Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (minus the Trains and all of the plurals)

What is all this talk about "Wow, you actually blogged again," and "stop blogging so much, you're making me look bad," all about? Well...maybe we left you all some reason to be concerned with our past habits, but don't you know Christianity is all about repentance, forgiveness, and absolution? Cut us some slack people! (Or, as Cristy is fond of saying, "Bust up off my cheetos fool! Don't waste my flava'.")

OK, so now we are in June, specifically June 1. Cristy dropped me off at the airport and had another long day at work. Purportedly, she stayed up late all week, didn't do any chores and was a wreck without her dear hubby. I don't believe it, but that's what she says. No pictures (I had the camera) and no drama.

I, on the other handm was on a business trip to Palm Springs, FLorida, headed for the FAA Center for Management and Executive Leadership (CMEL) to attend an engineering conference on airport planning safety. Trust me, it was a lot less riveting than it sounds, and that' s saying something.

The way the Government works with travel is you get two "travel days" no matter where you are headed, and you don't really have to do any work those days. If you go to Russia and your flight is 18 hours, tough luck, that counts as one day without comp. time. If you go to Florida on a four hour trip, you get the rest of the day to party. And that's what I did.

SPOILER ALERT: There aren't any pictures of humans in this blog, or for the next couple of blogs. Sorry. I will try and add some if I think of something clever.

Right across the street from Daytona Beach International Airport is Daytona 500 Speedway. Here are some past winners of the event's hand and footprints. Dale Earnheardt Jr.

Jeff Gordon.

An IMAX theatre, musuem, and statue of Dale Earnheardt Sr.

A view of the massively confusing parking lot. I am pretty sure they shot scenes from the movie "Labryinth" here.

My sweet ride for the day. XM radio is to die for.

To give you an idea of the dimensions of the building...

Yay, Welcome to the blistering heat.

Did you know Daytona is home to the LPGA? Who knew?

I took a drive down to Washington Oaks Park, near Orlando, and walked around intent on finding the rare Southern Oak Trees, often compared to California Redwoods.

Only to find out these look nothing like California Redwoods. They do grow laterally very well, but thick they are not.

Often in the park you could see the Oak growing beside (and betwixt) palm trees. I thought that was neat.

The mopnster fish in this pond are literally outgrowing parts of it. Here this fish is swimming around, all fat and looking like a grown man' s forearm.

And this is the biggest fish I have seen in my life (wait...Dolphins are fish, right?) He was up to maybe my lower thigh from the ground. This might have been the fish from the movie "Big Fish," but I can't verify that.

You can't stop this Palm Tree. Mother Nature = 1, Groundsmen = 0.

A conglomerate of little shells that make a rock.

Above ground roots? Crazy. This tree must live and die with the tides.

What is up with me and my ability to find cold-blooded animals. It's like they are attracted to me.

Another Southern Oak/Palm Tree mix.

The same shot from a distance.

Next I took a drive down the road to discover that Marineland had in store for me. This place is famous, right?

Not. You have to pay to see some dolphins in a pool-sized aquarium. Worth it if you have kids I suppose. Otherwise, there's always the pictures of fake shark jaws.

Sorry it's so little, this is one of my many shots form the car while driving (more on that next blog!) and I had to crop it really tight. It's just a beautiful pastel hotel in the background.

Did you read in the news about all the record rain and flooding in Florida in May? Well, right after that, I came here, and this shot from my hotel room shows just how saturated the Earth was. It had been raining for maybe 20 minutes at this point. Apparently some rooms down the hall from mine had flooded just the week before!

One Wedding and a Campout

So our anniversary this weekend was wonderful--I think we (and it really was "we" this time) took around 100 pictures that we'll keep, which bodes well for our blogging future well into August.

BUT, to stay true to my word, we must remain text-light if I am going to get through this. So here we go (this trip was May 22-23):

Cristy with the Hwangs. As you can see, their reception was not Anglo-Saxon.

Who knew Mr. Clean would be making an appearance at the Clarion Hotel, WV? Hey--who knew Mr. Clean was even a real person?!?

