PHOTOS: EncounterQuest holds Bigfoot track casting workshop at Rockingham’s Hinson Lake – The Richmond Observer

I had some fun playing with plaster of Paris this weekend at the EncounterQuest convention in Rockingham, NC. We were learning how to cast prints using the plaster so that – should ever come across Bigfoot tracks – we can properly capture them. I don’t know much about Bigfoot but I have always wanted to work more with plaster so why not?

ROCKINGHAM — Several attendees of EncounterQuest had the opportunity to learn how to cast footprints and meet the speakers on Friday evening prior to Saturday’s conference.

Jay Wolber, co-host of the “Cryptids of the Corn” podcast led the plaster casting workshop at the Hinson Lake Rotary Lodge. Wolber was joined by researcher Jake Dressel, of Dayton, Ohio, who was filling in for podcast partner Justin England.

While going over the casting procedure, Dr. Jeff Meldrum — professor of Anatomy and Anthropology at Idaho State University, who has a collection of more than 300 suspected sasquatch prints — noted that his book, “Sasquatch Field Guide,” has illustrated step-by-step instructions for casting.

Following the instructional portion of the workshop, the crowd moved outside to practice casting their own footprints in soil or sand.

Source: PHOTOS: EncounterQuest holds Bigfoot track casting workshop at Rockingham’s Hinson Lake – The Richmond Observer

Total solar eclipse, part I

Back in the summer of 2017, the Turner family was happily enjoying our summer vacation in Idaho and Wyoming, visiting Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks. The scenery was unforgettable, of course, but there was one sight we could have seen but opted to skip, and that is the totality of the 2017 eclipse. Yes, we donned eclipse glasses and enjoyed seeing the majority of sun disappear but this pales in comparison to actually being in the full shadow of the moon like in totality. Foolish me thought there was only a slight difference in awesomeness but after hearing others’ accounts I knew we’d made a mistake. I made it a mission to get to totality for the next North American total eclipse in April 2024.

I frequented eclipse-oriented websites and Facebook groups, planning out where I wanted to see it. I considered renting a mobile home to ensure lodging. The hoops that needed to be jumped through seemed extensive, and I thought a ton of planning needed to be put into it. Still, life got in the way and rather than having everything lined up (ha!) in October 2023, I put it off until after New Year’s to make our plans.
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Out of control driver

The last solar eclipse in America until 2045 is happening tomorrow and Kelly and I decided to take a road trip out west to see it. We had just left the airport in St. Louis today when I saw a car ahead of us driving erratically. It couldn’t keep in its lane and its hazard lights were flashing. I gave it a wide berth as we both navigated the rain-slick highway road. The driver swerved one more time, plowed through a large puddle of water and then hydroplaned into the left wall, leaving its smashed bumper in the road.

I had slowed to a stop by now and didn’t know what to do. We inched up on it as traffic slowed behind us. It was a white sedan, fairly new looking up until the crash, but with pitch black window tinting. As we neared the car, I was surprised to see the driver still stepping on the gas. The car was now facing in our direction in the left lane and the rear tires were squealing against the wet pavement!

The driver turned the car back into the direction of traffic and then cut across the other lanes, leaving a good chunk of the car’s front end in the highway as it exited to the right.

Was the driver having a medical emergency? Was he or she drunk or high? I really don’t know. I might have stopped and checked on the driver had it not been for the dark windows – I just don’t know what I’d have been getting into.

Effortless day

Today felt like an effortless day. I’ve been on a winning streak basically since I woke up. Right after I got out of bed, something told me that today would be somehow different, better. It did not disappoint.

I had a great night of sleep with lots of dreaming. Then when I awoke, I opted to skip my usual PT or workout and just eat breakfast. Then it was off to work as usual. I got in and immediately got going on some challenging work I’ve been figuring out over the past week or so. Without much thinking about them, the answers came to me and I did exactly what I needed to do to solve them.

I came home and finished up my work day, then turned my attention to a personal software project that had been hanging around. For months I’d been trying to get this software to work. When I couldn’t figure out I’d shelve it for a few months and there it languished. Tonight, I zeroed in on the issue and had it working for the first time in probably a year. Again, didn’t think about it – just did it.

I’ve felt great all day and my mind has been working very well. I don’t know what it takes to maintain this kind of effortless living but I’ll sure take it any day!

Old-fashioned management is failing to reverse the productivity slump. It’s time to ‘grownupify’ work | Fortune

This is spot on. If you don’t trust your team to do its work remotely, you don’t trust your team.

We’ve created an endless spiral of elementary school practices at work. We monitor employees by hours or keystrokes or lines of code. They then “produce” to meet the expected hours or keystrokes or lines of code. And the cycle continues, with employers trying to continually up the target. This makes sense on the surface–but to employees who are already burnt out, it becomes another game of checking boxes rather than a commitment to doing more, better work.

Source: Old-fashioned management is failing to reverse the productivity slump. It’s time to ‘grownupify’ work | Fortune

Quiet house

The kids have been home from college for the last few weeks on their holiday breaks. It has been wonderful having them home again, with lots of catching up, games, hikes, jokes, and just hanging out. I know how my parents felt when I returned home back in my college/military days. There’s a special comfort knowing they’re close by. I would walk by their doors in the morning (and sometimes the afternoon), smiling at the knowledge that they were home.

The past few days have been tougher, sending them back to their studies. Hallie packed and left on Friday, bound not for Chapel Hill but for a semester interning in DC. She’s excited to be starting a new adventure and Kelly and I are both excited for her and proud of her.

We had most of the rest of the weekend with Travis, though he also packed up this morning and I drove him at 10 AM to meet his carpool buddy for the trip back to Asheville. He is doing well in his studies and the interests he has picked up.

Now it’s just Kelly, me, and the dogs, and the quiet is settling in. I’ll miss the lights left on, the dishes strewn around the kitchen, the constant loads of laundry, and even the late night kitchen raids. Those things that once annoyed me now bring me comfort. It’s a reminder of the routine we’ve had for so long.

I know our jobs as parents are to get them out on their own, and we’re mighty damn close to having done that. Yet it’s still good to be remembered and to feel needed. I guess the beauty in the building of self-sufficiency is when they come back even when they don’t really have to. I’m already looking forward to our future visits.

2022 Celebrations: DNR!

This was the year that I put my money where my mouth is and actually got going with a band, DNR. I had first auditioned on December 30, 2021 but met the full band at my first rehearsal on January 15th. It was awkward for me at first because as the frontman / lead singer the band would often look to me for direction on what song to work on next. It was my first band and my first freaking rehearsal, so I really didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I just winged it, though, and figured it out as I went. I’m the noob in the band and the youngest, with the rest of the group having a decade or more of playing. They make it easy for me to fit in, though, and we’ve spent hundreds of hours of diligent rehearsing to perfect our sets. We played three private parties in 2022, which was great experience to be out in front of an audience, but I’ve always hungered for more! We have a dozen or so gigs lined up for 2023 at local bars and breweries and I can’t wait to get out there and entertain folks again!

One year with no alcohol

Today marks one year since I decided to stop drinking alcohol. I can’t say I really planned to get here. It started out as an experiment to see how abstaining would affect my health. I figured that I would probably sleep better and feel batter about my health if I stopped drinking. I was not a heavy drinker. I usually stopped at one drink and can’t remember a recent time where it was ever more than two. Still, I had gotten into the habit of having one drink in the evening and that over time would add up.

One thing I asked myself is why I was drinking. I recognized that alcohol often gives one freedom to shift blame for one’s own behavior. “Blame it on the booze.” I was never one to act crazy, regardless, but I decided it is better to own my behavior at all times.

There are also some people who drink because they aren’t happy with their lives. While my life does have its challenges (just like everyone else’s), again I would own my behavior and accept my situation, whatever it may be. I want to always be clear-eyed.

So, an initial two week trial period soon became a month. A month became six months. Six months became a year. I attended many parties, social events, and company meals where drinks were consumed by others but not by me. Previous attempts to stop drinking always seemed awkward when I would be out somewhere and the only one not drinking. Not this time around! I have learned that I can still have fun, be myself, entertain, and not drink. I feel no compulsion now whatsoever to drink.

