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). 

This has to be one of the most useless signs ever...  a "Designated Smoking Area" sign with an arrow pointing to another "Designated Smoking Area" sign less than 5 feet away.  Way to go, Galleria.

I see these from time to time...  This is the railroad company putting a truck on the tracks to do some work.  Notice the extra set of wheels just for the tracks.  Apparently they are on hydraulics so they can be raised and lowered to allow the truck to drive on streets as well as on the tracks.

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.

This is Sneakers, Steve and Brie's cat:

Just before Christmas, Laura made me a TON of peppermint bark to take to work.  I believe it was about 2-3 pounds worth. 

This is what was left of it.  Computer geeks apparently like peppermint bark:

I just thought these were funny pictures of George and Bella.

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.

Some of you might have heard this story already, but our neighbors tried to burn a pile of their leaves in the corner of their yard.  They didn't make a fire break or even have a pail of water nearby.  As you can see, it quickly caught into the very dry leaves in our back yard.  Fortunately, they quickly made a break with their rake to keep our entire back yard from going up.

Once again, the Jetta helped us get out Christmas tree home.

Laura and I stained/sealed our deck last fall.  One of the gallons of stain was stiff enough a paint stir would stand up in it.  For those of you that don't know, stain is typically about the consistency of water, so this stuff was pretty bad off.  The good old folks at Home Depot were more than happy to swap it out for a new one.

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:

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.

How ladylike is this:

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.

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: