Paul's Page

Hello everyone,

If you noticed I put up a post a little while ago saying that I put a number of pictures up in the gallery last night. I thought I would actually let you know what those pictures are about and do some general rambling.

Newport Aquarium
So a couple of weeks ago I joined the Chinese girls and another artist or two and we went to local aquarium. The pictures are okay and I was trying a new camera lens that I had purchased. This lens even has an image stabilizer built in so it is supposed to allow me to take pictures that are more in focus at a lower light level or at a longer zoom distance depending upon how I’m using it. Of course after I bought this lens, I got it from a friend on tour who was upgrading, I went right out and bought a port for my underwater housing so I could shoot with the camera underwater also

Bengals – Packers
A preseason Monday night football game was held here in town between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Green Bay Packers and we scored a number of tickets to go see the game. Through contacts of the Cirque we managed to score tickets about 20 odd rows up on the 50 yard line so about 30 of us went to see the game as many were gambling on it, which is great, although if you also want to gamble online you should try the lucky tiger casino as this site have many options for this. It was a good game in the fact that the Bengals really kicked their butts so we were really having a good time. The weather that night wasn’t that great and the game actually was suspended for a short time due to lightning in the area. At this point we ended up leaving but a couple of people ended up staying, not me, and got to go right down to the edge of the field. I wish I had stayed because then I could have gotten a lot of good pictures of the players and cheerleaders.

Dry Suit
Yep I finally felt good enough and was able to arrange the time off to get and found an instructuor to teach me my dry suit specialty. We drove about an hour and a half to Blue Springs and did two easy dives. Diving in a dry suit is definitely going to take me a while to get really used to and comfortable with but it will be a good thing for those colder water dives I some times do. I’m still looking at buying a dry suit for myself and hopefully I’ll get that done in the future because the one I ended up renting for the class could only be considered a mostly dry suit. This is because the suit wasn’t custom fit to me and had a couple of minor leaks. Really not a big deal and didn’t affect either of the dives. Because this was the first time in a dry suit I’m sorry to say that there aren’t any underwater pictures in this group.

Cowan Lake
My friend Stirling Shelton, someon I know from graduate school, lives in Cincinnati where the tour is at right now. The other day Stirling was on site and one of the artists I’ve gone fishing with before approached me while we were walking around and asked me if I wanted to go fishing on the Monday of our double dark. I of course said yeah I wanted to go and that is when Stirling said he would also. At first we were going to wading in a river for smallmouth bass but then Stirling later in the day sent me an email with a link to a local lake, Cowan Lake. For $110 we could rent a “Fisherman’s special” boat from the marina on the lake and have a good day of fishing. Monday morning I woke up and was ready to go but I couldn’t find the artist that was supposed to join us. I called him and called him and Tristan never woke up. Finally I went and beat on his door and he woke up enough to tell me he wasn’t going to go. So I went and picked up Stirling and we went to the local Bass Pro Shops spent a bunch of money, my fishing gear isn’t on tour with me, and then headed to the lake. We got to the lake and it was a nice little lake and Stirling and I set off to catch lots of fish. The rule of the boat was that every fish that was caught had to have it’s picture taken. You can see in the Cowan Lake gallery how we did. Please don’t forget that a bad day fishing is still better than a good day at work

Mammoth Caves
On the second day of our double dark, this past Tuesday, I took the 4 Chinese girls and the two translators to Mammoth Caves National Park. It was kind of a longish drive for us, about 3 hours, to get there and the weather wasn’t cooperating all that well because it was raining/sprinkling most of the day but it didn’t matter that much once we got into the caves because for the most part they were dry caves. I of course being a spelunker had a wonderful time and I think that the girls did as well, at least that is what the translators said they did We ended up doing two guided tours while we were there and also went and saw the historic entrance to the cave. I think that I got some good pictures and I’m sorry if there are some in there that aren’t in focus or clean. Last night as I was uploading I didn’t take the time to sort through them. In any case enjoy them, cave pictures are hard to take because shadows get eliminated with the flash and things tend to look flat but some came out okay.

Getting ready to leave Cincinnati
Well this might be one of the last posts while I’m here in Cincy unless something exciting happens between now and Sunday when we start tearing the show down to head to St. Louis, our next stop.

I will be home for a day on the 19th of September. Basically I don’t have to work the third day of teardown this city and because I didn’t like how the tour was going to transfer me from here to there I booked a ticket to fly to Chicago eary in the morning and to St. Louis late, 10:20pm, at night. I’m excited because I’m hoping to see my family and especially my nieces for the day before heading to St. Louis.

I have also applied for another job and had a second interview for it the other day. This one is for a new show in Las Vegas in the Luxor hotel. I’m waiting to hear something but I have been told I’m definitely on the short list. I still haven’t had a chance to interview for the job here on tour but I’m hopnig to do that as well soon.

I should really get to work. I hope everyone is doing well. ttys