Laura loves this article as it justifies what she's always known.  I like it because it says she has a "defect" :)

And just in case the image doesn't come through clearly:

It used to be that "only your hairdresser knows for sure" whether you color your hair, but redheads can now include their anesthesiologist.  A recent study showed that natural redheads need 20 percent more surgical anesthesia than do women with other hair colors.
Dr. Daniel Sessler, a professor of anesthesiology at the University of Lousiville, said he and his colleagues scientifically proved what anesthesiologists long have noticed in the operating room: that redheads seem to require more anesthesia.
To test their theory, Sessler and his co-workers induced general anesthesia in 20 healthy women - 10 with naturally bright-red hair and 10 with dark hair.  They then observed how the subjects responded to a pain stimulus.  Depending on the pain response, the anesthesiologists raised or lowered the dose of desflurane, a common inhaled anesthesic, until the ideal dose was reached.  Redheads needed significantly higher doses than either the dark-haired subjects or the few blondes the researchers tested.
One explanation why carrot-tops need stronger anesthesia is that they possibly have greater pain sensitivity.  They have a defect in the "melanocortin-1 receptor," which makes red pigment instead of the normal dark pigment (melanin) for hair.

I'm sure this won't surprise many of you, but Laura found the point in her Tetris game where the score hits maximum and stops counting:

Believe it or not, she got more than 1000 more lines after that point.

I think Tetris must be her "crack".

Laura came into the office with me the other day.  She got bored, so she decided to draw on my whiteboard:

Laura made homemade biscuits the other day.  They are always incredible:

Back in November, Chris, Christian, and Emily came into town to visit:

As always, the obligatory picture up Christian's nose:

We made the journey down to Orange Beach for fall break with Laura's family.  We took the kitties with us this time.  Once again, George looks quite possessed when he's drugged.

The weather was quite nice:

We went to one bar on the beach and noticed that there were several bags of water hanging from the supports of the ceiling above our heads.  The waiter said it was to repel flies.  I'm not sure anyone at our table believed him, but I just looked it up on Google and found quite a few articles explaining it.  Here is one.

One of the days we were there, we headed over to the Alabama Gulf Coast Zoo ("The Little Zoo That Could").  We have seen other zoos that are much bigger and nicer, but they had a surprisingly good assortment of animals on display.  One of the strangest things we saw was the hanging beer keg for the bears to play with:

Apparently they had taken in a claf as well ("baby moo"):

They also had a white tiger...  he looked much better in person.  They had huge vats of water for them to swim in and keep cool in the hot weather.

This turtle cracked me up... he got spooked when a bunch of people walked up to the cage to look at him.  When he tried to jump into the water, his shell got caught on a bump in the rock he was sitting on and it took him a few minutes to manage to squirm off into the water.

Big tortoise.  Upset.  That's all I have to say about that:

I think this might be my favorite picture from the beach:

Chris graduated from Alabama at the end of summer and Papa came down to visit.  Here he is with Katie.

So today was almost entirely skating.  The day started off with Caitlin as Mr. Potato Head and kept going from there:

I think the highlight of the day for our group was Caitlin and Michelle as Luke and Darth Vader:

I can't believe I took the picture, but the one thing that went terribly, terribly wrong with their program was that Caitlin's (Luke's) lightsaber broke (half of it promptly fell to the ground and remained there for the rest of the program):

Everyone did very well this competition.  There were a lot of medals, but unfortunately, no purple.  (Caitlin wanted a purple because it's pretty - not because it's 6th place).  Better luck next time I guess.

This morning Michelle had freestyle.  I think she got a 2nd place for her performance.  I was playing around with my camera and managed to get a picture of her in the air:

We headed into Boston for a tour of the Samuel Adams brewery.  The tour was your normal beer tour.  The only negative thing I can say about it is that the tour is in a warehouse and it is not air conditioned at all.  The best thing I can say about it is that they give you a free glass and a bunch of beer at the end.  They let us try their normal Boston Lager, Summer Ale, and a new beer based on a German "rauch". 

On the way back from the brewery, I saw something that would not have been out of the ordinary in Alabama, but in the middle of Boston seemed a bit too redneck:

So if I had an old school bus sitting around, the first thing I would do is park it next to the other run-down cars in my yard.  The second thing I would do is load it full of junk and use it as a storage shed.  And the third thing I would do (once all the stuff in the bus got melted by the sun) is install two turbin roof vents on top like it's a house.

So from Sam Adams we went over to the Prudential Center to pick up the Duck Tours.  We had Major Groovy the self-proclaimed hippie as our guide.  I would highly recommend this tour to anyone going to the Boston area.  Ours took about an hour and a half, counting quite a few minutes sitting in traffic (ours started at 4:30pm):

While on the tour, Major Groovy let all the children "drive" the duck (it was on water, so they couldn't hit anything).  Once that was over, he opened it up to adults and Michelle and Caitlin took him up on it. 

So is it just me, or does it seem like both of them were heading straight for land? Doesn't sound too good when you're in boat mode.  On the land part of the tour, we drove past a place Major Groovy finds amusing...  it's a combination Dunkin Donuts and sushi place:

You'll see the "Osaka Sushi Express" sign in the window of the Dunkin Donuts shop.  Wow.

When we got back to the Prudential Center, we decided to go up to the observation deck which I believe was on floor 50.  From there we could see quite a few sights of downtown Boston (and take some pictures if you have a decent lens on your camera)...  Here is one of the Charles River at (near) sunset:

This is all of Old Ironsides that we saw:

See it back there behind the building?

Here is a picture of the Old North Church from the Prudential Tower:

And last, but not least, a picture of Fenway Park from the Prudential Tower:

Today my father-in-law and I headed down to Connecticut to see the Connecticut Defenders play a baseball game.  As you might expect from a minor league team, they had interesting mascots.  Their current one was Cutter the Eagle:

And the one they just recently changed from (the team changed names for this season) was Tater the Gator:

A little strange that the old mascot was still around, but if you have the suit, wear it.  As it turns out, the game was early (10:30a) so it was a benefit for school children and several hundred Navy guys from sub school.  Check out all the white behind Cutter in the picture above.

We had to head back after the 7th inning to be sure we'd make it for Caitlin's performance this afternoon.  She got yet another 1st place medal in the Freestyle event:

Tonight we had a very excellent dinner at Legal Sea Foods.  I tried clam chowder for the first time ever (to my recollection) and it was quite good.

So this morning Caitlin and Michelle skated a routine together.  They actually got first place (yay):

In the afternoon, we ventured over to downtown Boston to check out Fenway Park:

I must admit it was quite a good tour of the stadium.  The guy talking to us had a lot of funny stories and could field pretty much any question he was asked.  We got some good advice there:

We got lunch/dinner at the Boston Beer Works.  Then we headed over to Quincy Market where we saw this cow painted to be a short bus:

The ladies did some shopping.  As you can imagine, we were quite tired after all of that, so we headed back out to our hotel.

So today Laura and I went separate ways...  Laura went to go see the girls ice skate at "worlds".  Here is a picture of the crew from Alabama:

There were several events for all of them, but the one that sounded the strangest to me (and Caitlin was in so we have pictures) was called "surprise".  Apparently they tell you as you go onto the ice what it is they need you to do.  I'm sure it's to test some sort of skill or concentration since Caitlin had to push a kickball around the ice with a hockey stick.  This isn't quite as odd as seeing a hockey player do spins, but it's close:

So while Laura was watching ice skating, I took a trip down into Boston on the "T" to see a thesis defense at MIT.  It is impressive to me that it took him 6 years just to get his PhD (this was time spent completely after his undergrad work) and this is about average for the MIT programs.  While I was in Boston, I had to kill some time between events, so I walked around a bit.  I did see the Old South Church which makes me wonder where the Old North Church is relative to it:

We had dinner at this amazing Italian place across the street from our hotel called Linguini's.  It's a dad-and-daughter type show, but it has some of the absolute best Italian food I've ever tasted.  I'm sure we'll visit again this week if we get a chance.

So this had to be one of the longest days of my life.  Laura and I were up fairly late (11:30p-ish) getting our ducks in a row.  Once we finally went to sleep, a storm was rolling through the area and as luck would have it, our power started blinking (almost every minute).  Get out of bed, walk across the house, and re-start the clothes dryer.  One minute later, repeat.  As you can imagine, it didn't start off as a very restful night.  The alarm went off at 3am which is always pleasant.  The things you have to do to make a 6am flight with two suitcases and two boxes full of stuff.  The check-in process was surprisingly efficient at the Delta counter.  Security wasn't too bad either, but I remembered to substitute my normal hiking boots for tennis shoes.  I have to remember to do that every time I fly from now on.

Everything was just ducky (since we got them in a row the night before) until we boarded the plane.  We were walking down the aisle looking for seat 12D and 12E.  I'm sure this has happened to everyone at some point, but we got to our seats and one of them was taken.  And not taken by some big, burley biker dude that you can either reason with or be afraid of.  It was taken by a 6-ish Asian girl that spoke about as much of my language as I did hers.  And of course, there was an avalanche of humanity behind us trying to get to their seats.  Great.  So we ducked into the row in front of her.  Bad choice.  After two people passed, we were now blocking the proper owners of that row.  So we ducked into the row behind her.  We noticed that there was another Asian child and a lady sitting across the aisle from her.  We asked the lady if the little girl was with her and she responded very plainly "no".  We finally managed to hit the call button as going back against the flow is not only a bad idea, but is downright impossible.  Fortunately there was a flight attendant in the back of the plane that came up to assist us.  I guess it must have been the uniform that scared the Asian lady into honesty since when the flight attendant asked her if the little girl was with them she nodded yes and signaled for the little girl to move.  WTF.

The rest of the trip was uneventful except Laura insists I managed to get us on the smallest plane ever built from Atlanta to Manchester, NH.  While waiting for our luggage to be launched out the hole, we decided to go into the gift shop for the baggage claim.  Yes, that's right, there is a gift shop IN the baggage claim.  While I went back outside to catch our luggage as it came out, Laura apparently had a very interesting conversation with a Manchester native that worked in the gift shop.  Their conversation went something like this:

GS: "Are you from here?"

L: "No, actually I'm from Birmingham, AL."

GS: <strange look on face>

L: <laughter>

GS: "So what are you doing up here?"

L: "Actually, I'm up here for a figure skating competition."

GS: "Oh, are you a figure skater?"

L: "No, but my sister is."

GS: "Oh, have you ever been up here before?"

L: "Well, my family was stationed outside of Boston when I was younger and I have family in New York..."

GS: "So this is your first time to New Hampshire?"

L: "Yes."

GS: "Oh.  Well, you're probably just going to want to go ahead and leave."

I'm not entirely sure how their conversation ended, but Laura did join me a few moments later at the baggage claim and let me know that a Manchester resident was more or less telling us that even with all the negatives that are associated with the state of Alabama, we should get back on a plane and leave Manchester as soon as possible.  Wow.

So after we retrieved our massive amounts of luggage, we started walking to pick up our rental car.  Little did we know we had our bags on one end of the airport and we had to walk to the complete other end of the airport.  Literally (we had to go from baggage claim A all the way back around to the opposite end - dodging mass amounts of people as we went past ALL of the ticketing/check-in counters and the other baggage claim). 

The one thing that went smoothly...  I am a Hertz #1 Gold member, so our car was sitting in the parking lot unlocked and waiting for us.  I got the cheapest thing they offered on their web site that wasn't a Focus or Metro.  I believe their web site promised a Grand Prix.  Well, they certainly deliverd something a lot better:

I couldn't believe we got a 2007 Camry.  It's just a 4 cyllinder, but it's night and day better than most of the alternatives.  And it was just big enough to fit all of our luggage in the trunk.  Yay.

So on the way from Manchester, NH down to Marlborough, MA, we decided to stop at the Nashoba Valley Winery.  We took a wrong turn and ended up at Colonial Candies instead.  After visiting for a bit we decided to try for the wine again.  So after having troubles figuring out where on their property the visitors section is, we went inside and realized a tour was about to start.  The tour didn't really hold our interest as we've been to California a few times and taken real tours.  The tour guide was funny though and that helped.  They did have a still on premesis.  Apparently they make their own booze (grappa, vodka, gin, etc) in addition to wine.  After sampling a few of them, we decided to head on to our hotel as we were tired.

