Another dive, another sea turtle. He’s probably thinking something similar about me. I spotted this one near the Playancar Deep reef off the shore of Cozumel, Mexico.

A day or so after Thanksgiving I noticed that Mary decided to make an appearance in the dried water droplets on the faucet of our Chicago rental. You may speculate as to why she chose this location, but I’m certain it was to ensure that my whites were as pearly as the gates.

So there’s this guy that hangs out around Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. He sits there holding up these branches in front of him and when some unsuspecting person walks by and doesn’t notice the oddity that is a shrub on the wharf, he scares them! Boo! That stunt won my dollar. I dropped it in his bucket and asked Chris to take our picture. Touche bush guy, touche.

It’s very much as it was, but it has been changed. Possibly the biggest difference between New Orleans in October of 2007 and New Orleans in January of 2001 is the difference in the number of tourists. On New Years Eve 2000 you could barely shove your way through Bourbon Street. In 2007 you can get a beer-to-go from every bar in less than a half hour. For us, this was somewhat refreshing. Our biggest complaint from our 2000/2001 trip was the terrible service we received at every restaurant and bar. But now folks are so happy that you’re there that they’re begging you to stay. “We need the dues!” (Read on …)

Seems that we never tire of a trip to Chicago in the summer. We popped into the Swissotel to take in the views and enjoy our kind of town. We have to recommend the rooms ending in 04. We had a corner room with a panoramic view from the Wrigley Building to Navy Pier. (Read on …)

Leslie’s been back at work since July 1, so have I for the most part. We have drastically different ideas about a full work day though. For her it’s the late afternoon colicystectomy. I don’t even know what that is, but apparently there’s a lot of fun for everyone but the patient. The patient loses part of their something-er-other. I checked with Google, it only returned 20 pages. Maybe Leslie made up the word to sound cool ’cause all she’s really doing are colorectal resections. I guess we all take hyperbolic liberties to make our work sound exciting from time to time. (Read on …)

Due to higher insurance premiums as a result of last years float incident, Molalla‘s parade on this 4th of July cost more for entrants. Consequently fewer folks joined in the parade and it was significantly shorter than it had been years prior. Fortunately our favorite Tin Lizzy found a loophole in the fee process and managed to make an appearance. (Read on …)

We packed, we left, we know where the cab stand is. We know how to ask the driver to take us to the airport, por favor. We left for Germany, for just one night at a 4 star hotel (hotwire!). At our nice German meal we were sitting next to a Canadian couple who happened to be on their way to Prague. Doctors, of course. Never tech guys or adventure sporting folks, it’s always doctors that we’re going to run into.

As we had home we remembered again that we learned to quit checking our email, quit writing our papers, quit all those things that make us not on vacation. Good to be home again.

Our final full day in Barcelona took us to Montjuic where we discovered an influential artist, Joan Miró. Neither of us were impressed by his later, freer works. It was that stick figures stuff with the splash of paint here and there. I think my nephews do similar work in their pre-school classes, probably better because the figures in their drawings tend to have descriptive labels like ‘mommy’ and ‘grandpa’. (Read on …)

If you’ve ever wondered where The Cheesecake Factory got the idea for the design of their restaurants, this is where you go. This entire building was designed and built in the early 1900s by the local architect Antoni Gaudí. (Read on …)