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The Church of the Latter-Day Saints of Jesus Christ has a gorgeous temple here in Las Vegas.  Thanks to Justin for the opportunity to photograph the grounds.

That's all for now...

B

The week has been thus far uneventful.  Had a wonderful Valentine's Day <3, got schoolwork done, and even saw Ryan through another successful year of life.  Happy Birthday brother :-)

As usual, can't have a photoblog without photos...here are the highlights of the week...

Here's the aviation shot of the week, Southwest Airlines.  Kind of a steep climb, yeah?

The Green Valley Ranch Casino & Resort at night...lots of construction going on to accomodate the increase in business...

Cassandra's pet turtle...cool detail huh?

I've also determined that DSLRs are absolutely the most awesome digital imaging equipment on the market.  I was playing with a lens that I received for Christmas--the Canon EF 10-22mm USM--an excellent wide-angle lens.  Here are some sample photos...

The car at work...

The Office...shortly before work, I wanted to get a picture of the entrance to work...

The Thomas & Mack arena, shortly before the big NBA All-Star weekend...finally figured it out haha!

Outside my car shortly before leaving school to go to work...

That's it for now...hasta pasta!

B

I haven't had time to take pictures.  Family has been in town.  Odd thing is, normally you preserve the memories you make with your family--someone does it, and I'm usually tasked to do so. 

But forget the event documentation.  Try having to justify a $500.00 loss at the GVR casino.  $H!#&*T!!!  No matter--I still had fun.  My mom's sisters less one were here over the weeked so I've been busy entertaining that aspect of my life.  Haven't been able to study one bit.

But I do have some random photos that I shot on the way home from school today...

Something's going on and I don't know what...typical Brandon

What's really funny is that no one's maintaining visual on the tension cords from below...so basically anyone can walk up and have a field day lol...

I never stop....that's just me though...

WHO THE F&#CK LET THIS OUT?!?!?!?!

"Toto's Lechon Manok" ... Why we thought this was a Chamorro restaurant, I'll never know...it really STUNK in there...wreaked of fish and balut...

"That's all for now...till laters" -[markie]
~Brandon

Suffice it so say, I haven't been very religious about my blogging.  It's been nearly two years since I've stepped foot into this world.  My grammar has gone awry,  and my skill set to conquer the blog world has diminished.  But that's okay.  I've attained yet another skill...well let's call it a hobby for now that I intend on developing into a skill.  It's Photography...the concept of photography that allows one to capture his personal perspective of the world around him with a mere click of a button.

I've always loved digital cameras.  This past year I took it a step further and bought myself a Canon 400D--my first digital SLR while working for Best Buy.  It's an awesome camera and allows for much better function and control of the pictures you take.  A digital SLR is SO POWERFUL, it makes the cheesy point-and-shoot conventionals about as worthless as the camera on your cell phone. 

Enough about the the power of the DSLR in writing--how about a visual perspective?  Here we go--yesterday I went out to Red Rock Canyon and Lake Las Vegas with some friends to help me take some pictures for a speech on photography that I'm doing at UNLV next week.  Here they are...

That's it guys.  Hope you enjoyed Round 1. 

--B--

Okay so I'm sitting here getting ready to start my day.  And I have nothing to write about.  It's called Writer's Block...a condition wherein a writer is devoid of all thought and cannot form opinions, fashion words into an attractive sentence, or even think of a suitable topic that will captivate his readers. 

I was hit with the condition for the first time in my senior year.  We read ten novels, four plays, and hundreds of poems under the British genre.  For each item read, a 250 word essay was to be submitted.  Each essay had a certain focal point.  Sometimes I'd have to discuss the theme of a novel.  Sometimes the conflict.  Sometimes it was a discussion of the hero and/or heroine.  The list went on, and Mrs. Heckman just adored making our senior year of English a living hell.  Fortunately for me, her class opened my mind to reading more, developing a stronger command of diction, and led to an overall improvement in my vocabulary.  At the end of the year, our work was culminated by a ten to fifteen page research paper on any topic of British Literature.  After my first two or three essays in her class, writer's block was well out of my system.  The consistency with which I wrote helped me flow from one paper to the next, always with ideas in mind.  Then came the research paper.  And I was stopped dead in my tracks.    I couldn't think of anything to write about, and it was a five week torcher.  I approached Mrs. Heckman about this, and she told me everyone that had already submitted a topic chose their favorite book, and chose to expand on a particular concept in the book (theme, hero/heroine, conflict, etc.), and it would be more than acceptable for me to do so.  But that wasn't me.  I like to stand out.  I like to be the one with a different perspective.  So instead, I chose an author and focused on her life.  What inspiration did she use for her novels.  How personable were her novels to her.  And I found that Jane Austen's love novels weren't exactly fiction.  They were her life...and all she did was change the names of the characters.  That's when my writer's block was cured.  I coined the topic, "The Ironic Parallelism Between Jane Austen's Novels and Her Life."

And it looks like I just found another cure for this symptom of WB.