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First we saw some cute animal pottery. Look, a monkey:

Monkey funny.

Pigs, cats, dogs, cows funny:

Wait, why is that frog caged in wire? Are those flies? Hmm, well, cute little wood flies. I guess that’s ok. We should have taken this as a warning… The panda led us into a false sense of security:

Awww! Panda cute!

Here is where the story becomes frightening. Sensitive views need to turn away because:

ARGHHHH!!! WTF is THAT?!? Why is it leering at me?!? What does it know? Why???

Maybe I need to back up and take another look:

NO! That doesn’t help!!! What is going on? What is that expression? Smug? Knowing? And, for the love of all that is holy, what is that puppy doing there? Oh, the answer became clear as we continued deeper into Dante’s Gift Store…

Here was our first real hint that all was not right in this falsely friendly store. Here is clear coercion of a stuffed, um, penguin? koala? lemur? Either way, there was a tiny army forcing these innocents into subservience. If only it was just that because turning once again around a corner reveals:

OMG!!! Fluffy, and all the Fluffy family?!? CARNAGE!!! Heads strewn about! I couldn’t look at it… had. to. look. away.

GAH!!! That look says, “Where is my body? I was your best friend. And apparently I have a conjoined twin who also deserved this fate?!?” Poor Beagley! Can it get any worse?!? Oh yes, my friends:

Oh, the humanity!!! Caninity? Either way, who lops the heads off of two fluffy dogs, then ties a bow on one? And why??? Where will it end?

OH NOES!!! Horsey!!! It seems even crueler to leave them two legs as a mockery of their former glory….

I must certainly have reached the bottom of this pitted hell, but no, my friends. The saga continues (and if I weren’t so lazy I’d pretend this had something to do with hell’s layers, but that’s not gonna happen)…

You must be thinking, as I did before I lost all innocence, “Where are all the feet in this charnel house?” Please… don’t look…

Yes, they make a joke of pedal amputation. Ok, it’s kinda funny, but, sadly, I’ve lost all sense of humor at this point. Feet and legs were not done being abused:

Why do the evil candy corn (which is redundant if you ask me) and the fat penguin have spindly legs? Do penguins even HAVE legs? And WTF did they do to this turkey to make it bleed from the eye?

Think we’ve hit the bottom? Do ya, really? NO. 7 words: Sea Turtle Nipple Piercing and Fish Suspension… Yes, friends, I documented the abuse:

And I think they’re endangered or something. Now you know why…

Ok, if you haven’t chosen to avert your eyes yet, this next image is going to rip your heart out:

Yes, they ripped his heart out. Then they installed a zipper so they could do it whenever they pleased. This is Vladimir Harkonnen level evil, friends. (Go Google it. Then watch that other nightmare, “Dune”.)

So, they defile dogs, horses, teddy bears… but they’d never hurt a bunny, right? Please, no. NO BUNNIES!!! WHAT’S IN THE BOX?????

NO!!! Make it stop!!! Ah, a nice kitty!

Finally, some kindness in this dystopia… but, Kitty, why do you have that odd expression? WAIT!!! What did they DO to you KITTY??? NO!!!!

They scooped out yer brain and made you into a single serving tea pot?!? WTF is a single serving tea pot??? How many times can one blog post say WTF??? But really, W.T.F??!

A billion disembodied Santas scream at the injustice. Scream on, Santa. Santas. Or are you laughing? Are you IN ON THIS?!? Who is THIS guy?!?

How can he be happy?

Oh no, there are MORE of them! These are the minion of the Master, enslaving masses… indoctrinating:

brainwashing…

And heaven can not help you if you fail:

I must escape! I must get the word out! I don’t have time to fight the boss level. I sneak, soundlessly toward the door. I’m almost there. Then… NO!!!

I knew it… St. Francis is finally getting back for all of the Assisi jokes. The world is doomed. Save yourself.

Good thing I had the iPhone with the Wordpress app to send all this before I was smoted. Smited? app needs spell check…

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Twitter has killed my blog updating… Trying to find a nice lazy way to kill two birds with one stone, but not be too annoying.

I’m late to the contest, but I thought I’d give it a shot.

Click here to vote for it.

Thanks!

Here’s what the image looks like on SoCal Photo Contest’s page:

Doesn’t look as good rendered as a tiny thumbnail!

http://www.whereiwrite.org/

very inspiring… I’ve been thinking of crafting a decent workspace at home.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here are the happy parents!

Nice work Erin!

(with Mr. Sykes, the drama coach)

Then on Thursday, Erin walked for her promotion ceremony:

There was pretty music:

which caused a lot of hugging:

and smiles:

and posing:

I’ve always wanted to go and Elaine and I were up in SF for the weekend, so I made it! I walked into the building above and assumed that was the whole thing. It was an enormous place with tons of exhibits.

The first one that caught my eye was a dude polishing a piece of glass for a telescope mirror:

I didn’t quite get how it worked, but it was fascinating to watch.

Next I saw a huge living sculpture of old plastic 2 liter bottles:

There was a line and pulley system that caused the ring of bottles to undulate in a wave.

There were many robot sculptures:

and scary vacuum guns!

These bike wheel LEDs were very cool! I almost bought the kit, but resisted… My birthday is coming up, hint hint…

I think this was part of The Long Now’s 10,000 year clock. I just thought it was cool:

Next I saw Tesla coils! They set up a board with hot dogs along a wire for the current to pass through:

Then there were more robots:

Some of the robots got all evil and started decapitations:

SOLDERING IS NOT A CRIME!

I was getting hungry by this point, so I stepped out of the building to get some food and discovered that there was 4x more Faire to cover:

This one was giving me the eye:

I want to try hanging a camera from a kite! Can I borrow your camera?

The robots were really being mean to children even…

Then they went all cyborg on this poor innocent:

This is the robot conversion factory:

The humans allowed to live had to pass through a life sized Mousetrap Game:

One hall was full of crafts and the witches who ply their trade:

and odes to their false idols:

ok, that’s a pretty cool ode – a yarn FSM!

And what would a trip to NoCal be without hippies and their dirty habits:

It’s sad what happened to some of the humans:

but I will admit to eating all the chocolate and vanilla ribbon off of the Hostess Cupcake car! Mmm, delicious!

Sheep lady’s twittering about seeing something stranger than her:

What could it be?

WOOP, der it is:

Some brave humans fought back the robot horde:

But in the end, who can fight robots?

Especially when they use child sympathizers:

I blame the XBoX generation for this madness.

But wait! There’s hope!

Mentos and Diet Coke save the day! And we all fly away:

and eat mushrooms:

and wear awesome coats:

Oh yeah, I ran into Andrew, Kim, and Site Con #3 (dammit, I can’t remember his name. Nice kid… )

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It boggles the mind…

In the whole trip, the only place we ran into a little weather was outside of Flagstaff where we picked up a light dusting of snow:

which broke as we came back down to the desert:

and gave me my only half-decent sunset picture of the trip:

I got to shoot London Bridge at night, something I’ve wanted to do for a long time:

Day:

Night:

Erin got bored, so we experimented with light writing:

Sadly, this summoned a monster which ate us. the end.

Actually, I kicked its butt:

We drove around the lake back into California:

and made a very important pit stop in Julian, CA:

In the time it took to take this picture, and it being Easter Sunday, Mom’s actually locked the door and denied us crumble topped apple pie goodness! So we went across the street to the malt shop and got a lovely piece of pie!

Erin looks shocked because I got her drinking a glass of ichor. Yep, she’s a vampire. See how sparkly she is in all the pictures.

Nine days, lots of bug guts, and 3000 miles later, we made it back home!

Yep, pretty much sums the place up.

My sister Diardra and her hubby Doug live in Arvada, CO right next to Denver:

Diardra gave us directions to the 16th Street Mall

which is right by the capitol:

Erin Yelped and found us some awesome Gyros at Shish Kabob:

We used Yelp a ton on this trip. With the location based iphone app, it worked very well!

I’d done some research before the trip and found that one of my favorite brewers is very close to Diardra’s house, so we took one evening and headed to Oskar Blues’ restaurant in Lyons, CO.

