Habitat

Last month I spent half the day with some of my coworkers working on the Beaverton site of Habitat for Humanity. It was a lot of fun and a lot of hard work. My arms were sore for several days, but it was so worth it.

Volunteering for Habitat for Humanity is always  something I've wanted to do, and I am happy I had the opportunity with my work.

Here are a few photos a few of my coworkers took.

 A few of the guys working on the second story of one of the houses we built.

We moved a lot of these and they are really heavy! They are the sub flooring boards... I think.

Another angle of doing the same thing, but in this one you get to see me rocking the tool belt and work gloves :)

 Poor Gladys had to vacuum out underneath the floor we put in place, it's a good thing she's tiny! haha

Our fearless leader, his name is escaping me at the moment, but he was a good sport with all of us who didn't know a single thing about how to build a house.

Standing next to him is Nannette who put this day together for us. Thanks Nannette, we had a lot of fun!

Next time maybe it won't rain, but it certainly made it interesting trying to get all the mud off my clothes and shoes.

The whole gang after a couple hours of hard work!

Life Lessons with Mr. Lima

Yesterday, I was at work doing my thing and searching for customers information when I came across this little jewel:

It is by far one of my favorite things I have found on the Internet to date. It's a little story about a volcano and drug abuse.  

Keep in mind, this was on a Middle School's teachers web page. Apparently he felt this would get through to kids?? 

We've pasted it below, but credit where it's due, it came the Mater Lakes Academy High School. The original link comes from here. 

Earth Space Science Life Lessons with Mr. Lima

(In Honor of Red Ribbon Week)

Episode I - The Life of Magma

An endless routine of going around in circles - stuck in a convection cell rising and falling between the Outer core and the Mantle; slowly rotating around the super-hot core. This is the life of Magma.

It is a great life. In this capacity he energizes the entire world and causes the movement of the lithosphere, which would otherwise always be stuck in the same place. He carries heat from the core and gives it to those less fortunate. He is so powerful that by driving this tectonic plate movement, he can shake the very essence of others - cause earthquakes that change everything forever. He a great motivator. An example for all in the geosphere to follow.  His twists and turns might seem too complicated and difficult for him, but they are magnificent for the world.  His entire journey create a field of attraction that protects the entire planet. He has a good, fulfilled, and magnetic life.

However, Magma sometimes wishes for something more, something different in life. You may call it: "some excitement". He fails to see that his life is hot and that he will gain nothing by trying to be "cool". Which is ironically what will happen if he makes the wrong choices  - a cold lonely end. Succumbing to peer pressure, Magma finds and gets high on cracks. For a while it is wonderful experience. He feels powerful - so powerful that he can push the planet's crust apart, create new sea floor, and separate and join entire continents at will. He feels like exploding with joy.

But pushing others around because of his new found addiction will ultimately cost him. As magma thinks he is getting higher and more powerful, he is actually digging himself a deep hole towards his doom. That is right. In space there is no up and down. It is all a matter of perspective. At this point, Magma unfortunately lost his. As he rises, he eventually reaches the surface, a new exciting place where he is not supposed to be. He is completely lost.

Taking a new persona, Magma becomes LAVA! A powerful and angry force that destroys everything in its path. He is now so caught up in this wave of annihilation that there is no going back. But even as he sets things around him on fire, he is also burning out. As he touches air, land, and water , he loses more and more of his energy. As lava he is much colder than he ever was as Magma. He has lost his intensity and power.

Ultimately his life ends because of his bad decisions. He hardens permanently into rock. As a rock he will stay until it is nothing but dust - destroyed into tiny grains of sand by slow erosion and spread thin all over the surface of the world he once so deeply moved.

Only if he is extremely lucky, in a few billion years, he may sink below another tectonic plate and be once again near the core of his values. After much time wasted, he will melt and once again be part of the circle of internal energy of the World. Though he is essentially powerless and mostly likely need the help of others to get close again to the good warmth of the life around the core.

In life we often find ourselves confused. We may feel stuck in a rut - in an endless routine. Life seems to be going around in circles. In times like that, we may fail to realize that near our core  values, we are powerful. We can be great and full of energy. We are deep motivators. We can touch and affect the life of many others. Around family and friends that are also glowing, we will continue to shine and create  a field of attraction that protects the world around us from evil and destruction. Near our core values we are magnetic!

