The Chronicles of John Trammell

Amanda Clark, a close cousin of mine, is leaving from San Diego Airport tomorrow for Afghanistan to were she will be a civilian contract worker for the military.  She will be gone for a full year.  She has been down here in the Inland Empire the past week hanging out with the family.  Been able to chill with her between my work and school schedule.  We did some awesome things from exploring Forest Falls, going to a dog beach in San Diego, and having a camp out in the yard at the farm.  I have the honor of being the person who takes her to the airport. We left for Oceanside this afternoon, and drove up to San Clemente to were my parents came to eat dinner at Sonny's Pizza and Pasta.  Now we are chilling tonight, then heading to downtown San Diego before she leaves. Amanda, I wish you a safe trip over to your new temperately home in the mid east, and pray for your safe return to the states in a year.  I know that you will stay strong, and wont allow any...

     For those who might not know, my cousin, Amanda, is leaving in less than a week to Afghanistan for 11 months.  She has been down here for just over a week and we have been chilling in between my school and work schedule. Yesterday afternoon while Amanda was driving back home from Camp Pendleton, she called me with an idea to have a campfire at the farm and roast hot dogs and have smores.  Then with that idea, she randomly came up with the idea of us having a Camp out at the farm, since she wont be able to go camping for the next year.  With that idea, I grabbled some clothes, my computer class homework, and my tent and headed on up to the farm.  When I arrived we first had dinner.  Amanda and I were hungry and was impatient, so we started the BBQ up and just cooked the hot dogs and sausages in that instead of the open fire.  As dinner was getting done, we were attempting to light the fire with no success.  Near the end of d...

For the past few years, I have been looking to bring something new into the 4-H program at state.  Last year, i switched from teaching web design and GIS technology to teaching photography at all major 4-H conferences at the state level.  While I was at the Technology Team Orientation at Lake Tahoe, I came up with a wonderful idea to have a photography contest to the 2010 State Field Day.  With the team supporting my idea, I had only three weeks to put the details together before information needed to go out into the public. After working on the major details and rules and online registration forms, the information spread out through the state.  At that time, I wasn't too sure that we would get that many entries, so I made it possible to have 4-H youth enter up to 5 photographs into the contest.  A few months went by, and registration entries were slowly coming in.  While the deadline came closer, I had tons of questions about having the photographs...