They are one of the first craft brewers who can their stuff, but I wanted to taste it from the tap. So I did:

God Bless sampler trays… Lotsa of lovely flavors and no huge hangover the next day

The place is very festive:

The staff was super nice. I was disappointed that the can price was no cheaper than our local places in San Diego. I had dreams of filling the trunk with cases of Ten Fidy and ruling the SoCal market.

The next morning we were supposed to drive to Albuquerque but how do you get THAT close to Rock Mountain National Park and not go take some pictures… This pattern seemed to rule the trip and make for very late night arrivals…

It’s a very dangerous park:

filled with scary creatures:

As usual, I’m ignoring the “thin ice” signs, although I think I was safe this time:

See the pretty lake behind us? Use your imagination. Or a large blow dryer…

Again, it was so hard not to just sit in one place and watch the light change. I like this shot, but imagine it at sunset…

“Welcome to Bear Lake!”

Six hours later we were on the road to AAAAAAaaaalbuquerque. Erin shot some neat weather:

Then it got dark and I made her listen to REO Speewagon for 8 hours straight!

Bryan’s learning how to count:

We saw Wolverine and didn’t go out for sushi.

Erin and her short Mom:

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But let’s be real, the real reason for the trip is JACK!

Jack is our new nephew and I hadn’t met him before this. He’s a wonderful little dude with a great disposition. Looks like he’ll have our sense of humor too:

He’s very curious about funny looking faces:

and he knows how to be cool:

Let’s just face it, this is a cute kid…

I didn’t really get to do much concentrated photography on this trip since we were on the move so much, but I did shoot this one night and was pretty happy with it:

I’d have been happier if the netting wasn’t there, but it was cold and dark and I didn’t notice it until I had the tripod all set up.

Aidan, Renia, and Jack live in a beautiful area, very close to Vail. We walked around their neighborhood quite a bit:

and took a side trip up to Vail to see the village and commune with the residents:

This dude was WAY into me:

After 2p, you can ride the gondolas up the mountain for free, so we did:

and enjoyed the beautiful views:

Erin made some sort of Ice Princess Shrine…

Then we all went out and enjoyed some “waters”:

and green goop:

We had a great time getting to meet Jack, and reuniting with Aidan and Renia!

I haven’t owned an ice scraper since Illinois, but thanks to my genetic influence, Erin’s a genius and we used the room key cards to scrape the windows.

We had a 7-8 hr drive to Denver ahead of us, so we swore we’d just spend an hour or so in Bryce… how hard could that be?

Erin wanted to prove she’d been in snow:

I made the world’s smallest snowman:

Erin shot a lot of our pix from the passenger seat, so she wanted a clean window:

Bryce is full of scenic view of hoodoos. What’s a hoodoo?

Those are. The way I understand it, the area used to be 3000 ft sand dunes, then a sea settled above that. The minerals in the sea seeped down into the sand, inconsistently, forming columns of cement in the sand. As the land was pushed up and the water ran out, it carried away the loose sand, leaving these amazing columns of fractal sand and cement.

There was usually someone at any stop who would trade a group shot if you did one for them:

The variations on the formations were beautiful:

I need a week in just this one spot to do it justice with a camera:

Ok, you get the point – it’s beautiful and everyone should go see it!

Six hours later, we dragged ourselves out of the park to start the 7 hr drive to Edwards, CO to see my brother. We lost the light soon, but I’ll never forget the drive:

Zion is a short trip off of I-15, just north on St. George, UT. We stopped at a little town called Springdale and looked at some rocks:

I decided then that I’d resist my rock collection obsession or else the car would be laden with 1000lbs as we headed over the Rockies later in the trip Erin got her Mom some earrings, and we headed into Zion proper. I didn’t know what to expect – I’d done some research for the trip, but I didn’t want to look at too many pictures before I saw it for myself.

There’s a $25 entry fee, then you leave your car at the visitor’s center and hop on a shuttle that runs the length of the park.

I’ll put a link in the blog to all of the pictures, but WOW! Just WOW! It was amazing:

Erin has the photography bug too. I got here here and I was using my iPhone – one of my favorite images from the trip:

I was drawn to the rocks mainly, while Erin loved the water features:

I got a new wide lens piece for my Lensbaby and tried it out here, but only got one or two interesting images:

I need to spend more time with it to learn how to get some part of the image in focus.

