My bad! Looks like we fell off the edge of the blogosphere. A whole lot has transpired in the past few months for sure. I started a job in May, lost it in September due to funding, I traveled to Guam and Saipan for business for a month, Kuma is still good, Lindsey's job is great, went to Amanda (our Peace Corps sitemate) and Josef's wedding near Chicago, visited Lindsey's family earlier this summer, and have gone swimming a lot.

It was great to be able to spend some time in Minnesota this past summer. We ended up spending a little less than a week and we were able to celebrate Derek's graduation and see a lot of the extended family. We had some great weather up at the lake, and then it became classically freezing and Lindsey and I almost went into hypothermia.

We then flew from Duluth over to Chicago, were we stayed with our good friends Mat and Karen for one night, and then headed over to Woodstock on the train. We were the classic wedding crashers who promised to stay in a tent in the yard (too lazy to set it up). It was such a fantastic, beautiful wedding and we were both so glad to make it. There were also a lot of my Peace Corps group members there as well (shown in the picture) so it was great to catch up with all of them.

Amanda and Josef had been living in Burma, where they attended this incredible hot air balloon festival, which gave them this amazing idea. There were about 100 of these balloons that had a small candle inside of them, which inflated the balloon, and then it took off. It was simply gorgeous. A really incredible, memorable wedding.

I started a job in May with a company doing disaster planning course development and training and in August I was lucky enough to travel to Guam and Saipan for a total of 3 weeks to help co-teach some courses. This picture is from the inside of the remains of a Japanese pillbox that still sits on a rocky outcropping on one of the beaches in Guam. There were some incredible ruins and reminders of the WWII history

This was in the southern tip of Guam and I guess Magellan landed here about two months before he was later killed in the Philippines (courtesy of Wikipedia, it turns out Magellan named Guam the Island of Sails because there were so many boats...and changed the name to Island of Thieves a few days later because some of their smaller boats went missing). It was a really beautiful island and actually felt bigger than I thought it would. Some quick notes of interest: cock-fighting is legal and hugely popular, the Navy is moving a huge base from Okinawa to Guam, the local raw beef that is "cooked" in lemon juice was amazing, it's only a 3 hour flight from Japan, and there are basically no birds because the Brown Tree Snake has literally overrun the island.

Off to Saipan! Saipan is an island that is part of the Marianas chain (Guam is a few hundred miles south of Saipan) and is part of the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas. Saipan has a much stronger indigenous culture than Guam and also felt incredibly small. The local residents whom we were teaching were incredibly friendly and we ended up going to a few of their local BBQ's. Also, I had a blast exploring some of the local WWII sites here as well. This picture is of the last Japanese gun emplacement on the island that is still intact, in its original site. It was an eerie place to visit in a remote part on the southern tip of the island.

The park ranger at the National Park museum near my hotel told me about some of the lesser known/visited sites. One of them was this pile of bombs! All of this unexploded ordinance was just put in a pill and left to rot, it was pretty hard to find, but an incredible place to explore. The whole beach area was just covered with rust and shrapnel. I was informed that standing and/or jumping on the bomb pile was not advised.

This was one of the BBQ's that we attended and I wish I could remember this fellows name. He is related to the famous voyageur Mau who basically saved the form of traditional pacific navigation. It's a fascinating read on ol' Wikipedia if you have the time. Anyway, this guy was showing us the model of a boat that he actually built and has sailed around Micronesia. The longest trip he had done was around 500 miles, all with traditional navigation methods, incredible. He was the kindest, most friendly soul and was very concerned about the island's youth letting their history and culture fade away.

I finally got back home after abou 4 weeks on the road, and Lindsey and I spent last weekend hiking around Volcano National Park! It was super nice. We then went to the beach, out to dinner, and had a good old time. Love my wife!

Lindsey and I standing in front of the sulfur pits at the park...mmm! So glad to be home, but just this week I also found out that funding ran out for my job! Shit! So, I've got one more week of work and them it's back to the job search. I've applied for about four positions here already and two of them are actually related to Planning, which is promising. So, we'll see what happens, but my stint as a world traveling businessman is over for the time being, and right after my Hyatt Gold car arrived in the mail!

We're a little late in getting these posts up...but here are some pictures from our visit from Mat and Karen, our Peace Corps buddies. They visited for a week about two weeks ago now and we had an awesome time. They were blessed with some great weather the whole trip and we saw a bunch of the island with them.

We stayed for a long weekend over in Kona before they left. It was great to just relax at a super nice beach, do some swimming and enjoy the pools.

Enjoying a little relaxation.

We did a little hike through the National Park which was really fun. It just figures that it was a free day...which annoys me because we own an annual pass.

Interpretive volcano dance.

Cool shot by Binzer showing the beach and another one of the island's volcanoes.

We drove all through Puna and stopped at a beach to check out the surf.

Recreation of a classic Binzer/Mat/Trine shot from Peace Corps.

Would the visit have been complete without a little hot pot? This restaurant just opened in Hilo and it's super awesome...can't wait to go again.

Sushi, white wine, ping pong, pools, beach, cribbage, perfect.

We were a little slow on the whole picture uploading thing, but here are some pictures from the Aysta's trip! It was a really great time. I can't believe how much stuff we we're able to do in the time that they were here. After the second day, I think Paul and Beck had already driven on every major road on the island (which is fairly impressive). Lindsey had to work a lot during the week, but Paul and Beck rented a place literally two minutes from our house up in the rainforest, so we were able to see them a lot. We hit up the Volcano Park, Waipio Valley, secret Kona beaches, made Paul eat poke (cubes of hawaiian raw fish), Indian, and Thai food, and lots of other stuff.

Just this week, it seems we have added a new member to the family, Kuma (bear in Japanese). Lindsey was driving to work and passed this dog crossing the road and continued on her way, but then on the drive home some 10 hours later, the dog was still in the same spot wandering around on the highway. Lindsey stopped and was finally able to get him in the car. He was pretty clearly abandoned because he's a bit older, but he's really sweet. We took him to the vet and he has deteriorating vision, some arthritis, a skin condition (which we're treating), and he's pretty timid. But, he does like to go for walks and stick his head out the window. We're just taking it one day at a time and seeing if he's a good fit, but with him being so old, he wouldn't have much of a chance at the Humane Society. So, it looks like we have a dog!

Right after Paul and Becky left, we had some big thunderstorms and received a lot of snow on Mauna Kea. I wish it had been a little clearer out...

We took a wagon ride in Waipio Valley, the end of the road heading up the coast.

There are probably 5 million pictures of this same shot on the internet.

At church I've been working with the youth group to start a band and we performed for our first time this past week. Most of the kids are Tongans and they are all pretty fun to work with.

They sang Oh Happy Day, just like at our wedding.

We went to the tidepools down in Puna, which were really awesome. There are all of these little pools with fish and corral and you can just spend hours exploring.

The road down to Waipio Valley was pretty wicked, the steepest grade was 39%.

While we were at the volcano, there was a small rock fall that put up a plume of ash...pretty awesome.

Here we are over on the Kohala Beaches

We drove the Saddle Rd. over to the beach one day and everyone was blown away by how cold and windy it was. Paul is clearly not too excited.

Down in the valley.

We had a pretty eventful past week, with the Tsunami warning and all. On that day, Lindsey and I felt our first earthquake at about 8pm, right when we saw the news about the Japanese earthquake. It was crazy to watch the breaking news from Japan and feel this impending doom about a tsunami on the way. The sirens started going on right away and continued every hour throughout the night. Then, at 11pm, we felt an even bigger earthquake as we were going to sleep, a 4.5 (completely unrelated to the Japanese one), which put us on edge even more.

While nothing at all happened on the Hilo side of the island, in Kona, water came into the stores and damaged a lot of property. One house was swept out into the bay and a lot of debris and garbage was pulled into the ocean. Yet, it was of course nothing like Japan experienced.

Here we are down at Hilo Bay for an early morning stroll and snack. Beautiful clear day.

We tend to stroll the shore and collect sea glass. Lindsey uses it for her parents programs that occur once a month at her work.

Some of the canoe teams practicing in the morning.

Last night we went to a roller derby match. The event was completely sold out and completely befuddling. Lindsey and I understood it all by the end, but still didn't really understand why there were so many people there, or why some fans were so passionate. The most interesting part of the night for me was after the conclusion of the national anthem, when the Hawaiian state anthem was sung. The song used to be the Hawaiian national anthem (pre-US Marine invasion) and it was really beautiful. It was pretty moving how everyone sang along and knew all the words.

A shot of the auditorium.

We drove over to Kona on Saturday for Lindsey to run a 10K at the Kona Brewery. It sure gets hot over there! It was a beautiful day and a really nice drive around the island.

Race getting started

Yay! Good job babe! She even won* a basil plant!

*participated

Well, this post has been a long time coming. We've been pretty busy over the last month or so. We house sat for more than a week for some friends outside of town, went to Honolulu for the weekend, and my Great Aunt Eleanor is here visiting. Lots going on! Pictures will be totally out of order because I'm kinda lazy and going to bed.

Here's Lindsey and I on Waikiki beach at night, but I guess we could be just about anywhere... It was fun visiting Oahu for a long weekend to actually experience some city living again. Always good to have a wide array of restaurants to choose from.

We also went over to Kailua, which is on the other side of Oahu, just for the day. The beaches over there are actually way better than Waikiki and there are not that many people.

Here's me and Aunt Eleanor over at the turtle beach. El flew in to town this past Friday and we've been taken her around to all the Hilo sights. It's been a lot of fun just hanging out and hearing about family history. El has also been to Hawaii about 8 different times

, so she knows her way around better than us!

One of my fantasies is to restore historic theaters in small towns...and there's a good one up the coast from us in this little tourist town.

We stopped and got some Kona coffee ice cream and Lindsey got a rainbow ice shave. Hit the spot pretty well on this really hot day.

It's always nice to have visitors because it actually pushes you to do things. We went over to the Mehana Brewery right here in Hilo and did some sampling, then it was off to get Big Island burgers.

We stopped over at the Hilo Chocolate...Store? Factory?...well, the chocolate is super good and you get free samples.

Whoa! back to Honolulu. This is a shot of the high rises right near Waikiki.

Another shot of the beach at Kailua, on Oahu. After this, we had a great lunch at a cute little local place right across the street, then had to catch the bus back to Honolulu to fly home.

While we house sat, we also took care of two sheep and two dogs. I also spent some time battling mice. It was quite the country experience, but it was fun to have a big house to ourselves and also be up in the higher, cooler elevation.

In Honolulu, we went to the Chinatown, but all of the shops were closed...bummer. But, we did stumble upon this great Chinese restaurant and ordered a few of the classic dishes we used to eat weekly in China. It was nice to have some bad Chinese beer, great food, and banter in Chinese with the staff.

Last but not least, the obligatory shot of Diamond Head near Waikiki.

We spent last weekend hiking into a remote beach in Volcano National Park to stay Saturday night. The park has some gorgeous back-country locations where you can camp. The one we chose, Halape Beach, was 11-miles along the rugged lava coastline. When we started out, spirits were high. It's pretty hot and slow going across the open lava plains, but the view of the ocean was great. It's really neat to watch the waves crash into the shore and send plums of water into the air. After about two miles, my knee started to hurt, and then both knees did. When we got to the six mile mark, I finally decided to tell Lindsey that I wasn't doing so good. But, rather than trudge back 6 miles to the car, I chose to continue going the five miles to the beach. Let's just say the trip back out the next day was a death march. We both didn't know if we would make it out before nightfall, we switched packs with two miles to go, and I could barely walk the last two miles...but then we got home and I ate a huge bowl of ice cream, all better.

The whole hike is mostly along the shore and you continue to cross various lava fields.

Here's a picture of some newer lava on some of the older stuff. It's clear to see along the cliffs in the background as well.

The beach itself was really nice. Nothing too incredible, but nice. The best part was this small brackish pool that was hidden in an earth crack, the water was really warm and so clear. It didn't help that I reminded Lindsey about two hours into our hike that we could have been sitting on any number of the world's most beautiful beaches at about this time, if we had just driven to Kona.

Here's a shot across the beach front. It was a really nice spot and we should have planned better to stay an extra day. There were a bunch of locals staying here that come down every year. They each carry down a whole case of beer and spend their three days drinking and fishing.

I was pumped to round up some coconuts and use the machete that I had hauled in.

This is the small brackish pool that we swam in.

Lindsey having some of the coconut milk from the front door step of our campsite. Back in the 1970's some Boy Scouts stayed at this same beach and a tsunami came up and washed them up and into the same earth crevice that the swimming hole was in, which saved them. No tsunami on this trip!

Another shot of the beach.

This was some huge fish, I should have taken a better picture of the head.

Happy Holidays everybody! Well, Christmas and New Years have already slid by and it's still sunny and 80 everyday...brrr... Personally, I can't wait until it warms back up to 85 everyday come March.

So, we haven't posted much in a while, but I'll just let the pictures do the talking with some narration to show you some of the stuff that we're up to.

So, we drove to see the fresh lava twice during the past week. The first time, we brought hiking shoes and lights, and then we were only allowed to walk within about 400 meters of it...a little dissapointing. But, this last trip we made was a lot better. While we didn't bring the lights and wore flip-flops, we were allowed to get within about 20 feet of the fresh lava, it was pretty cool.

Here are all the people looking at the lava from the viewing area on the first trip we made. We were both bummed we couldn't get any closer...but at least we only had to drive 30 minutes to get home and then try on a different day.

On New Year's Day we hiked to Shipman's Beach, which is this isolated little beach on the eastern side of the island and it was awesome. It took about 45 minutes to hike to along the coast through some really incredible forest along an old Hawaiian road. The beach is right in front of this amazing house that is still owned by the Shipman family (old money). They have fought to make it a private beach, but all the beaches in Hawaii are public...haha.

Woohoo!

Here we are at the fresh lava area. A house was burned down about a month ago out here, where people built on land that was freshly covered with lava only about 10 years ago...next to the world's most constantly active volcano...kinda makes it hard to really feel bad for them.

A few weeks ago we went to this show and silent auction for a fundraiser for BJ Penn's charity, an Ultimate Fighter that lives on our block. It was quite a cultural experience. The comedian opened with a range of Portuguese and Filipino jokes...didn't really expect that. Then we were regaled with the musical stylings of Melveen Leed, the first Hawaiian to perform at the Grand Ole Opry (which she made sure to inform of us in the first minutes of her performance). She spent most of the time harassing the DJ (a kid with an Ipod in the back of the room) to skip through songs and yell the titles to her because she couldn't recognize the tunes.

Christmas Day we went over to our friend Hillary and Steven's house. It was really nice to get together and have a little potluck and play some music! I got a little carried away with the blue outfit though.

This was our first attempt at making Finish Tarts and they turned out really well...mmm. Thanks for sending the cutout Becky!

We had Lindsey's Christmas part this weekend and it also snowed up on Mauna Kea! We were able to see the snow yesterday, but it was cloudy today, so no pictures were possible. Looks like it might be a white Christmas afterall.

Sally listed off a bunch of questions in her in response to our last post. Thanks for all the questions Sally, we'll try our best with them from what we know.

1) What kind of bugs? Well, the scariest bug of them all (which both of us have yet to see) if this huge centipede that can sting you. It gets about 8 inches long. If you just Google: Hawaii Centipede and look at the images, it should pop up. Scary! We also have scorpions in the drier areas, these really big black bees, huge snails, and a lot of normal things, the most disappointing of which are mosquitoes (but they're not bad at all near the coast).

2) Weeds in the backyard? The only plant that I really know in the photo beside the palms are the reddish and green, really thin plants that are in the center of the photo, near the stairs. Those are native to Hawaii and are Ti plants. Traditionally, they always put these around homes to protect them.

Lindsey running around with some of the staff's kids.

The Christmas party was at the Hilo Yacht Club, great location, but confoundingly...not a yacht in site.

Just today we went snorkeling at a new beach near our house and all these turtles were just hanging out.

Some of the people were feeding them grass, which we learned later upsets their stomachs. They typically love to eat the limu (seaweed) off of the rocks. But with all that grass, they must just get excited and eat it anyway.

It was so nice and sandy all along the bottom. The water was pretty cold, but it felt really nice.

Turtle eating some grass.

While no one has exhibited much sympathy for the fact that there is no snow here, avocados are always in season, and its always 80 during the day with no humidity, it will be hard to adjust to the rhythm of the almost imperceptible seasons. So, while there are lights up, Christmas displays in stores, and the second advent candle is lit, it feels like the same summer month keeps repeating. It's basically the Hawaiian sequel to Groundhog's Day. The weather is great, but it is strange when time is passing, but there is not way to tell that it is. I know, boo-hoo.

Well, the one fun thing is that we just moved out of our basement apartment this last weekend! We were both so happy to get out of the cave we have been living in for the last three months. The new place is a small one bedroom, but it's just perfect. It's really cozy and we didn't need to buy a lot of furniture because there was a built in kitchen table with benches, and the previous tenants sold us some of their furnishings.

Here's the view from the front door, looking through the kitchen into the dining/living room.

We have a small loft in the bedroom, which is super good surfboard storage.

This is the view of our backyard.

Here is our little bedroom, the only real piece of furniture that we had to buy was this bed.

Here's our cute Hawaiian Christmas tree! Our old landlord cut this tree down at her house, so I kept it in a bucket for a few days and then I trimmed it down to apartment size. The locals like to have "mainland" trees, but this one is really cool.

We didn't have any ornaments, so we made little ones from sea glass that we collected awhile back.

This week we had Thanksgiving at Lindsey's work and it was great. We have spent a lot of our Thanksgivings away from family over the past couple of years, but we've managed to make most of them have been very special and different. This year, we went out to the farm where Lindsey works two days of the week. All of the kids in the program made a big meal at each of the three camps. It was so nice to be able to see the beautiful setting that Lindsey gets to call her second office. Typically, it's closed off to non-staff, but I was able to check it all out on T-day. So, we ended up having a meal with about 12 of the kids, some staff, and the owner of the program. About 20 of us ate the huge meal sitting at one enormous, round picnic table in the middle of a forested farm, it was really nice.

We headed up the Hamakua Coast this weekend just to see some sights that we haven't explored yet. Another fab trip.

Here's one of our new favorite meals: turkey burgers with goat cheese, beets, and purple sweet potatoes...mmmm.

Surf beach, we just went this last weekend.

Here's a shot of Mauna Kea behind downtown Hilo.

Thanksgiving

Lindsey drives an hour and a half each way to work two times a week, but what a drive. We have a couple of shots of the route down here and then us at the camp.

When you get to about 2000' feet of elevation (after starting at sea level) it's almost always raining, but your pretty sure that it will stop when you get to about 4000'.

Then, you drive through the National Park, which is mostly desert on the drive, but is just gorgeous.

There are a ton of macadamia nut orchards on the way.

Here are some eucalyptus trees.

(Lindsey's turn) This is where I work....and this is the view the kids have from the first farm/camp. This place is called Nalu, which means Wave in Hawaiian and the focus of this camp is on reflection and self-care (finishing your 3 organic meals a day and drinking 3 Nalgene's of water). The little houses are a students hale, where they are protected from the elements.

This is the last farm: called the Ohana, which means family in Hawaiian. It is our oldest and biggest farm. The second farm is called Kuleana, which means personal-responsibility.

This is where I lead group therapy sessions with the kids!

This is the nursery.

Plants kiddos are planting in the nursery.

The kids decorated for Thanksgiving!

This is a Hawaiian Imu. The kids dug a huge hole, started a fire, layered wood/rocks, and put in the ham/turkey for 5 hours. They covered it with banana leaves and stalks, and a burlap sack, and wet the burlap. It was delicious!!!

This is Bri and I's drive north of Hilo. A huge tsunami hit this area in the 40's.

Bamboo forest at Akaka Falls.

Bri and I spotted 4 wild pigs in the woods as we were walking on the path at the falls! I said we better watch out for mama! Huntint wild pigs is a sport here.

Hamakua Coast.

Akaka Falls.

This is about 7 miles from our house!

A pretty flower Brian spied.

If you look close, you can see one of the roosters and a chicken in our front yard. There are a ton of these guys running around the neighborhood.

Just this past week, Hilo hosted Black and White night, which is an event to support the downtown business community. Hilo usually shuts down pretty early most nights, so it was fun to walk through the local businesses and see some music.

