Chris

Exhausted Raccoon, originally uploaded by JnL.

We’ve moved to Katy, Texas just outside of Houston. The stuff is in storage and the house, moving truck turned in, Texas beef consumed, beers downed and got 12 hrs sleep.

Howdy pard’ners!

Road Trip Mascot, originally uploaded by Photo Mojo.

Bevo watches over us and leads the way as I take the girls from Birmingham, Alabama to Houston, Texas- our new home.

As an aficionado of good music and blues, I was struck by how odd that 2 of my favorite songs on the Blues Brothers soundtrack have to do with our lives in a span of one week. This past weekend we visited Chicago (Sweet Home Chicago) for Wonderwife’s family reunion and today we are taking off for Katy (She Caught the Katy), Texas outside of Houston.

“We’re on a mission from God.”

Packing the boxes isn’t enough. Taking them downstairs is the hard part!

Crunch time here at Casa de Mojo. We’re wrapping up our keep/sell/trash mode by selling a lot of stuff on Craigslist, garage sales and even a Twitter sale. Our packing is ongoing as boxes are scarce. Apparently I am in an unspoken contest for boxes at our nearest grocery store with another customer so when the truck arrives Tuesday/Thursdays I will be waiting like a hungry scavenger looking for scraps & bones. Yes, I am too cheap to buy boxes.

All utilities except for power are scheduled for shut-off. Services are suspended or transferred to Texas.

As if I don’t have enough on my plate by migrating to Houston, I’m still taking on extra activities such as a few portrait sessions, conference planning sessions, and meetups. How ironic is it that the people I see online here locally and am big fans of, I finally meet and then I split? If you aren’t reading Ike, Brian, Lauren or Kenny then you have no taste. Honestly. There are way too many more friends over the past 5 years to mention here. I mentioned before that the hardest part about leaving Birmingham is the people and it is truer now than when I said it. The Esmans have been a real blessing lately because they have adopted our dog, Allie and even granted me a few photo gigs.

The rest of the week will be fast & furious with more of the same, plus we are flying to Chicago for the weekend for Wonderwife’s family reunion with people we see every 5 years or so. We’re back on Sunday night but then I am driving the girls to Houston on Monday, flying back to Birmingham on Tuesday, finishing up business here, loading the moving truck & heading out for Texas on Friday.

I’m considering taking up several generous offers of loading up the van with promises of adult beverages next week. If you are interested, let me know.

thanks to Werner for the photo

Is it me or is there very little new, creative & innovative web technologies being cranked out lately? There are tons of services with almost all of them mimicking each other and very few standouts such as Flickr, Delicious, WordPress etc. Why are we using 4 different web apps that do the same thing in a different way? We are too spread out. Let us pick one excellent service & stick with it.

Microblogging Examples:

1. Twitter- mojodenbow
2. Pownce- mojodenbow
3. Jaiku- mojodenbow
4. Brightkite- mojodenbow
5. Plurk- you guessed it, mojodenbow

At the same time, most of these services have been around for a few years and is finally seen widespread acceptance of people that are not early adopters/users i.e. Twitter, Youtube, Gmail.

So my question is, what is next for we who like to break in the newest and shiniest web toys? What tools do we have in our web toolbox that are used so frequently, they are as common place as email is?

Also, most of these services are free and even offer paid services. Which ones would/do you pay for because they are so invaluable?

**UPDATE**

Sold: deep freezer, sofa, chairs. Ladder is spoken for. Thanks gang, keep em coming!

We’ve had a garage sale and listed these items on Craigslist and got a lot of inquiries & hits. So far no takers, which is odd. Good prices on good pieces here. See something you like? Add your comment or send me an email mojodenbow@gmail.com Twitter me @mojodenbow

Haier 5 cu ft deep freezer- almost new! $75

Wood desk (accessories not included!)- $25

Sleeper Sofa with Queen bed- $250

2 chairs and ottoman-

4 drawer wood, vintage dresser- $30

16′ extension ladder- $50

metal desk & matching credenza- both for $65

Other items coming soon: washer/dryer, refrigerator, lawnmower, workbench. Interested?

Buddy Guy, originally uploaded by Photo Mojo.

After seeing Buddy Guy rocking the City Stages music festival this past weekend, my blues lovin’ self is back. It never went away, it just means I will add more blues back onto my ipod again and resubscribe to more podcasts too.

For those of you who didn’t know, “Mojo” is my nickname because of the old blues references.

I was encouraged by the fans there behind me. Young/old. White/black, it didn’t matter, we were entertained. It just goes to show that good music can bring people together like nothing else. The blues gave birth to jazz and rock & roll so no wonder it is so appealing to so many people.

Yep, I got my mojo back.

Wonderwife had turned on the television to unwind after our moving sale Saturday and stopped the channel flipping on a showing of Pixar’s animated movie, Monsters Inc. What stopped us was the fact that monsters are supposed to scare children and the child on screen (nicknamed Boo) looks VERY similar to our little Daphne when she has her hair in pigtails.

The clincher? Daphne blows raspberries at us, just like Boo does to a monster on screen.

See a resemblance?

What a Big Girl!!!, originally uploaded by eagerlittlemind.

Happy Father’s day to me from Daphne.

There cannot be enough positive adjectives to describe how I feel when I say how happy I am to have Daphne in my life. She brings me so much joy. Without shame or pretense, I have to say that she is the cutest baby I have seen. Ever. I think Wonderwife & I did a pretty good job and we thank God for giving her to us.

She and Wonderwife got me some really neat/practical/cool presents such as the Wolverine all-in-one media reader and the Wacom graphic tablet. These will both help when processing photos. Thanks girls!

I want to wish a special thank you to my own father. He likes to quote Bill Cosby a lot in saying: “I brought you into this world & I can take you out. It doesn’t make a difference to me because I can make another one look just like you.” I owe a lot of who I am thanks to him, both good & bad. Happy father’s day, dad. I love you.

Yesterday we said goodbye to Allie, our 7 yr old family dog. We had her since she was a little puppy in Missouri. When we decided to move to Texas next month, we knew we could not take her with us and it broke our hearts to give her away.

What makes this easier for us is knowing that she is with a really nice family now. She has 3 girls and another dog to play with as well as loving parents. We couldn’t be happier in our choice to give her up. We know she will be loved and cared for. Thank you, Esmans, we appreciate this.

Goodbye, Allie, we love and miss you!