recap

Ok. I haven't been putting my work up here everyday like I should be, but all this Vicodin I'm taking for my aching gall bladder has me kinda losing track of things. I have been working. I don't think I'm going to have many posts this week as I am going home to ILLINOIS Sunday evening to have SURGERY on Monday. I will then recover at home for the rest of the week and return to KANSAS next SUNDAY. It will SUCK losing a week's worth of pay, but my good health comes before my ability to pay bills, and if the surgery helps me as much as I think it is going to, I should have had it a LONG time ago.

So, these are some of the images I've had in the paper this last week.

Also, I got the Best of Colbert Report DVD today from Netflix, so I'm going to have something entertaining to watch all week while I'm recovering from being under the knife!

-TB

gallstones!

So, I was having a lot of stomach pain this week. It was a hard wrenching and burning pain in the right side of my abdomen and it hurt so much that i vomited a few times from it and i went to the bathroom lots but it didnt make the pain go away. So I went to a Same Day Care clinic at the Hutchinson Clinic here in town and Dr. Thode says 'sounds like gall bladder problems to me' and they hook me up to an IV and they draw blood and pump painkillers into me and put me to sleep and woke me up for an ultrasound and I fell asleep again and then they woke me up again and said I have gallstones! Medium-sized ones. Several of them.

I have three different medications now: Hydrocodone (vicodin), Levaquin (antibiotic), and Ursodiol, which dissolves gallstones, but it can take months for it to actually work. I think Dr. Thode is planning for me to have a surgery to have my gallbladder removed soon, because he only gave me 10 days worth of ursodiol. While I am thinking it would be nice to get my gallbladder removed, I dont think i want to have it done while I'm out here in Kansas. Of course, if the killer pain continues even with medication, I might have to. My mom had hers removed when she was 21 and my dad when he was 23, so I think it's partially a genetic thing to have gallstones in my family. Also, obesity and rapid weight loss help form gallstones because with both you have too much cholesterol in your bile.

I'm just going to take lots of pills and stay away from cholesterol and fats and hope that i get to feeling better long enough to get back to Illinois and have my gall bladder removed while I'm home.

That's what's new with Tom today. I was asleep just about all day and all night yesterday. I'm going to work today I think, probably an 11-8 kind of thing. I hope the vicodin I just took doesn't knock me out. Especially while I'm driving...

TB

PS: Here's a silly anecdote. After my dad's mom died in 1995 or 94 or one of those years, we had all of the stuff from her house in our garage. It sucked cuz we had usually parked cars in there, but for the time being, we had lots of furniture and boxes of granny stuff. One day, when we were going through the stuff, we found a little wooden box labeled 'Kathryn Barker - Gallstone" and sure as shoot, there was a dirty gallstone the size of a walnut sitting inside it.

gameday

Photo by DuVale Riley/Daily Egyptian
They had a cool ESPN Gameday broadcast at the Salukis bball game Saturday. I hope they do better than sweet 16 this year. Wish I was there to shoot the games. Not really though because I'm getting better pay and shooting lots of basketball out here, and i dont have to be in classes.

TB

HCC

Had a couple basketball photos in the paper today. They came out pretty red. They even look really red on here. Not sure why. I guess I just get so wrapped up trying to fix the toning on pictures after converting them to CMYK that my eyes forget what the photos're supposed to look like sometimes.
I got to drive around a bit today and take some wild art photos. There were a couple of phonecalls reporting that geese were frozen in ice on a lake and I went to take some pictures, but I don't think they were actually frozen there. There were like a thousand geese out there and I think they were just sitting on the ice. None of them were panicking or anything. Other than that, I mostly worked up photos for Sunday's Ad Astra about the Daisy Princess Party.

Tonight I'm going to shoot wrestling at HHS.

I miss Amber.

TB

under construction

So, I'm not sure how often I'm going to be posting pictures on here anymore. I had to take some off that I had posted which hadn't run in the paper yet, which won't be running in the paper for like a month. I'll be able to post pictures like the last ones as they are in the newspaper, the day of or after they've run in the paper. So. Today, I didn't have any photos in the paper, and there won't be any photos on here today. I didn't work Monday or Tuesday. Today, I worked. Tomorrow I'll have a few basketball photos in the paper, because I shot a couple Hutch Community College basketball games today. It was nice, I got to use strobes mounted in the ceiling and shoot perfectly-exposed, well-lit photos at 1/250th, f/5.6, 200 ISO.

