Ben Benner’s Blog

For those that do not know, the Dominguez part of Dominguez-Benner is known for their artistic talents. I got some of this talent, but to be honest, just never practice. I have tabled in clay as a medium, making small ceramic things and painting them. Some of which I felt were good, those being the ones that came after doing, many, many in a row. i.e. ‘Practice makes perfect.’ (Notably my Mother and Sister are very good artists, and my Abuelo (grandfather) is a real Renaissance man of art, all of my uncles have the talent as well.)

I can definitely feel that practice makes you better, in my opinion there is no such thing as perfect, sorry Google and Apple, but keep striving for perfection, please. Back to the real topic of this post. I have probably always been a sketcher, a doodler, someone who likes to draw little things. I really, REALLY enjoyed the drawing class I took with Rachel (the only other Dominguez-Benner in existence) a number of years ago.

Well, technology has gotten better at allowing artistic expression and thanks to the economics of technology (i.e. it gets cheaper every year), the cost of really GOOD digital drawing tablets has come to the point where it is not a MAJOR investment to get one. Particularly, when it is your Birthday.

Gina bought me a Wacom Intuos4 Small tablet. Kevin has one at work (technically two Wacom tablets, the small and I believe the mediumis at home). I had thought about asking for one of the larger Bamboo brand, also made by Wacom, but Kevin advised me that the sensitivity of the Intuos is just better.

I hope to be able to get the hang of digital sketching and also definitely work on doing some ‘photoshop’ editing of pics. Just from playing around with it for the about 15 minutes, I can tell that the sensitivity that it provides would allow for some very creative editing of existing digital media.

Here is the pic that I drew real quick. I was just messing around and it all sort of came together, I tried out doing the different pieces in layers and seeing how they blended onto one another.

Time to go to lunch with Gina and John.

Laterz

bdbenner art, digital birthday, drawing, gina, wacom

I had a nice chat with my mom this morning on the way into the office. During which, she and David sung me Happy Birthday.

I made it into the office a bit earlier than usual this morning, I have a 9am conference call. As is the dogs woke me up at like 5am. No matter how you slice it, this morning was going to happen earlier than usual.

On a side note, if memory serves I was born at about 12:11am eastern time on this day so many, many years ago (31). I don’t think I was able to get to sleep until about 11:30 central, which means I was actually up for my birthday, hour and minute.

I attribute my midnight birth as to one of the reasons I have always been more of a night-owl. But who knows if that is really the case or not. I do know that because I was sick when I was born, I have the unatural power to fall asleep with the lights on (and usually the TV as well). I forget what I had exactly, but I know my mom said that they put me in a ‘box’ with bright lights, presumably lamps that would give me artificial sun light or something.

So here I am at the office, drinking my soy milk with a dash of coffee spilled into the mug. I have already had my GingerBread Squared (patent pending) toast and am listening to Sinatra belt out how he did it his way. I had the brief notion that I would like to dress up like Sinatra for Halloween. Not entirely sure I will be able to find a vintage-ish suit and more importantly a fedora that will fit me noggin.

Regardless, I will do it MY WAY!

I have been ‘penning’ a blog post a few minutes at a time over the last couple of weeks that I hope to finish today. My original intent was to do that this morning before my call. However, answering work email took longer than expected. I will see if I can get some writing in at lunch.

Birthdays are usually when I start getting all introspective and reviewing myself and what I am doing and what I want to do, I imagine that many other get this way around their birthdays. I will likely weave some more introspection into that blog post.

Well, 3 minutes until my call. I best head over to the conference room.

Back to the grind.

Laterz

bdbenner Personal birthday, me, rambling

OK, maybe not a thousand words, more like a sound, maybe “Gurpasdkhf”.

Kevin just looks like his eyes are going to roll back and the rest of him fall forward.

Kevin is holding a gift that he made for Val as it is her birthday.

Jeremy brought in his camera and he snapped a few photos of Kevin’s gift and Kevin. I kinda dig this one.

Check out the Jeremy’s whole Flickr set.

Happy Birthday Val! (well, tomorrow anyway.)

Back to the grind.

Laterz

bdbenner blogs, friends, kevinNuut birthday, jeremy, kevin nuut

Technically speaking (my modus operandi) I turned 30 last night at about 11:15 or so, give or take a few minutes. I am of course adjusting for Central timezone vs Eastern.

It was 30 years ago somewhere around 12:10-12:15 (I forget the exact) in the morning that I was born to Graciela Dominguez (Now Graciela Underwood) and Thomas J. Benner.

A couple of years back my father sent me an strangely thick envelope, it contained the receipt for my birth. The charges for all of the various bits of hospital equipment, room charges, diapers ($4 back in 1978), and a few other odds and ends. The total was somewhere between $3,500 and $3,800 (I am sorry to report my memory isn’t quite as sharp as a few years ago, course I also didn’t try to commit the number to memory).

I found a few inflation calculators online and ran $3,800 through them to see how much I would have cost in today’s day and age, purely on an inflationary basis. It would appear that it is between $12,000 and $13,000. I find it interesting that three different calculators all produced three different results. I can only surmise that they are using different inflation staticists for each year.

Regardless, having the hospital bill sent to you some twenty-odd years after the fact is kinda weird. After receiving the envelop, I jokingly asked my father if I was expected to pay him back. I forget what his repsonse was, but since we didn’t setup a payment plan, I am guessing he declined.

But that brings me to the next thing. I received a package from my mother recently. The contents of which filled in several holes what I knew to be the story of the day of my birth and some backstory on my parent’s early years of marriage.

It also contained some family tree information.

I have to say that I was quite touched to have my mother be able to recollect in a fair amount of detail the events leading up to my birth. For instance, my parents had gone bowling before I was born. My mom did not start giving birth at the bowling alley, though that would have been quite a story and a sign of things to come.

She did however manage to bowl the same score three times in a row, while not a high score, it is worthy of a league patch. And there apparently was a write-up in the Lansing State Journal about it, next time I am in Lansing I will need to hit up the library and see if they have the microfiche available.

I knew that when I was born that I was sick and had to stay in a “special box with lights” for the first few days of my life. This apparently was because I was jaundice(d) and apparently the lights in the “box” helped me get some vitamins that I needed.

I am pretty sure that my parents and wife will agree that the box with the lights probably has had a profound effect on me, as it has granted me the ability to fall asleep with the lights (and tv on). Course it may or may not have anything to do with me being solar powered.

I woke up early today and headed into the office. I have been here for about 20 minutes, I caught up on a the few emails that came in over night and have been writing this post, which I now must wrap up. As of about 4pm yesterday this went from being a normal week with a couple of birthdays thrown in there, into a week with a tight deadline and a couple of birthdays.

Jeremy’s birthday is on Friday, I forget his exact age, but I know he is OLD(er than me). I regularly forget that Jeremy is a few years older than me, to that effect I can never tell whether that is because I still act older than I should or if it is just Jeremy’s youthful spirit.

Meh, could be both.

Back to the grind.

Laterz

bdbenner Personal 1978, birthday, inflation, solar powered