Even after 2/3 of my team bailed because of rain, I was dead set on enjoying my saturday to the fullest extent possible. Two of the 3 others (who shall remain nameless) decided getting wet didn’t sound like much fun… and stayed in Joplin. I guess most people’s idea of fun isn’t hiking around the forest and climbing in caves in the mud and pouring rain?!? I simply prepared by taking a change of clothes, a towel, and a plastic rain pancho. Obviously the highlight was onyx cave, which is probably the coolest cave I’ve ever explored out in the wild. We also saw a huge natural bridge… which was just plain cool. All in all – it was a completely awesome saturday and well worth getting soaked and muddy…even if most people don’t think so.
Anytime you need to get away and spend some time in the outdoors, the Mark Twain Natl Forest is a great place to do it (good weather or not). Plus, there are lots of pine trees in some areas! Check out all of the pics here !

I went to the 617 thing at grant’s church last night, and then played this lord of the rings-esque board game with a few other guys. I guess my strategy of not having a strategy didn’t pay off because i was the first person to loose all my players. Oh well, it was pretty fun, even if my massachussetts minute men didn’t quite get the job done against grant’s evil wildebeast with the sabre and luc’s serpant-thing!

Last night I went to the annual Mo State v. S. Illinois basketball game – the arch rival. As usual it was an arena full of super-pissed fans unwilling to forget the game a few years ago when SIU came back from behind on a fouled 3pt shot with 4 seconds left in the game… the siu players (and at least 1 asst coach) began taunting the crown and throwing their sweat towels up at the fans. Needless to say it did not go over very well with the bears fans, and also confirmed that the salukis were in fact a team with no class. Or at least I like to believe that.

Last night’s game was no less exciting. The bears gave up an 18 point lead to see SIU come to within one midway through the second half. The fans were up in arms because of the 10 – 2 foul count in favor of the salukis, combined with SIU’s typical style of suckness that just makes you want to throw an egg at someone. All things considered, it was a very exciting game, and a great win for the bears. Enjoy the photos, which show me with a totally sweet mullet that was a few seats down. And then we have the lovely Mason sisters who have seats right behind mine. And last but not least we have a shot of #15 Blake Ahearn making free-throws that sealed this critial win for SMS…err MSU.

Ok this is really crazy…. note the pic to the right. I went to visit LT’s hometown and hang spend some quality time with her fam this weekend. It was a total blast. It got off to a great start because there is a tunnel through a mountain on interstate 540, which is the highway between here and there. The crazy got started because we went out to eat at this awesome southern restaurant and i noticed stuck to the wall next to our table was a comment card, which had been filled out by a girl that laurel and i knew from college our freshman year. I recognized the handwriting, because this particular girl used to occasionally write me letters after she dropped out from sms second semester.

Saturday LT showed me all the sights and we took her g-pa out for ice cream, which was o-so-good. Then her parents took us out to this restaurant which was in an old barn. It was good. Then we decided to be creative and do some paintings. I tried to replicate a postcard from the netherlands which you can kinda see in the pic, and LT did a rendition of linus. It was great, and i also learned that LT in addition to being left handed, also peels the labels off of everything, just like I do.

My friend Derek Beck asked me to help out with his film project in Ohio, and I found a cheap flight from sgf for the weekend, so I did it. It was a load of fun. What was particularly cool was that this project was a 16mm sync sound film. I have shot on film a few times before, but I am by no means an expert. So it will be interesting to see how everything comes out.

We stayed up filming until well after 4am both nights I was there… so needless to say I have still not totally recovered. But it was so much fun… just what I was in need of. I haven’t done anything real creative lately, so it was a good dip in the pool of creativity. I need to get busy on a project of my own, even though I have no camera anymore.

Yesterday was Poco’s birthday – so send her some love.

And btw — make sure you keep New Year’s open. I will be sending out information for this years fiesta soon… so watch out!