It’s My Imagination

Michael Phelps and Sports Illustrated

August 20, 2008 on 12:58 am | In Entertainment | 1 Comment

Well, it’s certainly no surprise that Sports Illustrated has all ready had its photo shoot with the Michael Phelps. Phelps is the first athlete ever to win 8 gold medals in a single Olympics. He really is a true star and a true athlete. He has dedicated his life to his sport and has found success that will more than likely never be repeated.

Tags: Beijing, Beijing Olympics, Michael Phelps, olympics, Phelps, SI, Sports Illustrated

Nastia Liukin Accepts Silver With Grace

August 19, 2008 on 12:06 pm | In Entertainment, travel | 2 Comments

(Photo credit: KAZUHIRO NOGI/AFP/Getty Images)Nastia Liukin performed beautifully in the individual event finals of the uneven bars at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. She had a few small errors, but stuck her landing in a very difficult routine. In fact, her routine had the highest difficulty rating of any routine being done at these Olympics. Her competition, the Chinese women, opted to increase their own routine difficulty ratings in order to be able to compete against her.

In the end, another screwy judging scoring system left Nastia tied with her competitor He Kexin which should not have happened. These two gymnasts had identical difficulty ratings, both had small errors in their routines, but He Kexin had several more small errors and took a sideways step on her landing. Remember, Nastia stuck her landing. All things being equal, Nastia should have scored higher. But, this is international gymnastics and all things are apparently not equal. The two gymnasts wound up in a tie.

The International Olympic Committee determined that there would be no ties in gymnastics and the computer is programmed to automatically break the tie by dropping the 4th lowest score, leaving only 3 judges scores remaining to be calculated together. This left Nastia with the Silver medal. There should have never been a tie in the first place.

Nastia Liukin has handled the situation with maturity and grace. Although she was no doubt disappointed, she accepted her medal with a smile, posed for photographs after the awards ceremony and never said an unkind word about the situation. She is certainly a gold medal individual.

Tags: Beijing, Beijing Olympics, gymnastics, Nastia, Nastia Liukin, olympics

Beijing Olympics - Women’s Marathon

August 16, 2008 on 10:45 pm | In Entertainment, Some of This Some of That, travel | 2 Comments

(Photo credit: Guo Dayue/Xinhua)Were you watching the Olympics this afternoon? The women’s marathon took place today and, while I’m not a runner, and certainly not a marathoner, even I could appreciate how big of a lead Tomescu Constantina of Romania had for the last several miles. She headed into the Birdnest Stadium over a full minute ahead of any other runner to win the gold medal.

(Photo credit: Clive Rose/Getty Images)What amazed me even more was that after she crossed the finish line, she continued to run laps around the stadium, carrying the Romanian flag in celebration. What a run!

Tags: Beijing Olympics, marathon, Romania, Tomescu Constantina

Powerful Multi Media Application

August 14, 2008 on 8:46 pm | In Entertainment, technology | 1 Comment

If you’ve ever wanted to convert AVI files to MPG files this software is for you.

Blaze Media Pro is an all in one media application that will allow you to convert AVI to MPG among many other things. This software includes conversion, ripping, editing, recording, burning, playback, and yet is easy to use. Beyond the basic features, there are also advanced features that include video capture, video creation, combining, and extraction, video editing, copying of music CDs, audio and video merge, lyrics search, audio tag editing, and more. One of my favorite features is that you can take audio content directly from video and save it as a sound file, or how about taking still images and creating video files, even video editing is available.This software has endless possibilities and supports a multitude of formats.

Tags: AVI, Blaze Media Pro, convert, MPG, multimedia

Collecting Fine Art

August 7, 2008 on 8:52 pm | In Entertainment, My Imagination | No Comments

One of the things my husband and I have done since we went on our honeymoon has been to collect artwork for the locations we’ve visited. We started with a few pieces we picked up in Hawaii and have collect a number of pieces along the way. We enjoy finding works done by local artists and have collected items in many different mediums.

If you enjoy fine art work, check out Tomasz Rut and Park West Gallery located in Southfield, Michigan. Park West Gallery is home to the largest collection of fine art in the world and conducts fine art auctions all over the United States and Canada.

We certainly enjoy our art collection and all of the personal memories that come with it. Each and every piece we’ve collected over the past 21 years have such special meaning to us, we treasure them all.