If instead, we listen to peer pressure and seek excitement  in the wrong way, we may end up in a journey where we seem to rise, but are ultimately falling to our doom. For many, once the journey starts it is almost impossible to turn back. The temporary "high" that comes from the bad choices entraps and forces you to keep going up until the point of no return is reached. Those that choose to go this way, always end up losing themselves in the way - they become less powerful, corrupt versions of their formal selves. They become someone else, a destructive force that consumes the life of those around them - sometimes the very same that were once helped, are pushed around and dragged along. The saddest part is that ultimately, their own lives are forfeited. They consume themselves and if they survive in some way - they are nothing but shells of their former selves. They are powerless. While for some there is hope of return - through a long journey that requires much help from others, for the majority death or a long life of misery is the ultimate extinction of the light that of us have at the start.

Please remember to stay near your core values and say no to the fleeting "excitement" that leads only to sadness and isolation. Say no to things that ask you to relinquish your character. Respect yourself first and then others. This is especially true with it comes to substance abuse.

SAY NO TO DRUGS.

My epic weekend part 1: The calm before the storm

I've got a BIG post coming later on this weekend about what I'm currently up to at work.

Here's a hint: It involves me getting up at 3 a.m., nearly getting murdered by bovine and involves 1,800 pounds of nylon fabric.

What is it? The Tigard Festival of Balloons, of course!

What's the balloon fest, you ask? Good question. It's an annual summer festival where they bring in hot air balloons from all over the country to fly. There's also music and pancakes and rides, and I spend all weekend running around like crazy having a good time.

It runs all weekend long but before I give you a link to the details I wanted to show you this:

It's another of those (*cough* award winning *cough*) videos I make for my work, and I totally dig the crap out of it.

The festival is super fun and worth the drive out if you've never seen a hot air balloon before. The catch: They take off at about 6 a.m., so you've got to be up early if you want to see them do their thaang.

Details for this year's festival and more awesome photos can be found HERE. Expect my ACTUAL Balloon Fest post with pictures and videos (and the story of how I was nearly killed by cows and then became an accessory to a crime) later this week.

...I'll let you know when it's up.

Beards, bears and blogposts

Gather 'round, children and let me tell you a tale.

A tale of courage and bravery. A tale of savage beasts and intrepid reporting.

In short, I'd like to tell you the story of:

Warning: This story is only about 10 percent as epic as I just made it out to be.

I don't know if I've ever actually written it down but: I love my job. I love it for the simple reason that every day is completely different. You never know what you'll be doing on any given day. Some days you're stuck covering long meetings about city planning that feel like they're sucking out your soul and other days you're rushing to a field at 8:30 in the morning to track down a wild black bear.

Those of you who follow the Portland happenings in any capacity probably heard about the bear that wandered near Tualatin Elementary School yesterday (if you hadn't heard then, please, read on!)

Normally I cover another city and don't write much about Tualatin, but early on Wednesday morning I got a call from my photographer saying that the Tualatin reporter wouldn't be able to cover the story so I headed out to face THE BEAR. 

The scary as all hell, taller than I am, 200-pound black bear, to be precise.

Whenever the press covers anything even remotely like this they tend to rope us off and make us all stand together in one area "for protection."

That spot was on the other side of where I parked my car, so I had to walk through the police barricade area in order to get there. 

There were dozens of police cars parked along the road. Some were local, some county, some state. A group of about four Oregon State troopers were loading shotguns just in case the bear tried any funny business. One of them pumped his shotgun as I walked past. 

He looked up at me and smiled. 

"Hey," he said.

There was a local TV news helicopter making some considerable noise overhead and the crowd of photographers and reporters (aka "people like me") were lined up near the elementary school. 

Between us and the bear was a soccer field and a waist-high chainlink fence. 

"Totally safe," I told myself.

Police armed with tranquilizer guns (and some impressive automatic rifles) were positioned around the area very near to where we were. Some were on the roof of the school with binoculars, others were in cars ready to chase after it, should it decide to make a run for it.

Our photographer Jaime Valdez was there snapping photos and doing interviews with local radio stations (at the same time. He's that good) as I arrived. 

(Before I forget, I should say that all of these photos are used by permission of photographer Jaime Valdez. Who is awesome in every way.)

