T-shirt #244 - Camp Snoopy

T-shirt #244 - Camp Snoopy

Greetings. Happy Wednesday. Today is a short entry of mostly pictures as I had a busy day with work and unexpected events. The main work of the day was conferences at WMU, at which I had to break some bad news to some very nice students. The good things is that though some of the news of grades was woeful, the semester is not over, and I am not carving the grades in stone quite yet. I gave all the students who wished higher grades, options to raise their grades.

None of this work really has anything to do with Snoopy and friends, and this specific shirt, which my parents brought back from the Mall of America in Minneapolis, a trip that they took with my sister, some time (I am guessing) in the 1990s. For those who have not heard of the Mall of America, I am providing a link (which I provided twice). I had not heard of it before my family went there without me. I seem to remember that the sole purpose of the trip was to visit the mall, as my mother and sister are avid shoppers.


As for the photo, my face cannot be in every photo. That's just narcissistic.

I had not heard of Camp Snoopy either. Though, knowing my love for Snoopy and beagles in general (before I shared my life with one), they bought this short knowing I would love it.

EGADS! I just discovered a travesty. In an attempt to provide you with more links, such as one for Camp Snoopy, I found this (among many other articles):

Camp Snoopy Who? Nickelodeon runs the show now at Mall of America

The Nikelodeon Universe replaced Camp Snoopy back in 2007. So apparently, my shirt is a bit of a vintage prize now.

Check out this great video. Apparently this is an old advertisement for Camp Snoopy.

CAMP SNOOPY VIDEO

There's also

Mall of America Camp Snoopy Camp Bus Ride 

and...

Camp Snoopy Living the Dream

• by madmouse3
• 5 years ago
• 3,197 views

At the end you will know how i feel.

Apparently people were quite sad when Mall of America parted ways with Snoopy and his gang.

I have only written about Snoopy one time in T-shirt #117, which I presented to commemorate Satchel's birthday. Anything Peanuts or Snoopy makes me think of my family and their support for my love of Snoopy and related other things, like Winnie the Pooh, Paddington Bear, and Curious George.

Today, I am off to do more work even yet, a class that had to be postponed due to an emergency. But I conclude my posting for the day with some old photos from my childhood and some recent pictures of our Snoopy, our boo-boo puppy, Satchel. Though I have some great pics and videos of the Boo-Boo in T-shirt #117. Check those out if you have not done so already.

I love featuring my family in my blog. I would describe my childhood as idyllic. I love my family very much.

me at three years old

I have some tentative captions with these photos, but I do not have all the details. I may update later when time permits dating and detailing each photo.

Some Easter Sunday in the 1970s
I would guess around 1974

Posing with art project
This is a space ship I drew

Halloween gifts
yes, GIFTS for Halloween
Did I mention my childhood was idyllic?

Cub Scouts camping trip
I am in the middle.

A carriage ride on Mackinaw Island
I have no idea who the girl is next to my sister.

Christmas, maybe 1975? 1974?

Post Blizzard of 1969? 1970?

I have no idea where we are.
I am guessing 1973-74.
My David Cassidy period.

My sister looks bigger here.
I would guess this is a year later
than the previous picture.

Long Lake - 1973-4?

Just two pictures of the Satchel Boo-Boo. I don't want to go nuts here.

Satchel one month ago today
1310.20

Napping puppy - 1310.20

COUNTDOWN TO THE END OF THE BLOG YEAR: 121 shirts remaining

- chris tower - 1311.20- 20:18

T-shirt #243 - Movie City

T-shirt #243 - Movie City

I worked in a video store from 1990 to 1995. It was located on the east side of town at Gull Road and Sprinkle Road. It was called Movie City ans was owned by a great guy of whom I am still very fond, a guy named Ken.

I worked all the holidays. Christmas Eve, Easter, New Year's Eve, and any other times that other people wanted off because I needed so much other time off and holidays tended to be good times for me.

