What was supposed to be a quiet weekend at home with nothing much to do, turned out to be packed with activities. I was so excited all week long for this weekend to get here. I knew this would be the weekend that Christmas Jimmy got to go to the Christmas Tree Farm and purchase (not pick out) our 2012 Christmas Tree. Thank you to the Underwood Family for growing Christmas trees around the corner. That was supposed to be the centerpiece of our weekend. Christmas tree chopping and shopping was only a quick flicker of the fun-filled weekend.

Can you picture that physical comedy gag that you always see on the television when someone opens a champagne bottle or a bottle of wine? The releasing of contents under pressure causes the cap or cork to go flying across the room and always hits someone in a comical way. Right in the forehead, or the nuts, something pretty hysterical. That happened to me this Friday night. I was minding my own business having a fajita, and someone across the room was celebrating something. I am not sure what was being celebrated, probably an occasion of excellent companionship. A wine cork smashed me square in the mouth. I made it through OK, minimal scarring, no need for stitches, just a bruised sense of value and worth. Luckily I was done my dinner but this incident did unfortunately result in a cancelation of desert.

I awoke Saturday morning still reeling from the night before and learning to live with the fact that my existence had been boiled down to a scene from The Three Stooges. It was the first of the month so I had to dash over to work and get the first of the month work done. No big deal. The positive about work on a Saturday was that it brought me to Newark on a gorgeous weather day. I brought my (Wifey’s) bike with me with intentions to head to White Clay. I got to White Clay and the place was deserted. I brought along all my Under Armour base layer gear, but did not need that stuff. The weather was amazing. I rode the trails of White Clay, enjoying the weather, the outdoors, nature, peacefulness, and finding geocaches all afternoon. I would have stayed until I ran out of sunlight, but I had MUCH more important matters to attend.

Thanxgiving is over, Wifey is done her volunteer missionary work in Puerto Rico, and it is officially December. All these facts add up to only one thing, it’s Christmas tree time! I had to rush home from White Clay and pick up Wifey to head around the corner to the Christmas Tree farm before sundown. She picked out a perfect blue spruce. We had the tree back to the house, set up, and decorated before the sun extinguished and the Asians borrowed it for the next 12 hours. It looks and smells fantastic. One of the handsome boys that lives in our home can’t decide if he should pee on it, or guard it with every fiber of his being.

Sunday was the day that Team Sellers dipped our toes back into the world of culture and refinement. We had tickets to see Warhorse the play in Philadelphia with Taper Matt and his diverse family. We made a pact to not walk out half way through the show. We were able to stick to our pact this time. We wanted to see the show because of Matt’s recommendation, so when the show came to Philadelphia it seem fitting to see it with him. Plus, Sunday was his birfday, so it was fun spending a matinee and dinner with him to celebrate. He was very lucky to have Team Sellers to himself for an entire day. We typically charge by the hour. The show was fantastic. A well above average story, the acting was good, and the theatrics were exceptional. The way the story of a war was told on stage through the use of theatrics, imagination, presentation, and innuendo was much better than simply having gun battles, bright lights, and explosion sounds. It was a bit of a “heavy” story as Wifey pointed out, but an enjoyable two and a half hours. The show was followed by Thai dinner in Wilmington, the opening of gifts, and the awkwardness of other people’s families. I enjoyed every second of Taper Matt’s 55^th(?) birfday.

I believe the official rule is that 2 years makes a tradition. If that is the case, then this year I continued ¾ of the Sellers’ Family festive ritual. Since Wifey decided she would rather spend her Turkey Holiday with her Puerto Rican relatives, the rest of us loaded up and headed south.
Today was a most gorgeous day. The sun was out all day and the weather was near perfect. The boy half of Team Sellers decided it would be a good day to do some driving, wander around some strange parks, run through some new forests, and log a bunch of miles on a whirlwind geocaching adventure. Charlie is a great geocache companion. He was by my side at all times. He never actually helped me find any, but celebrated with me each time we uncovered a hidden gem. That poor boy is worn out! He ran and played outside all day, met some new canine friends, and saw parts of Maryland that neither of us would know existed otherwise. Baby Girl Sellers got to enjoy a nice quiet day without anyone trying to ear her face. She tells me those are her favorite days.
Turkey dinner with all the fixings…seems like that would be a good idea any day of the year. I guess it is, but when it takes half a day to prepare I understand why those pilgrims and Real Americans didn’t stay friends for too long.
Putting aside everything we know about Thanxgiving, there is one thing we can all agree upon. Forget discussions of political differences, religious ideas, family squabbles, that drunk uncle that wants to play weird games without shirts, the pie is burnt, or there is too much meat in the turkey. There is one thing about this day off from work that truly brings us all together…turkey sandwiches.