It’s been an investment in my health, both physical and mental. I have lost weight and gotten rid of my gut. I sleep better now and remember my dreams far better than I once did. My mood is better. Most of all, I take pride in who I am and don’t feel the need to cede my power to alcohol.

As my streak continued, I debated whether I would have a celebratory drink on my one-year anniversary. In light of the improvements that this choice has brought me, I don’t feel the need for any celebratory drink. This is a path that has proven worthy of following. I think I will see where it leads.

A return to recording engineering

A side effect of my work on singing has been discovering what tools I need to sound decent. I started with a very good USB microphone a few years ago and then graduated to an inexpensive, 8-channel USB mixer board that I could use with some decent XLR mics I had lying around. When I got my current job, I went out and bought a top-of-the-line Shure SM7B microphone and paired it with my mixer, which got me even closer to the professional sound I wanted. Then I found a used digital sound card, an 8-channel Firewire-based M-Audio 2626 and bought it cheap.

Now, Firewire is essentially an abandoned technology now that Apple no longer ships systems with it, but it is still alive and well in Linux. I took one of my old desktop PCs out of storage, added a hard drive, installed Ubuntu Studio on it, and now have a digital audio workstation (DAW), for dirt cheap! Ubuntu Studio comes with a huge number of audio and video production tools and plugins. It works just fine with this very old M-Audio 2626, too.

My audio tool of choice for editing was once Audacity, but Ubuntu Studio comes with the open-source, ProTools-like DAW called Ardour. I’ve learned how to do some amazing things with manipulating audio using Ardour, simply by diving in and trying different things. I’m sure there is at last 200% more I can be doing with it when I fully understand its capabilities.

Over the past few days and nights, I’ve spent my free time using Ardour to recreate one of my favorite songs, R.E.M.’s These Days. I’ve often looked for old-school karaoke tracks for R.E.M. but there are few that aren’t the hits everyone’s heard a million times already. I did some Google searches to see if anyone’s done this themselves and hit pay dirt when I found a musician named Clive Butler. Clive posted several of his R.E.M. covers to Blogger from 2011-2018 and I thought I’d start with those. Then last week, I discovered he has fresh versions on his very own YouTube channel so I downloaded his version of These Days.
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Playing in a band – DNR

As I mentioned previously, I’d taken my singing much more seriously over the last few years, practicing for hours each week to improve my technique. At the end of last year, I got good enough to post a few audio clips and videos on a bandmate-finding website called BandMix. It took about a week before a few bands reached out to me, interested to talk to me about fronting their bands. I said yes to one which was a new Creedence Clearwater Revival tribute band but we never rehearsed because of a surge in COVID at the time. I wound up leaving the band and it kind of broke up soon afterward. Then I got interest from a Beatles tribute band, too, but didn’t think the music was varied or interesting enough. Finally, a musician reached out who was interested in the same music I was – and it was across the gamut of styles. My interest was piqued!

In Beaufort, NC, tagging along on one of Kelly’s work trips at the end of December, I got a call from Chuck, the drummer, who proceeded to talk my ear off on all the stuff the band planned to play. A week later, I showed up at the practice space at Kit’s home and sang a few songs for him. He didn’t say much but his ear-to-ear grin told me all I needed to know. Thus, I became the frontman for DNR.

DNR is composed of veteran musicians, many with a decade or more experience playing in bands. As for me, this is my very first band. At our early rehearsals, held almost every Saturday morning, I found myself being stared at by my bandmates, waiting for me to take charge and get us playing. It took me a few beats (ha!) to learn how to actually lead a band, but basically I faked it until I figured out what I was doing. I never considered before how cool and powerful it feels to set this band (or any band) in motion. It’s not something I pondered when I was singing solo to karaoke tracks!

So we rehearsed and rehearsed, picked an interesting setlist, and missed various practices here and there due to vacations, COVID cases, and what have you. Finally, after months of hard work rehearsing, we held our first gig over the Memorial Day weekend: a surprise birthday party for Chuck’s wife, Claudia. There were about two dozen people in attendance and friendly faces at that, but re-watching the video I took I appreciate more and more how heartfelt the applause is that we earned.
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