Congratulations Phil and Katherine! No, Phil is not expecting, but they got engaged today! About time ol’ man.

Mrs. Shoo received her order from Payless today. She was only suppose to order one pair but magically two showed up. Now how funny is that, sweetie? Of course her first request were for her shoes to be the daily photo. I can’t help but oblige as it something to take pictures of that aren’t dogs. I love my dogs, but sometimes it’s great when you don’t have to bribe the subject to stay still.

I really need to invest in some photography lights. My setup is completely jerry-rigged. My white backdrop is white construction paper. Then I point two halogen work lamps at the subject and a work light to add more light in the background. After that, I tweak the white levels in Photoshop. The white and green shoes were a little difficult, but I think it looks good for tonight’s purposes. All I could ask for, is that they become someone’s background.

Stopped in Best Buy for some new music, found this.

A somewhat lofty summary of the local Springfield blogging scene from the Illinois Times and a plug for Spfldbloggers.com.

With a follow up from John at Just-Two-Guys. I like John’s version better.

Yup, still wearing pants.

Mother Nature just does not want to let it up. It’s suppose to get down to 36 tonight with a chance of flurries after midnight with no accumulation. I want it to be 65 and sunny now, please.

I know the photo above is Clancy but I’ve got a Buddy story.

Last night we had DVD’s that had to go back to the video store. (Yes, we Netflix but Mrs. Shoo has been going through the movies since she’s been home this week) I whispered to Buddy, “You wanna go for a ride?” For the next fifteen minutes he cried and cried while I taunted him by paying no attention and surfing the internet. Finally, I got up, and he was at my beck and call with his tail wagging at a hundred miles per hour.

On the ride to the store, I lowered the window all the way down so he could stick out his head and let his ears flop in the wind. Dude was in heaven.

Coins, keys, and candy for cuties.

Ever since Lebowski Fest Exhibition Experience, I’ve developed a habit of calling every noun in the book, dude. It irritates Mrs. Shoo all the time. We took a short walk tonight and the dogs were pulling really hard in the opposite direction to smell poop or some kind dead animal. I yell at the dogs, “Dudes! Cut it out!” Mrs. Shoo turns around and gives me the look ‘omg, I can’t believe you just uttered that sentence.’

Oh well. Dudes.

Today’s dailyphoto is brought to you by the unfolded laundry sitting in the chair.

If there is one chore that I hate more than the scrubbing, sweeping, vacuuming of the daily upkeep of living; it’s laundry. I was babied as a kid all the way through adulthood till the day I moved out. My mom did the laundry.

Everything from sorting and folding socks to getting that nice crease in dress pants. She did it all.

Of course, I never questioned it, “Hey Mom, love you, but can you stop taking care of me? I am a real man now, and I’d like to clean the skid marks out of my own boxers now. Thanks.” Are you kidding me?! I relished every Downy fresh sock, shirt, and pant that magnificent woman washed.

Now I am left to half ass fold my own boxers, bunch up my socks, and find some way to get out the wrinkles. It’s not the same anymore.  I wonder if the dry cleaning lady will let me call her mom?

I didn’t get a chance last night because I was dead to the world and didn’t want to have sit down and type out a blog post, but better late than never. Here’s a summary about what’s new with Spfldbloggers.com.

• Much easier to read; both in IE and FF. The last version had a bug where there would be a much larger gap between the headline and the posted by section in IE rather than Firefox. For those of you curious – 50% of viewers use FF, 48% IE, 2% Safari.
• If you click the blog’s title on the posted by section, the site will display posts from the linked blog in the same paginated fashion as the main site. A little hard to explain, just click it.
• I am still trying to figure out a way to work photos into the mix. Matt Penning, Dave Heinzel, and myself all have a daily photo. I was trying to work them in somehow, but that will be a project further down the road. Right now I have pictures from the Sangamon County Flickr Group displayed on the right column.

Umm, what else? I’ll be going through the blogroll soon retiring some blog sites and cleaning up the list. I’ll figure out some way to archive the removed sites.

I coded all the CSS from scratch, so if something displays weird let me know. Ohh, and if you’re still using IE6, it looks totally funked up – time to upgrade folks.

Of course I’ve got a few more ideas on the drawing board, I just need the time. Tell me what you think. Am I missing anything here?

Well, it’s up. I finally finished the redesign of spfldbloggers.com.

It’s been a weird weather day. It’s flurried off and on all day. Nothing like the 9″ of snow Chicago got last week, but still odd. I guess that’s Illinois for you.

Everyone is just chilling out tonight.