 

Kids in the school had their noses pressed against the glass watching everything the bear and the police did. They waved at local TV cameras and craned their necks to spot the helicopter as it circled overhead. 

I made a few quick calls to get the word about what was happening. One of those calls was to the school district superintendent (he's speed dialed in my phone. Yes. I know. I'm awesome) to get the official "the safety of the children is our number one priority" statement.

That's him there, with the binoculars. He's standing on the roof of the school with some police officers, who keep him informed on all things student-bear related.

At one point in the conversation he tells me "Just to let you know, the doors to the building are unlocked should you need to run."

I tell that to Jaime, who laughs (a bit nervously) and the reporters near us joke how we would react should the bear come our way.

"Jaime, are you gonna stay and get the perfect shot?" one of his photographer friends asks him. "Or are you gonna run?" 

"Hey, many, I'll do what you do."

For the record: I would run. I would wet my pants, leave Jaime to fend for himself and run.

Anyway. We stood in the rain for awhile as the bear put on a bit of a show. The Fish and Wildlife biologists had to shoot it with a tranquilizer dart but couldn't sneak close enough to it in the open field to get a clear shot.

Every so often he'd hop the chain-link fence onto the school's property and then get scared back by police.

When the bear did finally make a break for it after about an hour and a half, he darted right past all the reporters, giving all of us the perfect shots we needed for our various newspapers/nightly news/websites.

He was, maybe, 50 yards away from us.

Jaime was able to shoot this:

While I was able to capture some it on the iPhone and use it in a small video on our website.

They did eventually tranquilize the bear when it ran up a tree and my exciting day was over. I spent most of the afternoon waiting for them to bring the bear down, then talked to some neighbors, the fish and wildlife biologists who captured it, and kids from the school who had probably the most memorable school day of their entire lives.

They released the bear back into the wild sometime today out in the woods near the beach.

When I got back to the office at about 3 p.m. we had to come up with some good bear-related puns for our new lead story and I had to start writing.

If you want to read my story (and if you've made it this far into this exceedingly long post then YOU DO) just click on the big pretty newspaper page.

Thanks for reading the blog and being awesome!

O HAI!

Oh, hey, Internet, it's me. Bruce Campbell.

Geoff and Katie are hanging out being lazy good-for-nothing's today. So I thought I'd upload some of their photos that have been left on their camera. 

If Geoff were here, he'd probably have something witty to say about each of them, but I'm just a cat.

I don't really care that much about pithiness.

 

  

According to Geoff this is a guy named Mac Carruth. He's a goalie for the Portland Winterhawks hockey team, who are in the playoffs or something. Geoff went to Winterhawks practice a few weeks ago and hung out with the players for a story he wrote. There were some TV news people there, too, who had a quick interview with Carruth about the playoffs as he was on his way out the door.  Geoff snapped a quick pic.

Katie and Geoff spent some time with little baby Max a few weeks ago, and Katie (as usual) took a billion photos. This was my favorite, so I put it up. Geoff and Katie had others they liked but, you know, they're good-for-nothings so it was up to the ol' BC to pick the photos.

This week Geoff wrote a story about a Chinese food restaurant that's closing after almost 60 years in business. The woman on the left is one of the owners, and daughter of the restaurant's founder. The woman on the right is Greta Helmer, a waitress at the restaurant who has worked there for 46 years. 

They looked over some old newspaper clippings about the restaurant and talked about the good ol' days, including a fire that burned the restaurant to the ground in the '60s.

This is a fish. Geoff brought him home the other day. I want him. Oooooh how I want him.

Geoff calls him Robert, or something. But I call him Dinner.

Geoff sprays me with a water bottle when I try to eat him, but Geoff goes back to work tomorrow.

He will be mine, oh yes, he will be mine.

My work...

...is one of those places that everyone is happy at, and everybody likes to know everyone, and a place where they value their employees. That's all fine and well but in some ways it's nice to be anonymous. In the first week do you know how many times I heard "wow, you look so much like your sister, Jenny!"

I knew that on the first day I was going to get my picture taken, so I took a little extra time getting ready and put a little more effort into it then normal but what I didn't know (even though my sister works there and could have warned me) is that said picture would be sent out to all the employees so that when they saw me around the office they knew who I was and was able to welcome me to the company.

Employee pictures also get put up on the companies intranet so that if someone mentions an employee  you don't know, you can say "wait, let me look them up!"

