Brie purchased some sort of "Moon Plant" at the Helena ACE Hardware a while back.  It gets its name since it only blooms in the evening or at night.  It has little pods of seeds that it drops periodically.

Everyone got together for Brie's birthday...  even Emily and Jeremy came down to celebrate.  Laura and friends planned it out as if it was Brie's 6th birthday instead of her 26th...

Even Brie's sister Jade came to see her.

Water balloon toss:

 

Laura, Lauren, Brie, Steve, and I went to the 2007 Brewfest at Sloss Furnace sponsored by Free The Hops.  It was quite an interesting experience, especially since we had an opportunity to taste quite a few different beers. 

I must say though that there was only one beer that stood out as amazingly horrible.  That award would have to go to Rodenbach Grand Cru.  It was fruity and not at all what a beer should be.  Most of us poured it out on the ground.

This is Beans.  It is Brie and Steve's newest cat.  He's not quite a month younger than Lily, so as you can imagine, they're best buds.

We went to The Grape at 5 Points and Bell Bottoms.

The girls did a spectacular job of decorating for Laura's birthday.  The theme was a black and white movie-type thing and everyone pitched in to decorate the house while I distracted Laura.  Even Emily and Jeremy made the journey down to Birmingham.

Laura, Christa, and I went to see Carrie sing with the Birmingham Concert Chorale back in April...

Just in case you can't make out which one is Carrie, she's in the upper left...  here is a zoom.

LAuren was kind enough to take us up to North Georgia Wine Country back in April.  On the way up, we stopped at an Applebees before we got too far away from civilization.  As it turned out, they were having a special on beer for $2.  The ladies ordered margaritas at about $8 each.  Who do you think go the better deal?

Here is Lauren sneaking a taste of my beer through a straw (I believe on a dare just to see what would happen).

This is the woods outside where we stayed...  The area up there was absolutely beautiful.

On the way back out of town, we stopped an got gas...  it was a little scary as this was the only store we had enough gas to get to:

We had Easter at our house for a bunch of our friends...

We did secret-Santa style easter baskets.  Steve drew my name and in it there was a Yard-O-Beef.  Here's a picture relative to a DVD case, so you can see it's not quite a yard, but it's certainly large enough to beat someone with.

 

Laura and I met Steve and Brie at Superior Grill before heading out to Jeremy and Emily's bachelor party.  It ended up being a bad idea, but it sounded like a good idea at the time.

The margaritas were quite nice.  The beer was incredibly small and was almost the same price as the margarita.  We put one of the hot sauce bottles next to the beer for a size reference.

We were all distracted when the Wienermobile drove down 280.  It stopped in a parking lot and we took a few pictures:

Then everyone piled into my car and headed to the party:

Christian scored us tickets to the home closer for Georgia Tech...  it was vs BC. 

He brough Emily along to enjoy the game:

Amusingly, at halftime, the soundsystem guys were having problems, so instead of dancing, the GT dance team stood in this position for about 3 minutes while no music was playing (or the beginning of the wrong music was playing).  They got huge applause when they finally left as I think everyone knew just how embarrassed they must have been having never been able to perform their dance:

Howdy.

Back in February, Jeremy, Ryan, Steve, and I went up to Nashville to see a Predators vs Red Wings game.  All of them are pretty big Red Wings fans (they all had jerseys and the like). 

On princilpe, Jeremy has to buy a "40" of beer whenever he goes to a state that sells them:

Steve and Ryan robbed an ATM on the way to the arena:

Inside the arena:

During the game, there was a little girl sitting next to Steve that must have been about 5.  She knew more about hockey than he did.  I believe that drove him to drink quite a few beers.  When we got back to the hotel (and before we hit downtown Nashville), Steve passed out in the chair, still holding a beer.  His hand didn't know it was removed:

So sad:

When we came back from the various places downtown, he had managed to crawl into bed:

We (and the AOII ladies) threw a big bash at our place in honor of Emily and Jeremy.  It was a hawaiian/luau theme:

Still trying to catch up...  Lauren's birthday was in February.  Everybody met at Wine'd Down and went to Sumo afterwards:

In January, we ventured down to Orlando.  Marriott Horizons had promised us a cheap place to say if we listened to their timeshare sales pitch.  Needless to say, we didn't walk away with a timeshare, but we did have a good time at Disney.