It's a Nene! These are an endangered species here in Hawaii and some of them live in the yard of the couple I've been working for. Lindsey just read that they are all descended from one pair of Canadian Geese, pretty cool. I wanted to dress up as one for Halloween...maybe next year.

Volcano National Park

So, this weekend, my patience finally paid off and we went camping in Volcano National Park. We stayed near the park entrance Friday night and went out for dinner in Volcano (the town). It was so nice because the weather is really cool at the higher elevations, it actually feels like fall. Then on Saturday morning, we packed up and started on a 7-mile hike to Napau Crater Campsite, one of the trails in the parks back-country. The weather was sunny with cool breezes with a little misting rain on the way out Saturday. We were the only ones camping at the spot and saw only two other groups in two days. The campsite sits right near one of the most active craters, which is fueling all of the lava entries near the ocean. We hiked past old craters, across lava, and through a little rainforest. I can't wait to go back.

Brrr!!! It got down to about 45-50 this first night and we were freezing! It's a shock to the system after living in 80 degree weather all the time. I can see all the tears your shedding for us.

The trail crossed miles of vast lava fields, the scale of them is just impossible to portray.

The trail we went on was closed past the campground we stayed at because of huge earth cracks and what-not.

The lava flows from the 60's and 70's have some plant life starting to take root out in the open. A lot of the first species are native plants.

I just love all of the textures of the lava flows. They constantly change color and shape, because of the gas and mineral content of the lava, as well as newer flows covering older. It's just this constantly changing, dynamic landscape.

This here is a lava tree, albeit, not a very good example. When the lava started flowing into this one time forest, it hardened around a tree that stood here and made this cast.

The trail is denoted by these piles of rocks, or cairns, along the open lava fields.

Here is a native fern frond starting to spool out.

After the miles of lava, we entered a rain forest for the last 2 miles of the hike.

This crater was huge, and it was still steaming from the sides.

Some of the steam vents along the trail. In a lot of places, there is still active lava flowing underneath the ground.

Binzer taping up some blisters along the way.

The money shot. This is Pu'u'O'o, the most active crater in the park right now. I could just sit and watch this thing for hours. No worries, most Hawaiian volcano's are not of the violently erupting variety (ex. Vesuvius). Some of these craters have put up 1000ft lava fountains and created lava lakes and rivers, but they aren't building up explosive pressure.

We went and scoped out some campsites as we were leaving the park, and this Nene started coming after me. I'm guessing he was looking for food (which we did not give him). He walked right up to me and started making this pathetic honking sound. I thought he was going to try and jump in the car to go for a spin with us, which, I kind of wish had happened.

For Halloween this year, we played our usual hand and panicked on the day of, running around to piece outfits together. I decided to be Harry Potter based on a $30 owl I found and the fact that we watched every movie in preparation for the the next film. Lindsey was going to be a British telephone booth aka, the Ministry of Magic elevator, but settled on a pokemon chicken outfit, which we thought at the time of purchase was just a regular chicken outfit.

Not much news. We are both anxiously awaiting the move into our new apartment, which will happen at the start of December. It will be less basement-esque, which is nice. I've also been doing some work independently, building a website for some children's authors and also doing some GIS/aerial imagery work.

I went up in a small plane the other day to take some pictures and just get a knack for the flying thing (I could do some work flying the Hawaiian islands taking aerial imagery). We happened to fly over the resort we had stayed at the other week in Kona.

Stephen is the guy I've been working with and he happened to get behind the controls for a bit during the flight, I was more comfortable when he was driving the car.

Shot for Paul. I had no idea what any of the planes were, but I knew he would have gotten a kick out of hanging out at the Kona airport.

Double Rainbow!!! Oh my god! (If you haven't seen the YouTube video, just google Double Rainbow) Right near Volcano National Park

We camped again at the spot where we lived for a bit when we first moved here.

Harry caught without his wand as some demon creature attempts to eat Headwig

We went and watched The Great Pumpkin and hung out with some kids on Halloween, it was fun.

Lindsey getting some paint on Mike's face (which he later had an allergic reaction to) for the party we went to on Saturday night.

The outfits.

This past weekend we just relaxed and also traveled around Hilo a little bit to see some of the sights that we hadn't explored yet. I went surfing for a little bit today and finally rode a wave really well (actually turned!), so that was fun. I also got smashed by a couple of big waves and blamed the ocean at first...but then realized I could direct all of my anger at the moon.

This is Coconut Island, just a little park jutting out into Hilo Bay.

This is Rainbow Falls, literally about two minutes from our house, but we just hadn't made it over here yet. It was pretty, but it really flows after a good rain.

I had checked out these caves already, but Lindz and I went to go and explore them a little more. We met a couple of guys who were walking out who had walked for 30 minutes through the caves (they are lava tubes). We didn't really have the right clothes, so we just walked around a bit and opted not to get lost underground.

These are the Japanese gardens in downtown Hilo. I was more impressed than I thought I would be.

Cave again. I just love all of the old graffiti as well. There are carving from people in the 1920's and beyond, also, many of the names are Japanese.

Some Banyan trees near Rainbow Falls.

Us at the falls.

This past weekend Lindsey had a work trip over to the Kona side of the island. We stayed at the Waikoloa Mariott for two nights and did a lot of swimming, snorkeling, and schmoozing. It was fun but really tiring. Lindsey did a great job and now we just have to wait and see when she starts getting some clients.

Here is the beach right in front of the hotel, we went snorkeling a couple of times which was nice...didn't really feel like October.

This picture is from the luau on the last night. The food was really great and everyone who came in for the weekend had the greatest time, which was good to hear.

There was some hula and the group had everyone come up for lessons.

The luau.

Here is a shot of the resort from the beach. It was a really nice place and there were a lot of ancient Hawaiian ruins and petroglyphs all around, which were fun to explore.

Sunset.

Everyone kept being blown away by all of Lindsey's outfits, which was really funny. She bought a couple of really nice dresses that were made in Hilo for the event.

This one was for Mama B, Lindsey getting some time to relax in the sun.

I arrived a couple of hours before Lindsey did on Friday (after going surfing in the morning, I figured I might as well drive over and do some exploring). I walked through some of the petroglyph fields which were really cool.

On the last day, we drove over to a surf beach with some friends and spent the day BBQ'ing and surfing. Lindsey got up two times and rode a wave all the way in, good job babe!

I would first just like to say thanks to everyone for all birthday well wishes and cards (even though we have only lived here for about 3 weeks). I'm the big 28 now and feel so much wiser and more mature. Well, in terms of things going on here, Lindsey's job is still going well and I'm still looking for work. I have a bunch of applications out and I'm feeling good about the possibilities, just have to sit back and wait...and surf. This next weekend we are going to be heading over to Kona (the other side of the island) because Lindsey has some business stuff going on. We'll stay at a hotel, attend a luau, swim, surf, and snorkel. It's going to be a lot of business for Lindz and I'll be playing Michelle Obama, but it should be fun too.

So, this weekend, we went downtown to a big Jawaiian music fest. It's not really reggae...it's called island music. It was a really funny contrast to a New Orleans music fest. First off, there were about 10,000 people and no alcohol sales. It also ended by 10'oclock and it's the biggest music/public event that happens all year.

Lindz eating an ice shave, the Hawaiian snowball. The consistency of the ice is a little more snow-ish, but they are good.

This was a little hula thing going on that we just caught the end of. It's cute to see all the little kids in these performances.

We finally took Lindz up the East coast a little bit to see the island, and here is one of the overlooks. We were looking for places to rent in some of the towns north of Hilo.

Scoops! What a cutie!

We went snorkling the other day and surfing the next day. It's so nice to be so close to all of this great water stuff. We lived next to the ocean for the last two years, but you just had no access to it.

For my B-day, we went to a little Italian restaurant in town that was super good and then we got dessert to go and Lindz suprised me by going up to the Mauna Kea visitors center at 9'000 feet. She even packed warm clothes and hot cocoa (it was freezing up there). It was a full moon, so the visibility wasn't that good, but it was neat to look at the moon through these really high power telescopes and also to see the moons of Jupiter. The weirdest part was wearing shoes for the first time in over a month.

Enjoying our cocoa!

I biked around Hilo and wanted to take some pictures of the churches because there are some really neat ones. I'll get some better pictures, they just look so Spanish Colonial, its cool.

Hi again! I'm unemployed so why not blog? Here are some pictures from downtown Hilo and the Farmer's Market. We just went and picked up some fruit and veggies. Yesterday, as an early b-day present, Lindsey bought me a surfboard! So, this morning we went out surfing right near our place and it was super fun, we're both just very out of surf shape (arms). It takes a lot of work to paddle all around out in the water, but we had a lot of fun and I can't wait to get back out there.

Here are some of the storefronts in the downtown. I just thought it was funny that I caught that bird in the shot.

Guess the fruit! The fuzzy red ones are rambutan, which taste like lychees, theres some papaya, and jackfruit, and thousands of other cool things like this at the market, and most of it grown right here on the island.

Here's Binzer in the market.

Here's Binzer and her co-worker buddy Mike out on the waves. Mike has been surfing everyday for a year and he's super good. I caught one wave and Binzer just almost got this one. In a few weeks, when were in super good shape, we're gonna rippin all over these waves...

Now that is a happy car.

I just noticed that it's the 100th post, I suppose that's some type of milestone. Hawaii is going well. I'm still looking for work and applying for jobs I finally took some pictures of our short term apartment and also the surrounding neighborhood. I'll take some pictures of Hilo and the Farmer's Market soon.

Here is Honoli'i Beach, the best surf spot on the East side of the island and its about 3/4 mile from our place. We stopped there one evening to eat some chocolate and watch the surfers for a bit. There's supposed to be a surf competition there this weekend and we'll stop to watch if it's going on.

Surfer.

I thought this was cool, just sitting in a little planter right outside our door were these little pineapples, I had never even noticed them. Pineapples are little aloe looking bushes that grow on the ground and each plant produces about 1 pineapple a year.

On to the apartment! Here's our little kitchen...with no oven or range! I've had to be quite the creative cook, working with an electric fry pan and two rice cookers, but it's actually been fun.

Here's the little bedroom.

We went to the Farmer's Market this past Saturday and bought a ton of stuff, both Lindsey and I love to see the fridge look like this. Almost everything we bought was locally grown or locally made.

This flower is growing on a fence right outside of our house, there are a ton of really beautiful and different plants growing all over the place, it's really neat.

This is a view of Mauna Kea, the tallest mountain on the island at over 13,000 feet. The volcano is famous for all the observatories on top, which you can just barely see. Also, there is an observation area about 8'ooo feet up with a visitors center and you can go up at night and have some of the best star viewing on earth.

View of the ocean about 20 feet down the road from our apartment. We live about 200 meters from the water (I didn't even touch up the color of the water).

After almost a month and a half without any new posts, here it is. This post will be slightly epic because of all that has transpired, so I've taken the liberty to break it into "chapters" with sub-headings.

If you didn't know, Binzer and I have now landed in a small one bedroom apartment just north of Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaii. We will be in this apartment for three months as we look at neighborhoods and get ready to settle into longer term housing. Lindsey is loving her new job as a Wilderness Therapist and I am trying to get our apartment settled and in order as I also look for work. If Lindsey hasn't let you know already, I went a little crazy the first week due to being homeless, jobless, and hungry. But I'm good now! No worries! We are starting to figure out our new home and are still just trying to get comfy in our new surroundings.

New York

After leaving New Orleans with a Penske truck and all of our possessions, we drove to Vestal, NY to say goodbye to my Grandfather, who was rapidly deteriorating due to brain cancer. We were able to see him just before he passed. While the time spent in New York was somber, due to my Grandfathers passing and the funeral, we were able to spend a lot of time with family and friends. It simply all worked out to allow us to be there to say goodbye.

Gene was an avid outdoors-man and photographer and he loved to take the road less traveled, many times literally. My Grandmother and Grandfather would drive the back roads of the country for week-long road trips. What I will always remember most about my Grandfather was his love of the Adirondacks, where he would come to camp with our family every summer, and his love of photography. You could always count on Grandpa to sit quietly at family events, with one of his cameras trained on us, while he patiently waited for some look or smile. I love you Grandpa and you will be dearly missed.

My Grandfather collected hundreds of cameras and developed all of his own pictures in a dark room in the basement.

One of my best buddies, Chris Cimino, just returned home from Japan. It was great to see him and catch up. It was also awesome to take the Home Run Derby Crown off to Hawaii.

I think I probably played this for at least 4 hours a day. Coach was still pretty good though...

The whole fam.

I was using my new camera way too much. Lindsey was about to go crazy by the time we arrived in Hawaii.

My Dad and Grandmother.

The night of the wake.

Our buddy Steve was able to make it out for a couple of days. It was great to see him again post-wedding and it turns out he's gonna be Poppa Steve!

Roadtrip: New York to Minnesota

After about three weeks in New York, we drove to Minnesota. We took the longest way in the entire world, going to Niagara Falls, then to Port Burgess in Ontario Canada, and finally to Chicago. It took about 18 hours to drive, which includes getting lost in Canada.

We stopped at my Aunt and Uncles house in Spencerport, NY, which was right along the way. Ellen made us a super awesome breakfast. It was really nice to see the house, Mike and Chris' rooms, and just hang out for a little bit.

Then we headed to Niagara Falls and we crossed right over to the Canadian side of the falls (better view, cleaner, beautiful gardens, feels like Europe, etc.). We were there for about 45 minutes and then loaded back into the car to drove through Canada to Chicago.

We stopped at Port Burgess Ontario (not on the way to Chicago) to see where Lindsey's ancestors spent some time before making their way to Minnesota. It was a cute little mainstreet right on Lake Erie. We ate a small meal, asked about Burgesses ("Sorry, don't know any"), and continued on our way.

We arrived in Chicago 18 hours after we started because the rural routes in Ontario were like 50 mph and we got lost. It was really fun to finally see Chicago in the summer, as we had been there in the winter two other times. We stayed for two nights with our buddies Mat, Karen, and Amina.

We read a ton of childrens books, ate some awesome food, and saw some of the sights in Chicago. It was a great stay. We owe Mat and Karen about 3 weeks in Hawaii for all the crashing we have done at their house.

Minnesota

We stayed in Minnesota for about two weeks, and it was freezing when we arrived! A cold front literally followed us in. We had a lot of fun meeting Audrey (cutest baby in the world), playing with Joey, and just relaxing after spending so much time on the road.

Joey was a little shy upon first seeing us arrive at the house. He had to devour this entire truck before he would even talk to us.

My god! She was so adorable. We had so much fun playing with and spending time with Audrey, she was just the quietest, best baby ever.

We took a trip to the Orr Bear Center, which is simply a place where a guy started feeding bears years ago, so these are all just wild bears that know where to get some free food. There is a viewing deck, but the bears are just walking around all over and there were probably 80 of them.

Lindsey's cousin Nathan just moved to Duluth from Italy.

We stopped over at Josh and Jen's new place to see Mattie and Emma, they were both so much fun to play with. Thanks for the awesome lunch Jen and for the swim shorts Josh!

At the park with Joey.

Audrey and the girls.

We stopped at some other northern Minnesota sights and had a little picnic at the Vermillion Falls.

Family shot.

This is the "Lindsey getting frustrated because Brian's taking too many photos" face.

Here is Lindsey with two of her ol' college buddies, Laura and Lainski'

Homeless in Hawaii

We flew to Hawaii and planned on simply camping at a county park close to the farm where Lindsey would be working for the first week. After landing in Hilo, we picked up our car and stayed at a small hostel, which was nice. Hilo is a dusty, third world type of town. There are a ton of great asian restaurants, an awesome farmers market, it rains a lot, and one way streets start and stop completely erratically. After two nights, we made our way south to Punalu'u Beach, where we would be camping for the week. This island is vast and it does not have the stark natural beauty of the other islands at first glance, but it is still a pretty impressive place. Hilo is a tropical, green place; as the east side of the island receives all of the rain. But as we drove west, it gets drier and drier. We passed through desert and recent lava flows and watched the sun start to set over Mauna Loa, the worlds biggest volcano.

The campground was nice, but there is no one to check in with or anything. You basically fend for yourself and set up wherever you want.

This is the beach we stayed at. There is a turtle somewhere in the background, oh well.

Punalu'u Black Sand Beach. It is a really beautiful place. It's very dry, sunny, lots of turtles, and the waves crash dramatically into the coast all around here.

Here is our buddy Ed. Ed is a Vietnam vet with some of the craziest stories that span his entire life. He was camping out in the park with us for the week that we were there. Ed sold his business in Arizona, left his wife, and flew to Hawaii with 80 pounds of stuff.

This is a lava tube just north of Hilo. There are caves all over this island from past lava flows.

At a neighboring park, there was a little festival for the region we were in with food, crafts, music, hula, and more. It was really nice to just relax and hang with the locals.

This is the coast in the south of Hawaii, near where we were camping. It's sunny every morning and then clouds slowly build up by the afternoon.

Turtle. They were eating the algae all over the beach we were staying at, it was really cool.

Hula Dancer at the county festival.

Soo..most people have probably heard by now that Brian and I are moving out and moving to the Big Island of hawaii, so that I can follow my heart and a dream job of being a wilderness therapist, working with troubled youth. We are flying out at the end of August, so now we are packin' up, and heading up to NY to store our things at Bri's parents' house, and then will drive to Minnesota, and fly out from there to Hawaii. We should be in NY for 2 weeks and MN for 2 weeks. Here are our pictures of sad goodbyes to this amazing city.....

My good good friend and old co-worker Ellen and her husband. We have house sit for them and just hung out with them a ton. She is like a friend/aunt figure and who would know she'd be one of my best friends here...even with the age difference!

They took us out for a great goodbye dinner, at a French restaurant...here's delicious French Onion Soup.

Our amazing amazing church.... a white congregation of Methodists and a black congregation of Methodists mixed after the storm to form and incredibly diverse and awesome place. Most everything here is so segregated-schools, hang-outs, churches, neighborhoods--that it was so refreshing to be a part of such a diverse congregation.

Ended the night of our going away party with fried chicken from the Mexican gas station (trust me, it's amazing).

Here's the 'ol Mexican gas station.

Bri's buddies...a lot of Urban planners at our going away partaaa!

Our humble abode for rent. This was the best experience of community we have ever had, and we just love our block. I know we will not be able to recreate this wherever we go.

Sleepin on the blow-up while we pack.

Bri and the kids I babysit made our names permanent on the sidewalk of our block.

Bri's homemade deliciousness.

Last Snowball! Apparently in Hawaii, they are called "ice shaved" so we will be changing our lingo up.

Here is our landlord/husband/and Roxie...we will miss them soooo much. She is my long lost soul sister.

The kiddos I babysit.

More awesome neighbors at teh going away party they threw for us. The whole block came!

Jasin made some incredible watermelon/balsamic vinegar/feta appetizer...so good on these hot and sticky days!

Hmm....our car got smashed into by the recycling truck this week. Worst part is our neighbor ran after them, and they saw him flaggin them down and they just kept driving. hit and run. But bri called em up and now we're gettin the damages covered...woohoo!

Jose, our Honduran buddy who works for our landlord on their repairs and stuff.

These pics are completely out of order! oh well! Bri and I flew to Columbus Ohio last weekend for my Peace Corps site mates and one of my best friends, Steve wedding to a wonderful Korean girl, named Nara. There were 4 of us living at our site in Panzhihua, Sichuan and it was the first time the Panzhihua family was back together in over 4 years! Here is Amanda and I--Amanda came to my bachelorette party two-some years ago, and bought me cool sandals from a global import store...well, sadly they broke! Now, Amanda lives in Myanmar and traveled to Thailand and was able to find the EXACT same sandals for me! What a great friend!!!

Post-wedding brunch.

The PEace Corps crew stayed across the street, with one of Steve's mom's good friends. Here we are posing with "the Lodge", which is the 4 women who are the equivalent of the Ya Ya Sisterhood. They were so wonderful to spend time with and help out with the brunch they threw for Steve and Nara.

Settin' up

Steve's nieces on both sides now :)

What was so cute-was this was the first day they met, and the house was filled with Korean and English. Niether of these two could understand each other, but they played together just like they could.

Here are the exchanging of gifts from Korea between families. Again, huge cross-cultural divide, but Steve's family is so welcoming and kind and culturally sensitive, that it went well. (along w/Nara translating)

Making centerpieces w/the fam.

(As I said,these are out of order-here is Bri entertaining the kids down the street I babysat for a weekend w/old school Nintendo)

Sooo.... There had been some past problems w/NAra's father accepting STeve into his Korean family, and he almost did not even come to the wedding. There was definitely tension a bit, and concern throughout the weekend that things would go okay. My duty before arrival-was to entertain Steve's new father-in-law. TRanslation in Binzer language-pull him up on the dancefloor and get him grooving. Everyone was shocked, absolutely shocked, (as was I) when Mr. Choi started hard core BUSTING a move w/me. The families all came out then to dance together, and it was a really neat moment, where all the tension was gone, and everyone was celebrating.

LEt's just say, after, I was appointed the Dancing Ambassador. :)

My friend got engaged on the way to Steve's wedding! Here we are dancing to Beyonce's Put a Ring On it.

Peace Corps folk!!! THe two on the left were Steve's sitemates in Peace Corps Nepal, and they actually traveled to Lake Vermilion to stay w/us 4 years ago!!! It was so great to see them and have a reunion!!

Steve's pre-wedding B-ball tournament.

The Panzhihua family reunited. Until next time...maybe Amanda's wedding next summer?!?!

Lindsey had a job for a little bit, but the agency lost funding so they had to let a couple of the recent hires go. She loved a lot of her co-workers, so the good-bye was hard. Lindsey will be starting to work at a summer camp with the City Parks Department for two months, and then who knows?

One of Lindsey best friends and co-worker, Ellen

So, we went tubing on a river about an hour north of here in rural Louisiana and it turned into Redneck Apocalypse Now. We saw people get beat up, rednecks slamming beer, and domestic violence in the river, and I lost my wedding band. It was great fun.

My parents came down for my graduation weekend and we had a good time going around and seeing the sights. We went back to Jean Lafitte to see alligators and we saw one just out of the water and dive. He came up eating a fish, it was awesome.

Awww...

Me and my buddy John King, a fellow graduate. There were about 8 other people who finished my program (Urban and Regional Planning), but only 3 walked.

The graduation.

We brought my folks to WINO before my graduation dinner. You walk around and sample any wines you want, it's really cool.

My and Binzer getting ready for the graduation

They give you these sweet hoods, but you don't even wear them. What's the point?!

We introduced everyone to oysters...but now with the stupid oil spill we probably won't be able to eat them again for another 20 years.

We had a backyard pizza party with a couple people from the Planning program. Good times.

A ton has happened, so I'll try to update ya all via pictures. Here's Bri and I at Jazz Fest, watching Richie Havens.

Ever since I watched the Woodstock video, I've wanted to see him perform. He sings 'Freedom' 'Here Comes the Sun," and "Just like a woman."

Since Bri is a mastermind, he scored us volunteering gigs at Jazz Fest so we could get in for free. Bri went for 4 days, and I went for 2, which saved us about 350 buckaroos. WE had to volunteer in the Children's tent for 3 hours a day, and here we are rolling ink on stamps for the kiddos.

Here's the ink press man who made the stamps and we hung out with.

Bri apparently didn't notice, but the first day the actress Maggie Gyllendal came in with her girl to the tent, and later a woman told him who she was. Thankfully, i was able to see her two days later, comin out of the bathroom. Oh star spottin, gotta love it.

My professor, Robby, who was my professor in Australia was in town for Jazz Fest. After 6 almost 7 years of not seeing him, we were reunited... We went to a crawfish boil at his sisters house..yum.

Ironically, we were reunited underneath the "lost kids' sign at jazz fest. This guy has been incredible and he was what pushed and inspired me to do the Peace Corps, as he'd served in Africa.

These pics are out of order, but this is me in the process of mauling my Pork Poboy-which is delicious, has some hot sauce, pork, and spicy coleslaw on it.

Trust me, I'm stoked.

Alligator Sausage Poboy at Jazz Fest.

My favorite once a year pork poboy indulgence..heaven

Shrimp boil at a friends!

Pickin' wild blackberries near City Park w/Bri.

I ended up standing in a huge ol ant pile and the trip ended kinda shortly. But bri went back and picked containers of them. Smoothie Town.

My work bought tickets to go see the Saints play baseball against a military team for a fund-raiser for the Heath Evans Foundation, which provides counseling adn support for sexual assault victims. It was really fun to see these athletes even kick butt at a sport they don't play.

Here's me and coworkers at the game. Sadly, the day after this, my agency laid off me and 2 other workers due to cutbacks. They said that the fair thing to do was lay off the most recently hired...boo... I will be finishing there in May, and then we will see where and what we are being led to do. There are several leads and things going on, so we'll keep you posted!

The place was sold out!

This is in Seaside, where we had to stop , cause Bri said it's one of the first new urbanist community that he's learned about in school. It was pretty cool how it was set up, all very walkable and bike-friendly. SUPER expensive though!

Lil' deer on the way into the State Park Campground we stayed at in Florida.

We headed into Appalachacola, which was 30 miles from where we stayed, and stumbled upon this amazing oyster bar.... 2 dozen oysters, plus 1/2 lb. crab and it was CHEAP!

We never thought we'd be soo hooked on oysters, but the cooked ones have parmeson cheese on them, and the raw ones, you put on a cracker w/horseradish and ketchup and they are DELICIOUS! Let's hope and pray our seafood won't be hurt forever by the horrible oil spill (which people can smell around here, and kids in the parish near it have been getting headaches...soo sad)

Appalachacola

This is where we stayed, right behind the dunes on Cape San Blas, at the State Park Campground. Amazing. 10 miles of untouched beach, for 20 bucks a night.

We were in Florida for my good friends wedding, which was at a house they rented on the Cape, so we were able to walk 20 minutes down the beach to the wedding...too fun!

This is their dog Roxie, who we've dogsat a bunch for. Too cute.

Colleen before the wedding, in her balcony and ready to go.

Hot husband + Hot wife.

THe beach was fabulous...people WERE seeing SHARKS though in the AM and PM, right near the shore as they fished ( bull sharks!) so, we weren't too keen on swimming much.

Back to NAwlins...this was a Crawfish race at a Crawfish boil at a bar near our house....it's amazing, bars have FREE all you can eat crawfish boils, and like I said, since the spill, we are taking advantage while we can. I LOVE hot spicy crawfish! (our crawfish did not win the race :(

My friend Allison and the names of teh crawfish and numbers...

I can probably eat 3-4 lb. now...a lot of people can eat 6-10!

I love pictures of food! This was a breakfast we made, all awesome, local and organic...smoothie, eggs and veggies, gazpacho and Bri's homemade sourdough bread.

This was so fun, my work held a fundraiser at a place called Corks and Canvas, and they teach you to paint a picture and you get to drink wine whenever you're stressed out. Everyone is an artist!

My awesome friend and coworker Ellen, and I.

I didn't take a lot of pictures from French Quarter FEst, as the day we were going, I fell on my bike and banged up my body and slammed my head on the pavement. Thankfully I was wearing a helmet, which literally saved my life that day. We managed to go the next day after my headache was gone, and scored amazign local food for cheap. It's a crawfish and goat cheese crepe and artichoke stuffing. YUM. This food here is to die for.

For our anniversary, Bri and I went to see the production of Wicked. Amazing and so fun at the Mahalia Jackson theater.

We went to eat Hibachi the other night..which was really fun save for the Japanese guy who decided to hit me in the face with egg twice before landing it in my mouth....

We went to Oak Alley Plantation which is beautiful with huge oak trees...

My friend Niecie from high school came into town with her boyfriend for a week. LEt's just say yet again, they brought cold weather. It was freezing here, 45 degrees with freezing wind whipping through

Crawfish season has begun!

Alligator tracks! But no alligators-it was too cold that AM to see them, but they are starting to come out from winter time!

We saw a bird though.

Bri and I went to the New Orleans Museum of Art to see the Disney exhibit on how they made all their films. It was super cool and I'm stoked to see the PRincess and the Frog which is in New Orleans!

St. Patty's Day dance party that broke out on the street w/my two friends!

We caught 3 cabbage, 2 potatoes, 2 lemons, and a bunch o beads this year!

This person was soooore after they took off all their beads!

These are 2 of the neighbor kids I babysit for. They are the coolest kids ever and we took them to City Park to feed the ducks. This pic captures their personalities perfectly.

This is my friend/landlords wedding brunch at Ralphs on the Park. It was goregous and so fun! No one does brunch like New Orleans!

The shrimp and grits were to diiieee for!

What did we do with all that cabbage we caught, you say? We make Brians new famous cabbage goat rolls! I crave these!

My second in my life experience with raw oysters. Despite my face, I did end up really liking them!

Post Mardi Gras mess!

Some of the floats are just funny...and too true!

Here's auntie susie + Bri and friends using a creative method to catch beads... It worked!

It was soo nice to see my Auntie Susie and Uncle Frank. I wish the weather had been nice for you! Come back!

I dressed as Michael Jackson for the day.

Being a red head helps get more beads.

At Muses, teh all women parade, Bri caught a shoe, which is a very prized possession and few people get them! He was so happy!

Coach holdin the Lombardi Trophy from the Superbowl parade with all the Saints players!

Drew Brees on the Saints float threw beads to us!

Lindz and I were certainly not very big football fans until this year, when we literally found ourselves watching every game. It has sure been a lot of fun to live in New Orleans for the past year, especially watching how much the team has meant to the City and the on-going recovery.

We ended up watching the game down on Bourbon St. at a small bar. It was really fun to be right in the pulse of the city.

Here I am out hugging and high-fiving strangers during some good play.

This is just some of the post-game mayhem. Lindsey lost an erring, I lost the camera batteries shortly after this, I pretty much lost my voice, but we sure had fun!

Quite excited.

I went and bought the apron in the morning and went to church like this. I thought it was a little more fun than a boring old T-shirt.

Lindsey busting loose.

Went for a stroll in City Park the other day, right across the street.

Stone lion surfing, the coolest new urban sport.

When the Saints played the Vikings we went and walked around the Superdome.

Some hopeful Vikings fans before the game.

This was cute, they had a Saints trivia contest for kids.

It's the Superdome!

Here is the grocery store when people were stocking up for the Vikings game.

Some of the Bourbon St. craziness-this was right after we won and everyone rushed out onto the street--, it was pretty neat just to be down there.