It's really helpful, but as someone who prefers to be behind the camera and not in front of it I was not pleased that it would get passed around and forever live on the interwebs... but it's already there and I can't change it now, so oh well. Here you go.

To catch you all up on the rest of my work situation: I love it.

My work? It's not exciting. It's just data entry but I love pretty much everything about my company. I work with lots of nice people, I see my sis a little more (kinda), we all play volleyball together on our lunch break and can do yoga, and they give me lots of free stuff and pay me pretty well :)

Also, I got to go shopping with my companies money for a new chair that I wanted and a keyboard tray :)

Shopping when I don't have to pay for it? Turns out it's really, really fun.

On a more serious note: I'm starting to hit my groove there and fall into place with everyone. Yay!

Let's Roll, Kato

Oh, how I want one of these.


This, my friends, is the Black Beauty, the car from The Green Hornet.

You know, The Green Hornet.

It's got rocket launchers...

And machine guns.

It is, in short, the most wonderful car of all time.

 

Now, I know what you're asking: "Hey, Geoff. Why do you have a superpowered death machine on the ol' blog? And what's it doing parked at a Carl's Jr.?"

Well, Internet, I'm glad you asked.

As it turns out: I have an awesome job.

I don't want to brag, but I'm kind of a big deal.

"An optimist stays up to see the New Year in. A pessimist waits to make sure the old one leaves" columnist Bill Vaughan

Another year is almost through and it's time to look back on the year-that-almost-was and make plans for the next 365 days. 

2010 saw a lot of pivitol moments for the Rappingers (namely the start of this blog). It also saw Geoff finishing his Photo-A-Day project, and the wedding after wedding of family and friends. 

Mostly, though 2010 can be summed up like this:

Geoff worked...

and worked... 

And worked some more...

So, what's there to look forward to in 2011? Well here at LaaR (sidenote: worst. acronym. ever) you'll be seeing more of what you love: namely more inane babbling and the photos. Lots of photos.

The goal will be to post to the blog more regularly. And with what Katie and I have planned for the year I think that's something we'll be able to do. 

Speaking of which: After the success of my 365 project (read: I finished it by cheating. A LOT). I've decided to start again, albeit a big more relaxed. This time it's a tag team effort, with the K-Dizzle and I working to take a family photo once a week.

Yes, boys and girls, we're talking FAMILY PORTRAITS of the Rappingers. 

There'll be some good ones:

"Good," of course, meaning I find it kinda funny

There will be some bad ones:

Like this one I tried to do in September. Just very boring and not well thought out.

As well as several taken at the last minute but by the end of the year we should have a pretty accurate account of 2011 just in time to say hello to 2012.

So mostly, as far as the blog is concerned 2011 plans to bring more of the same. If you have any suggestions for a 365 photo for us, or ideas on what you'd like to see more of (did you like the Halloween movie reviews?) we'd love to hear from you. 

The new year is T minus 9 hours and counting.

We'll see you on the other side.




---Geoff

Geoff's Kinda Crappy Videos #5: Football Edition

It's time for another edition of Geoff's Kinda Crappy Videos. These are short documentaries that my newspaper The Times has started doing over the last few months.

This one is about Aloha High School football. The team went on to win the state championships this year, but back when we made this they had just made the playoffs.

For those not content with the piss poor quality of this upload, go here. Otherwise, enjoy:

In the still of the chill of the night

This may sound counter-intuitive but there’s something really nice about being at work really, unreasonably, early.

"...and that is why Ace of Cakes is the greatest show on television today. The End."

For those of you who don’t know what I do for a living (like --- for example --- stalkers or our friends in the Russian Federation) I work for a small town newspaper just outside of Portland. Once a week on production day I get to work early. I mean E A R L Y to finish up my stories and get started putting the newspaper together.

By early I mean "I didn't even know that time existed" early. I'm talking "Holy Crap What the Heck are you THINKING!?!" early.

This week I was at my desk at 3:30 in the a.m. and didn't get home until about 5 or 6 in the nighttime.

And you know what? It’s really nice.

Yes, you read that clock right. It's 4 a.m

Now, I don’t consider myself much of a “morning person” but I have to say that there is something incredibly relaxing about being up when the rest of the world is asleep.

Everything is so quiet. You feel like you're the only person in the entire world.

