I'm a Dancing Poodle



A home video of Lauren Ratcliff, more famously known for her performance in 'Jesus Ranch', here performs as a dancing poodle.

A while back we transferred a bunch of home movies over to our Tivo, next I used the Tivo desktop feature to copy them to my computer. Since I purchased a decent piece of video editing software yesterday (Adobe Premiere Elements), I decided to experiment with editing a section of one of the movies.

As I pointed out yesterday, editing videos can be very time consuming, but pulling out snippets from when your children were young is well worth the time. Being able to then upload these video snippets to YouTube and embed them into your website is especially cool.


(Lauren Ratcliff in Itsy Bitsy Spider and other performances)

Yesterday Alex and I attended the installation of officers for Troy Lodge #34. It was a great ceremony and I was very happy for Tommy Hamlett who was installed as Master for the second time. The last time he was Master was over twenty years ago.

After the Installation Sean, past Master Councilor of Troy DeMolay Chapter, presented the Ceremony of Lights. I grabbed my camera and recorded his performance. As I noted before, the video quality I get out of my digital camera really sucks. The image quality was poor, the audio quality was poor and, worst of all, every time the camera re-focused it made a very loud whirring sound into the microphone.

This experience pretty much decided it for me. This morning I went ahead and bought myself a modern camcorder. We have stacks of camcorders lying around in closets but they are all quite old technology. I was suprised that a high-end camcorder costs under $400. I purchased a Sony DCR-DVD108 DVD Handycam recorder with 40x optical zoom from Amazon.com. I considered getting one that records to a hard-drive, but I decided against it. Hard-drives crash and then you have to hassle with being forced to transfer the data all of the time. I think I will like the convenience of burning a DVD directly with the Camcorder and I can transfer it to my computer for editing at my own convince from this very 'hard' copy.

Attending the Installation of Officers for Troy Lodge really got me thinking about my own installation, which is scheduled for September 15th at the New Masonic Temple.

I really enjoyed the meal that Brother Tommy had for his installation yesterday. It included ham, turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, corn, rolls, salad, and pecan pie for dessert. To be quite honest, I'm becoming a bit too 'active' in Masonry as I have gained quite a bit of weight in the past six months. I guess I'm going to have to start dieting yet once again. It seems all of the walking I did on my vacation couldn't offset all of the great meals I had while I was there.

The meal yesterday was so enjoyable that I decided I wanted to get a business card from the caterer so I might use them for my own Installation. When I asked the guy for a card he apologized and said he didn't have one as he pointed to the name badge on his shirt. The name plate read 'Ponderosa'. Now, I have never eaten at Ponderosa in my life since I am a stuck up snob who just intuitively figured any all you can eat steak place was going to be a pretty scary experience. And, I certainly never thought they did catering. Well, I have seen the light now and I am definitely going to consider using them for my own Installation as not only was the food great but so was the service and professionalism of the staff.

As I watched the installation yesterday I realized I have a lot of preparation to do. Since the installation will be open I hope to get a lot of my friends to show up. I'm even thinking of challenging my son to memorize the entire flower talk so he can perform it at my installation as well. I also plan to give a short, but informative, speech about the history of Napthali lodge.

I am currently in the process of uploading the video of Sean's presentation of 'The Ceremony of Lights' to Google video. I will embed the link when it is complete. For members of the Freemason community who are not entirely familiar with DeMolay I think you may find the ritual interesting.




Worshipful Master Tommy Hamlett receiving the gavel of authority from Right Worshipful Brother Fred Statler



Worshipful Brother Tommy Hamlet being installed as Master of Troy Lodge #34.




Worshipful Brother Dusty Rhoads and his lovely wife at the installation.




The painting I purchased in Rome now snugly encassed in the custom made frame I bought off of the Internet.






Past Master Councilor of Troy Chapter of DeMolay, Sean, performing the Ceremony of Lights.






Just a few clips strung together from a home video.

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