That's it.

TB

TB

a home to call her own

I worked up these photos yesterday for today's paper. Also I went to wal-mart last night and i bought a box of thin spaghetti and some ragu sauce and I cooked the spaghetti and put sauce on it and ate it and it was amazing. only 240ish calories too!


Also, I went to a basketball game last night at McPherson High School and they have the craziest most amazing gymnasium for a high school I have ever seen. It's cooler than SIU's gym, just not as much seating.


I got to sit at the fancy little press table with the little HutchNews laptop and transmit photos back to the office at halftime. Then I didn't even have to edit them, or even go back to the office, it was cool.

Also, I bought the Family Guy Blue Harvest dvd and watched it.

TB

293

So I got on the scale this morning and it said 291.6. I thought, that can't be right, there's no way i could lose 4-5 pounds in a day, and I scooted the scale over a little bit a re-weighed a few times and the scale is meant to handle 400 pounds so I'm sure I haven't broken it or anything and then it said 293.0. I tried again, it said 293.0. and again, just to be sure. I'm down to 293 pounds! 13 lbs. down from my start weight!

Also I finally went running again today. I didnt go the last two days cuz it was really snowy and there was like 5-degree wind chills. Today it was 33 with a windchill of 20 some, so I went in double layers. Two running pants, a running jacket, a sweatshirt, a fuzzy hat, and gloves, and it was still pretty cold the first half of the loop. Winds were about 27mph.

I took a bunch of pictures yesterday that i didn't blog about. I think im going to start blogging photos only on the days theyre running in the paper, instead of beforehand. I'm not sure if I'll run into trouble posting photos that technically the Hutchinson News owns before they've run them in the newspaper. So, for instance, today I should post two basketball photos and the photo of the "Energy Czar", because that's what in today's paper.

Of course, I can talk all I want about the shooting I did. Yesterday, I went to a recovering meth addicts house who's been through three marriages and has a kid who was a meth addict and she worked with a realtor guy who's also a detective for the state police who got her her house when she never thought she'd be able to own one. It was actually a really nice house for its size. All remodeled, nice floors, huge ass kitchen and a pond in the fenced-in backyard.

That's about it for now. It's about noon and im going to eat my salad and go to work at 1. adios.

TB

TUESDAY-I get my first check tomorrow.

I got to go to a construction site today where they're building a new VA clinic thing place. Actually their just framing it right now and there's a group of guys called Mertens Bros. Construction who were doing the framing and their names are Leo (above), Les (below left), and Ronald (below right), Mertens.

Nice guys. Took the photos for a story about the new place possibly running on Thursday. Here's some more pictures from that:

There's bad sensor dust in that one (^) . I didnt feel like editing it out. Also, it's cool to have dust on your sensor. Everyone's doing it. My popularity = skyrocketed.

This guy's name is Doug Pack. He's not one of the Mertens Brothers. He's from a company called Rosa's Drywall who is bidding to do the drywall job on the place after it's been all framed and stuff. He was walking around taking lots of little measurements and marking things with his pencil.

Also today, I got to drive around a company car! There's like four of em and theyre all Mazda 3's and theyre fun to drive and hopefully I can drive them more often so I don't have to use my gas and get reimbursed for it. I took the car home and then to a basketball tournament in a town with a really awesome high school called HALSTEAD.

ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM! And then I had basketball pictures. Two in the paper tomorrow (the top two):


