.: bistan.net :.

Once again this year, I’m not making “resolutions”.  I do have several goals for the new year.

Fitness Related:

Run a half-marathon in less than 2 hours. (Let’s hope this happens on January 9!)

Reduce my 5K PR to 22 minutes.

Run 1000 miles in 2010.

Restart and actually complete hundredpushups.com.

Commit to and begin training to run (not run/walk) an entire marathon.

Drop my weight down to 160.

Eat out no more than once per week.

Finance Related:

Eat out no more than once per week (this falls under both).

Be completely debt free by 2011.

Work/School Related:

Take two masters degree classes each semester and stay on top of them.

Stop passing up greener pastures.

Home Related:

Spend more time teaching my kids things.

Get rid of more junk.

Computer Related:

Tweet more.

Blog more.

Facebook less.

I think that’s enough for now. I’ll try to revisit this post every few months to see how I’m doing.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that we attended part of the taping for the Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade.  I also included a few of the 500 pictures I snapped and one of the videos I shot.  Here is a tilt-shift video, created by Disney of the Christmas parade.

As you can see, tilt-shift is a cool technology.  I consider it analogous to HDR photography, but even cooler.  Here are links to two other tilt-shift videos with short explanations by Disney if you are interested in the technology:

Magic Kingdom Tilt-shift
Epcot Tilt-shift
Tilt-shift Explanation

Here are some screen shots from the video, so that you can see where to find us in the parade.  It airs tomorrow, Christmas Day, at 10:00 AM on your local ABC channel.

As a hobbyist photographer, I always want the best picture – especially when my child is performing.  We learned a hard lesson at the preschool open house last year: Don’t get there on time . . . get there very early!  So this year, we did.

Here is a question for the reader(s): Suppose you arrived somewhere an hour early to get a good seat.  You rushed home from work, rushed to change clothes, and had to entertain two small children for that entire hour.  All of that just so you could (hopefully) take some decent photos of your three-year-old child singing carols.  After sitting for 45 minutes (and trying to entertain those two small kids), the room is about 90 percent full.  There are several seats in the back and one seat next to you. A man with a cane sits in the empty seat next to you.  His overweight wife then asks you to give up your seat so that she could sit next to her “handicapped husband”.  What do you do?

Now I certainly have ranted before on this issue.  I hate it when handicapped people attempt to exploit their disability to gain something.  I politely suggested that they sit together in the back, however, the thoughts going through my mind were much more colorful.  Throughout the entire evening, the man kept making remarks to his wife about how sorry he was that she didn’t have a seat and how inconsiderate people can be.  I bit my tongue . . . so hard.  I haven’t had a reason to show anyone at Mackenzie’s preschool the ugly side of Jonathan and I certainly didn’t want to do it at the Christmas Open House.

Should handicapped people have reserved seating at the front when there are clearly no visual or hearing disabilities?  Parking is one thing, but seating is another.  Like you, I may have left my “What Would Jesus Do” bracelet back in the nineties, but I would have given up my seat to a blind or deaf person.  I will not, however, give up my seat to someone attempting to exploit their perceived handicap.  Notice I say “perceived”, because I doubt that toting around a cane makes you handicapped.

So that’s what Jonathan did.  What would you do?

Last night, Mackenzie’s preschool had an open house.  There were finger foods and the kids sang three songs.  Mackenzie actually sang this year!  Unfortunately, my video camera battery was dead, so no video today.

Mackenzie singing

Mackenzie with two friends: Rosie and Ryan

Mackenzie and her teacher Mrs. Beverly

Something did take place last night, that makes me want to rant, but I’ll create a new post for that.

No family blog is complete without a photo of the kids with Santa, so here we go.

I’m not exactly sure how the birth of Christ translates into Santa or Black Friday Sales or the Jonas Brothers or messy cookie-making kids, but it sure is fun, so we’ll take it!

Today was Christmas Cookie Day at Tristan’s kindergarten.  Kimberlie and I, along with other parents helped about 120 kindergarteners make cookies.  Just imagine the biggest possible mess and multiply it by 100.  Kimberlie was covered in flour and had to return home and change before going to work.  I was a little more careful, since I had the fancy camera and all.

Enjoy the pictures.

Mackenzie went on her first field trip yesterday to see Santa at “The Fish Store”, better known as Bass Pro Shops.  Due to a light day at work, I was able to flex my lunch break around and meet them there.  Of course, I took the law school’s 50D with me.  When folks see you show up with a camera like that, you end up becoming the offical photographer.  I did photos of all of the children individually with Santa and class photos with Santa . . . all on a lunch break!

I created a photoshop template of a 5 x 7  Christmas card and included for each child their individual print, class print, and school name, teacher name, and date. I also did 8 x 10 class prints for the teachers.  Sam’s printed them for about 40 cents each and I just donated them to the preschool.  In hindsight, I should have printed photo packages to sell to parents at next week’s Christmas Open House.  Preschool parents will pay anything for Christmas photos.  Oh well, I’ll get them next year!

Below are a few of Mackenzie:

Stay tuned . . . Tristan’s kindergarten class is making Christmas cookies tomorrow and the D50 will be there to capture the action!

For the second time in my life, I was able to take part in the taping of a very popular Christmas special.  In 2007, Kimberlie and I were a part of “Oprah’s Favorite Things” and were showered with overpriced merchandise by a television diva.  Other than that, there is only one other holiday television special that I would love to be a part of, and somehow I managed to pull it off this year.

This past weekend, we were invited to be part of the taping of the Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade.  Basically, they entice you to come be a part of the crowd with free entry into the Magic Kingdom for the day.  We were unable to make the Kris Allen (American Idol) taping on Thursday or the Celine Dion taping on Friday due to work and school schedules, so we decided to go down for the Jonas Brothers on Saturday. 

The Jonas Brothers sang a three minute song called Summertime Anthem, but it took us four hours to shoot the performance.  The director made them sing it no less than 10 times.  Part of that was teaching the 5000 member audience to break out into a flash-mob style dance routine towards the end of the song.  It was awesome!  By shear luck, we ended up at the very front of the stage!

The parade taping was another grueling six hours, because performers had to perform over and over and over for the perfect camera angles.  Steve Rushton (singer) and the Santa Buddies (dogs from a new Disney Christmas movie) were there and all of it was hosted by Kelly Ripa.  No Regis this year due to surgery!  And by shear accident, we ended up on center street, where the performers performed.

Of course I shot over 500 pictures and 3 videos.  Here is a small sample:

Check out the video to see how close we were to the action!

Be sure to watch the parade Christmas morning on ABC.  There is no possible way that they can show the parade without including some very good shots of us.  You should definitely watch for the shot of  Tristan and me dancing (above) during the “Move it, Shake it, Celebrate it” portion of the parade.

Why is everyone so surprised that Tiger has been cheating on his wife?

Tiger Woods is a human being — a member of the animal kingdom. He has the same non-manogamous desires as a dog or a rabbit or a . . . tiger?

While some humans, in fact, have the ability to demonstrate self-control, the vast majority do not. Let’s take food and exercise for example — 64% of adults in our country are obese. No self-control there. Then there is alcohol, drug, and prescription medication addictions . . . no self-control there. Oh yeah, credit card problems and other money issues . . . no self-control there either. I could go on and on.

And today, over 50% of marriages end in divorce. The vast majority of those divorces are the result of infidelity. On top of that 50%, not all instances of discovered infidelity end in divorce and on top of that, I would bet that a good number of affairs are never discovered. So take the facts above — humans do not possess self-control and infidelity is rampant.

Now add in the temptation factor. Look at rock stars, politicians, and athletes and their groupies/fans/advisors swarming around them constantly. Lots of temptation there. And being on the road constantly away from his family probably didn’t help the situation.

If the math equation isn’t enough so far, add in the clubbing.  There are three reasons to go to clubs — to people watch, to be seen, and to hook up with people.  Enough said.

I’m not condoning his affairs, but seriously people . . . you’re surprised?

Now watch, the media that made him is the same media that will dismantle him. Let’s just hope he can still hit a golf ball after this.

My calendar says its December but clearly the year hasn’t gone by that fast.  It must be a Y2K but or something.  It’s unimaginable that Y2K was a decade ago. Paranoia was everywhere and my field was at the top of our game.  Fun stuff.

I’ve been annoyed with blogging and micro-blogging lately.  Sometimes I want to say more than a tweet or Facebook status will allow, yet it’s not enough for a WordPress post.  There really needs to be a solid convergence between the two soon.

My goal for December is to update this blog at least once a day.  Ha!