Have any of you noticed the drastic difference in quality with some of my pictures?  I just wanted to explain as it's kinda funny (as least to me). 

A couple years ago (5?) I bought a digital camera before a trip to London (unfortunately I did not buy one before my trip to Barcelona - I would love to have some good pictures from there, but that's beside the point).  It was a Canon Elph 110.  I absolutely love that camera since it's small enough I can put it in my pocket and not appear to be the typical tourist.  It took excellent quality pictures at 2.1 megapixels.  The only downside to it was it only had a 2x optical zoom which pretty much meant you had a manual zoom (walk really close or walk far away).  Some (but very few) of our pictures on here were taken with this camera, especially since Chris M. has been borrowing it for the past several months.

A couple years ago (2?) Laura bought me a very nice Nikon D70 that used the same lenses my old N6006 took.  Hello 300mm zoom lens.  Turns out this is only the equivalent of a 6x optical zoom, but it's an amazing difference.  That and it's a 6 megapixel camera, so if I use Photoshop to crop the picture a little, it has the appearance of being a much higher zoom (call it simulated digital zoom since that's pretty much how a digital zoom works).  I absolutely love this camera since I can tinker with it all day to make some bizarre photos.  Of course, this sometimes tries on the patience of people I'm with, but it also has a fully automatic mode that saves the day.  The majority of the good pictures on the blog were taken with this camera.

A year and a half ago Laura bought me a Motorola MPx220 smartphone with a camera in it.  It has a 1 megapixel camera, but the quality is somewhat lacking (but it makes an excellent phone and PDA - which was the reason for getting the phone).  The majority of the bad quality images were taken with this camera as I have it in my pocket almost all the time, so I can take random pictures in traffic, etc.

A couple months ago I bought Laura a Motorola Razr.  The camera in it is very low resolution, but it has incredible quality for its size.  Those pictures have started working their way into the blog too as she is using it more and more.  The picture of the warning sign and of Chris T. in a cast were taken with it.

Hopefully some day the cameras in phones will catch up with mainstream digital cameras.  Until that day, if you continue to follow this blog, you will be enjoying incredibly high quality pictures of cats and poor quality pictures of random things.

I'm not sure I ever paid attention to the Mississippi state flag before our trip yesterday...  I saw it flying at Trustmark Park:

You can't really see it very well in this picture, so here is a better one with a description and history.

I find it very strange in the day and age of "cover up anything that ever has or ever might offend anyone" that this is still the state flag of Mississippi.  Progress in this region can be very much like turning a battleship.  What should I expect considering Alabama has voted down the lottery to help fund schools three times now.  I know quite a few people that at least got one good year of free college tuition from the lottery, if not a full 4 years.  Of course, we went to school in Georgia.

But back on the flag issue...  Is it just me, or does the Mississippi state flag look just like the French or Dutch flag with the Confederate flag thrown into one corner.  For once Alabama isn't last in something...  they had already taken their Confederate flag down in 1993.

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:

I love cats...  they taste just like chicken:

Who in their right mind puts a trailer hitch on a Miata?

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.

We received these letters on the same day:

Let me explain why this is even worthy of a post...

Over Memorial Day weekend when Doug was here, he apparently lost some of his business cards and club memberships out of his wallet (not sure how he lost part but not all of his wallet).  He sounded like he'd want them back, so I put them in an envelope with $0.39 and sent them on their merry way.

Laura's mom was trying to send something to us.  Not sure if she even knew the USPS rates had gone from $0.37 to $0.39 for a 1oz letter.

But surprisingly, the letter up top is the one with just $0.37 postage on it and was delivered to us from Huntsville without a problem.

The bottom letter shown was the one with adequate postage for its weight ($0.39) but it was returned telling us we needed $0.13 more postage.  I'm assuming this is the non-machinable surcharge since their machine probably didn't take it without choking.

Madness I tell you.  Grrr.

I finally got a decent picture of an example of a local fire department (which shall remain nameless) doing something that really annoys me...  they needlessly block off lanes of I-459 at 5pm just because they feel like it.  The cause of all this madness is two cars that probably bumped each other in traffic (probably in a very similar situation to all the cars that are piling up behind the mess caused by them blocking off a lane) that are now currently completely off the side of the shoulder.  Not just on the shoulder, but OFF THE SIDE.  So why then would you park a fire truck in one of the traffic lanes instead of at least on the shoulder if not off the edge of the shoulder?  I have no idea.

This brings me back to a year and a half ago when I got in a wreck at almost this same place (just on the left shoulder).  This fire department apparently is having to justify its existance by responding to every emergency call possible on the interstate.  It was very obvious to me which department had this section of the road since I got a fire truck, and ambulance, and an entire fleet of trainees.  How did I know they were trainees?  They had t-shirts that literally said "trainee".  Go figure. 

Unfortunately, even though I knew which fire department we were serviced by, it was a little bit of a grey area as to which police district needed to write up the accident report.  We were right in-between Hoover and Vestavia Hills, so either police group could have responded.  We were in Jefferson County, so the sheriff could have responded.  But no, we got stuck with a State Trooper.  It took the better part of an hour for them to show up (in the middle of a city no less) to spend 10 minutes to write up some paperwork.  The ENTIRE TIME we were waiting on the trooper to show up the fire truck was blocking the left lane of I-459 since apparently once someone responds to an "emergency", someone must stay there until the call has been resolved.  Oh joy.

How did CB get a grape?  I really don't know.  I figure it was left behind by someone at our last party.  It was starting to get a little squishy and had loose skin.  Kinda fitting CB had it, isn't it.

So I finally decided it'd be a good idea to chop down the forest of weeds we had in our back yard.  Unfortunately, I had to do it all by hand:

Also decided to pressure wash part of the back sidewalk with Max's pressure washer (thanks Max!).  I still need to do the driveway.  Hopefully I'll get around to that sometime soon:

And finally...  Laura thought she met her maker the other day...  a wasp flew in the house and she was very afraid.  I came home early that day to remedy the situation, but when I got there, there was no sign of the wasp at all.  The next day when I got home from work, Laura had found it and it was doing the backstroke in a puddle of wasp spray in the foyer:

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: