of the things I'm talking about:

1. We use a VCR to record television shows
2. The VHS tape we use to record television has been fully copied over at least 4 times
   
3. We have a tube television that weighs about 200 lbs
4. My cell phone does not have a camera on it
   
5. I have a drawer full of cassette tapes in my van to which I still listen
6. In my closet, among many other similar shirts that I wear, you'll find one which says "1999 College Basketball Champions"
7. Every pair of jeans that I own has at least 1 hole (and they're not "fashion" holes)
8. I've been riding the same snowboard for over 13 years
9. Sonya drives a '93 Volvo station wagon with ripped seats
10. I drive a '96 "Mercur" Villager van with ripped seats (the letter 'y' fell off the word "Mercury")
    

So, after we made this list, we started thinking "why do we do this to ourselves"? And therein lies our question to you, our 2 readers. Respond to the poll on the right about why you think we live this way. Then, comment with your suggestions about which one of these things we should change/update and why.

Sick Longboarding Action Monday, February 02, 2009

This blog has really been crawling along for the past few years. We usually only write about things that we do or places we go, but no more. There are tons of cool things that I come across on the web and lots of thoughts rolling around in my head, so I thought I'd try and dump some o' dat in you face erry now and then.

I came across this insane longboarding video on one of my Vimeo romps. Check out these two dudes rocking the blue suits and passing the video camera back and forth while they blaze down this hill at ridiculous speeds.


Adam Kimmel presents: Claremont HD from adam kimmel on Vimeo.

If you're going to do something this crazy/awesome/stupid, you might as well look fresh while you do it!

Knoxville at Night Monday, February 02, 2009

Sonya spent the weekend in Nashville with some of her friends, so I thought it would be the perfect excuse for me to head downtown and learn how to use my new Canon Digital Rebel XSi in low light settings. I got down there just as the sun had set, so it was practically dark. Thankfully, this camera is AWESOME and was up for the task!


I learned a lot about my camera, but what I really took away from my night out on the town was that I should never do this again without gloves and a heavier jacket if it's only going to be 28 degrees outside!!

See more photos on my Flickr page

The Last of 2008 Thursday, January 15, 2009

Some of my favorite things about 2008:

1. New community and involvement with Christ Community Church
2. Our travels in EUROPE
3. Rootclip officially launched, and was featured in the Traverse City Film Festival
4. I officially started Grad School full-time, working toward my Nurse Practitioner Degree
5. Ran my 1st 1/2 Marathon
6. President-elect Barack Obama - hopeful future for our country
7. Many of our friends brought new little lives into this world in '08, plus a few via adoption!
8. Erik and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary

I'm sure there are many, many more awesome and amazing things that God allowed me to experience in 2008, but these were just the highlights.

The last few weeks of December were filled with visits from friends and family - much laughter and love all around. Here's a link to our photos chronicling all of the fun :)