I can paste beautiful rock formation pictures in here all day:

I also got a 70-300 Canon IS lens to play with, and it didn’t disappoint:

Erin goes in search of more water pictures:

We encountered much wild life, such as the Thanksgiving bird:

We couldn’t find the stuffing gophers.

Where’s Erin?

I was going to have some deep comments about ageless stone and modern technology, but I remembered that I’m not that deep:

Finally found some phone signal!

It was getting late and we needed to get to Bryce for the next day, so we headed out through the tunnel on Rt. 12:

and found even more amazing sights:

SOMEone was getting a little tired of stopping every 5 minutes to take pix, but I have to say – this was one of the most amazing drives I have ever made. Beautiful!

Good bye Zion. I’ll be back, and I promise to spend more that a day….

to get to our first stop, Las Vegas! This was Erin’s first time so I wanted to make sure she saw the most important part, Barry Manilow!

Ok, not really – our goal was the Blue Man Group but first we needed to get a good meal. I looked out the window of our hotel and saw the Peppermill, a great place my buddy TJ intruduced me to on my last LV visit. Erin was impressed with the very colorful sugar:

Ok, so was I:

Next, we walked (and walked and walked) the Strip:

Caught some amazing magic:

Then finally saw the men of blue:

When I took Nathan to this show a few years ago, I neglected to bring a camera, so we missed this shot…

Erin really wanted to see the Excalibur, so we hoofed it down the Strip again after the show and she scored a nice image:

Sadly, the dragon statue is gone now. A guard told us that it was breaking down and they couldn’t get parts. I blame the IT department, or this Emo kid:

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I need to play with it more… I KNOW I went over 11 mph Not sure why there are so few data points. The phone was in my saddle bag, under the metal seat, and the big rider – so maybe that’s it

I took a lot of pictures as usual. They’re all up on Flicrk, but here are a few I really liked:

Our hotel was right across the street from the Rhode Island State house. I forgot to fix my white balance before I shot it, but I kinda like the effect:

If all of the cars in front were as old as the one in the middle, I could have pretended it was an old slide

Here’s a more “accurate” shot:

We headed over to the local mall’s food court for lunch:

Lotsa folks in that one – Mike Giarlo, Rob Cassion, Ross Singer, Phil Cryer.

I really enjoyed spending a few days with our intrepid Esme:

(He lives in Florida, Mike.)

Here Dan Chudnov does his Bollywood routine in celebration of Slumdog Millionaire’s big Oscar wins:

Jodi Schneider was thrilled to see me, as always:

I finally met Ed Summers, in the middle. It’s good to see him inspiring others as he does me. Bess Sadler is enjoying the fracas as well:

Gabe Farrell, on the right, forgot he owed me $20. Never do that. It gives me WAY too much license…

Mike Park left me waiting to be picked up at the airport:

Well ok, he mailed me 3 weeks before the event asking if I needed a ride and I sent him an itinerary and said I’d confirm closer to the flight. Three hours before the flight takes off doesn’t really count! Mike drove me, Esme, Brad, and Dan all over the place, either because he’s a great dude, or I’m good at making people feel guilty. Either way, I win! Thanks Mike for being a great host.

Actually, I gotta say that the whole Brown Univ (or is that Univ of Providence?) crew kicked ass in prep and execution of this conference. BRAVO Birkin, Jean, Bonnie, and other names I can’t remember because I drink a lot.

I also take a lot of pictures, so I’ll inevitably get something cool like this:

Heehee! I love my Lensbaby!

Pizza is good!

Did you know the lead singer of Saliva is a librarian?

Ross pretends to laugh at something while trying to ignore the fat dude sticking a camera in his face:

Just looking at this costs me 14 points:

Brad, Dan, and I visited the inside of the RI State House before we ran to the airport, and decided that we should hold the next code4lib in the Senate chambers:

Never get on that end of a canon, especially when I am on the other end…

As usual, way too many pictures here:

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Awesome seeing you all again!