It was one of the best jobs I ever had.

I owe a great deal to Ken and his store for teaching me about customer service and building community.

I miss his store. I wish it had not closed, which it did, in or around 1995.

Movie City, I miss you. And I am not the only one.

I miss having access to so many movies. Okay, not true any more with streaming. I miss the time and luxury to bring home stacks of videos and actually binge watch them all. I do not seem to have the time to watch stacks of videos anymore. I am sad about this change and yet not sad. I get more done. I read more.

Today's entry is very short. I am currently in my mythology class as I type this. Lots of grading to do.

ASIDE: The actress Melissa Gilbert (famous for being "Half Pint" on Little House on the Prairie) spent a summer at the Barn Theatre. She came into Movie City one day. She paid with a credit card for a business: Half Pint Enterprises. There's my Movie City brush with fame.

This was not my first shirt choice of the day. I started another entry that will probably go up as Thursday's or even Friday's entry. I photographed this shirt and conceived what I wanted to write later in the afternoon to meet the daily deadline. Tomorrow's and possibly Thursday's entries will be short like this one. And this is supposed to be my light work week.

BTW, the front of the shirt is blank. The design is on the back.

See you tomorrow.

COUNTDOWN TO THE END OF THE BLOG YEAR: 122 shirts remaining

- chris tower - 1311.19 - 20:33

T-shirt #242 - MUSL XII and other T-shirt blogs

T-shirt #242 - MUSL XII 
and other T-shirt blogs

Welcome back Ultimate Monday. I featured Ultimate shirts on Wednesdays in the Fall because that's when we played. I am shifting back to Monday just to be easy. It's the start of the work week. Things to do. Although Grading Robot will have a somewhat easy week with CTU just starting up. Other schools will need attention, and I am running individual conferences on Wednesday at WMU. But compared to usual, it's a lighter week. Still, today's post will be relatively short. Though in addition to the MUSL shirt, I will feature a little blog recap and other people's blogs recap.

Today's shirt comes from Michiana Ultimate Summer League (South Bend) where I played three seasons: two prior to forming our own league, and one final season before I could no longer devote the time to drive down there and back each week. The community that formed in our car pool was wonderful, and we had many fabulous conversations on the ride down and back. I do miss the conversations. I keep this shirt at my parents' house to wear when I am helping out there. I had a picture of the back, which features sponsorships, but somehow that picture vanished from my phone. I featured my other season at MUSL in T-shirt #207. This shirt is from the next year: 2008.

MORE BLOG RECAP

I devoted myself to some blog recap yesterday, detailing the number of page views I have received and which posts are the most popular. These facts are very interesting to me, and I feel the need to roundup the statistics from time to time.

I have also discussed my categories recently, so I will not go over that again, but I will draw your attention to the categories along the right side of the page. They are hot links to open all the pages labeled with that category. I am happy with my recent addition of the cover gallery category, which collects all the posts in which I have many comic book covers in a gallery, but I also included a couple of related ones (such as the Night Film "movie" posters) and any post with more than three pieces of comic book cover art.

I have some new categories to which I need to add posts, such as relaxing and sassy women. But today is not the day to attend to my categories. I will explore this content again soon. One thing I must update is my LIST of top ten favorite blog posts category. There are some new candidates. I may need to change it to a top twenty (especially since it currently contains 12 entries anyway).

THE GOOGLE SEARCH

The other day I decided to try a Google search because I wanted to see if my blog was the first result for "365 T-shirts blog." It is the first search. But the search produced some other interesting results.

There are other blogs of similar content.

365 Days > 365 T-shirts article about Andi from La Fraise

His name is Andi, he lives in UK, he is graphic designer and he has a funny/crazy challenge:wearing a different shirt each day and then give them to charity. laFraise couldn’t miss the opportunity of providing him shirts and making an interview to get to know about this project. And of course we will talk about it again at the time he gives the shirts to charities (la Fraise, 2013).