I did quite a bit of experimenting during the basketball games. I first took pictures with my 70-200 on my 1D with two Pocketwizarded flashes. Then I took pictures with my 17-35 on my 20D with the pop-up flash (above) and I also took pictures with my manual focus 50 1.4 on both my 20D and my 1D and THEN I took pictures onmy 20D with the 70-200 with no flash at all. So i had lots of different looking pictures.
Also, this picture was in the paper today for a story about reusable shopping bags. I took it at walmart. I also took pictures of cashiers bagging stuff, but they didnt use any of those. I got lots of funny looks from people.
Finally, I put these items up for sale on SPORTSSHOOTER.COM! You can't see them because it's a member-only listing, unless of course youre a sportsshooter member, but I did it after I decided a few things: 1.) I need a 1.4x teleconverter, not a 2x (middle), 2.) I don't use my 85 and it's good for about $300 I could use to get a better lens I would use (right), and 3.) I need to get rid of this Tamron lens (left) and replace it with CANON L GLASS, e.g. Canon 17-40 f/4 L. So, if it all sells, I'm looking at about $950. The perfect amount to buy myself a 24-70 f/2.8L, one of the 4 lenses I could ever need and one I would use for everything. DAMN IT THE TRAINS IN HUTCHINSON ARE SO DAMN LOUD. I mentioned in my classified that I'm hoping to save for a 24-70 and/or a mk2 camera.

My classified read:

I'm a Southern Illinois student interning in Hutchinson, KS and I've got a couple things I don't use too much anymore that I would like to get rid of to make way for bigger and better things. Canon 2x II EF Extender: $225 shipped. Good condition, used occasionally for college sports, would like to replace it with a 1.4x. Accepting trades. Canon 85 f/1.8 USM: $300 shipped. Like new condition, perfect glass. Extremely sharp lens. Bought last year and used for portraits. Can't even feel the thing focus. Comes with Hood. Tamron 17-35 f/2.8-4: $375 shipped. Bought new from Calumet two summers ago and have used it on nearly every assignment since. Still clean and sharp. I'm wanting to replace it with Canon L glass. Didn't have money for Canon glass at the time, but have been very happy with this lens. Great for student or low budget. Sells on KEH used for $499. Trying to save up enough to buy a 24-70 2.8 and/or a MkII. Student wages and car payments don't help out too much! Additional photos available, just ask. Will ship to ContUS. I'll accept just about anything that counts as money in the US.

Oh, that's cool, it pasted with a little box around it. Isn't the internet neat!

The interesting part is, I got a response. I got an email from a guy stating:

Thomas,
I've got a 24-70f2.8 Canon USM and a MII listed for sale
in the classifieds. If you're interested, email me and
we'll work something out. I'm more than willing to do
something for a fellow SS.com member.

And I live in Iowa...not Dubai :) :) :)

Good luck on your sale.

Michael

"Work something out." Isn't that interesting? I emailed him back asking what he had in mind and explaining my financial situation and I've yet to hear from him, but it would be very VERY exciting if I could get a 24-70 and a mk2 from him with the money I could get from these items as some kinda downpayment or something. Who knows? It's happened before, I got my 1D from paying $600 initially and then $650 a month later. Good ole 2003 Taco Bell shift manager money.

Oh well, guess we'll wait and see. I get to work 9-6 tomorrow instead of 1-10pm so I'll actually have an evening without basketball games maybe! That's exciting too!

TB

PS: In case you're curious, the four lenses that I could ever need are:
1. Canon 16-35 2.8L ($950)
2. Canon 24-70 2.8L($950)
3. Canon 70-200 2.8L ($950) -currently owned
4. Canon 300 2.8 L ($3500) -that one's a ways off.

ffx297huckawalmart

Well on my two days off this week, I beat Ghost Recon Advanced Warfigher 2 for the ps3, a game Amber's parents got me for Christmas. It's pretty cool, sometimes it's a pain in the ass to get your tank to do what the hell you want it to, but it's a fun game. I put my life on the line to stop Mexican terrorists from launching a nuclear missile from El Paso. Fun. Also I beat the Mile High Club mission on COD4, which I talked about in the previous post. AND , I started a new game of Final Fantasy X! I played it a long time ago and never actually finished it, so I think I'll play it all the way through this time, as something to do in my free time.

Also, I'm gonna see if there are any awesome red and blue jackets at wal-mart that are good for running in and I'm gonna get one and then have the words 'RUN FOR HUCKABEE' put on the back of it and wear it while I run. I bet I'll get on the news and Mike Huckabee will come to Kansas and shake my hand.

Also, I weighed 297.0 pounds today! That's 9 pounds lost! I started dieting on the 4th or the 5th! Thats 10 days! I'm off to a good start I think! As long as I keep it up.