My favorite quote from the trip came from Steve:  "I shouldn't have eaten that red pepper."

Amy and Nick got married in January...  we were both in the wedding:

We flew Delta out to Sacramento.  If you're familiar at all with the screens on the back of the headrests, you think it's amusing that when they reboot unexpectedly, you see the Tux logo as they start up:

For the second time now, we went to San Francisco at New Year's.  We were a little afraid it would pale in comparison to last year, but as it turned out, it was a lot better and didn't have a lot of the problems of last year (flooding, etc). 

This is Sneakers, Steve and Brie's cat:

As many of you experienced, Laura threw me a surprise casino party for my 30th birthday.  Just about everyone I know came to it.  Laura throws an awesome party.

We had a party after Thanksgiving (when everyone could make it).  Rob was prepared to "party hard":

As always, the picture up Christian's nose:

This one was also on the camera.  I'm pretty sure he took this one on accident.

 

Laura and I decided to meet the Atlanta crew in New Orleans one weekend.  Can you tell Laura was holding the camera for this one?

The Atlanta (and Houston) crew on Bourbon street:

And this guy apparently runs around interviewing people all night:

Someone put a sticky note on Christian's back while we were walking through the French Quarter.  It stayed on for quite a while.  It's a little crude to put what it actually says, but it starts with "I <heart>".  We were enjoying laughing at him until a lady walked past him and started laughing, then came back to him and pointed it out to him. 

Some of you might recognize Ganesha.  I'm not sure why someone thought it was necessary for him to be on Bourbon Street.  I'm pretty sure his official dress is not beads.

The W Hotel that Raj hooked us up with was in an incredible location just a couple blocks off of everything.  The one very odd thing about it was the bathroom door was an opaque glass sliding door.  It didn't quite seal completely:

And, as with any time we see Christian, the picture up his nose:

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

 

 

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

Our friend Virginia (owner of Delicious To Go) provided the food for the shower.  Special just for halloween was some sort of a dip that was in the shape of a brain:

Laura and Lauren were in full costume (as usual):

Our costumes matched...  aren't we cute?

Brie was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and Steve was Scuba Steve.

Carrie was the easter bunny, Emily was Jem and the Rockers, and Jeremy was Wayne.

Laura spreading her wings:

This has to be the absolute best self-picture I've ever seen.  Even more impressive is she took this with a Nikon D70 SLR, so it was odd shaped and heavy:

 

While we were down in Orange Beach, Lauren was housesitting for us.  She left this behind.  Still not sure what it was.  As a picture, it looks a lot like bacon, but it appears to be a lot thicker than a strip of bacon in person.  Either way, it was scary and we threw it out.

 

I know this entry is a bit late, but I thought these pictures were amusing.  We started off at Superior Grill and then went bowling.

It's been a while since this happened, but I know for sure that's Lauren in the background and I think this is the night that she and Brie decided that I was a pool shark.  Those of you that know me better know that I am anything but a pool shark.  Oh well.

So last Thursday we went to On Tap with some folks.  Good times.  Until the waitress brought out our (probably 4th) round of beverages.  Two of us received glasses that were about 1/2 inch taller and a little bit fatter than the others.  Caused quite a stir at the table and we attempted to specify our glass choice going forward...  to no avail.

So about three weeks ago, Laura and I headed up to Norfolk, VA to visit our friend Chris.  We decided to fly Delta, so we were stuck in Atlanta airport on a layover.  We were there early in the morning, so we were looking for a place to have some breakfast.  The last time we were there, we braved the frenzy that is McDonald's breakfast.  This time we decided to go for something else.  We were walking around and noticed that the Mandarin Express seemed quite busy:

You really can't tell what the little yellow sign says since Miss argyle is in the way, so I had to take another shot of it:

Is it just me, or is Mandarin Express the last place you expect to see a sign that says "Special: Country Breakfast - Ham, Bacon, or Sausage with Egg, Cheese, Toast, & Hashbrowns - $3.89".  Sadly, I couldn't help but try the Chinese country breakfast.  It was very tasty except for the very cafeteria-style eggs. 

So first, let me dispense with the official (slightly posed pictures).  First, there is Mama Kitty (mother of both George and Bella):

Then there is Adon with Chris and Adon with Chris's Mom:

Ok, so now that those are out of the way... the first night we were there (a friday) we went out on Chris's pontoon boat for a little bit.  Not a whole lot happened on the boat, but when we got back to Chris's place, Christian made his "famous" (famous being in quotes since I think his friends are the only ones that have ever heard of them) margaritas.  And of course we broke out the beer pong:

After playing beer pong for about 3 minutes, we decided to scrap that idea (Christian was the only one that even knew how to play).  I really don't remember what we did that night and the pictures stopped with this one, so really have nothing to go on:

The next day we got out on the boat farily early in the afternoon.  Sadly, I can't even tell you when we got started, but I can tell you it was one of the absolute best and most relaxing days of my life.  Laura, Kim, Christian, Chris, and I went out on the pontoon boat ALL day.  I think the general idea was to cruise around and explore the Chesapeake Bay / Elizabeth River area.  And explore we did, but first we had a problem with the engine.  Those of you that know Chris know that he is always tinkering with everything.  Well, on this day, his fuel filter started leaking as we put the boat in the water, so we had to bring it back out and search for a parts store.  So Laura and Kim sat on the boat while Chris took off the old filter to run into Pep Boys to get a new one and Christian kept his finger on the fuel line so it wouldn't be spilling into the parking lot while Chris was gone:

Once the fuel line was fixed, we proceeded to explore the area on the boat.  After cruising along for a considerable distance, we realized that our cooler was running low on ice cold refreshment, so we started looking along the shore for anyplace that might sell snacks and beverages.  We finally caught a glimpse of what we thought was a BP, so I was the designated person to get out and walk over to it while everyone else circled in the boat.  I came back a hero:

So then the journey continued, until we hit the end of the river (ot at least the part we thought we could navigate):

And then we saw a boat to our side speeding out from under the bridge.  We went over that way and found a channel through the random grass.  There were several forks in the channel from that point, so we took to exploring each one.  We saw some very redneck-ish looking places:

And some very nice looking places:

Also, we saw places for sale that we were curious about.  Christian was the designated go-getter this time:

And we can't forget the coolest fort ever:

We continued up the river for what seemed like hours and hours:

And then we came to the actual end of the river...  or at least we're sure it didn't continue this time. 

On our return trip, Laura was standing near one of the boat doors and apparently fell into the door, which promptly opened and she almost went in except Christian managed to catch her before she completely fell in.  The plastic lock that keeps the door closed on the boat now looks a little deformed:

On our way back, we saw something floating in the water that Chris and Christian insisted was a coconut.  The ladies somehow knew it was a ball.  So we picked this item up and what's the first thing you do when you pick up a moldy, slimy ball?  You throw it at your friend, of course.  Check out the marks on Chris's shoulder where Christian threw it at him:

I think Chris had a good day today:

So our journey continued towards home.  On our way back to the boat ramp, we got to see the sun set:

The following day, our flight back home left late in the evening, so we decided it'd be a good idea to go out on the boat again.  I got to intertube for a little bit:

Chris got to intertube for a bit as well, untill he wiped out:

Matt lost his sunglasses today...  thanks to Chris.  This is the last known picture of his shades:

So after the third day of fun on the water, we needed to head to the airport to catch our flight.  On the way, we saw a want ad for the perfect job for Christian:

When we got to the airport, we found our our flight back to Atlanta was delayed 2-3 hours due to weather "in Atlanta".  You would normally think this means that all flights would be affected and everything would be ok.... but that wasn't the case on that day.  After killing 3 hours in the gloriously entertaining Norfolk airport, we arrived in Atlanta to find out that our Atlanta-Birmingham flight was perfectly on time.  Weather "in Atlanta" my left foot.  So since our missed connection was caused by weather, it was up to us to find some place to stay overnight until we could catch our connection to Birmingham.  Fun stuff.  I ended up making it to work the following day at around noon. 

All in all, it was an excellent trip with a little bit of a bummer of an ending, all thanks to good old Delta.

So I remember a long time ago being at Christian's place and making fun of him for having extremely old pretzels (almost 2.5 years actually).  The other day I was cleaning out the chip cabinet and noticed a bag of pretzels that had not been opened yet.  They're not quite as impressive as Christian's bag, but this one managed to make it over 1.5 years.  They actually didn't taste too stale until the third one I tried.

One thing that is interesting about these pictures is you can tell that in the span of almost a year, the price of pretzels increased about $0.20 per bag.

So I took off on Friday night to go visit my family and some of my friends in Huntsville.  Everybody seemed to be doing well.  My mom had grown some HUGE lillies.  I'm not really sure how she receives mail.  I'm pretty sure the postperson would have to get out of their truck to put it in the mailbox (they request a "clear approach"):

So I met my friend David for breakfast at Little Rosie's.  We used to go there once a week for their incredible breakfasts and occasionally for lunch.  It's one of the things I miss most about Huntsville.

After a while, I met Keith and April for lunch.  We always pick something in Hampton Cove as it is very convenient to them.  They had just finished playing golf:

We went to a place they frequent but I have never been to before.  But you better believe I had heard of it:

If you look these guys up in the Yellow Pages the name of the restaurant is actually "China Cook", but that's not what the sign looks like.

After lunch, I got to see their new house which was incredible.  After spending a bit more time with them, I headed back to Birmingham.  Our friends Nick & Amy just bought a house (in Calera) and they were having a bunch of folks over as well.  I don't have any pictures from their house, but I did steal one of their cat Jasper.  Unfortunately the light was very dim in the room, so I Photoshopped the brightness of this picture.  It might look psychedelic, but you can easily tell that Jasper is putting the hurt on a Yuengling.  Go Jasper.

So for those of you that have no idea what Bocce Ball is, Wikipedia has a decent description.  We had a bunch of friends over to play.  It was actually quite fun.  For those of you that came over, you ate some of this...  can you identify it?  Laura really wants to know, so email her your guesses, seriously, she means it.  Not kidding.  She really, really wants to know.  We thought this was a funny picture:

So Laura and some of the ladies ran off to Crazy Bill's Fireworks.  Not sure how much they spent, but they came back with a large paper sack full of stuff.  One of them was called the "Hen Laying Egg".  We couldn't help but call it the "Pooping Chicken":

Here are pictures of a "Scatering Fish".  Obviously the translator didn't know how to spell "scattering":

And there were many Roman candles:

I guess that after everything was said and done, the cats weren't taking the noise too well.  If any of you happen to know the dynamic between CB and George (she hates him for constantly trying to "play" with her) you'll realize how strange it is that they both decided to hide from the noise under the same end table:

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:

Crazy was up here last weekend for City Stages.  He rented a car so he could run around town.  Funny that he flew in from Texas just to get a rental car with a Texas license plate:

I'm almost certain I've seen this car out on the road since then with a new driver.  Strange that it would happen in a city of about a million people.

And while we're on the subject of Crazy, I got an email from him the other day that was hilarious.  It had this picture in it:

And here I am giving him the benefit of the doubt thinking he was drawing on a sheet of paper and using his laptop as a desk.  Well, unfortunately, I was not correct.  Apparently Rakesh had his laptop in one hand and a dry erase marker in the other and decided it would be a good idea to draw on it under the premise that he'd be able to dry erase it later.  Wrong.

So one somewhat boring friday afternoon Laura finally convinces me to leave work a couple hours earlier than I probably should have.  I should have been afraid.  Very afraid.  When I opened my garage door, these two nut jobs came running out.  I think this picture pretty much sums up the evening:

We called a few old friends and said hi:

Still not sure why Christian had the sweeper vac out.  Also not sure why Chris is trying to kick it.

And in his normal form, Christian tried to kiss another guy:

And what does this picture of Laura have to do with the guys visiting?  This is a picture of her taking a picture of Chris with her phone.  Where is she?  The hospital.  Why is she there?  See in a minute.

Yes, that's right, this picture was taken with a camera phone in a hospital:

And here is the real reason Laura was at the hospital....

Chris broke one of the bones in his hand.  Punched one of the support beams to our deck.  Oops.

Despite all the pain and suffering of the night before, we still managed to head into Anniston to see little Adon.  Good to meet the little guy finally.

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. 

Over the years, Christian has always managed to steal my camera whenever we were on a trip or having a party.  The problem is he likes to take pictures of himself.  What better way to honor this tradition than to immortalize it by putting it on the web.  Here is a photo montage (from oldest to newest):

I must say that this is the scariest one so far. 

So I mentioned the other day that Lyle and Heather were alive and well...  Lyle sent me some pictures last night that I thought should go up here.  The first is just Lyle being very Lyle.  Do you think he bought the numchucks just to take this picture?

The second is Heather with Buzz Aldrin.  I think you might have some competition, Lyle:

And finally, the happy couple together:

So out of the group of pictures he sent me, the one I find the most disturbing (even more disturbing than him following a little girl around a grocery store making bunny ears on) is the one he described as "burying people".  I would think he's actually serving a community service term for something, but Heather's there with him:

What better way to make your friend happy he sent you pictures than to post them on a blog and make fun of them?  We love you Lyle!

So Rob showed up for a little bit this weekend.  He will be back next weekend (he is working "remotely" this week which is an understatement since he'll be in Cullman) to hopefully stay a little longer.  Sadly, this is the best picture of him we got while he was here:

So one thing I think is funny about the pictures I post up here...  most of them are taken with a 6MP camera.  Occasionally there will be one with a 1MP camera.  Some of them are my camera phone (which by the way, I found out last night I had it in "night" mode which explains why the picture of the rainbow the other day was so horrible).  These next two are with Laura's new phone.  The resolution isn't super high, but it takes MUCH better pictures than my phone and she has it with her when we're out, so maybe I can get some better non-posed pictures in the future. 

In honor of Rob, Doug and Brian were hanging out with us at 5 Points Grill.  Doug still somehow thinks that hiding his face from pictures will keep his picture off of some FBI file.  I have news for you, Doug:

And then there is Brian, who so far is 2-for-2 on showing up when invited.  There was a rumor floating around for the past two years that he wouldn't show up, even if invited.  Either that rumor is incorrect or he's turned over a new leaf:

So this weekend Max and Jennifer were both out of town...  we were taking care of their little Pomeranian named Spunkey.  He's about 7 and is totally nuts.  Being a dog though, he's very much a people person and we felt bad just stopping by to let him out to use the bathroom, so we brought him back over to our place.  Here's the little fellow... keep in mind he weighs in at about 2/3 of a Bella, so all of our cats are much larger than this dog:

Having 4 cats in the house at the moment, he was almost immediately noticed.  It didn't help that he insisted on barking loudly and wanted to chase the cats around (this is what he does to any animal, humans included).  Wilson disappeared entirely (we think he went under our bed).  CB ran halfway up the stairs for shelter but stayed low enough she could still see what was going on:

George got "puffy" (his tail is normally about the diameter of one of his legs):

And Bella being the cautious but curious one made sure to stay behind him or at least at a distance and would watch from afar, following him around the house.  She is the only one that ultimately didn't run away and hide.  Go Bella.

I think Laura might want to keep him since he might fit into one of her purses and he coordinates with her hair color.  Just kidding, Laura :)

It's probably been more than a year now, but Lyle actually IM'd me.  I was shocked to say the least.  I should have asked him his mother's maiden name or last for of his SSN to make sure it was actually him and somebody hadn't just hijacked his account.

It sounded like he and Heather have been doing well in LA.  Lyle is supposedly about to change jobs to one that doesn't take 100% of his time.  We'll see if he uses any of his new found time to communicate with his friends.

He is actually about to go to the airport to fly to Iowa of all places.  Apparently that's where his frield Lloyd is getting married. 

In an amusing parallel, Heather contacted the alumni group of her sorority (KKG I think) and within a few weeks was voted their president.  Crazy stuff.

I am trying to get Lyle to send us some pictures of what they've been up to recently (they apparently bought a digital camera recently), so I'll post them or link to them if he comes through on that front.  (supposedly he wrote himself a note)

All in all, it was very good to talk with an old friend.  I really hope it's not another couple years before I hear from him again.

PS - for those of you that don't know Lyle...  he's the one in this picture about to me traumatized by Christian:

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.

On our last evening in Healdsburg we decided to grill out.  Everyone made fun of my hamburgers, even my lovely wife.  I made modest sized hamburgers and apparently we had gotten the jumbo sized buns.  Mike, being the oh-so-funny guy that he is thought it'd be fun to see how many hamburger patties he could fit on the bun:

After dinner, we all waited the obligatory 30 minutes before swimming and got in the hot tub:

And what I think is a very fitting picture to end the New Year's sequence...  a sunset from Pier 39:

What is this fruit that Rob's neighbor is lining up so nicely in the gutter for the trash people to pick up?  They're about the size of grapefruit but don't quite look like them:

The one that got away:

So now the tragic part of our journey...  on the day that Rob "had" to go back to work, we got a call from him explaining why he couldn't come back out and see us...  apparently there was a police chase that lasted several hours.  It ended right in front of Rob's house.  On Rob's vehicle:

And the truly tragic part of it...  Rob just purchased a brand new bed and was bringing it home for his fancy place.  The cardboard  box in the pictures above?  His bed.  With the wheel of his truck on top of it.

They even called out the CSI to investigate:

The remainder of our trip we spent up in Healdsburg, CA.  We stayed at a rental house more or less on top of a vineyard:

I would highly recommend Healdsburg Country Gardens to anyone that was planning on going up to wine country.  Speaking of wine, over the next few days we visited quite a few wineries, quite a few of them we hadn't even heard of before.

We visited Mill Creek, Dry Creek Vineyards, Clos Du Bois, Seghesio, Jordan, Silver Oak, Geyser Peak, Ridge, Simi, and Mondavi.

Here are some pictures from Mill Creek:

Here are a few pictures from our favorite, Jordan:

 

So I'll tell you about one day in the middle of the week just because it doesn't fit in with the rest of our trip...  Rob had to go to work for a day and we decided to head back into SF since we didn't get to do much while we were there.  We took the boat over to Alcatraz.  I remember it being this huge monstrosity that took forever to walk around.  Of course, the last time I was there I was about 8.  So as it turns out, it's a dinky little island with only a few buildings and a 150 yard walk up hill.  Woo. 

I did get to take what is probably my favorite picture of the trip though...  Believe it or not, this was taken on the walk back down to our ferry boat:

It was an enjoyable day but it felt like we didn't do a whole lot.

So I'm finally getting around to writing about our New Year's trip and it's officially late April.  Yeah, I'm a slacker.

Dec 30.

We flew into good old Sacramento.  Never have figured out why the airport abbreviation is SMF.  We had good old Rob with us since he was travelling back with us.  Oh, and by us I mean Laura, Becca, and myself. 

Rob's place was pretty nice.  A lot more feminine than I was expecting, but it was really cool that it had a lot of older chandeliers, clocks, and things.  Check out his manly wallpaper:

But on the bright side, it does not represent how cool the rest of his house is:

Which brings us to incident #1...  We were staying in Rob's dining room on an air mattress for the first night in town.  Funny thing is we woke up with the thing mostly deflated.  So we got the little pump and got it back up to normal mattress height.  Soon after I got back onto it, Laura said she felt a draft under the covers.  After poking around for a few moments, we found the source of the draft:

And then there was the next day.  Dec 31.  We needed to go by Target for a few various things.  While looking for a place to stay, we were told that portions of the area had been flooded.  We didn't realize that all the water in California had accumulated in the Target parking lot:

We should have realized this was a sign of things to come. 

We did have brunch at the famous Tower:

We attempted at this point to head to San Francisco (the original point of the trip).  We started seeing bad signs of things ahead:

So then we found the place where the water was across the road instead of covering the farmland beside it.  The police had all of I-80 closed and detoured onto very small streets.  We allocated about 5 hours to take the normally 2 hour drive and to get showers.  4 hours into the voyage, this was our view:

So as you can imagine, everything was just ducky.  Yeah.  So anyway, after taking several detours and wading past several "flooded" signs in the trusty Robmobile, we made it to the hotel with less than an hour before the boat was set to leave.  And of course we had been told on numerous occasions that the boat would leave us if we were late.  55 minutes until the ship leaves.  Check-in, 15 minutes.  Take the fastest showers ever 10 minutes.  Get dressed in formal attire, 10 minutes.  Cab ride across downtown SF to the boat, 15 minutes.  That's right, we show up with about 5 minutes to spare.  A lot of people did a lot of things to help us all make it (lady let us check into the hotel before her, Rob went down and found a cab).

The boat is normally used for other things like parties and weddings.  This night it had a couple levels of seating for dinner, a dance floor, and an open bar.  They had absolutely wonder food.  I can't believe squash bisque is actually very tasty.  We had a wild group behind us, but we still enjoyed ourselves.

Here is our entire crew for the evening:

Anyway, about midnight, the ship lined up near the bay bridge and we got to see the Nea Year's firework display.

And once the fireworks were over, we went back down to the dance floor and the DJ played "Sweet Home Alabama" for us since apparently we traveled the farthest just to be there.

Good times, good times.

So Laura and I got a bunch of pansies and violas for our front yard and spent quite a few days before Thanksgiving making our house look a little more colorful.  We found quite a few interesting items in our yard that were left behind by the builder, but probably the most disturbing was the large hunk of concrete that was left less than two inches from the surface of our flower bed.  Our neighbor Max was kind enough to come over and help us remove it (he more or less did it as we stood around looking at how huge the boulder actually was).

This is our neighbor Jennifer almost strangling Laura.  I just thought this was a funny picture.

I just thought this was amusing.  There were four people in this picture, but at least three of them were frightening, so I cut two of them off.

What do you think my friend Chris is dressing up as for Halloween?  I bet it's a flight deck crew member:

This is an amazing picture he took with (I am assuming) his new Nikon D70.  Glad he was able to get it up in his plane.

Another amazing picture from his plane. 

Click on them and you can see a larger version.

I know I am a little late in getting these up here, but here are a couple pictures my friend Chris sent from his latest deployment.  I'm hoping he'll send more soon.  (This isn't actually Chris flying since he's the one taking the pictures.  I really hope he gets someone to take a picture of him at some point.)

Spunkey - perhaps the only thing in the world fuzzier than Bella:

BTW - he is the neighbor's Pomeranian.

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.

A good time was had by all this weekend as we traveled up to Norfolk, VA to visit our friend Chris.  How incredible is it to have your name on the side of an F-18 Hornet:

It's absolutely amazing to me that he gets to fly this plane:

I'm sure it looks even more menacing when it is fully loaded up with bombs, missiles, etc., but I'm glad they didn't let us near anything live.  Of course, even without weapons, this plane has managed to cause damage (fortunately not while Chris was in it):

Imagine how much crap his friends would give him if he had been the one to kill Bambi on the runway...  Just in case something like this happened again, Laura was prepared by wearing the proper headgear (she knows Chris too well):

We were actually visiting because Chris will be away from home for the next several months on his home away from home:

We enjoyed this weekend, doing some water skiing in the calmer areas of the Chesapeke Bay (Elizabeth River actually, I think).  Chris's parents and brother also visited us and brought the smallest dog on earth with them:

I believe it weighed in at 1 pound, 2 ounces.  I bet at least 1 pound of it was fur.  If it gives you any sort of reference, I believe the tiles are 12 inches across. 

Good food was had by all:

But no matter how much fun we were having, Chris always made sure to talk with his wife when she got a free moment on the computer.  She is on a ship right now and he doesn't get to talk with her very frequently.  Here he is, still typing with only two fingers:

Good luck, Chris.  Stay safe and come back home soon.

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:

Here's something sweet...  Our friends Chris and DonAnn are both in the Navy.  DonAnn is somewhere far, far away from her husband Chris.  Each night we were with Chris this weekend, he had to be near a computer at 11pm to catch DonAnn online and email her back and forth.  1st of all, this is really cool since I didn't know Navy ships had near real time email.  2nd - look how much concentration Chris puts into typing with just two fingers:

Just kidding Chris!  You go pretty fast for only using two fingers on each hand :)

Rob finally sent out pictures from our last party.  I really need to learn to take pictures while people are here.  A few of the highlights:

L to R: Cherrie, Laura, and Becca on the playground...

I'm really not sure how I slept through this, but at some point apparently Christian jumped me and Rob shot a flash in my face after I had already gone to bed:

The damage after the weekend (thank goodness there were a LOT of people here):

And the kicker for me....  out of all the pictures Rob took, this one turned out upside down.  I am curious to find out...  was Rob hanging upside down on the monkey bars?  Or do pictures of Crazy just turn out upside down for some reason?  The world may never know...

This is the one clear picture taken last weekend at our party...  we're waiting on Rob to get to Sacramento so he can find his data cable and send us the pictures he took while he was here.  Good luck in finding a place to live Rob.

This is crazy and his new Avalon.  Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

This is Rob's foot.  People were mean to him while he was sleeping.  Now he's using fingernail polish remover.

Thanks to all of you that showed up over the weekend.  Everyone seemed to have a really good time.  Laura and I enjoyed seeing all of you and hope we can do it again soon.

A better picture, as promised.  This one is even clickable for a larger version.

Rob is a very bad man.  He didn't tell us he had an exellent view of downtown Birmingham.  In fact I had no idea of what his place even looked like before Sunday.  He asked me if I'd come over and take a good picture of his view instead of this one with my phone camera, so hopefully I'll have a better copy to put up here soon.

Those of you that knew Crazy at his previous job would apprecaite what Laura and I did to the keys to his (Kia!) rental car. 

Crazy had a wreck a few days ago.  He is 100% ok (or at least as ok as he was before the wreck).  His car (humbly called the "POOmobile" due to the way his license plate reads) was not however.  Credit goes to Toyota for him walking away from this one.  Notice the trunk is as destroyed as the front but the center part is just fine.  His clothes are even still hanging in the back window.