We're back! (well, we have been for about two weeks now)

After Lindsey graduated we drove up to Minnesota for Christmas, stopping in Chicago along the way to visit our buddies Mat, Karen, and baby Amina. Then we drove back to New Orleans, stopping in Chicago again to visit our other Peace Corps buddy Amanda. After spending one day in New Orleans packing, we started our three week trip through Nicaragua and just returned home on January 18th. Lindsey just started her new job, I'm back in school, and things are getting back to normal down here...unless you count the fact that Mardi Gras starts in a week and The Saints are going to the Superbowl.

Can't wait to watch the Super Bowl in two weeks!!! Go Saints!

If you want to look at the 5 bagillion photos that we took in Nicaragua...here is the link to Lindsey's Picasa page where the photos are sitting.

We spent a lot of time outdoors on the pond. Lindsey bought some skates, I had mine sharpened, and Joey got a real hockey stick. Joey was having a blast out on the ice, he even started checking me!

Lets just say that getting full body pajamas with feet and going out of the town is a bad idea.

Lindsey and Joey mercilessly protecting their fort.

Lindsey and some of her college friends on a quick trip that we took down to...'The Cities'.

Derek attempting to make the kids stop thinking about the snack booth and focus on the game.

Stopped in Amanda's hometown for two nights before she ran back to Burma.

So, here is our Nicaragua trip in a few photos...if you want to look at more...check out the Picasa link

Surfing! We went on one day and boy do you get tired quick. We took lessons with some Nicaraguan surfers (basically being pushed into the waves so you don't have to use all of your energy).

This was a mural from a small mountain town called Jinotega. The country is a really safe place to travel and live, but there are still reminders everywhere of the recent history and politics. The election next year will be fascinating to follow with Ortega attempting to change the constitution and run again.

When we were up in the north in the city called Matagalpa, we went on a tour of a chocolate factory. This little place called Castillo de Cacao make 100% local organic chocolate with only two ingredients: sugar and cocoa. It was a really neat tour showing how everything there is done by hand. We then got to taste their chocolate and drank some local coffee.

Again, here's the beach we stayed at.

The food was good, but man did we miss a little diversity. Every meal is either steak or chicken, with a cabbage salad, plantains, and rice. The steak was really good, but you can only eat so much steak. The breakfasts were also good, but the same every day with: rice and beans, two eggs, a tortilla, and maybe some fruit.

This is from the top of the cathedral in Leon, the other large colonial city in Nicaragua. This city is the historically liberal counter-point to more conservative Granada. Many a battle fought between the two.

Just a shot of some typical storefronts throughout Nicaragua, this was in a town up in the north, a city called Matagalpa in a region famous for coffee.

We stayed three nights at this beach, Playa Coco, one of the most pristine in the country. An older canadian rents out the top floor of his house for 25$/night. There were only about 10 other people on the whole stretch of beach the whole time we were there. It was nice to just stop moving and relax for a couple of days.

This is a shot from the balcony of an organic coffee farm that we stayed at for two nights. The island is called Ometepe and it consists of two volcanoes (we were staying at the base of the dormant one) in the middle of a large freshwater lake. We went on a hike looking at petroglyphs and walked around the farm.

One of the reasons for the trip is my exuberant excitement relating to volcanoes. We went on a night hike of one volcano and this was one of the neatest parts of our trip. The hike took us up to the rim of the crater to see glowing lava, we went and saw a cave with hundreds of bats flying out, and also walked through an old lava tube. The volcano is quite active and there were a lot of fumes coming out that made you cough and feel kinda sick...pretty cool. If you want to see a little eruption from 2008, search for: masaya volcano, it should be the first hit.

This was one of the many festivals that we drove through and saw. This one was on New Year's Day in this small town that we were passing through on the way to the Masaya Volcano National Park.

This is just some of the many street food stalls. We only ate street food one and it was on the last day of our trip...good thing because our bellies were a little off for a while after.

This is a picture of Granada, the first 'nice' city we were in. We flew into Managua and stayed there for our first night and were happy to leave the capital for places that felt a little safer. Granada was really nice with big old churches, lots of good food, and we stayed at a place with a pool.

Lindsey graduated tonight with a Masters degree in Social Work after a long and stressful year and a half. I am so proud of how much hard work she into the program and her internship, she's a natural Social Worker. It was just so nice to watch her grab that degree, so proud! It was hard for her to say goodbye to all of the incredible people she met in her program, as many of them will be leaving over the next weeks. But, we're off to Minnesota tomorrow morning, stopping in Chicago to see friends for a bit.

Woohoo! Now we need to buy a big frame!

One of Linsey's favorite professors

This was the only shot I could get of her on the stage and she literally broke into a sprint to get off

Harry Shearer delivered the commencement, he was great (voice of many Simpsons characters and also in Spinal Tap)

The Dean

Here are all the graduates

Lindsey with some of her friends before the ceremony

Lindsey and Mandy

Lindsey, Ida, and Karen

Lindsey, Brooke, and Hailey

Lindsey and Calley

This is my professional project group. We have been working for a year on a project in bibliotherapy-which is basically writing books and having discussion as a form of therapy. This form of therapy is only effective if you combine it with other therapy....but the idea began when we noticed that there was a lack of books addressing Posttraumatic Stress Syndrome (highly prevalent with kids here post Hurricane Katrina) and a lack of books that address bullying -from the bully's perspective and trying to understand the bully. For Save the Children, we would go in the schools and lead therapy groups with kids addressing these topics, which usually involved a story-since there was a lack of these books-we decided to write them, have focus groups critiquing them, and then and have them illustrated. Here's us last minute throwing our post together in 2 hours to present our project :)

our cheesy poster (very Science Fairy-like)

Friends Brooke-(she just got back from living in BElize for 3 months with the international social work program) Molly, Mandy and ME

Here's us at the science and fair and with our completed projects. Our professors were THRILLED with our books and they are looking at getting us funding to pursue self-publishing.

Brian helped put the illustrations and writing into a software program before we brought them to the printing press...so he even had a part in the project!

Here's us celebrating at Lisa's family restaurant, which is an Italian restaurant from the 1950's (it was a restaurant originally in Chicago and they moved here in the 50's!)

Sooo good.... chicken, breaded oysters, shrimp, crab salad....yum!

My friend got married and the marriage didn't turn out so well and she's getting a divorce. She was never able to have a bachelorette party-so her sister threw her a Divorce Party-a Back on the Market party and we decided to go out and buy tacky dresses. here are 2 we tried on. Hideous..but I didn't settle on this one....

This is Shea my friend from the program-we ended up buying the SAME dresses in different colors! (don't we look like those fundamentalist mormans?)

This is the group--we had a bag and had people contribute to a Divorce fund. We walked in a Christmas parade in the Quarter-and everyone loved our idea!

I think Mandy had 20 bows on her dress. d

Bri and I have been taking Chinese classes on the weekend--here's our class eating hot pot tonight! So good cause it was cold outside!

Our teacher dishing up!

I graduate this Friday so more pictures soon to come! Then Chicago/Minnesota here we come!

Bri getting crafty w/his guitar.

School of Social Work Boys + Brian on Turkey Day.

My friend Haley, a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer from Paraguay and also a Social Worker, put on the meal.

Char-broiled oysters at the Po-boy festival. YUUMMMMMM

Cochon Delai Po-boy.... Which is a pork po-boy that is super awesome. All of our pictures seem to have to do with eating in NEw Orleans, but the food is so good!!!!

We may not be vegan, but this is one of our favorite recipes, Vegan Enchiladas!

Lindsey had a Tulane Graduate School party the other night, so we had the chance to get all dressed up and go out for the night.

Here's Lindsey and all her social work buddies!

Here's the two of us! It was a fun night of dancing.

What you don't see in these pictures is my stellar move I made at the beginning of the night. I was wearing heels (which the binzer does about once a year) and I was trying to fix the heel of my shoe. My ring somehow got caught in the spike of the shoe and I was thrown completely off balance and landed face first on the carpet. It was kinda a long fall and I have carpet burns on both knees to prove it. IT was hilarious in the sense that I was not drinking and just being a clutzy Aysta (which Shelley can attest to) . This only a few days after I attended a conference inBaton Rouge and spilled an entire cup of sweet tea on the white tablecloth at my table. I spent about 10 minutes cleaning it up ...ahhhh jeez.

It finally dipped down into the 70's this past week with nice clear skies and a crisp breeze. It was Lindsey's first trip out of the house for awhile so we took the time to go over to the Lake near my school. The fall semester is starting to wind down as well. Lindsey will be graduating in a few weeks and then we'll be driving up to Minnesota for Christmas, with stops in Chicago to visit Peace Corps friends, and then it's off to Nicaragua for a vacation before I settle in to finish my last semester. We are also so excited for our niece who's on the way!

Happy Fall!

Well, Binzer has been down for the count for about 13 days now with mono. She was just sleepy and had no appetite for the first few days but now her throat is really sore and shes been really nauseous. Hopefully she starts to feel better soon. Shes been getting lots of rest but has missed a lot of stuff, I just can't wait to see our old Binzer back!

Just this past weekend Lindsey was feeling a little better so we took her over to Liz and Christian's place to watch the Saints game. Then we went over to our friend Hailey's house to carve pumpkins. I think it was good for her to actually see some friends for a little bit, but she sure got tuckered out.

Here's the pumpkin I carved. I have not idea what it is.

Me and the pumpkin

Pumpkin carving party...I don't know how long the pumpkins are gonna last when it gets back up to 80 this next week...

A little classic street football action after The Saints destroyed The Giants.

Christian made all of the gravestones with movie characters and quotes.

Lindsey got me some cupcakes for my birthday...mmmm! White frosting, chocolate cake, in the fridge...best dessert ever.

We went out for my birthday to this fancy little place called Clancy's in Uptown New Orleans. Lindsey had crab and I had baby cow.

Our lunch from the other day. I was so excited that we found Laotian sticky rice at the local asian market along with our favorite curry (second best food behind refrigerated cupcakes). Lindsey also made Vietnamese soup which was equally awesome.

Just last night we performed a scene from a traditional Chinese story from the Three Kingdoms Period. We started taking a Chinese class only three weeks ago and on the first day we learned that we would be part of a play. We're both glad it's over because Chinese classes and play practices every week were getting to be a little too much Chinese. It was fun though and everyone did really well.