Final also, even though it's my day off, I'm probably gonna have to go in to work in a while and put in some pictures I took at Wal-Mart the other day about people using or not using the reusable black canvas shopping bags. I took pictures of the bags and got pictures of a cashier putting peoples stuff into their cart with regular walmart bags. I'm not really sure what the story is about, I just know it has to do with those reusable bags. Pretty much all the walmart cashiers and customer service people know me as a news photographer now, though. Also, lots of Kansans gave me weird looks while I was standing there taking pictures of the checkout lanes.

TB

BOWLYA GRANDMA!

I DID IT! After 3 hours of trying once again to beat the epilogue mission on call of duty 4 called 'MILE HIGH CLUB' on the hardest difficulty, a.ka. VETERAN, I DID IT! And this is proof! I'm the man! I dont ever have to try it again!! Buwahwhaha! all that pissedoffness and saying of the F word! It all paid off!


TB

today

Main image on today's front page. I had a couple basketball pictures in today's paper also that I took last night. They weren't all too spectacular. I probably won't put them on here. I'ts 1013am and i havent run yet. I'm going to go run....

TB

Chipmunk Fishing

TB

a wee bit o' research

Yes I was doing a wee bit of research this morning after my morning jog at about 915 am, and according to NUTRITIONDATA.COM, a person of my size even living a sedentary lifestyle but running two 9-minute miles everyday burns around 4,000 calories in a day. According to the same site, it takes about 3,500 calories to gain or lose one pound of body fat.

So, if you consume 3,500 more calories than your body uses, you gain a pound, and if you consume 3,500 calories less than your body uses, you lose a pound. THEORETICALLY, that means if I consume only 500 calories per day and continue running 2 miles everyday, I should be able to lose one pound of fat per day.

Since I've been on my strict diet and exercise plan for about a week now and I've lost about 5-6 pounds, that sounds almost accurate. Especially since I've been consuming more like 650-750 calories a day, I burn less than a pound in a day, but not much less.

Of course, as my body size decreases, the amount of calories I burn per day will decrease. For instance, if I weighed 200 pounds right now instead of 299, I would only be burning 3,240 calories in a day, even with running two 9-minute miles daily, in which case I would have to eat absolutely nothing and burn an extra 300 calories doing something else to lose a pound in that day. Ah, the marvels of the human body!

Fortunately, probably for the first time since I've been here, there wasn't any wind in Hutchinson this morning. Really, 0 mph. So, I ran a little faster and got my 9-minute mile, but tired myself out a little more. Yesterday, there was 35 mph wind and my first mile was a little less than 11 minutes. Either way, it was 24 degrees both days and it just feels like so much more of a bitch to run in 24-degree weather than it does with a nice 60 to 70-degree summer night. Running when it's about 90 degrees out is the worst though. FYI.

That's my interesting research. Believe it or not. Im showing less on the scale every morning, so I'm happy. I'll put up geese pictures and other pictures I may take today tonight. I think I'm going to a HHS Homecoming BBall game. Should be . . . loud.

TB

moo

The cow! It's back!

I took pictures today. I took like 200 pictures of geese for a possible Ad Astra on Sunday and I went to a high school wrestling match in Buhler, KS. The wrestle pic will be sports main art tomorrow and my pictures of Dennis Mahorney will be main art on the front page tomorrow. I dont have any pictures for today's blog because I left all my geese pictures and wrestling pictures on the server at work and I formatted my card, so I dont have them with me now.

I just got home from work. Some guy I assume is from the design desk called the photo desk saying he didnt have photos for a couple obituaries and the only people at the photo desk were me, the intern, and Andrew, a Hutch HS student who works part-time. We were scrambling around looking for obituary photos and we had to go to the obit desk and turn on one of their computers to find em. Usually, they mail all the obit photos they get to us and then we work em up and put em in.

It's cool though, working up AP photos for the sports guys and puttin things where they go, and uploading pics to the website and that kinda stuff. Makes me feel like I've been working there for way more than week and I belong there.

I weighed in at 300.2 lbs. again tonight and I usually weigh less in the morning, so I ought to be under 300 tomorrow! A milestone! I didnt get up til like 1030 this morning and forced myself to go run at 1130. also, i missed breakfast. That's why there's no bowl of Total on my list for today and the calories are less. It sucked running cuz there were 35mph winds and it was 38 degrees with a windchill of 24. I was cold and windblown so I went pretty slow. Heart was beatin though and thats what counts.

