I have live in Gatlinburg for almost 5 years and never had been to the Ribfest & Wings event held downtown. They block off the street and vendors set up booths to offer you 3 little bones. And after standing in line to get those three bones you get in the next line and continue the process until you have had enough. But don’t look for that to happen if you really want to make a meal out of it, cause you will wait for 30 minutes to get your three bones and then do it again. And the whole time you have to carry the paper plate with you the entire night.

To me it was pretty much a joke to think that you could vote on your favorite ribs or wings. After you stood in line, got your small portion of ribs, that were usually cold, there is no way to officially tell wether or not they were any good. But at least I can finally say I have experienced the annual event.

I did get to see a few folks I knew as I passed other lines of people waiting for their three bones, and finished it with a stop by Ripleys Believe it or Not to take a grandson through to see the odd things on display.

Will I go next year… if I do, it will be to hang out downtown but most likely not to stand in line for three to four hours.

Spring officially begins Friday and finally I think temperatures in the 30′s and 40′s during the daytime will be a thing of the past. I will certainly embrace spring with open arms and see some relief from the cost of winter heating. After taking a big hit in the finances over the last few months, things only got worse due to the high cost of electricity. For some reason my bill was 60 to 100 dollars higher than last year. And don’t give me that bull about higher fuel cost. They don’t bring my electric to me in a truck and besides, the cost of gasoline has been less than 2 bucks a gallon for several months now.

I have been able to get by and hopefully the nations economy will at least stay where its at or begin to get better. It really sad to see that in this downtime, that the high ranking executives who are getting bail out money are using it to pay bonuses. If you are like me, then hopefully that pisses you off too.

I closed the gallery in December due to the horrible state of the art buying economy but hope to open again someday. I moved my agency back into the house and have been doing that work from there again. But without the outlet to sell art, I just have not been motivated to produce new works, I keep wanting to experiment with HDR, but for no good reason have not completed too many test in that medium. It seems as if that is the direction most photography is heading to. I have even notice some bits of television using HDR imagery as well.

With the upcoming flurry of blooming spring flowers, I hope I can get out, get motivated and produce some new works. Hopefully some HDR images will work their way into my product line.