Here is Lindsey's costume...真漂亮！ How pretty!

Here we are. I gave an introduction in Chinese and then bowed a lot. Lindsey was a servant and did awesome with her lines and the poem.

Me and the other guys in the class.

Here's out whole class and our Chinese teacher.

Happy birthday to the best husband EVER! 27 here we go! Where will we be for 28??? Love you honey! Old pictures of the band in high school I found. !

Wow, it's been a month! Woops... Well, we ended up taking a trip to New York, Lindsey finished her insane summer semester, and we went hiking and camping on the drive back down to New Orleans. Lindsey's last semester is about to start and I'm just getting started on my last year.

This was Lindsey's last day of Statistics class. She had a really busy and crazy summer semester, but now it's all done! We left for New York the day after she finished. She also got a 4.0 for the semester, good job babe!

Classroom

Lindz and her class

This is Lindsey and her buddy Mandy, whose heading off to India in a few weeks for a short study abroad trip

Well, we drove up to New York after Lindsey finished and we camped at the halfway point in Virginia...not the best campground but it sure was nice to see stars again.

Here's my whole family! Well, mothers side at least. Everyone hasn't been all together in a long time, it was great to see everyone.

Chillin with the fam.

Also had some time to dust off the old whiffle ball bat with the ol' man.

I crushed this one.

We also played cards a couple of times, which is always really fun. Somehow, my ol' man is really good at the one game we play.

Got to see Brady!, whose now in Japan visiting with Cimino. Can't believe that hammock held...

Me, Lindz, and Caitlin at Sylvan Beach, a small beach and amusement park near our house...not nearly as glorious as it was in my memory, but it was fun.

Beach time!...central NY style. Its pretty crazy there because people just pull their boats right up and blast music...pretty classy

Momma B and the girls went out for pedicures, I just went and chopped down some trees, ate beef jerky, and shopped for steel toe boots

nice feet.

The best pizza in the world from this small place a town over from mine, NY style pizza is the only style!

Went to the local Syracuse brewery for a quick tasting session, really neat place.

Another beach! This one is called Green Lakes and Lindsey and I biked over there from my parents place down the Historic Erie Canal.

This is my favorite spot at Green Lakes, really neat limestone formation.

Here is the canal museum that I use to work at, right on the Erie Canal where Lindsey and I biked down.

The canal path, oh, and Lindsey saw this huge black snack that she also ran over with the bike, I think it might have been a Massasagua (if you are so inclined to google search for an image).

My buddies from college came over for a day and spent the night, Caleb, Nate, and his wife Kelly. Good times playing video games and just goofing around.

My Mom ran a 'duck derby' down at the nursing home and dragged everyone down to help and watch, it was cute, but I didn't win.

My buddies Chris and Cathy from college, Chris was my roomie for two years.

On the drive home we stopped in the Smokey Mountains of North Carolina for two nights. We camped and hiked, it was really nice.

Here is a shot from our 12 mile day hike.

Little sweaty in this one...

We ended up hiking along the Appalachian Trail for a little ways. I thought it would be somewhat busy or a little wider, but it's just a regular old trail.

Lindsey right near the top...

There was a really neat old fire tower located at the top. So, we sat on that and had lunch before we started back down.

Here's the fire tower...or was it a lookout...

Coldest water ever...but it felt so good after the long hike.

So nice.

The most dissapointing part of the whole trip. I think I spent an hour trying to search the woods for wood! There was literally nothing, and it was all wet anyway. So, then we both tried in vain to start a fire...and failed. A scoutmaster stopped by a few minutes later and tore my cub scout patches off my back pack.

Happy B-Day Shelley!!!

Whew! It's been awhile. Here are some photos from over the past month, a bit of stuff has happened.

We dog/house sat in Old Metairie, a suburb of New Orleans this past week. It was like staying at a spa! It was the home of one of Lindsey's co-workers and it sure was nice. Here is one of the dogs we were watching, Wesley, and he just stayed in the closet most of the time...poor guy.

We had a big pasta dinner on the patio our last night while the neighbors had a party with a live jazz band, pretty nice.

We went to a training this past weekend to help people evacuate from the city if there is another evacuation. We were even served MRE's for lunch, which are standard army/evacuee dining.

It wasn't too bad having a hot tub and a pool for the week.

I don't know why my shirt is off in every photo...but here's the inside of the house. In the back corner they had a huge big screen TV that was built into a cabinet and mechanically rose out with a remote...best part of the house.

Some day...

This is the other dog that we watched for the week, Wenis... He was a little more lively and pretty funny. We had a good time with him but he was pretty mishieivous.

Our old Peace Corps sitemate Amanda came to visit for a couple days and we took her all over the city. It was a lot of fun to see her, just too bad that it was only for three days! We took her to Jean Laffitte National Park and only saw this one little alligator.

Amanda and Lindsey at the park, and then we rewarded ourselves with some sweet drinks from Sonic.

Here's Lindsey and a bunch of her social work buddies.

Happy B-Day hon! Most of you probably know by now that Flag Day is known as Binzer Day in most circles. So, this past weekend we did some celebrating for the best wife on this side of the Mississippi. This past week we also drove up to Tennesee to see Phish, one of my favorite bands who I haven't seen in years.

This was at the W Hotel in the French Quarter, where they opened the hotel up to the public for movies on Sundays in the courtyard. We basically went to swim because it's so darn hot! At 8 o'clock at night, it was still 90 degrees. So, we had Lindsey's B-day party at the hotel with some friends, it was a lot of fun.

Woohoo! Free pool! Wish we had one in the backyard, but this sure worked.

There were these outdoor beds and lounge chairs set up as well, pretty nice.

For Lindsey's B-day dinner I picked up some snow crab legs and her favorite vegtable, spicy corn. She was pretty pumped, happy B-day honey.

Our friend Christian made Lindsey a t-shirt for her B-day, her made his own screen printer and is starting to design t-shirts.

This is the Ramada at Ft. Walton Beach Florida where we stayed for one night after our camping trip failed. The beach sure was nice...too bad it was super expensive and we could only afford one night!

Here is the lot scene at venue in Knoxville. It's really fun to see the carnival atmosphere and just walk around to see what the slews of entrepreneurs are up to. We bought a couple t-shirts and also had some great french bread pizza, all courtesy of other fans who are trying to make some money.

The show was a lot of fun, and it was Lindsey's first Phish show!

While we were in Tennessee we ended up driving past Chickamauga, which was one of the first millitary parks in the US. This was one of the biggest loses for the Union army during the Civil War and it was neat to see the canons and fields all preserved.

Tennessee BBQ, this was really good, but Lindsey's belly wasn't too happy later.

Here are some of the photos that my Mom took while her and my father were down about a month ago. We didn't post many photos because I accidentally deleted all of them! Whoops! So enjoy.

We had another action packed week. We just went to to a tribute concert to Fats Domino last night which featured BB King, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Wyclef, and a few other artists. It was a lot of fun, and ever more fun because I recieved free tickets from work. We even got into the box suites at the arena for free food and drinks!

Tracy Morgan was the host for the night, he was pretty funny. We also sat right behind his girlfriend in the second row for part of the night.

Here's us in the 2nd row! Lindz was so pumped to get this close for Wyclef, it was a lot of fun.

I was so glad to get to see BB King, he's about 82 years old and could still smoke on the guitar. I just wish he had played longer.

I didn't really expect much from Little Richard, but the show was great! He had a huge band and they sounded awesome.

A few weeks ago, Lindsey and I were supposed to be in a movie it was going to be a brothel scene and we could have made out, but Lindsey ended up getting cut from the scene so we both dropped out. We didn't really know why Lindsey was cut, but I think I found out this past week. I signed up to film in a different scene where they had asked for 'tall, bearded, skinny, scarred, or amputees'. There were a few women in the scene as well, dressed in the corset type outfits that Lindsey had been fitted in, but these girls were certainly not very cute. I came home telling Lindsey that the girls were all pretty 'broken' and that it was no wonder she was cut.

The movie I was hired on as an extra for is titled Jonah Hex. The movie is about some cowboy superhero...not sure if it will be very good, but it has a huge budget and stars Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, and Megan Fox. My scene had Josh Brolin in it and it was cool to see him do a lot of stunts and just joke around with all of us. The best part of the whole experience was seeing how Hollywood works and how movies are made, but it sure was boring a lot of the time! I spent two of the three days just sitting around for probably 14 hours doing nothing.

My scene was a gambling scene where there were about 80 other men, all bearded and dirty, in a big tent watching a dog fight, cock fight, and a monster fight. So, all we had to do was wave money around and yell. I was on camera a few times, but who knows if I'll make it into the movie. Now I'll just have to wait until August 2010 to find out...bummer.

One of the things that was pretty bizzaar was that the extras were seperated out from the rest of the cast and crew. We had our own seperate food and drinks. They also kept trying to corral us into this large back room away from everything. In summation; good food, 14-15 hour days, funny outfits, one girl passed out, I looked like Abraham Lincoln, and made about 300 bucks.

Here's my buddy Christian and his brother John behind me. We've been playing together on Sundays in a little band. Its been a lot of fun.

Well, I pulled a sweet move and acidentally deleted all the pictures that I took while my parents were here! Ahh!!!! I had so many good ones of alligators, family fun, and other such stuff...bummer. Well, I'm waiting on my Mom to send a CD down with all of her shots. So, you'll have to enjoy the few that didn't get deleated.

Here's Coach cracking up after working on his 'routine' where he hums When the Saints Go Marching In for spare change. Mom wasn't nearly as entertained as Dad was.

Took the folks over to St. Louis Cemetary #1

Of course we had to stop at Cafe Du Monde, my folks were staying about one block away from here in the French Quarter, a really neat hotel. The rate was probably so good because it's haunted with kids who died in a fire in the 1800's when it was a school. We heard they also use to hang people in the courtyard. Oh New Orleans. But at least it had a pool!

Me and Coach

I decided that we should go to this great free concert by our place on Saturday...too bad the festival didn't take place for another two weeks...woops. Well, it was a fun bike ride anyway!

This was Emily's last night in town, so we went out for hot pot. Little did Lindsey and I know that we would ever be soo excited to eat hot pot ever again, but it was great. We even made them put almost twice as much hot pepper in to make it truly Sichuanese.

