I was invited to a grand pre-opening of the new KeyLime Cove waterpark in Gurnee, IL. I won’t go into too many details as I have another post coming soon with reviews and photos, but here’s a short video of our adventures in the water park. It’s just a mashup of short clips we filmed.

(13.7 MB / 01:56)

I also changed the video format from MP4 to M4V. Mostly because it’s been so long since I’ve encoded a video I forget the settings I used. So I just picked the “Convert to iPhone” option. Let me know if you have problems viewing it.

AP Photo

Well, not the whole town, but a section of the strip mall on the 1900 block of Grand Avenue (route 132) blew up. The explosion is thought to be caused by a natural gas leak.

I won’t go into all the details here; you can read all about it on probably any news site. But this hit close to home — literally. The explosion was just three blocks from my mom’s apartment.

The story even made it over seas, showing up on the news as far away as the UK and China.

The funniest thing about this whole situation (not that there’s really anything funny about it)? Pretty much all the windows of area buildings were blown out from the blast — one window that survived is the one with the Lucky Lady cake (aka SexyCake) painted on it. SexyCake can not be destroyed!

nite nite, originally uploaded by kellybelly.

Spending the night at KeyLime Cove.

My most recent camera purchase was of a Holga 135BC toy camera. My New Year’s resolution was to not buy so many cameras and photography-related stuff… but yeah, that didn’t last long.

I already have a number of “regular” Holga cameras but I thought I’d give this one a try since it seemed pretty neat.

Yesterday I finished my first roll and developed it, and I gotta say… I really like what I get from this camera. Being winter and low on daylight hours I haven’t had a chance to shoot many interesting things (all we have around here is snow), but this little camera will definitely get a workout once spring/summer hits. I took some indoor flash photos that turned out surprisingly well, so I may make this my “party camera.”

The whole set can be viewed here, but below are three of the better shots from the roll.

Ilford HP5+ (iso400), developed in Diafine

Fixing my broken headphones, originally uploaded by kellybelly.

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Ever since we saw a review over on Candy Addict, we’ve been on a search. We both love malt-flavored candy so these were right up our alley.

Any store we ventured into required a visit to the candy aisle, but we always walked away disappointed. We were positive that we’d never get to taste them. I did some Google-ing and found out that they were released back in September as a limited edition flavor, so the chances were good that they all got snapped up and were no longer available.

I was even tempted to buy a bag on eBay, but neither of us felt that a single bag of Kisses was worth $10 (what it would cost after shipping was added in), even though we were dying to try them.

Last week I read a comment on the above-linked post that K-Mart still had them in late December. Hope was still alive!

Today I hit up the local K-Mart during my lunch break. It was a long shot (in my opinion) that they would still be available — they were last spotted in stores about six weeks ago, so surely they were all gone by now.

At first glance I figured it was the same thing as usual — I didn’t see any. But then I got down on my knees and really peered and searched the shelves. Finally… there, at the back of a lower shelf, I spotted the elusive Chocolate Malt Crunch Hershey Kisses! Victory at last!

There were actually quite a few bags on the shelf — about fifteen — and it was hard not to grab them all… so I only grabbed six. Six bags should last a while, right?

Do they live up to the hype? Well… I gots to say, they’re pretty tasty. I like the little crunchy bits in them, and the malt flavor is pretty good. I really can’t eat more than a few at a time because the flavor gets a bit overpowering — but I really shouldn’t eat more than one or two anyway so it works out.

Free Chili’s lunch, originally uploaded by kellybelly.

Guiltless chicken platter
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Ugh.

Yesterday we went to my aunt’s house for a “bon voyage” party. She’s moving to Phoenix in a few days so we gathered to wish her well.

I got my ass kicked by some damn good margaritas, and so you may share my pain some time in the future I decided to post the recipe here.

You will need the following ingredients:

1 can frozen limeade concentrate
1 bottle beer, Corona preferrably
Tequila
limes, sliced
margarita salt
margarita glasses

Multiply as necessary — this doubled will fill that glass container above about halfway full. Quadruple the recipe and you will have plenty for a small gathering.

Now that you have everything ready, do the following (very important!):

Step 1: Put the limeade concentrate in the blender.
Step 2: Fill the limeade container with tequila and pour into the blender.
Step 3: Pour the Corona into the blender.
Step 4: Blend.
Step 5: Rim margarita glass with salt, add ice and the mix from the blender, and garnish with a lime slice.
Step 6: Consume.

Of course, you can vary the amount of tequila if you’re not much of a drinker, but honestly… why?

Have a safe trip Auntie!

I have so many cameras in my collection (sixty-eight, to be exact), and most of them are functional, so many times I end up not taking a lot of photos just because I can’t decide what camera to use. I usually have film in about four different cameras at once, which means I never get anything developed.

My solution is to narrow my camera use down to a handful of models. I think I came up with the list:

• Nikon D70 - for when I need guaranteed “good” photos
• Canon G2 - for band photos (it’s converted for IR, so great for low-light shows)
• Holga 135BC - carry everywhere camera
• Canon A540 - digital carry everywhere camera when I don’t want to use the Holga; also underwater shots
• Horizon - my new favorite, for events when I think there’ll be good photo ops
• Diana+ - when I want medium format shots; outdoors only

It will be tempting to drag out some other models, and I very well might do so if I think the subject warrants it. But I will try my hardest to limit myself to only those cameras listed above.