Mr. Fred (my father-in-law) took me down to Montgomery for a Biscuits vs Barons game.  They have a pretty cool stadium that is built out of an old train depot:

The biggest question I have though, is what's up with their mascot?  It doesn't look like anything I've ever seen in nature before.  It's not too far off of a Snuffleupagus.  I really expected it to be named "biscuit eater".  But alas, it's just "Big Mo".

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:

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:

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."

While we were in Orlando in January, I ran across a gas pump that had entirely too many choices.  How difficult is this one for the indecisive?

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). 

Our stay in a hotel room for Christmas was interesting.  The first thing I noticed was the absence of the board/tile that joined the carpeted part of the room with the bathroom:

This appeared like the shower head should have had one of those separate hand-held heads, but instead the cord was just cut. 

I'm pretty sure this room was under construction and they let us rent it anyway.

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, Laura and I went to a ball in Montgomery where I had to wear a tux.  I picked out a random vest to wear at the store that I thought looked ok.  It was sliver based, so in theory it should go with anything.

As it turns out, it very nearly matched the pattern on the wallpaper of the bathroom of the hotel we stayed in.

And to add insult to injury, a very similar pattern was on the carpet of the very same hotel room.

I just can't win.

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:

This was on the wall in the Sam Adams brewery in Boston.

While in Nashville, I tried the Anheuser-Busch Bourbon Cask Ale.  I highly recommend trying it if you get a chance.  Too bad it's a winter seasonal.

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 Day 7 was our last day in the Boston area.  There wasn't any ice skating (at least not for the people from Alabama) so we pretty much got to waste time until our flight.  We decided to go to Salem since a lot of people had been and told us what to see and what not to see.  They also mentioned to Laura that there were lots of little shops with obscure items in them and Laura was kinda pumped about it.  I think it might have been a letdown once we got there and saw what they had to offer.

As it turns out, Saturday was the day of the Salem CultureFest 2006.  There wasn't anything too impressive there...  a large gazebo-like structure where a "band" was playing and some little tents for vendors:

Either way, we successfully killed a couple hours in Salem and drove back to Manchester, NH where we originally flew in at the beginning of the trip.

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.

One thing I forgot to mention...  on the way down I-95 to Boston, we noticed a very amusing car:

I think it was originally a Mercury Topaz.  In addition to the "Rap is to Music like Graffiti is to Art" bumper sticker, he has the perfect example to back it up.  Oh, and he named his masterpiece:

I am not sure what kind of shaggin has gone on in the "Shaggin Wagon", but I'm pretty sure it wasn't a good experience since it was in a Mercury Topaz.

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 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 the past several MONTHS, every time I logged into delta.com to check my SkyMiles balance, I get a pop-up window (probably supposed to be a survey or an ad or something) that is apparently not a valid page:

So thinking that Delta has no idea of what was going on (I was probably right) I sent their web support an email telling them that they've had a web page error for several months.  A little over 25 hours later, I get the following form letter:

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:

On our last trip out to San Francisco (New Year's), we were introduced to a new phenomenon...  The "enjoy!" pack.  Delta is apparently trying to make its passengers happy:

The one thing to note is the back of the shortbread:

Yes, you read it right, 31% butter!!!  How can they possibly expect to have any more customers when we're all in the hospital?

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:

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.

One thing I didn't know about Tuscaloosa (home of the University of Alabama) was that there are very few (no?) roads that go over or under the main railroad line in town.  So what's amusing is when something large happens (like Alabama's graduation lets out - congratulations to Katie by the way) and everyone races to their cars and gets in them and then promptly gets stuck because the city is bisected by a stopped train.  A very long train.  One amusing thing about this train...  they seemed to load the train incorrectly - the larger cargo container is on top of the smaller one - sticking out on each end.

So now for the amusing part of our trip...  on Thursday, we decided to go to the National Shrimp Festival and see what all the fuss was about.  They provided public transportation for $1pp, so we figured we should take them up on it.  This one was on the way out from the shrimp festival and continued to take us farther away.  We figured they'd eventaully have to go back, so we'd just ride it.  Several miles later we were in front of the Flora-Bama bar, which is just about as far away as we needed to go to get to the shrimp festival but in the dead opposite direction. 

So we dropped off whoever it was that needed to go there and the driver was attempting to turn left to go back the way we came from.  This is a two-lane road and carries a considerable amount of traffic for its size, and we're in a bus.  Great.

The driver pulled across one of the lanes (or at least that's how it appeared to us from inside the bus) when it was clear and waited for the other direction to clear so we could finally go.  About the time the other direction was clear and the driver started to inch forward more, we heard tires squealing.  Apparently the driver wasn't completely across the lane and traffic was planning on continuing around the bus until they inched forward and traffic couldn't get by (for sure) anymore. 

So the end result was that while on vacation, I was in a bus wreck with an Isuzu pickup truck:

Everyone on the bus was fine and the Isuzu driver seemed to be ok other than he'll probably have a nice, large, circular bruise on his chest (no airbags).  They sent another bus out to pick up the passengers and while still on our way to the Shrimp Festival, we heard our original driver on the radio more or less saying that the bus was "a little ugly, but it drives pretty good".  Which isn't too bad since I'm pretty sure that poor Isuzu truck was totaled.

So I finally got around to pulling our pictures off of the camera from the second half of our trip to Orange Beach.  Had a few interesting ones.

For one, we did take the cats down with us this week and they both made themselves at home in the condo.  Fitting to their individual personalities, each one took to their new environment in a different way:

We strolled on the beach quite a bit and saw a surprising number of sea shells in the water:

We saw quite a few sunsets and it was clear enough to see the moon when it was out:

By the way, this picture of the moon was taken by Laura.  She did not use a tripod or anything.  I'm not quite sure how she stood so still, but this is an incredible shot for someone to just be "messing with the settings, trying to get it to do right".  Way to go Laura.

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.

So Laura and I packed up the cats and headed off to Orange Beach on Saturday.  And when I say packed up, I mean we caught them, rammed a pill down their throats (they loved that part), and when they got groggy, we made them ride in the car for almost 5 hours.  Funny thing about a high cat...  you can tell instantly that they're on something.  I bet this would be a very different world if it worked that way on humans.  Cats look a bit like they're cross-eyed:

You can't tell as much on George since the little eye cover that makes him look cross-eyed is white (so it just looks like the white of his eye in this picture).  You can definately tell that Laura is on something though...  You can see it better on Bella:

They're both back to normal now, but it was amusing but sad all at the same time.  Thanks to drugs though, we made it through the trip without too much trauma.

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 :)

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: