Props to Panera Manager Colin (W Boughton in Bolingbrook). Heidi and I ordered dinner there a couple of nights ago. I’d been searching for much of the afternoon for black drinking straws. You wouldn’t believe how hard they are to find. Target doesn’t have them. The Jewel-Osco grocery store doesn’t have them. Even the Factory Card Party Outlet doesn’t have them — and they have full sets of black plasticware for “Over the Hill” parties. I couldn’t find them … until Panera.

So seeing cups and cups of these straws around the restaurant, I decided to ask the cashier if I could have about 100 of the straws. I even offered to pay. She said, “Hold on, I don’t think I can give out a box without my manager knowing about it.” She went to the back as they prepared our food and then came out with an anxious-looking guy. (I don’t think he’d ever had such a request). He pulled out a box of the straws from a cabinet, came up to me, and said, “You want 100 of these?!?” Then he counted them out halfway and doubled it. (I ended up with 121).

“Can I pay you for these?” I asked him. After thinking about it for five seconds, he asked us if we had family in the area that ever needed catering. I said “No, but she’s a local priest” and pointed to Heidi. He gave us the catering brochures and asked us to use their service at some point. And I’m pretty sure we will!  This Panera is already Heidi’s default place to meet her parishioners, and if St. Benedict’s ever did cater (instead of eating pot-luck style) they’d probably use Panera.  But when Heidi and I were walking to the car and talking about how smart and friendly of a manager Colin is, we realized: we’re going to need food for the rehearsal dinner for our wedding! This is the start of a beautiful case of patronage to our local Panera …

So the straws are for a very particular project – a project that makes me feel like Clark Gilpin. I’m making grid spots for my external camera flashes. Grid spots are honeycomb shapes you put on the end of a flash to give it a circular shape (rather than a widespread fill) and a directable beam of light. In Joe McNally’s book, The Moment it Clicks (one of the new crowd favorites), it seems most of his pictures have at least one light with a grid spot. I wanted this effect, but I didn’t want to have to pay $137 for set of 4. Thank goodness for Strobist and the other DIY (Do-It-Yourself) blogs.

For those of you who don’t know, Clark Gilpin is an American Religious History professor at the Divinity School. He’s not a photographer, and not an “artsy” type — so no, he wasn’t the one who showed me how to make these grid spots. But his incessant use of a ruler is very memorable. I still remember first time he gave us a copied reading for class with his underlines still in the text. Gilpin doesn’t underline while reading in the car or on the bus; there are no squiggly lines in his text. He reads and underlines USING A RULER … with exact, parallel lines underscoring his points. When I think of a ruler, I don’t think of Canon, I think of Gilpin.

Which is why I felt like Clark Gilpin while creating these grid spots. To make them, I had to borrow Heidi’s ruler. (I haven’t had a ruler since high school … there’s a reason I’m going into ministry!!!) With the ruler, I made the precise measurements – first, on a Raisin Bran box, and then, on a Trader Joe’s pesto pizza box after I’d messed up the Raisin Bran version. With enough super glue and electrical tape to go around, the grid spots are finished and I’m anxious to test them!

Heidi and my teaching pastor have been giving me a hard time about what counts as a “healthy snack.” It started at CHN when Rich Birch was getting the goldfish cracker snacks out for the kids before Godly Play (the pre-Sunday School activity time). The container was missing and there weren’t snacks. Luckily, the week before, I’d stocked a cupboard at CHN with my stash of Diet Pepsi and Baked Cheetos. So when Rich was needing a quick fix, I said “Hey, don’t worry, I have some healthy snacks in the cupboard. I have a bag of Baked Cheetos.”

Aimée immediately chided me, saying “Adam, cheetos ARE NOT healthy!”

“Why not? It has that green circle with a check mark that says Smart Choice on it!”

“Come on, Adam, it really means smarter choice …”

Heidi unfortunately agreed with Aimée on that one. Which is why, in January, Heidi introduced me to an incredible new snack at Trader Joe’s. For the first two bags I devoured, I couldn’t believe these things were real vegetables. They’re actual snap peas that are baked through and covered with a salty flavoring. Even though they’re veggies, they have the texture of crackers. That company is brilliant!

I’m on the look-out for more healthy snacks (besides the traditional salads/fruit options). If you have any recommendations, leave them in the comments on this blog entry!

Oh! And I included the picture above because I’m getting into the hands-on projects from Strobist (this one’s the DIY Macro Studio) . Here’s the setup shot with my two Speedlites; underneath the bag I had a glass pane my parents were going to throw out over Christmas break).