The Taylors and the Bees camping with us in Harpers Ferry, WV. Peach Cobbler....hmmm...

...Dutch Oven style!

I apologize beforehand for the awful photo-editing. My generic MS Vistas program does not do well with the shade.

Group Photo #1

Nathan Taylor standing precariously over the waterfall.

Rest is Best.

Group Photo #2

The Taylors. Yes, Amanda did decide to wear this red shirt until Nate chose his red shirt. That's how she rolls.

The Bees

Who knows and Who cares.

Nathan not worried about growing warts on his hands and fingers. Tsk Tsk. Note Cristy in the background checking the GPS. "Hey babe--I know where we're going."

Crossing the railroad track. Is that illegal in WV? We'll never know.

Another frog. Nathan already had too many warts on his hands, so he couldn't risk picking this one up too.

I have known way too many West Virginians to wonder how a disassembled car made its way down to the river. West Virginia: the armpit of the South. (Note: so what does that make Mississippi ;)

A pretty sweet looking tree. Very old but hanging--err--rooting strong. Notice its now growing up...left...or whatever.

Drew and Nathan sharing a moment among friends.

Team Taylor!

Those people again....they're following us honey.

Photo Op!

It was really, really hot that day. And we ran out of water...soooo...

...Just kidding. I was just cooling off.

An Osprey or something. Ironically, it seemed like the fish should have been hunting the birds because they were huge.

Some funny demotivators...just because I didn't want to end with a picture of a bird :)

This is not helping my case with Cristy to let us get a dog.

HAHAHA Idaho. I mean Virginia.

Here a shout out to my (hopefully) future employers.

Gives you a new perspective, doesn't it. Makes you feel a little bad for all those late nights, trying to get to the next level.

To Blog Is An Art Form

Hello! As most of you know now (many have called concerned about our health) Cristy and I are not hand-crippled, we have just been extremely busy. This last weekend we had so many things going on that we had to cut things out because their literaly was not enough time in the day. Like when I called the Mississippi clan and told them I would call right back, then called them the next day. Oops.

Well, since the middle of May (our last blog post) Cristy and I have ammassed 159 pictures that we feel are blogworthy. In order to stay sane, I am not going to blog all of these at once, but rather ten seperate blogs over the course of July. Add that to our anniversary this weekend in NYC (a year already!!!) and the week after in Mississippi, and we will have 12 blog posts in July. Does that help make up for the dirth last month?

Here's the super-watered down version: Cristy continues to work 12-14 hour days (although yesterday she pulled an 8!) and hasn't had much of a social life outside of the weekend. Church obligations and family commitments have filled our weekends (and Cisty worked at least one full weekend a few weeks ago). My sister graduated (twice) and my Mom had a surgery. As later blogs will show, I went on a work trip the first week of June and took about 100 pictures that we kept. I applied for two government jobs, which took forever.

And that's it. Hopefully in July I can return to daily blogging, but until then.........no.

Because I don't remember a lot of things that happened (and I am going to be blogging enough that I don't care) I am going to write captions for the pictures and little else. Enjoy!

Remember the day Cheney and Obama give "dueling" national security speeches? Well Obama gave his speech at the National Archives, just across the street from me, so I took a gander over there for lunch and...well...I didn't quite get in. Hundreds of Secret Service agents, 25 SUVs, a firetruck and a bomb squad. Just in case, I guess.

I spend the rest of my lunch walking through art galleries. I discovered (or rather remembered) how much I dislike much of modern art. Below: good modern art.

Good art. A 10+ foot statue of a nude man, looking upset and pensive. Not convinced it has artistic value?

The close-up of this man is amazing. When I stood near him taking this picture of skin imperfection, blemishes, pores, and veins, I thought he would come alive and start talking to me. One of those irrational fears I guess. You can even see the "oil" on his nose.

And then there was this room. The room with the shapes. Hung. On the wall.

Wow. Modern art. Booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

Somewhat better (it has balance) but nothing compared to Impressionism.

Oh look. The Poteets sent Paper Georgey on another vacation to the Hirschhorn Musuem. Oh wait, it's more modern art. (I'm only bitter because my tax dollars benefit this thing.)