It was a lot of fun. Had some bad Chinese beer, annoyed the staff by speaking Chinese the whole time, and had bellyaches all the next day...oh hot pot.

Lindsey and I biked over to a Greek Festival on Sunday that had some great food and other fun stuff. We ate gyros and had a big Greek dinner special. We also had pomegranite iced tea, pomegranite snowballs, and Lindsey bought some jangly bell things to wear.

This is from inside the church, we went on a small tour and they said that it was the oldest Green Orthodox Church in the hemisphere.

If you wore a toga, you got in free. We were basically the only ones wearing togas, but we didn't stick around for the toga contest, which Lindsey was pretty bummed about because she thought she had it wrapped up.

This was a cute old guy who was dancing the whole time by himself, and then this kid came out and joined him. Happy Memorial Day everybody!

Went to the beach in Florida this past weekend with our buddies Liz and Christian. We had an awesome time, just great to get away and play in the waves for a little bit.

Sure didn't catch anything, but I did see a school of stingrays go by, that was cool!

Liz and Christian bought an underwater camera and this is the best we could get! Lindsey kept running for the surface.

We went out for seafood and got a ton of crab. Then we went back home and all went out to try and catch crabs, caught a bucket full!

Here's Lindsey and I out crabbing. I was too scared to pick them up with my hands, but the nets helped a lot.

Crabs in a bucket! Here's about the point where Lindsey ran back inside

Lindz and Liz

Aww, here's Lindz and I at the beach. It was such a great trip but I sure did get a little pink.

It's already been one year! So happy to have found my soul lova and can't wait to spend the next 100 with you honey. We got dressed up fancy and went out to Jockamos, one of the best local places in town.

Yesterday we went to Jazz Fest for the day and tried to see as much music as possible. It was so hot and there are so many bands playing that its just insane. We had a great time though, but it would be tough to go to all seven full days!

Lindsey, Emily, and Sara at Jazz Fest, the food was one of the best parts of the day. I think we all had about five meals

Here's some of the food stalls, all of the stuff was really good.

Here are some of the Mardi Gras Indians playing, I think there were about 10 different stages of music all going at the same time. We managed to see Rebirth, Wilco, James Taylor, and sat in the Gospel tent for a little while.

Went to a bar the other week for all you can eat crawfish, $7 bucks and they just keep filling up this pool with corn, potatoes and crawfish...so good. I think this is Lindsey's new favorite meal.

Well, long story short. We went to a Hornets game and these two guys gave us 9th row seats ($170 each) for free! We had a ton of fun and Lindsey got on the jumbo-tron three times with her sweet dance moves.

We were even able to use the special 'club access' elevator and food area, we did not belong.

Well, the Hornets lost, but it was fun to see Chris Paul, Shaq, and just have a good time.

I could have pushed Shaq over from our seats.

It's us!

Today we ran the Crescent City Classic 10K. We picked up these outfits at the local thrift store yesterday. It was a lot of fun and we did pretty well. Our time was about 57:30.

Free food and beer after the race, even for monsters.

There were so many people in the race, it was just crazy, about 17,000. It was a really nice route though, all through the French Quarter and then down Esplanade to City Park, right near our house.

Crawfish! Paul has been talking about getting some of these for weeks now. We bought about 2 pounds (people usually eat about 5 pounds a piece). We also bought three pounds of shrimp, it was great.

Jellyfish! Lindsey and I went walking on the beach and saw three jellyfish up on the shore.

Mmm! They are pretty good, just a lot of work for each one.

Here's the place we're staying at and the beach.

Here's the patio on the seventh floor of the place we're staying! So far so good, come on down Shelley, Derek, and Joey!

The aftermath...yes they throw beads and vegetables at the parade...so we scored a few cabbage!

75% Irish and 50% Finn

Crawfish boils...they are yummy and SPICY.

It rained on and off all day, but overall it was a super stellar parade!!!

We went on a moonlight paddle adventure with a group of social work students and others....here's us at sunset...it was windy!

There were a lot of downed trees from Katrina and Gustav.

It made me so happy to be in a canoe again!!!

We were paddling in Gator country....We didn't see any though! We paddled back after the sun went down and we weren't near the beginning or end where the men with the large spotlights were...but 2 of my classmates saw a little alligator and at the back they saw a bigger one with like 8 babies!!! So we were in the right neighborhood, but our headlamps weren't strong enough...

This was honestly my perfect day....relaxing, not stressing about school and paddlin with my honey and watching the sun go down. I really enjoy these times when I don't have something due or have to be at my internship or work study or running around like a chicken with my head cutoff!

I just like this picture of Bri, Colin, and I walking through the Lower Ninth Ward. Bri's buddy Colin flew in from NY for Mardi Gras and my friend Amanda from Duluth flew down for the Gras.

Aftermath...

I thought Amanda caught a pretty sweet picture of this-in the French Quarter.

Amanda tried her grits 4 different ways....turns out salt and pepper is the best!

Mardi Gras Indian jammin....

If you saw Benjamin Button-the scene was filmed in the park 2 blocks from our house...

How did 3 superheroes get in our kitchen??

Yes, Colin did walk around like this. Come'on it's the Gras.

What's leftover of King CAke--a tradional bread/cake that you eat all for the month of Mardi Gras-kinda tastes like Cinnamin rolls.

Amanda's spicy shrimp remoulade

I was amazingly pumped elvis stopped to give me a scarf on the parade route.

Muses..the all woman's crew parade.

breakfast in the backyard.

Zulu-all African American parade.

Chinese breakfast we cooked.

Yes, Colin did put on ALL of our beads....and it took a long time to get them off and sort them again.

"GANGSTA's but what I call the Blues Brothers.

My friend is in the pink

Everyone brings their own ladders to stand on to catch beads.

I was a Super Gardner and Bri was just Super.

Chinese on bikes?

CAn you find the Minnesotan in the picture?

Here's Bri training high school students purusing their GED and training...Bri has made walking maps for them to go through the neighborhood and survey housing conditions as part of a job training program, so they will have skills to use in the workforce.

We went camping here in Mississippi--I never knew riverbeds were so sandy!

Mardi Gras parades have started for the past few weekends. We went to see the Carnival Krewe parade....parades will then start this Thursday and go through, with several a day until Fat Tuesday.

Traditionally, parades all had men krewes. They all have to wear masks so you can't see their faces... (you still have to be mega loaded and pay to be on floats and have connections to throw beads). After the parades, there are balls for those on the floats to go to.

Barkus was today---a parade of dogs dressed up ....the theme was Batman.

Awkward picture of us....but at least you can see our beads!

Yummy artichoke for dinner....it's prepared here with bread crumbs, cheese, garlic..yum!

Bri and I hit up an awesome Spanish restaurant to celebrate an early Valentine's Day. We had paella and sangria which was soooooooooo good...

After the race, we headed out for a big breakfast down on Oak Street, where we were greated with live jazz at 9:30 AM....the singer was great!

This is my favorite part of the week....It's similar to a CSA, (community supported agriculture) but not because you have the choice to buy veggies every week or not and you can switch out the veggies you don't want for what others have left over--this is how much we get a week for only 25 bucks! local, organic, and amazing....

Each week, we get to walk through the line and take the amount of veggies/fruits requested-like 5 tangerines, 2 oranges, 2 tomatoes.....the list is very long! it's awesome because we get to switch up what we eat each week for what's in season. We cook a ton with greens now and discovered that mustard greens are very, very bitter.....

Bri's first batch of beer! Our house kinda smells a little weird sometimes, but it's been cute seeing him make his little science experiments.

This is our friend Andy, who is engaged to another MSW student and is originally from Brainerd and understands the Midwest! He's also very very fast...! He also rocks out with Brian on bass when their band gets together.

This is my lil posse of Social Workers I convinced to run the 5K with me...Kim on the left, Kerri, and Mandy.... Kim on the left-whom I like to brag about, is an Olympic gold medalist from 2000 in the 100 M frontcrawl swim relay. She swam with Michael Phelps when he was a wee 15. I've been runnin' with her the last 3 weeks and like to think it's why I did so well!

At the last minute, I convinced Bri to run this with me.... We hooked him up with running shoes and now I have a partner... He pushed me a lot, but I know he held back cause he's a fast dude!

The gang! I got 25.20 for a time, which is great for only running for 3 weeks! My last 5K I got 27.20 so I was happy and came in the 41st woman in the race out of at least 400! (Can you tell I'm proud of myself?!?!? Maybe it's the endorphines...)

My sister Caitlin and buddy Colin Brady came down to visit us this past week. They were here for New Year's Eve and then a bunch of other fun stuff. We took them all around town in the gorgeous weather and took them to have Po Boys, see alligators (failure), ride the streetcar, see the cemeteries, ghost tour, French Quarter, Mid-City New Year's Eve bonfire, and a bunch of other stuff.

Here we all are at Audubon Park right across from Tulane.

This is Nicolas Cage's house which was the home of one of the most notorious murders in the entire city. The story of the murders and stuff is pretty intense. It's called the La Laurie house and any web search will get you the story. Oh, and the white circles in the picture are orbs...ghosts!

This was our guide on the ghost tour that we took, which brought us past the Nicolas Cage house. It was a lot of fun to see some of the architecture and just hear some of the stories about the city.

Our failed alligator hunt to the Jean Lafitte National Park. Supposedly alligators hibernate in the winter...stupid gators.

We went to Rock & Bowl one night too, which has awesome live music every night right next to the lanes. It was a lot of fun.

We also took a trip down to the lower 9th ward to see how things are and aren't coming along. We saw the Brad Pitt project and also looked at some of the Prospect 1 pieces, an international art show that stopped in New Orleans this year.

We had a couple of meals down in the French Quarter and here was a stop at Pat O'Briens, the birthplace of the hurricane, an infamous New Orleans drink.

This is a picture of the Mid-City bonfire that took place around the corner from our house on New Year's Eve. It was a lot of fun because I brought my guitar out and Brady was slamming away on Lindsey's drum.

This is the St. Louis Cemetery, which was founded in 1792 or so. It was really neat to walk around and see all the old graves.

Here's a picture of the Natchez, one of the old steamboats that still go up and down the river for touristy stuff. It's still pretty neat to see it going up and down the Mississippi right downtown.