Here's the actual blog: 36t5.

Of course, there's several companies selling shirts on a daily basis, like Teefury, which I have featured before in T-shirt #23: Planet of the Snapes.

I love how the Internet fuels new an inventive ways to be an entrepreneur.

The Captain America Image, left, comes from Flying Mouse. I don't see daily activity on this blog, but the images are GREAT!!




RIPT Apparel gave away 365 T-shirts to a lucky contest winner earlier this year:

DON’T DO LAUNDRY FOR A YEAR! RIPT’S 365 SHIRT GIVEAWAY STARTS TODAY!

I was impressed to find a guy named Dave, who has Crohn's Disease and survived brain cancer, who did the T-shirt project in 2010. He received many donations to reach his goal of 365. Hmmmmm, donations....


Dave's Daily T-shirts Blog

Dave made a video showing all his 365 T-shirts in three minutes. A very cool idea!!

There's also a defunct blog that only made it to seven shirts -- 365 Days, 365 Different shirts -- and the blog page features a link that goes nowhere, so apparently, he didn't make it.




That's just the first page of the Google search. Maybe in a future blog, I will delve deeper. For now, that's a day's work. See you tomorrow.

Though before I go, I wanted to feature this picture on a day when it is prominent. My parents and I went to the Cornwell's Turkeyville Dinner Theatre Christmas show last week. Here's the photo.

Quality time with my parents
at Cornwell's Turkeyville
1311.14

COUNTDOWN TO THE END OF THE BLOG YEAR: 123 shirts remaining

- chris tower - 1311.18 - 8:48

T-shirt #241- Advice from a Volcano - Blog Recap

T-shirt #241- 
Advice from a Volcano - 
Blog Recap

Today is my day off. I do not get that many days, and I wish I could report that it had been a completely work-free day; however, I had to grade all morning. But I managed to complete the set of grades that needed to be done in time to rest and relax while watching the Detroit Lions game. There's a storm, so I lost signal for a short period of time. But I have managed to read several comic books, a report that I will delve into in a future blog. In fact, most of the content in today's post was going to be part of yesterday's post, but I am trying to compartmentalize better and to keep my blog entries to a shorter average length than many of the gargantuan entries of many of the previous two hundred and forty entries.

THE BLOG JOURNEY

I started writing about The Blog Journey the other day and created a category for the subject. So far, each entry (two) has focused on the Blog Journey and how I have come to work on this project. I found it very edifying that yesterday's shirt for the Veronica Mars Kickstarter coincided with my cancer diagnosis in a way that I did not anticipate when I started writing the entry. I did not remember that my discovery of and funding of the Kickstarter came the same day as learning I had prostate cancer.

My therapist asked me if the momentum shifted in regards to the blog after my surgery. I believe I have mentioned this before, but I have a new point to make. Yes, the momentum shifted. There was less of a sense of urgency. Before the surgery, I was driven by the feeling that I had to get it all in before that dead end date of August 16th. I had this quite irrational feeling that the surgery was the end of my life and that if I did not accomplish certain things before the surgery, I would not be able to finish the things after. Rationally, I knew this was not true. But like I wrote, it was an irrational feeling. Also, I felt as if I had permission to do certain bucket list type things because I had cancer, was having surgery, and so I deserved these things. The sense of urgency came in at trying to get the things I was permitted to do done in time. This urgency also propelled the blog forward. Would I have time to generate all the content I wanted to generate in time?

Since the surgery that feeling of urgency has changed, but the bucket list has remained. After all, we went to Hawaii because of that list and today's shirt comes from that trip. Since the surgery, I have a renewed sense of the need for the journey of self-discovery and self-definition that this blog represents. Today's shirt factors well into this journey and this self analysis process. The T-shirt's message may need to be incorporated into the Rules of Chris.

The journey continues...


