Mind Wanderings and Various Other Bull

...You see political cartoons in the paper like this one:


 0 comments

If you haven't seen Aimee's blog, then you probably didn't know that I've been turning Japanese with photos. The best place to look at them is here. Here's a few more of my favorites:

In the Sky Tower:







Dunedin was quite funky:





Lake Manapouri was unreal. With the storms that blow in off the Tasman Sea and go over the Southern Alps, the lighting was just stunning:



...and so were the sunrises in that part of the country:



The sunsets weren't bad either:





Captain Cook really missed out on Doubtful Sound:





But more importantly, Aimee and I got a chance to reconnect and just be happy together:


 1 comments

So I've got some new photo's uploaded. These ones are from a beautiful couple of days in Nelson and Dunedin.

We had a great wine tour in Nelson. I blew a few hundred bucks on some nice wines. On the way back, I started snapping pictures out of the bus window.

The lot of Nelson pics can be found here: (Click on the 'Nelson' Set)

Dunedin is quite an interesting place. It has a lot of character - as though it were settled by some Scottish people or something :-) The batch of Dunedin pics (thus far) can be found here: (Click on the 'Dunedin' set).


View Larger Map

Thus far, we've spent St. Patrick's day in an Irish pub.



Alas, I was too drunk to take a picture of the t-shirts that the staff were wearing. They were from Guinness, and had a tap and a pint glass cleverly shaped like the shaky islands. Above them, it said, "Can I get you a Guiness?"

Today we spent a lovely time going out the Otago Penninsula and then up to the Moeraki Boulders. Our itinerary up the peninsula included Larnach Castle and the Royal Albatross Colony at the tip of the penninsula. All together, I snapped 300 pictures today.

...but for those, you'll just have to wait for the next posting.
 1 comments

You can find my photos over on flickr. http://www.flickr.com/photos/richypants/sets/ is the address to see everything.

Most recently, I've uploaded the pictures from Samoa, Auckland, Nelson, and some more from the Airplane. They're categorized accordingly.

Oh yes...below is the look on Aimee's face when we got our luggage. Enjoy!


 1 comments

So our luggage seemed to have missed the boat somewheres. Here was the message previously sent out:

Madame Librarian and I have made it here safe and sound. Our luggage (however) is another story. We are betting that it is in Tonga...

In the end, it showed up at the hotel this morning. We were walking back from buying clothing, and something looked familiar on the front stoop. "Ooooh Oooh! Is that our luggage?!?!?" Aimee was heard to exclaim.

She wanted to do the happy dance right then and there.

I have to say, I can sympathize with her. Loosing your luggage is bad enough. Having to convert your sizes into metric is completely another (although I just grabbed a calculator from the stationery aisle in the store). Adding insult to injury was that the luggage contained wedding presents for the people we came visit.

All's well that ends well.

At any rate, still haven't had a chance to post photos. I've got a few hundred taken already. Samoa was one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. There are a few places that I've seen sunrises from that have taken my breath away. A sunrise in the summertime over The Great Plains is one of them. Samoa is another. With the latter, I have pictures to prove it.

In addition, Madame Librarian now has a new place where she can post her thoughts: http://blog.notamy.com. For Christmas last year, I got her a domain name. She spells her name "A-i-m-e-e" but pronounces it "Amy". Hence, "NotAmy.com". I will give you three guesses what her email address is.

So greetings from Nelson:

View Larger Map

Updates as events warrant.
 0 comments

I've found a place on the earth that has time zone issues. No joke, but its the same time of day here in Samoa that it is in New Zealand - except that it's less one full day:

In Apia, Samoa:


In Wellington, NZ:


In other words, we're in the same time zone...but on opposite sides of the International Date Line.

So we found ourselves in a bit of a situation this morning. We were booked to fly from LAX to Auckland - via Apia, Samoa. When we got there, we went over to the lounge for in transit passengers, but we were refused.

"Sorry...you are on a different flight - you have to go through Immigration." was how the story went.

So off we go to Immigration.

"Sorry...you are in transit. You need to go to the lounge. You cant come into the country."

Hmm...this could get interesting. Mme Librarian is still whacked out on Xanax from the flight, and we are in No Man's Land. Eventually, they decided to let us into Samoa - and even gave us stamps in our passports that exempt us from the departure tax.

So, we are spending our 7 hours here in Samoa walking around and taking photos. I'll post them as soon as I get to a place where I can upload. Wow. It is really beautiful here - and everyone is quite friendly.
 1 comments

So I've paid flickr their bloody bribe money. The photos can now be seen on flickr.

It used to be that I had a lovely yahoo photo page where I could post all of the pictures that I take when I travel. But noooooooo... Yahoo had to go and discontinue that service. It was only after I had transferred the photos did I find out that I had so many that I needed a paid account.

Bastards.

So this was found a few weeks ago as I was headed up the escalator at O'Hare to the B concourse:



Yes...my librarian varies
 0 comments

The NY Times is running an interesting article about how the younger generation of Iraqi's are questioning their faith. This piqued my interest because I decided that organized religion was a crock when I was 14. But my crisis of faith only stemmed from a church leader telling me that my earring and long hair was a detriment to my salvation. I wasn't being bombed.
 0 comments