I woke up a bit later than normal this morning. Between a late rise and daylight savings, there was a bit of glow to the sky this morning when I stepped into our closet to chose the attire I would adorn while tackling today. I got a view out the window of something in the front lawn, I had not idea what to think. I meandered down the stairs and got a better view of what looked like a front lawn that had been TP’ed. Once I made it to ground level and was able to focus outside into our front yard I saw what looked like an overturned trash can with litter spewed about. My brain went from “great, we got post-Halloween TP’ed” to “marvelous, I have to go clean up someone else’s garbage”. When I finally got myself ready to go outside, I started to walk around the front of the house. It became clear that whatever I was seeing was no accident, it was no post-Sandy debris, it was nothing done in malice by the neighborhood toughs…it clearly was something methodically and tenderly placed. My first instinct that kicked in was remembering that today was my wedding anniversary. I thought how sweet it was of Wifey to wake up in the middle of the night and place something in the front yard for me to see first thing in the morning. That lasted about a second until I realized how many flaws were actual in that single thought.

As I made my way around the corner of the driveway it became clear what had happened. Someone had pranked the local Oil Baron pretty damn well. I jumped to an immediate assumption of who was involved, but my assumption jumping was incorrect. Not only is there no time in the lives of the originally accused, creativity and spontaneity have also gone missing. It was only a few minutes later that the actual culprit was positively identified. That culprit will pay dearly. Lots of new evidence is coming in almost every minute. Apparently the voting has been suspended in our area to divert all resources into apprehending and punishing the guilty parties. The joke is on the Middle-of-the-Night-Marauders though. We don’t support any party. I refuse to vote until there is an app on my phone for that. I can’t see a reason to have to leave my home for something so silly.

I spent almost the entire day last Saturday biking in fair hill. I was there in the morning and out until I almost ran out of sun. It was the last day to do much of anything because of Hurricane Sandy Pants. It was probably also the last, and best day to be out leaf peeping. Beautiful fall foliage everywhere that would be destroyed with the upcoming storm. It was the first time I rode with my new fanny pack camera bag, worked out perfectly. Strapped around my back I hardly knew it was there. I made an album of some of the better shots HERE. I rode almost 20 miles on the trails and surrounding roads. I was able to clean up most of the geocaches in Fair Hill that had eluded me earlier in the summer, which was fun.

I was joined for part of my day by the notorious head of the Finazzo Family, Eddie. We had a blast. He was still getting used to his new bike shoes, I’m sure he will come to love them in time, we all do. Eddie made for a great camera subject most of the day. He was constantly doing thrilling things, like falling down. He was gracious enough to allow me to shot him with high-speed photos. He was determined to climb a hill that I have not seen anyone able to climb. I don’t want to ruin the ending or say whether he made it or not, but I did put together this quick time lapse video of his attempts. I think the video turned out just fantastic, considering it was made with all still photos.

Between the amazingness of GPS, an app on my phone, and Google maps, there is a way to export my entire ride into Google maps for viewing. I think that is pretty freaking neat. Check it here. Wonder if this link will work in 10 years from now.

Tropical Storm Sandy could not stop our house from doing some light redecorating. Trapped in the house, scared to death exclusively by words from the media, and starving for ways to make our friends laugh, we dove headfirst into bathroom redecorating. Three of my favorite photographers are now proudly displayed in the most illustrious room in our home. The master bath is now adorned with our favorite shutterbugs, Matthew (Sub)Urban, JDT and Peter Lik (actual name, not changed for internets humor). I informed the team from Mobius that they were sharing wall space with Mr. Lik, and also sent Mr. Lik a similar email informing him how honored he should be to share wall space with the other two boners.

Ain’t no party like a hurricane party, ’cause a hurricane party stops at 9pm and everyone goes to bed. People were panicking, power was going out, flood waters rising, shingles coming off, Indian River Inlet Bridges collapsing. None of this matters when Team Sellers has a house party planned. Even if our power had gone out last night, we had a contingency plan in effect. That plan was to do what every young, hip, in love couple does in a state of emergency…finish our Big Five Africa puzzle.

We finished that sucker and started our new puzzle. The new puzzle is one I had made from a collage of our own personal pictures from August Holiday 2012. Not only are we the luckiest people I know, we are probably also the most exciting.

Take that Hurricane Sandy!

It is too late for Team Sellers, please save yourselves by any means neccesary. If we never see you again, thank you Earth fo the memories. Sincerely, Team Sellers

I have been talking a lot about photography and messing around constantly with my new camera and pictures. I have bored the tears out of countless people lately telling stories of how with “digital negatives” I can take a picture that was just OK, and make it brilliant. This is not to be mistaken with Photoshopping, or faking a picture into looking good. With a digital negative, or the camera RAW file, there is a lot more information stored than simply what is currently displayed. It is similar to the negative of film. It can be developed and exposed countless ways. I have been playing with this new toy most of my free time. When I originally posted our Africa pictures they were simply right off the camera. I didn’t look at them, or process them in any way. I have gone back to make groups of the photos look better for printing, other digital applications, wall hanging, puzzles, all types of waste. The comparison between some photos is unbelievable. It is hard to believe they are the same photo. Simply by adding more or less light, a little tweak here or there, and a decent picture is suddenly an amazing picture. None of it is faked, just focused on the good and covering up the bad. I put up an album here.

