She's going to hate this picture but I had to document the fact that she got her braces off.

Nicole painted the bedroom and I'm digging the iPhone panorama lately.  I should have turned off the lamp though.

Picking up Madison from a friends house.

Today was the Bix7.  A seven mile road race that is probably the biggest non-marathon in the Midwest.  I love it because it's a chance to run with professionals.  This years winner was Leonard Korir from Kenya in 32:14, and the biggest name runner (at least to me) was Meb Keflezighi who won a silver medal in the 2004 Olympic Marathon.  Meb finished third and I was 5070th out of 10,677 finishers in 1:08:08.

Tomorrow I'm running the Bix7.  It's such a large race that you have to pick up your packet the day before so Madison drove me down.  She get her license in a little over a month and still needs to get in more hours of driving.  After picking up my race packet we went to Harris Pizza.  Madison insisted this guy looks like the Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin.  What do you think?

I apologize to myself and anyone viewing that I allowed this to be the only photo I took today.

Logan had a roommate named Noah who was five (and a half).  By morning they had become pretty good buddies and Noah even climbed into Logan's bed to show him a video.

The hospital is across the street from Kinnick Stadium, home of the Iowa Hawkeyes.

Waiting for the doctor to give the word that we can leave.

He's been cleared to go and we got a laugh / big cheesy smile out of him.

Walking out, the same way they walked in.

And finally... back home on the couch.

We left the hotel at 7:00 am.  Logan isn't a big fan of getting poked by needles so Nicole got some numbing gel to put on his hands.  We took care of that in the parking garage before heading in.

Getting a little comfort as we walk across the skybridge from the parking garage to the hospital.

We just arrived and he's not looking thrilled about what is to come.

Still pretty stoic as he's prepped for surgery.

Logan's surgery was a two part deal.  The first part involved placing a tube into the kidney, the second part involved the actual removal of the stones.  We headed to the first of two waiting rooms and it was small and packed.  I discretely snapped the below photo as a memory of the worst waiting room ever. 

The tech came out to see us after the tube was in place and we were told he would be wheeled down the hall to next surgical suit so Mom camped out by the door to get a glimpse of her boy.

It's an odd thing to see your son under anesthesia.

The second waiting room was much larger and less populated but I still decide to take a walk.  From the skyway you can see the construction site for the new children's hospital.

While in the skyway I met up with the rest of the family and led them to the spacious waiting room.

A very relieved mother meeting up with her son in the recovery room.

Big sister helping with the straw.  He was still able to give her the evil eye even though he wasn't totally awake.

Curious George stopped by the room.

By evening he was up and walking around the unit.

Parents are allowed to stay sleep overnight in the room.  It took some shuffling but we managed to set up two fold out bed/chairs in the tiny room.

Logan has over 20 kidney stones all in his left kidney.  Tomorrow, he is having them surgically removed at the University of Iowa Hospital.  We are about two hours from Iowa City so we headed out tonight and got a hotel room so we don't have to get up so early tomorrow.  While Mom checked us in Logan found a comfy seat and I began to document our time in photos.  I decided to to use Hipstamatic's Claunch 72 Monochrome for all of the photos and just change the "lens" for effect.

When we got tot the room he grabbed the remote and got even more comfortable.

Next thing I knew everyone was in bed.

I decided to go for a run and found a nice bike path behind our hotel.  Iowa City is a college town so as I trudged along at about 11:30 per mile I encountered several young runners easily galloping along at about 7:00 per mile.   

While I was gone, Logan spent some time at the pool.  I managed to coax a smile out of him even though he's pretty nervous about tomorrows procedure.

Nicole is nervous as well.

Logan is having his surgery on Tuesday so we let him choose a place where we could go out to eat.  He chose Pizza Ranch, a pizza and chicken buffet.  Here is with my Mom.

Tomorrow is my wife's friend Missy's birthday so tonight we went out to the Prime Quarter.  It's a steak house where you cook your own steak.

I snapped this as Madison and I were sitting on the front porch watching a storm move in.  About a minute later our neighbor, Jan ran by at a pretty quick pace, obviously trying to get home before the rain came.  You can read about Jan's crazy run on her blog Running on Fumes.  

I'm a quality manager at Metal Spinners in Rock Falls, IL.  Metal spinning is a process of forming metal over a formed tool to make a round part.  In some ways it's like using a pottery wheel to shape ceramics.  Today our plant manager came out to see if he can still spin and I thought should document it with a photo.  

This is a lame photo because I took it off the TV screen. I'll have to make up for it by writing a little bit.  Tonight I was watching part of Metallica concert on Palladia.  Logan was annoyed with me because he wanted to play his Play Station and I was watching this on the TV it's connected to.  I wondered if he thought it was "appropriate" for a dad to listen to this style of music.  I have to admit if I walked into a nursing home and heard a resident blasting Metallica it would seem odd.  But that's because people of that age didn't grow up with pop culture so our stereo type of them doesn't include any element of pop culture.  I don't think you stop liking Metallica just because you reach a certain age so the stereo type of "old people music" is going to have to change.  If it doesn't, it's going to seem weird when my great-grandkids come to visit and their mom makes me turn down "Enter Sandman".

Tonight we drove over to Prophetstown to see the fire damage.

A neighboring community (Phrophetstown, IL) had a large fire in their downtown this morning destroying eight or nine buildings.  I thought tonight would be a good night to photograph my own downtown. (Morrison, IL)

This is my nephew on his go-kart.  It's fun to watch him tear around on it.  Since he's the smallest kid the kart goes fastest when he is driving.

I occasionally check in on the work of Seattle photographer, John Keatley.  Yesterday I came across a blog post about his iPhone portraits.  He has photographed over 100 people with his phone.  As I pass the half way point of this 365 project I realize what I would really like to have is a body of work with some cohesion to it rather than random shots throughout a year.  Maybe the place to start is 100 iPhone portraits.

I was cleaning my desk at work to make way for the laptop + external monitor = dual monitor setup while Tom, the shop foreman was asking about the fake camera shutter noise that cell phones make.  He was commenting that he had never heard my phone make the noise.  I explained that I have the sound turned off but that my phone does indeed make that noise.  I turned the sound on, pointed the camera phone at my desk and snapped this without really even paying attention.  Since I didn't take any other good pictures today I'm using this one as a reminder of the day I got dual monitors.

I have mentioned before my love for Waffle House even though there are none close to by.  Another restaurant we don't have but I like is Portillo's.  They're a little closer than Waffle House but still far enough away that I don't get to eat there often.  Today I had to go to West Chicago, IL for work so lunch was at Portillo's.  When your food is ready they call your number and a little rhyme to go with it.  Something like Twenty-Nine it's time to Dine, or Forty-Three, come see Me. Today I was One - One - Seven, You're of to Heaven.  

My trial of Photoshop CS6 has run out so I bought a subscription to Photoshop CC.  Since I was a legit owner of CS3 I get my first year at half price.  I don't think $9.99 a month is a bad price for Photoshop.  As I mentioned before it's a more attractive option to me than dropping $700 on the CD version like we had to do 'in the old days'.  This is my first work of art with CC.  I wanted to spend more time on the photography part but I was told his friends will be online at 7 and they expect him to be there.  I've included the "before" version below.

I put a little effort in to my photography tonight.  Hopefully this is the start of a good streak.  I also changed the template on my blog.  The previous template had some issues with comments.  Let me know if you like the new look.  I'm still undecided.

Madison and her friends have been making "space paintings".  Tonight she gave all of us a lesson in how to do it.