I'm gonna see if Dave is on COD4 and probably go to sleep.

TB

OH, here's the wrestling pic for tomorrow's paper. i found it on the hutchnews site where you order photos so it's really small and has a PREVIEW watermark through it.


TB

I went to prison today.

Apparently, Hutchinson doesn't just have one prison, it has three: minimum, medium, and maximum securities. I got to go to the maximum one today! To take pictures of inmates working for a company called Hubco, a company that makes bags. Bags. Like, canvas bags and other kinds of cloth bags. Inmates have the opportunity to work for the company sewing and inspecting the bags and packaging them for shipment.


This guy up here is some kind of head security guy. We also were accompanied by the warden and the CEO of Hubco. I had to pass through metal detectors and have one run over me and security took my driver's license and gave me a visitor's badge. Lots of convicts made comments about my cameras, but the security guy said there were only 2 inmates I was allowed to photograph, 2 of the guys working at the Hubco place. They had to have them approved by the state, I guess.This is Samuel Minor. He's been in Hutchinson Correctional for 29 years. He's 50 years old. He was inspecting thousands of small cloth bags and packing them into boxes (5000 per box). He said he was out at 25 years on parole but he violated it and came back. I can't imagine being 21 years old and entering prison in 1978 and not coming out for 30 years.


This is Rick Beck. He's been in for 25 years and he comes out next month. He's 51. He was doing the same thing as Samuel. Inspecting and boxing bags. The reporter, John, gave him his card so they can meet up after he's out and talk about what it's like for a longtime inmate to reenter the world. I have a feeling I'll see Rick again.

On a lighter note, I had to find a feature photo today and I took pictures of little kids at the Hutchinson Community College Child Care Center! a.k.a. the HCCCCC! The kid on the slide is named Gabe Barnes. He was really funny, he told me that he was playing some kinda marine government spy bomber mission flying kill terrorists score points something game and I laughed cuz the title of the game took him like 20 seconds to say. The kid behind him is Creedan Christopherson and I don't know the third kid's name which is why we didn't use this photo in the paper tomorrow. I like how you can only see all their eyes, though.

Instead, they're gonna use this picture. I knew all three of their names, Shane, Sabrina and something else. It's just a page filler for pg A5. It'll be in color though! Other than that, the only pictures I took today were of Dennis Mahorney, who sells firewood to people. He has like 4 kids and a stepkid also. They were really nice and I enjoyed being there, even though it took me awhile to find the place.

Also, I had to take a picture at the office today of someone looking sick, for an illustration tomorrow about influenza. So, we grabbed a girl from the design desk and took lots of shots of her trying to look sick. I don't know what the final illustration looks like, but the photo she used looked like this:
We have a fancy study at the office with White Lightning Heads and a huge backdrop system with white black and gray paper backgrounds. It's nice, just plug n shoot and u have studio images! I think the illustration is going on the front page, so I'll have some kinda photo credit, woot.


Also, I took this image of a grain elevator while I was driving back from the Mahorneys'. It's like the most heavenly grain elevator in all of Kansas.

TB

December Ice Storm

Anyone curious about what kind of storm Hutchinson had in December to create all those piles of fallen branches, this slideshow pretty much tells it all. There was so much ice on the trees, they couldn't hold themselves up.

CLICK HERE
COPYRIGHT HUTCHINSON NEWS 2007

TB

Cleanin up branches

I got to take pictures today of Hutchinson city workers cleaning up piles of fallen branches. Kansas had some pretty bad storms at about Christmas time and just about everyone has huge piles of fallen limbs and sticks at the edge of their yard. The lucky ones do at least. The not-so-lucky have tree trunks laying across their cars, almost pinching them in two.

Also, I shot two basketball games tonight at Central Christian High School. The gym sucked. The light sucked and there was literally no place to put my lights, so i shot with available light at like 1000-1250 ISO and the shots came out pretty grainy, but they ought to both be in black and white tomorrow, so they'll look good.
Also I took this picture of the sunset out my window earlier. I think that building is like the Hutchinson City Hall kind of place. Doesn't it look like a mosque? It's like I'm in Saudi Arabia.

And finally, I took this picture while I was changing batteries at my car at the Central Christian High School parking lot.

TB