BLOG RECAP

This week the top viewed blog entry is the one on the Clash -- T-shirt #238 - The Clash --
two others are tied for second most views:
T-shirt #235 - Fantastic Four Long-Sleeved and T-shirt #236 - Happy Ending Massage.

High views for the week came on November 11th when the blog received 87 page views. The second spike came on Friday with 67 views. Today, others had shown hits, such as yesterday's Veronica Mars entry, T-shirt #100: Kalamazoo College, and T-shirt #45: Star Wars: The Evolution of Darth Vader.

For the month, and I think this is interesting as I am not sure why it hit so much, T-shirt #220: Star Trek Red Shirt Gift, scored the most page views. I suspect this one was popular because it was shared with all the people included in the photo and shared by my wife who took the picture.

Here's the grid (the links are hot in the grid):

More » Posts Entry Pageviews T-shirt #220: Star Trek Red Shirt Gift Oct 27, 2013,  76 T-shirt #62: Nightwing May 22, 2013,  37 T-shirt #28: Batgirl (spoiler alerts) Apr 18, 2013,  36 T-shirt #233: Tower Pinkster Titus Associates Arch... Nov 9, 2013,  27 T-shirt #215: Powell's Books Oct 22, 2013,  23

I am happy to see the post on my Dad score well. I am very proud of that entry. Nightwing and Batgirl continue to be popular, I assume, because of DC Comics related searching of the Internet. I find it very interesting that the Powell's Books entry has drawn a lot of views. Is it the Jim Leyland content? The content on Night Film? Or my last blog recap like this one?

In terms of all time most frequented pages, the Nightwing page bumped the What Would Kirk Do page that I dedicated to Trayvon Martin. I am happy to see the Nightwing love, but I am sad to see what I feel is an important issue losing ground to a comic book character.

More » Posts Entry Pageviews T-shirt #176 - Isher Artifacts Sep 13, 2013,  218 T-shirt#171 - The Neahtawanta Inn - Goodbye Bob Ru... Sep 8, 2013,  174 T-shirt #28: Batgirl (spoiler alerts) Apr 18, 2013,  145 T-shirt #125: Hair and the Barn Theatre Jul 24, 2013,  117 T-shirt #62: Nightwing May 22, 2013,  116

TODAY'S SHIRT

Words to live by. Potential content for more Rules of Chris.

Stay active.
Keep your inner fire burning.
It's OK to let off steam.
Go with the flow.
Be uplifting.
It's all a matter of time.
Have a blast!





















RANDOM FACTS

Fantasy sports recap - I am doing very well with fantasy sports this week. I have started basketball and actually joined more leagues to expand to six leagues. I am starting to be more competitive with the league I let Yahoo's terrible AI draft. I do not care as much about fantasy football. I much prefer the daily challenge of basketball and Baseball.

And so far today, I am picking football games better than last week's terrible record (4-11). I already have more wins in the early games than total last week = 5-2-2.

The storm - We're having high winds and thunderstorms. As usual, the most severe stuff veers north and south of us.

Time with my parents - Spent quality time with my parents yesterday and did some work on my stuff in their basement. This is a sign that things are better in balance in my life, and I am able to fit in more things. It's also made possible by hiring a friend to be a dog sitter for Satchel, so I can be away for the day.

Wife at home - Liesel stayed home from work today, and so I am having quality time with my love, which is excellent.

Kimchi update - The Kimchi is a little extra salty but it's nearly pickled. One more day on the counter and then to the fridge.

Day of rest - Today is my day of rest as I wrote earlier. I am keen to return to my reading.

DORIS LESSING HAS DIED - Sadness. A very good writer whose books I have not explored nearly well enough.

THE GUARDIAN UK - DORIS LESSING DIES AGED 94


  

Mauna Loa volcano in the night

government shutdown closed the park where the
volcano is located

Volcano at night

Liesel and I standing at the volcano at night

COUNTDOWN TO THE END OF THE BLOG YEAR: 124 shirts remaining

- chris tower - 1311.17 - 19:07