Plus my 45-minute-long drive to work is also shorted to about 17 minutes, which is REALLY nice

I’m used to early mornings, having had them most of my childhood, but I’ve never really embraced them. Most of the time I’m too groggily choking down caffeine and sweating bullets to get my stories finished to realize it, but today I really enjoyed myself.

The newsroom has a tendency to get a little crazy during the day. People spend their days running around, making calls, shouting across the cubicles at each other, driving back and forth and everything else that has to do with making deadlines.

But at 3:30 in the morning, when you’re sitting in the office in the dark, all alone. When there’s nobody around but you and your thoughts and Pandora turned up as loud as you want it’s actually quite relaxing.

And hey, I.T.-guy from work, if you're reading this: Yes. I use Pandora. At work. And don't care if it takes away bandwidth from everybody else in the building. It's 4 a.m. and I'm at work. I'm gonna listen to whatever the heck I like. Deal with it.

Of course, I'm write this after having worked a 14-hour day yesterday, so I might just be a little sleep deprived.

I'm gonna go to bed now.

Speaking of Pandora, everyone should listen to Seasick Steve. You shan't be disappointed.

Geoff's Kinda Crappy Videos, #4: Brownie ME

My newspaper The Times has started doing little videos to accompany some of our stories. This is one of the better ones. It's about a Beaverton woman who makes and sells brownies at the local farmer's market.

For those not content with the piss poor quality of this upload, go here otherwise, enjoy:

Want more? Read the story: http://www.beavertonvalleytimes.com/news/story.php?story_id=128344812637634700

Geoff's kinda crappy videos #3: Hatcher's Holiday

My newspaper The Times has started doing little videos to accompany some of our stories. This is one of the better ones. It's about a Tualatin woman who loves to decorate her house for Halloween.

Anybody know how to upload a better quality video? This resolution kinda sucks (a lot)

Go here for the better version.

Anyway, here's the crap resolution version:

Wanna read the story? Go here.

Geoff's kinda crappy videos #2: Doing it Yourself

Okay, I know I said awhile ago that the next video would be about visiting a bookmobile, but I couldn't get it to load, so we're gonna do this instead.

For those not in the know, my newspaper The Times (serving Tigard, Tualatin and Sherwood) has started doing little videos to accompany some of our stories. This is one of the better ones. It's about a Tualatin blogger named Carly Cais, who blogs about her Do It Yourself fashion tips on her website Chic Steals.

Want more on The Times' Carly? Check out the link, and enjoy the video!

Next time: Who wants BROWNIES!?!

---Geoff

Attack of the killer GEOFF'S WORK

So today (Thursday) is the day that the new edition of our paper The Times comes out. And today (Thursday) is the day that we put all of our stories and photos and videos and such up onto our website. And today (Thursday) is the day that when all those millions and trillions of people logged onto tigardtimes.com they saw this:

I routinely do google searches for "Geoff is awesome" on my work computer.

So the 2 hours of traffic I sat through and the 10 hours of work I spent on the newest video for today is all for nothing.

Six days until vacation.....

---Geoff

Geoff's kinda crappy videos #1: Urban Chickens

For the last couple of months I've been working on short 2-minute videos for our website. They usually go with a story in that week's paper and are designed to draw people online.

Of course, we never advertise that we have a video on the website, so I'm not sure how much it actually helps, but so far it's meant that I've gotten the creative juices flowing and keeps me busy with film stuff -- I have a tendency to get a little stir crazy when I'm not doing something movie related.
Usually the reporter and cameraman go out and do the filming and interviewing and then the cameraman and I try to put something together in the editing room (usually with mixed results). It's an interesting way to go about making movies, since I usually have no idea what the footage is (or even what the video is about) until I sit down at the keyboard.

But hey, that's the way it works sometimes.

So far we've made nine videos, only about four of which I think are even watchable. I'll post one every so often so you can see, in a new segment I like to call:

GEOFF'S KINDA CRAPPY VIDEOS!!

This was our first one. Personally I think it's one of our better ones (which, if you don't like it, could tell you something about the rest of what's to come....)

Sorry in advance about the quality... not sure how to go about fixing that.

Like I said: "Geoff's kinda crappy videos."

If you actually found that enjoyable, and wanna learn more, check out the story, written by Angela Webber

---GEOFF

Next time: LET'S GO TO THE BOOKMOBILE!!!