The Blog of Bert Jones

I have cre­ated a new tutorial!

This tuto­rial talks about using His­tor­grams (and sat­u­ra­tion) in Memory Man­ager and Sto­ry­Book Cre­ator Plus to adjust your photos expo­sure and color. Enjoy!

His­togram Fea­ture in MM3

Lately I have been watching a little TV, laying in bed, before sleeping for the day.

This morning, after Amy left to take Courtney to school, I hear Riley come thumpin through the house and he opens my bed­room door, with that look on his face of “where’s my mom!”.

I told him before he could even say any­thing, “Mommy went to take Bear to school, she’lll be right back”.

I fig­ured he would then shut the door and go to grandma’s room, like usual, but what I was watching on the TV must have caught his eye (Smal­l­ville) and he climbed up into my bed and shim­mied to the tiny space in front of me on the edge of the bed (TV is on my side).

I scooted back a little to make more room for him and he snug­gled in. I put my arm around him, (I think I felt him inter­nally sigh), and we watched the show until Amy came home and in the room.

She asked him (sounding all sur­prised), “My Riley is awake, what are you doin? Are you watching TV with daddy? What are you watching?” and he paused and I whis­pered “smal­l­ville” and he blurts out, “yeah! Smallville”.

And he stayed there until Amy men­tioned Tod­dler Tuesday, and he was off like the flash.

The snuggle time was great while it lasted. Its not often he snug­gles in with me, like he used to when he was a baby*. So I take it when I can.

I love all my snugglers.

*Foot­note: When he was a baby, Amy would sneak him into the crook of my arm, while I was asleep and he would take his naps with me during the day.

My wife and our best friend Katie are par­tic­i­pating in a walk for the Courage Center.

Details below:

I’m par­tic­i­pating in the 2010 No Name-Deli Express 5K Your Way!

Hi!

In Honor of Kassie Harms I have cre­ated “Team Kassie” to par­tic­i­pate in the 5K fundraiser for the Courage Center. The Courage Center has always been an impor­tant charity to me. They have been a great resource for mem­bers of my family my whole life and I am so happy to have this chance to par­tic­i­pate to help raise funds for them. Kassie is cur­rently a res­i­dent of Courage Center in Golden Valley. What she has over come with the help of her ther­a­pists is amazing! You can read her story here: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/kassieharms

Please help me by spon­soring my team in this event! Any little amount will help! If you would like to join the team and walk with us that day please visit our team’s web­site http://5KYourWay.kintera.org/teamkassie

Thank You!
Katie Montour

Keep fighting Kassie, Never Give Up!! Please Pray for Kassie!!

Follow This Link to visit my per­sonal web page and help me in my efforts to sup­port Courage Center

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Some email sys­tems do not sup­port the use of links and there­fore this link may not appear to work. If so, copy and paste the fol­lowing into your browser:
http://5KYourWay.kintera.org/katiemontour?faf=1&e=3389429622
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I got my iPad wifi+3G today!

Very cool.This will help me when I can’t bring a laptop, and my iPhone just won’t cut it.

I cur­rently am cooking in the kitchen, using the Key­board Dock. Checking mail, recipe app, music and email.
Its great!

Today was my first day out on a walk with Amy, Katie and Troy.

Wow…was I not ready for that. I knew I was out of shape, but I wasn’t pre­pared to walk that fast or that much.

Now, I am sure for them, that didn’t seem that fast, but after (and this is embar­rassing) 5 min­utes (I think, It was only a few blocks away) my ankles were burning and giving me pain, which was trav­eling up my leg. My lower back was causing me pain. As we walked it got worse and I started slowing down. I just couldn’t walk as fast as them without the pain get­ting worse. When we would need to walk faster to cross streets (those damn lights really don’t give you much time to get across Lex­ington) I thought I was going to pass out from the pain.

To top it off my allergy meds weren’t working. So I kept snif­fling and I had a headache before we left, which only got worse.

I felt like such a wuss.

There was one point during the walk where I was lag­ging very far behind, and even though my eyes were tearing up from the cotton and pollen, I don’t think that entirely con­tributed to it. I almost had a mini emo­tional melt­down. I just felt like a fat loser that couldn’t even handle just walking in my neigh­bor­hood with my friends. Part of me felt like I was let­ting them down or holding them back, because they would have to wait for me to catch up.

It did get a little better on the way back. It still hurt, but the pain wasn’t as severe.

So, I gotta make sure I con­tinue on the tread­mill until our next walk so that, hope­fully, I’ll be ready for it.

As for right now, I still feel emo­tion­ally down. I can’t get my legs com­fort­able. I move them and they cause me a little bit of pain (in between my knees and my ankles). Their just really, really sore I think.

I may be taking a hiatus from Project 365.

I was sick a few weeks ago, and it made it hard to keep up with, since I wasn’t going any­where or doing anything.

And since then, I have had  a lot going on.

The other part is that I really want to use my big camera. But with my odd hours, its hard to really take that thing every­where, so I end up using my phone, and that wasn’t really the ini­tial point of this project.

I may start where I left of in the near future, if things calm down and I can figure out a better way to use my big camera.

Turtle Mocha

I knew it was going to be a LOOOONG night, so since I was going to work ear­lier, I thought I would stop and get me a pick-me-up to make sure I could stay awake!

I ordered my usual turtle Mocha, without nuts; but, when I got to work…sure enough…there was nuts in it…the night just got worse after that.

Orange Chicken

I hav ebeen craving some LeeAnn Chins. THe only one that I can really go to is the one by my work, since I pass it. But it closes so darn early.

Well, since they adjusted my sdchedule this month, I have been get­ting to work, when stuff is still open!

So I treated myself to some Orange Chicken. Not as good as the one in Market Square, Down­town Min­neapolis, but still good.

You can tell, when your sick, that you got some good med­ica­tion, by the whacked out dreams you have.

I had a whacked out one this afternoon.

I was back at my par­ents old house, when Riley, My wife Amy.….and Amy the COP from work. (Not a real cop, but that is what we call our Client Oper­a­tions Peeps).

It was late, Riley has passed out on the couch, my wife was already in our room asleep. My par­ents were asleep and at this point I didn’t know that Amy the COP was living their too. I fig­ured I would stay up and watch some t.v. in the living room, and if I fell asleep, there was a another couch I could sleep on. Mainly so Riley wouldn’t be alone.

So I noticed I hadn’t put food away from ear­lier (some Chi­nese food). And so I put it away and got me some­thing else to eat.As well as went around the house and turned off all the lights, locked the doors and such. (And ran back upstairs like I used to, cause I didn’t like the dark.)

Then Amy the COP appears from nowhere, looking for the food I put away. She needed it for a col­lege assign­ment. The sub­ject was some­thing like “bach­elor food items” stuff bach­e­lors would put together or eat. (Don’t ask me, she is mar­ried her­self, so I don’t know what the class was about). I told her I put it away, that it was mine from ear­lier, but she could have it for the class (my par­ents always had tons of food around). But the more I thought about it, I found a  better option…Ramen Noo­dles. She was happy with that.

Cut scene to some mono­rail car. My wife and I, are in this Mono­rail thing, I think Amy the COP was with us. Riley was not (must have still been sleeping on the couch).

There is this guy and his 7 month old there too, and he just puts the kid in my lap, so that he can go do some­thing. Cute kid so I didn’t mind.

Then cut scene to out­side the mono­rail and I am watching the whole thing. Amy, Amy and the guy are not in the car any­more. I am watching the mono­rail car, go across this long bring and these windy roads to this building on this tall (I mean tall) plateau where this pen­i­ten­tiary was for mutants (weird I know).

Appar­ently this Lady, her Oldest son, her daughter and younger son, all were in some acci­dent or some­thing. The youngest two were able to get away, but the cops took the mom and her oldest son to this place cause they had powers and they thought they caused the crash (they didn’t, they were innocent).

So the younger two (now adults, and cops no less…noticing a theme here with cops). Came to break them out.

As they are meeting with the mom and brother, the mom tells them to go, have a normal life…and the daughter says, “Who said any­thing about normal” and a tiny laser shoots from her eye and melts a very tiny part of a chain link fence sep­a­rating them, while the younger brother “repairs” it. They were mutants too. I guess its a family thing.

So they break them out. And they are back in the mono­rail car, heading over the long bridge. What they don’t know is some other cop saw them use their powers and so everyone is going to blow up the bridge to stop them.

But Batman’s car is behind them on the bridge (going side­ways and making screeching noises on the track, its a car, not a monorail…but wait! The tires trans­form and now it IS a monorail.)

All of a sudden, I am Batman, and I push their car to go faster across the bridge (I have nitro you know…) And I get them across just as the bridge blows up…but there is some cord attached to my car, which is attached to their car, and its pulling us down with the bridge.

So I eject out of the car, som­er­sault over the cars. I am holding onto this rope that is pulling the cars and I use my batarang, to slice the cable. Saving the day.

And then I woke up.

Weird thing I real­ized when I woke up…Amy the COP likes Batman. (the real Batman, not the “me” Batman in the dream…that had nothing to do with the dream, other than per­haps that was the con­nec­tion in the dream of why I tran­si­tioned to that. Who the hell knows)

Eewww

I hate aller­gies. I go through so much kleenex and my nose gets so sore…