Tags: art auctions, fine art, Park West Gallery, Tomasz Rut

River Rafting in Tennessee

July 29, 2008 on 10:07 am | In Entertainment, Family, travel | No Comments

As you know, I was away from home for the last 2 weeks. The purpose of the trip was to attend a show in Knoxville, TN where my sisters and I had a booth in order to sell our hand sewn items. However, the show was only 3 of the 14 days, the rest of the time we were simply out enjoying ourselves!

One of the first things we did was to go river rafting on the Pigeon River in Tennessee. We started the adventure just below the North Carolina state line and rafted for about 5 miles. The trip took about 4 hours, mainly due to the river being low. There were a lot of rocks that we had to navigate around and over. There were some small rapids that made it exciting, and a few spots in the river deep enough to take a swim. We really did have a good time!

That’s me and my niece’s daughter in the front of the raft. The handsome young man in the back was our guide.

Tags: Pigeon River, rafting, river rafting, Tennessee

We’ve Pimped Out our Gnome

July 10, 2008 on 10:09 am | In Entertainment | 4 Comments

I’m not sure what our neighbors are going to think, but we’ve pimped out our garden gnome! My husband is a huge Kansas City Chiefs fan and so, in preparation for the upcoming football season, we’ve decked out our gnome to cheer on the Chiefs. Check out all of his fan bling!

I love gnomes, their just so cute! We have a second gnome for our garden, but he only comes out at Christmas. The rest of the year he is hidden away, generating his magical powers!I found an online game that uses the magical Bling Gnome to get rid of players unwanted items. They do this by eating the items and then pooping them out. That sounds disgusting except that the gnome poo is actually gold! Now, if I could only get my little guy out in my landscaping to do the same thing!

Anyway, the online game is Dungeon Runners and its available as a free download. It’s super easy, just sign up and download. The download time was rather slow, and I’m on a fiber optic network, so not sure why it took almost 15 minutes, but once it downloaded, I was able to begin playing immediately.

The game itself is a bit dark, but it’s the basic good against evil. I’m certainly not the best gamer around, but I have to say I thought the graphics were really well done. There were an awful lot of keys to use to make things happen and so for me, it was confusing. Gaming enthusiasts would probably have no problem. I did find it distracting that there were so many things happening on the screen that covered up parts of the game, including a chat room for players that covered the bottom quarter of my screen. There is probably a way to turn it off though, so I won’t let that deter me from playing.

Tags: bling gnome, Dungeon Runners, gnomes

America’s Got Talent

July 8, 2008 on 8:11 pm | In Entertainment | No Comments

My daughter and I just finished watching “America’s Got Talent”.  It was tryouts in several different cities.  We had a couple of minor power outages during the show, so we did miss a few acts while the television restarted.

I think my favorite of the ones we saw was the very last guy.  He sang a wonderful song and brought the house down.  His mom was watching in the wings and everyone was very emotional.  The guy has advanced to Las Vegas and I hope he goes far.

Do you ever watch this show?

Grandma’s Revenge

July 7, 2008 on 8:15 am | In Blogging, Entertainment | 2 Comments

I saw this video over at Reenashwina and I just had to share it. It’s very funny and at the same time, the jerk in the car gets just what he deserves! I love this grandma! Leave me a comment and let me know what you think. The videographer was in the right place at the right time for this one!

Tags: grandma, video

Having Fun with Wii

July 3, 2008 on 6:33 pm | In Entertainment, Family | 4 Comments

So, we’ve been playing on the new Wii for a few weeks now. I haven’t had to much time to play, but my daughter and husband have definitely been enjoying it. I think it’s really cool that it is all wireless, even though I think the graphics could be much better for the price of the games and the game system. But, hey, it’s all for fun anyway right?!

My daughter has been playing several of the games that came bundles with the system when we bought it, including some of her favorites, Mario Kart. She has been having so much fun with it, we even have one of the steering wheels for her to feel like she’s really driving. It’s neat to not have to mash buttons, instead just steer and the car goes where you’re steering it.

One of the games they play together is Legos - Star Wars; The Complete Saga. It’s so funny because the characters are from Star Wars, but they’re made out of Legos. There are a lot of battle scenes and the characters are wearing Tactical Assault Gear and carrying light sabers. My husband is not a big gamer, so it’s funny to see him playing. I think he really enjoys the time he’s spending with our daughter more than anything.

I’m hoping that over this long weekend I’ll have more time to play. Although, I’ve got an awful lot of sewing to get done in the next week!

What’s your favorite game?

Tags: lapolicegear.com, tactical assual gear