hey everybody this will be hard. What are the five reasons you are glad it is summer?

to make friends and have fun.
Adventure Club-San Antonio
There’s also one in Austin
Check them out - they do wild stuff like sky diving and simple stuff like going to the River Pub in San Marcos. Once a month they get together to celebrate birthdays. Everything from book clubs to rock climbing. Couples and singles welcome.

tour with Beth Nielson Chapman to the UK next month, but you can still catch him at the Cactus Cafe in Austin June 4th.
It might be worth it to hop a jet plane across the pond to catch those Brit shows, though.

Swim free in S.A.

It’s the first day of our summer - what did we do you ask?
We went down to Cypress Bend park on the Guadalupe and pretended to fish. Boys jumped off rocks. The tubers all get out just upstream at the last public exit (if you go too far you go over the damn dam at the mill and drown) so we have the downstream part of the park to ourselves.
I mean we were really alone because there were NO fish. Too much beer in the water.
Then we went to Hinman Island park on the Comal and cleaned off in the clear fresh water. Actually caught small bass. Snorkled. Sun set - went home.
Watched

Matchstick Men.
John and I proclaim it a flawless film. Recommend it highly.
Hope your first day of summer was a good one, too!
(Mine included sleeping late AND taking a nap)
Great day. More to come.

Renee mentioned in her comment to the post below that we are converting old home videos to DVD. Some of them are on VHS, some on HI-8 and some on miniDV. Actually more like “tons” not just “some”. All of our camcorders are spastic in one way or another so I bought this gizmo for inputting the non-digital tapes. The miniDV tapes input directly via Firewire. We decided to compromise on “high compression yet non-editor friendly” formats like MPEG and DIVX on the old analog stuff after talking a lot about what format would be best for archiving. We got this program and bought this excellent tutorial. And I bought an 8x DVD burner. Now all we need is something to put 10 extra hours in the day. If you have an interest in converting old video to DVD, though, we’ll share our toys with you.

This is a slideshow from June 6th.

And Bluehole2
And Bluehole3

I have no idea where Blue Hole 1 is.

The early email returns on people’s schedules indicate June 25th - 28th might work for a Hootenanny weekend at Rockport. If that doesn’t work for anyone, email asap. Evan is going to a two week creative writing class at Texas State that ends on the 25th. He’s a college boy now. I’d like to get down there on the 24th so maybe I could ride down with someone and we could open it up. Last year, Renee and I rode down two days early.

This is the beach we need to be walking on.

With a few tents in the back yard and the two upstairs bedrooms, we can handle several families. Some of us might like to do a campout on the beach one night. I got the utilities changed over into my name today so it’ll all be on and ready. We have bikes, fishing gear, kites and crab nets. The house is made for “beachy” people coming in and out - little astroturf rugs and linoleum floors - all very durable. Two bedrooms but lots of room for sleeping bags on the floors. A nice kitchen with a giant new fridge.

Good camping resource:

Cheaper Than Dirt/Camping Supplies

Cheaper Than Dirt/Cot

Our first visitor group has grown from 2 to 3 and we will need a cot. My friend, Lisa, found this site and I wanted to share it with all you campers.

I really like the new look of this blog. Great job!

at Tycoon Flats tonight. We’ll drop Taylor at Molly’s end of school party and then make our way over to St. Mary’s about 7:00. They don’t start until 8:00 so we’ll be drinking Red Stripe and heckling them as they set up. Eatin’ some forbidden Jamaican food. Drive over there if ya’ll ain’t doing nothin’.

“Family Walk on the Wild Side Day Activity Book. Provides basic information on how to take a family on Texas nature walks, even if you don’t know the name of a single flower or bird. Available in two versions, one that is generic to Texas, and another that lists places in the Houston area. Email the Texas Committee on Natural Resource (TCONR) at tconr@texas.net with your address. Be sure to specify which version you’d like!”

Man in Makeup

They’re trying to build up their circulation. Help them out. It’s a great magazine.

Article in RollingStone.com

Chris, you ‘ol son of a gun.

Frontline is going to do a special on the music biz. And wouldn’t it be funny if we lived in a world where ringtones cost more than real songs?

boingboing.com

When he wasn’t looking, I caught a photo of Taylor talking to Molly on the telephone after he just got back from the end of the year school concert. He had the John Travolta solo in the middle of songs from “Grease”. He was chosen as this year’s “Choir Student of the Year” and “Drama Student of the Year”. Again. Hey, I’m the proud Dad, I get to brag.

I sent this using the Hello thing. It works great. You can even click on it and see a larger version. The bad thing is that the photo goes to their server, not the one that Kim and Chris host for us. That means that the photo would be lost if this service ever went out of business. But if this method gets you going, then please try it. It’s free.
Posted by Hello

I decided to get a third email account. It’s with Google. The Yahoo account has too small a mailbox. The Roadrunner account address is too hard to remember. Maybe this one will be juuuussst right.

My address is jimmiewhipple@gmail.com
Send me something!

Check this out. “Hello?”

I’ve been using ThumbsPlus as a photo thumbnail and slideshow viewer for 7 or 8 years. Several people recommended Picasa recently and I think it’s much better. Then, today I saw this BloggerBot info, it looks like it will autosize a photo and do things like email it, send it using instant messaging or publish it on a blog.

I think that Dad and Linda used it to email some photos recently. They looked real good. It automatically gave them a photo border and put a nice little drop shadow behind them. The picture in a previous post of Russell and his fish was one.

Russell’s Birthday.

John won two tickets on 92.1 for Ray Price at Floore’s this Saturday night. They’re up for grabs to the first taker!
Nothin like big free fun!

Don’t you love the Internet? While waiting for the coffee water to boil, I was reading a totally unrelated article and 4 minutes and clicks to 6 links later I was somehow here. I had to share it because they fit right into Jimmie’s Art For The Day.

You were all so very nice to Jimmie and kind to us while we were singing. We had a really great time.

I just got off the phone with Claude and he said Jimmie and I would play from about 8:30 to 9:00. That’s perfect - we can have Jimmie’s party and cake at 7:00, then we play and then people can split in that 9:30 - 10:30 hour if they work the next day. I imagine the place will be getting pretty crowed around 9:00 because Claude said he has a lot of other people playing late. The question is, how early do we need to get there to grab a table so we can all sit together? They don’t reserve tables. The last time we all met out there, we were spread out and we need to avoid that. What do the Casbeers experts say?

Chordie - lyrics and guitar chords

Casey is making tremendous progress in learning to play the guitar. She played The House Of The Rising Sun last night. Look out world. I wanted to recommend a good guitar chord site to her and found this. On many of the songs, it will accurately transpose the chords up or down. And it shows a fingering chart right on the page for all the chords needed to play the song - and the charts change as you transpose the song. Check it out. If you can recommend other sites for chords or guitar instruction please do.