What do all of these things have in common? Nothing.

Jury duty? How could I possibly get picked for jury duty? I always assumed that because of my horrid history as a human (and American) and lack of interest in helping decide the political hierarchy of this country, I was excluded from jury duty. I made it almost 40 years without getting picked, how could I assume anything else. I first received my notice in the mail at 8pm on a Friday evening. 12 hours later, Saturday morning, I was getting on a plane to leave the country for 3 weeks. I had no time or way to let the illustrious Cecil County court system know that I could not attend Guilty-Fest 2012. I paniced, and then sent the paperwork to  a young brother that used to go by the name of BT. Thankfully, he handled the situation for me. That does not change the fact that I traveled for 3 weeks in Europe and Africa with the fear of reentering the country and being taken into custody for crimes against the motherland. BT handled the situation and I was assigned new dates, simple enough. Those dates were this past week, around my birfday, lucky me. I ended up only having to go 1 day, Monday, and was dismissed by 11am. Hardly any inconvenience in my life because of jury duty. I feel like I got off pretty lucky. I never would have been picked for anything serious. I had a fairly insane, ludicrous, racial, sexist, ageist rant planned in case of emergency. This is now the second time in recent memory that I wasted an opportunity to live the life dream of shouting “No further questions!” in open court. Hopefully someday…

Primus in 3D was a truly life changing experience. Not only was it a long time since I have been out to a concert, but it was one of my all time favorites to rekindle my flame. The tour was called The 3D Tour. Who knew what to expect? Not me considering I didn’t even know it was called The 3D tour until the drive to the show. King of Mobius Matt told me during that drive that he was purposefully ignoring news about the tour so to be surprised. We were handed 3D glasses as we entered and there was a giant screen behind the band that had nonsensical 3D cartoons playing all night to correspond with the songs. Extremely artistic and elegant to watch! My single complaint is that there was absolutely no front lighting because of the screen. You could hardly see the band at all. Half of the fun of a Primus show for me was watching Les Claypool. That man treats a bass guitar like I have never seen any other object treated, anywhere. Picture a lumberjack in the Redwood Forest with an axe. Now picture that the oldest and largest tree in the Redwoods insulted that lumberjack’s mother. That scenario would be nothing compared to the abuse a Les Claypool bass guitar suffers. After that night I decided I want to live my entire life in three dimensions. No more of this pitiful two-dimensional world for me. I’m tired of living my life like a paper thin cardboard cutout.

Went out with Wifey to the Delaware Theater the other night. It was a celebration of 15 years since the day we first met. I thought it was only 3 year, but she swears it’s 15. They currently have a play running titled The Outgoing Tide. Just stupendous. I enjoyed every minute. It only had 3 actors, Olivia Walton, The Trinity Killer’s son, and Peter Strauss. All accredited television actors as well as theater. They were marvelous, so glad we went. It was a great story that both tugged at my nonexistent heartstrings as well as had me (literally) El Oh El’ing throughout. Great job Delaware Theater Company.

I grabbed a few pictures of the Wilmington Riverwalk after sunset and before the play. A couple turned out very nice in my opinion. Quite a fun, event filled week for Team Sellers. Lucky for Cecil County criminals that jury duty did not hinder or interfere with our plans.

PBR for the uninformed is the Pro Bull Riding Association. It is quite a popular sport amongst the fans. Last weekend we went to Philadelphia to watch Brazilians and cowboy rednecks get rag-dolled by bulls. This past weekend we went to Wilmington to take in a ballet at The Grand. That makes us Cultural Chameleons (I was saying things like this long before Boy George). It should also be noted that we did walk out of said ballet during the intermission. So I guess our sophistication does have some limits. This was our first ballet. It was beautiful to watch. I would describe ballet as a not-so-subtle way for people to show off how long they can stand, hop around, and twirl on tippy toes. I can only imagine what is next for us…I am hoping an opera, but that idea was quickly vetoed.
Leaving the ballet early did have advantages. We went on to find one of the best geocaches yet. It was tied off to some fishing line, dangling from a fence on the Wilmington River Walk, and way below the walkway and surface of the water. As we reeled it in we discovered the fishing line had a used rubber attached. So far this is the only geocache that came with aids, and we even found a geocache in Africa. I would say the geocache from the rubbery abyss is the best geocache yet.

Probably pretty weird, but I did take a picture of the geocache too: