Arfink: Thread Of Randomness (mk.iii)

[AnneLine]

Got a late-breaking headline from ARfink and Ploomf -- She arrived safe and sound but everyone is super tired.

 

ARFink is asking for prayers that they get some rest -- I gather they may be a little too excited to sleep easily!

 

:rabbit:  :bounce:  :heart: :bounce: :rabbit:                 :evil:

Edited December 29, 2013 by AnneLine

[arfink]

Hey everybody, thanks for the prayers and concern! Katie and I will try to get some pics of course, perhaps showing off some Christmas presents. ;) We exchanged our gifts today. We haven't done much that is extra-ordinary really, and we have marriage prep meetings tomorrow. We are going on a jaunt up into Northern MN for New Years though, so we'll be sure to take pics of that. Perhaps we could even take a picture after adoration tonight.

[AnneLine]

ARFink let me know that the area where he and Ploomf are has NO internet access (!) and that it was -20F this morning!    Even HE says that is cold. 

 

Here is a picture of the two of them wishing us a happy New Year!

 

:icey2:  :icey2:    :cold:  :cold:  :icey2:  :icey2:

 

We send warm New Year's greetings and prayers to you and Ploomf!

 

 

AND this St.. Bernard with a cask of Hot Chocolate!!!!!

Edited January 1, 2014 by AnneLine

[TheresaThoma]

That does sounds a bit cold!

Good weather for cuddling though....

[arfink]

And this morning it was -32F. And then it warmed up to a balmy -8F by lunch time. Now the sun is already going back down, and it's getting colder again. But at least in the city it does not get as cold as way up north. We were in a little town called Pine River staying with my uncle who has several acres of timberland with a beautiful log house which he built himself as a young man. It was a nice time. That area is very beautiful, but also because it's so far north the weather is brutal, and there was a lot more snow than we have in the city.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We spent New Years day mostly indoors and feasting, as is the Fink family way, but later on me and my dad and uncle and a couple of the other siblings went out to shoot guns. :bounce: That was fun, but we didn't stay out for more than a couple hours. By that point I couldn't feel my face anymore, though the rest of me was still quite nice and toasty.

[AnneLine]

Now we know why you grow those furry wings, ARFink....  looks like you had a great time!    But that DOES sound very, very VERY cold....  shiver....

[TheresaThoma]

That does sound very cold. Looks like it was fun though from the pics!

[arfink]

This is a repost from the Open Mic thread, but I'm putting it here for record-keeping. :P

 

Just a quick bump to say we have now picked out a date and things are starting to come together.

 

Katie and I will be married on August 15th of 2014, the Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary. This is, as many of you know, a Holy Day of Obligation, but my pastor has generously agreed to do an extra mass for us that day. We'll be using the propers for the solemnity instead of the usual wedding-ish readings so that the wedding mass will fulfill the obligation, as a courtesy to our guests. And because, come on, getting married on a Holy Day like that is too cool!

 

There will be a whole pile of priests there too, as I have a great number of priest-friends who were my classmates in seminary.

 

The story of how we wound up with the 15th is actually kinda cool too. We'd been praying for Mary's intercession in wedding planning. We got pushed back and forth during the planning process (due to the pastor holding things up and other issues) such that we no longer could get any Saturday in any of the months we wanted, so we picked a Friday. We liked the 22nd of August as another possible option. Katie liked it because August 22 is the feast of the Queenship of Mary and was a little disappointed that we couldn't get the 22nd due to a scheduling error with the banquet hall. They had the following Friday open, and the one before. We didn't want to go any later than the weekend of the 22nd because of her bridesmaids needing to have kids in school by then, so we picked the weekend before, the 15th, without consulting the calendar first or anything. We just grabbed it because we knew if we waited any longer we might lose our last opportunity to even get a hall at all.

 

As we sat down with the pastor to discuss dates, I mentioned we had already booked a hall for August 15th. His eyes got real big and he said, "Wait, isn't that a Holy Day?" Me: "No, of obligation? Really? Uh oh, now what?" Father: "Oh, well I guess we could just use the readings for the day. How does 11:30 sound?"

 

I guess Mary had other ideas for us. :dance:

[arfink]

Here's a couple of sketches I did while staying up entirely too late on New Years Eve. I was also highly caffeinated at the time. ;)

 

 

See if you can spot AnneLine in this one... and Ploomf.

 

 

And the Holy Family makes a triple-header showing here in some triptych concepts. ;)

[ploomf]

Arfink and I got a little goofy taking our engagement pictures today. ;)

 

 

And here's a non goofy picture. ;)

 

[TheresaThoma]

Awww!

[EmilyAnn]

Y'all are nauseatingly adorable. :)

[arfink]

Y'all are nauseatingly adorable. :)

 

Thanks. :)

 

Well, it's brutally cold here. Windchill is somewhere around -30F and -50F depending on where you measure, and air temps are really really low as well. I'm staying inside and not going out for anything, not even pizza. The only thing I'd go out for is Katie, but she's safely back in Idaho by now.

[arfink]

Today's artistic experiment went fairly well. I decided to try rigging up a projector over my desk so that I could make sketches based on the projected images. It was actually pretty good. It took a number of tries to get the thing mounted reliably and without risk of overheating, but I did get it.

 

This was my initial mounting solution. Pretty shaky, and not very good. It had 2 spring clamps, a small bench vice, and pencils, but it was too heavy and wobbly, and it didn't mount perfectly flat, which resulted in some distortion of the image.

 

 

Then I moved to this rig with a piece of wood and rubber bands, with two pencils stuck in under the projector body to allow air flow for cooling. This turned out to be way more secure. No shaking or wobbling, and the alignment was spot-on.

 

 

This is what the projected image on my sketch book looks like. The camera made the whole room appear much darker than it actually was. In reality, this is just very bright in full daylight, which is great!

 

 

And the sketch I made. It was a bit rushed and got smudged up because I'm a lefty and I'm out of practice, but it turned out OK. If I was to sit down and continue to refine it, I think I could make something good with this.

 

 

Something else I did was set up the projector to display the image upside down. The projector has a shifted lens that can angle upwards or downwards by default, which allows the projector to be placed above or below the viewer without getting in the way. I projected upside down so that I could keep my hands out of the beam as much as possible.

[TheresaThoma]

Very cool

 

(You wouldn't happen to be able to get a hold of the pattern for that cute little owl would you?)