Greetings Citizens. Happy Halloween! Yesterday was great fun at the dentist. I got one permanent crown and one temporary one. The nitrous oxide was good though.

Today I get to see a dietician and a diabetic specialist. I'm certain my diet is about to change from fried chicken to carrots. I don't think I'll be handing out any Halloween candy tonight. Instead, I'll be working on the image I made for the Gnome Print Exchange.

Greetings Citizens. Yesterdays football games were lots of fun. Me & my crew all had a great time! The first game was a blowout, which is very uncommon, but the second game went down to the wire. That was the end of my season. There will be no high school playoff games for me. So I am washing my football gear and putting it all away until next season.

I am supposed to meet Cole today to ration out the platinum and palladium for my 19th Century Processes class. Not a task I am looking forward to but it must be done. I save the kids quite a bit of money ordering the chemistry in bulk. It will still cost them $100 but they will get to make double the number of prints than if they would have bought a kit. A couple of students are complaining about the cost but they should know that this class isn't cheap and that PT/PD is the cream of the crop when it comes to printmaking. But, if they're willing to take a letter grade drop in their grade for $100, that's their choice, not mine.

Greetings Citizens. Last night was the USU Art Guild Halloween Art Auction. It's a fairly well attended event with lots of good art and miscellaneous crapola. I managed to get a little of both. The big score for me was a full-sheet monoprint for $20. I have a nice wall in my apartment for it. I also got a pair of sculptural pieces that I like. And I got some solvent for the Color II class next term. Now we can do solvent transfers from color copies. Fun.

Today is the Kiddie Superbowl. I'm working a couple of games with the infamous Dream Crew of Cache Valley. They are all good friends (and officials). More importantly, they know how to have fun out on the field and won't do anything stupid to get us all in trouble. In that department, I am the weakest link. Afterwards we'll probably go get a bite to eat and share a few laughs.

Greetings Citizens. Yesterday was fun on the Spiral Jetty. The weather was a bit chilly but we didn't get snowed on... or rained on either. I drove out there with the Grad Boys (Cole & Barrett) and Megan (one of my advanced students). I think we all made a bunch of images. I know I made a fair share including my "Gnome Image" that I needed to make for a print trade that is coming up soon. I shot a couple with the Spiral Jetty in the background and one with a dead dog that Barrett found. I think the neatest part of the trip was watching the foam (which there was more of than I've ever seen) blow over the jetty. It would have been a good time to be a videographer!

When we finished we went to Mack's Family Drive-in, in Tremonton, for a burger and tots.

Today I'm showing the alt-kids how to coat the silver onto the paper they salted last week. I think I'll be seeing more than a couple images from Rozel Point made with salt from the Great Salt Lake. That is soooo Post-Post-Modern!

Greetings Citizens. I had a pretty fun weekend. Saturday I went with my farmer friend, Dave, to Buhl, Idaho. He was picking up some calf pens. I made one image along the way that I am hoping to process today. We went to an auction too. I found it interesting to see how the bidding went on the cows. But what I found really interesting was the family-like atmosphere there. What was so strange to me was very ordinary to the people there.

Last night I was at Mary Kay's to watch the World Series and have dinner. The vittles were delicious and the game went to Detroit, who won 3-1 behind the stellar pitching of Kenny Rodgers.

Today, we have a visiting artist in town. Jungjin Lee, a Korean photographer, will be on campus for the next three days. Tonight she is giving a lecture. The following day, she'll be looking at the work of our students. Wednesday, I think we're making a field trip out to the Spiral Jetty. I'm excited to get out there and make some images, so I hope we go.

Greetings Citizens. Everything is going so well here. My students are doing a good job and are making fine work. Some of the kids actually wanted to get a headstart and begin working on salted paper images yesterday. Of course the light was horrible but they managed to make a few... with five hour exposure times!!! Hopefully, we'll have some sunny days next week and things will move a bit more quickly.

The guy who set up my web page has threatened to shut it down. I have contacted another person to get a new webpage set up. She's trying to find out about us keeping the same name. I, personally, have stopped all contact with the guy. He seems to have decided to burn a bridge and I am happy to let him do it. It would be nice to be able to keep my old site and take ownership but it's up to him, I guess. He owns it so it's his choice.

My football season ended yesterday with a JV blowout: 50 - 0! I actually could get a play-off game but I haven't had a varsity game in two weeks, so I think the chances are slim to none. I could also get a Kiddie Bowl game on the 27th. But, again, I ain't counting on it. Since I don't have a game tonight, me and Hubba are going to go to Dave H's game. Afterwards, we'll go to Javier's (in Ogden) for some choice Mexican food.

Greetings Citizens. It was great fun on the turf Saturday. In our first kiddie game, a fellow official made a horrendous call that completely fired up the coaches on my sideline. They screamed and yelled the whole game! The thing was was that they were right in being mad so I had to sit there and take the crap for another official's call. It was brutal.

When I got home, I settled in to watch some TV and nurse my cold. I was drinking tea and watching Florida give a win to Auburn when Ann called from the lab. Apparently, the NuArc is blowing fuses. That mean, unless we get things fixed, the students will be making their platinum prints outside. That means a lot more guessing on exposure... which means mistakes... which means money.

Today I am cleaning my apartment. Later, I'd like to ride up to Tony's Grove just for the fun of it.

Greetings Citizens. The 19th Century kids worked all day making Kallitypes. I must admit there were some very nice looking prints. Cole is working on his digital tests and will, no doubt, have some first-rate image next Tuesday. We'll be preparing paper for salted paper images on Tuesday too. I think we'll make a gelatin solution with the salt this time. Normally, I soak the paper in salt and brush the chemistry directly onto the paper. But the students are struggling getting contrast into there images so using gelatin will prevent the silver from soaking into the paper.

The basic kids are making some pretty nice portraits from what I am seeing. They have a skills test today. They'll either get really high scores or really low ones. The test is for me really. I can see who is having problems with metering from the answers they give.

No football game tonight. It was a short week for public schools so the games were played on Wednesday. Since I have a night class, I wasn't able to work. There's a chance I can get a game next Friday but I'm not counting on it. I actually had a pretty good season considering I have been gone for two seasons. There's a very slim chance that I'll get a first-round playoff game but I doubt it. I do have some kiddie ball games tomorrow though.

Greetings Citizens. My first trip to the doctor's office in twenty-five years went about as well as one could expect. I found out that I have high blood pressure but that my heart beat is okay. I'm starting medication for the blood pressure this morning. I still have to do my blood work later today after school. So there are probably more surprises to follow.

Today I am giving a Kallitype demonstration. I saw a lot of the students processing film yesterday and over the weekend. So, I imagine, they will be ready to go this morning. I'm going to mix up some gold toner for them to use... until it is gone... also. If they like the way their images looked after being toned, they'll be able to mix their own toner from the palladium that they're getting to make Pt/Pd prints. Heck, it's only seven drops which is about the amount needed for one print.

We have double-header football games this afternoon at Bear River. I hope my tender & sore hamstring holds out.

Greetings Citizens. The kiddie play-off games went smoothly enough. The games were all good and the scores were close. Parents wanted to kill us. All in a day's work for a youth official

Yesterday, after football on TV, I went up to the school and made some kallitypes. I used platinum/palladium developers instead of the traditional developers and was very happy with the results. The colors were nice and the scale was wonderful. Ah, the "working man's platinum " print.

Today the basic kids are working in the lab on their portrait assignment. Those with film to develop will be guinea pigs for the new developer that Craig decided to purchase. I was against switching a third of the way through the semester but the price was right, I guess.

Greetings Citizens. It has come down to this in High School football. That was my Friday game with the result going the way of the victims. You can read the game summary here. It is interesting to note that the head coach called a time-out with a few minutes remaining to express his apologies for the whole sordid affair. He didn't need to (everyone knew the coaches weren't responsible) but I think he felt he needed to assure everyone that his players and program wouldn't stoop to such a low thing.

I got knocked on my ass in the game, too. I didn't even see it coming. One second I'm watching the play, the next second I'm looking straight up into the pouring rain. I got hurt a little but that won't keep me from working today's play-off games with the little kids. I'll just be a little bit slower than I usually am (which is pretty damned slow).

At school, all of my students appear to be doing quite well. I'm very happy.

Tomorrow I'm grading & mixing chemistry. Maybe I'll get the chance to make a print, or two also.

Greeting Citizens. Scheduled my first doctor's appointment in over twenty years the other day. I've been nervous ever since. I am convinced that the good doctor will find about a dozen things wrong with me, outside of being overweight & not of sound mind.

I had individual meetings with the Independent Projects class last night. All the meetings went quite well! The students are working on some very interesting ideas and I am very excited to see what they finally produce.

The basic kids are wrapping up on the technical stuff and will begin working on portraits this Friday. It's always a bit scary for me because I give them a couple of weeks to work on things. The slackers rise to the surface and don't use their time wisely, excuses & stories abound!

This morning Cole is showing us all the procedure he followed to create a digital negative. Many of the students are interested to create digital negatives themselves, so the demonstration should be extremely helpful to the students. After that, I'm going light on them. I had them create an insane amount of work for the last techniques to get them to realize how important it is to create new negatives (with the process in mind) and practice good technique and work habits. It was successful. Some of them even learned how time consuming alternative processes can be by pulling an all-nighter! So, I'll assign them to shoot some new work over the weekend and selenium tone their negatives. Monday, I'll show them how to make Kallitypes and they'll have a week to make a few images (of high quality)!

Greetings Citizens, the 19th Century students turned in some great work yesterday. They are definitely on their way! Cole, on of the graduate students, read a handout I game him on making digital negatives and turned in a digital VDB that was simply amazing. I got him scheduled to give a demonstration to the class on Thursday. It took him a some serious groundwork to figure it out, but now he can bust out prints with ease. I, for one, was impressed. Got home and made my first doctor's appointment in over 20 years. To say that I am a little nervous is a gross understatement! Rode Heidi to SLC for a new tire and to get the carburetor adjusted for the higher altitude here. They seem reliable but I'd rather have Steve & Chris working on the bike. While the work was being done on Heidi, I met with a former photography student from Salt Lake Community College for an enjoyable lunch at the Porcupine. Got home and went up to the lab to see how things were going. It was a ghost town. What a difference a day makes!