As it turns out, our hotel is right next to PC Connection corporate headquarters:

So we checked into the hotel and carried all our junk up to our room.  Except it wasn't our room.  We walked in to two unmaid beds and a suitcase obstructing the door.  Turn it around.  Go downstairs.  Complain.  They gave us a new room.  Carrying all our crap back up again.  Yay.  This room wasn't already occupied.  Good.  Except there aren't any drawers and hardly and hanging space.  Very unusual for a decent quality hotel.  Who in their right mind makes a wardrobe where the hanging bar runs from the door to the back of the piece?  Why not just make it run side to side like the rest of the intelligent world?  Seriously...

So my father-in-law invited me to go down to Pearl, MS to see a baseball game.  Sadly, until I looked it up the day before we went, I had no idea we were going to see the Mississippi Braves.  And even more sadly, they're playing the Birmingham Barons.  I have lived in Birmingham for 2 years now and haven't see the Barons in Birmingham yet and I live about 3 miles from their home stadium. 

When we made it from Birmingham to Tuscaloosa to pick up Chris, we had to light his birthday cake and let him blow them out since he and his family had missed each other for his actual birthday:

I think the first thing we noticed when we got there is that as an outparcel to the stadium (between Trustmark Park and I-20) there is a huge Bass Pro Shops.  It seriously seemed as large as the stadium, just without quite as much parking:

The stadium is apparently in its second season and you can tell that it is brand new and that someone put some money into it.  In addition to having its own restaurant, it had about 8 different food places that all served the generic ballpark stuff in addition to their specialty (peanuts, beer).  The one thing that I think I liked the most about it was that it was easy to get in and out of.  There were a sufficient number of aisles and gates open so that things didn't jam up too badly before and after the game.  You can see how open-air it was in this picture:

It was a bit of a long day (took about 3.5 hours from Birmingham each way), but I think all three of us had a really good time:

Laura found the littlest butterfly:

I found a little lizard that had climbed most of the way up the house to sun himself:

Wilson stayed with us for almost two weeks around Memorial Day:

Bella in a basket:

Tongue:

Caitlin went a little nuts with the letters from a craft project:

Monkey on a motorcycle?

Why were there ducks in our front yard the other morning?

George voted:

Lizard mating call:

The Force on the Ramblin' Wreck:

George and Bella do laundry:

This weekend I think we accomplished what Rob wanted us to do...  party hard:

Christian and some friends came over from Atlanta and partied hard as well:

Brian showed up for the third consecutive time, further backing up his story that he shows up when he's invited:

Rob hung out with all the ladies.  I've never been quite sure why they put up with him:

Fun was had by all:

And there was only one minor incident...  do you see what Christian is standing in?

That would be most of a 10 pound bag of CB's cat food.  And what's the best way to pick up 10 pounds of cat food off of a flat floor?  With a flimsy paper plate of course:

I'm still trying to figure out how it was that Jennifer went from standing in the previous picture to laying down in cat food in this one.  I would say she was rolling around on the floor because she was laughing so hard, but I think it might have actually been that she slipped.

Anyway, Dave is confused by the lack of efficiency with which Christian is cleaning up the mess:

But before he can act, Max swoops in to the rescue:

So all in all, I think everyone had a good time.  Even little Poo had some fun:

I think Doug has the right idea. 

Trooper is the black lab that Laura's parents have.  He is very good at eating anyone that shouldn't be in the house (not quite literally, but his bark will scare you pretty well).

Apparently this weekend they noticed a chunk of his ear missing.  They have no idea of how it happened, but they went to the vet who said he should be fine and bandaged him up.  I always joke that I want to see an animal in a funnel, but really truly, I want an animal to be not hurt even more.

Chris (brother-in-law as opposed to the zillion other Chris's I know) has started up a new web site mainly for the Tuscaloosa area, but plans on expanding it one city at a time.  The general premise is to find cities where the larger restaurant guides missed (like Tuscaloosa, AL) and put up a guide for that city.  I think he's done an excellend job so far.  Check it out and click on an advertisement as that is the way he plans on getting revenue from the site.

http://www.eattuscaloosa.com/

Yesterday we went to the Magic City Art Connection.  This is our second time going to the art show, but our first time to attend the Corks & Chefs Food & Wine Tasting Event.  I must say it was a pretty good display of what some of the local catering companies can crank out.  Our friends Amy & Nick joined us along with brother-in-law Chris.  And you know what that means...  while we were out enjoying ourselves, Wilson was at home terrorizing Grandma.  Poor grandma.

Laura and I went up to Nashville to see Caitlin skate in a competition up there.  We woke up the next morning to this view:

Caitlin and Michelle did quite well in their competition.  Here are a few pics of them in action:

So we made it to Orange Beach in one piece...  and were greeted by swarms of Dragonflies.  Here's one taking a break on our deck:

There were at times swarms of them all over the place, and then at other times, none to be seen.  Very strange.

I did have had a few good chances to play with camera settings, etc, while I was down there.  Here is the moon on Saturday night.  The other light spots are (I assume) fishing ships that were a considerable distance away.  The moon looked cool since it kept getting shrouded in clouds.  In this picture it is just about to pass below the horizon:

Here is Orange Beach during the daytime (morning):

And here are a couple sunset pics:

I really like that you can see the moon in the second one.

Laura gets to stay down there all week, but I have to go to work this week.  Bummer.

We celebrated Caitlin's 15th birthday this weekend.  I took her out driving in a stick-shift car and she did quite well.  Go Caitlin!

This weekend we headed over to Atlanta to help celebrate Christian's 28th birthday.  As always, it was good to visit all the folks over in Atlanta, and I hope we can do it again soon.

While we were in Atlanta, we went shopping for Georgia Tech shirts, etc, at the new Georgia Tech Bookstore.  I can't believe how nice the new group of buildings is, including a Starbucks and various eating places.  I remember the area as being old run-down, shady night clubs.  Now it's an amazing area I would have frequented when I lived right around the corner.  Oh, well.  Nice to know things are getting better for GT.

We were enjoying ourselves at Christian's place:

and then when we wanted something to munch on, Laura found an unopened bag of pretzels.  Great, right?  Well, it's the end of August in 2005 and this is a picture of the pretzel bag:

Way to go, Christian.  These had a wonderful aftertaste of moldy feet.  Not sure I'll ever get rid of that one.

On a good note, we did have the best beer run adventure ever on Saturday night.  Here is a picture of Jon and myself collecting our "reward" from the ladies:

Happy OLD day, Christian.  Just wait till you see what everyone does when you turn 30.

Laura made a new friend this weekend:

I just thought this was a funny picture.

So apparently Sandy Springs (part of Atlanta Metro) has big "painted turtles" at quite a few businesses.  Cross that with a turtle collector, and you have someone that wants to steal your yard ornament.  Here is the turtle lover with the life-sized turtle:

Laura and I saw Chris in Atlanta on Satuday.  I thought this was a really good picture of the two of them:

I made a cat tower for Wilson since he seemed to like ours so much when he was over here.  It's mostly plywood and 2x10s (ripped down to smaller sizes) covered in carpet left over when we re-carped our Huntsville house (before selling it).  Can you say lots of fun with the nailgun and staple gun?

Laura and I gave my mother this cow last year for Christmas...   it is now peacefully sitting in her garden area of the back yard guarding all the plants.  Nevermind that the slacker cow has let poison ivy grow up among the plants.  Bad cow.  But it makes such a good lawn ornament...

On Saturday we went to Abby and Judd's wedding.  Congratulations to Abby and Judd!

Laura and her sister Caitlin were enjoying themselves:

I forgot to post that on Saturday and Sunday we were in Huntsville:

We went to go see Laura's sister do synchronized ice skating:

Once again Laura outdid herself with her creations for Mother's Day.  This time instead of just a snowman for her mother, she made a cow for mine.  Check them out:

You can see the rest of her creations here.

Wilson (aka "loaner" aka "devil cat") was dropped off at our house while we were up in Huntsville this weekend...  He is my brother-in-law's cat and is used to being an only cat.  Needless to say, when he's over, one of our cats is always hiding and the other one gets a good workout chasing him around (or being chased around).

I took it upon myself to make Laura a birthday cake...  the frosting never really became frosting...

It did finally harden a little and start sticking to the cake.  So I took a knife and believe it or not, it finally looked like a normal frosted cake.  Glad it worked out ok.