Phoenix, AZ

I went to this ridiculous town last week to watch preseason baseball and to have my fantasy draft. This town is called Phoenix. I don't know which cowboy rode through the desert with an Apache arrow in his horse's butt and thought to himself, this looks like a great spot to have an enormous city, but he was an moron. Phoenix has no natural resources other than rocks, sunshine and hot, dry air. I think the national pastime of Phoenix dwellers is to collect rocks in the heat and arrange them into nice patterns. See here

and here

I also saw a guy "weeding" some rocks. Nice use of government cash there; wait three months and those weeds will be dead for free.

If the fact that living in a desert wasn't silly enough, the powers that be decided that Phoenix should be enormous. We had to drive 30 minutes to get anywhere and I think it would take a good 90 minutes to drive from Chandler to Surprise. I was listening to the radio and the program hosts were criticizing Dennis Leary for saying he didn't care about global warming and then asserted that we should do everything we can to reduce CO2 emissions yadayada. My first thought was, you boneheads live in enormous, spread-out, three-lane highways everywhere Phoenix where you have to import water, food, cold air and old people; if you're so serious, move somewhere hospitable to human life.

Natural History Museum and Jardin des Plantes

Ok, now that I have your attention...

We spent the afternoon at the Natural History Museum in Jardin des Plantes:

Michael is now at the phase where he understands to say "cheese" for the camera. So now, instead of just giving natural smiles, we get this:

I just like the motion in this picture. Michael is levatating here, Matrix style:

Michael spent LOTS of time squatting and looking at the televisions on the floor. I spent a lot of time cursing my 50mm and its blurry shots. Next time, i am bringing my external flash.

HOWEVER, once we got outside, the 50mm was indeed my favorite lens of choice. Michael did not agree:

This is his dodo bird. He rides the carrousel at Jardin des Plantes a lot because we have been running there "often." So he gets all excited and runs straight to the dodo bird every time we ride the carrousel.

Jardin des Plantes has 2 blossoming trees. Michael is plotting how to next attack that pile of mulch behind him:

And these 3 shots are the reason I have this 50mm lens:

(wishing Michael's head was just a tad bit to the left there...)

And how is it that I have aged so much and Brian is still as handsome as he was when we met???

Awesome. f1.4...