Phil isn’t too pleased that I am posting these pictures of him because he doesn’t think they are good pictures.  I don’t think they are too bad.  I just thought it was neat that I had three different facial expressions with him sitting in the same place.  And besides, he took this picture of me once, and I posted it without any worries.  His pictures are tame compared to that one. Phil has a habit of taking pictures of me while I am sleeping.  Recently, he took a picture of me that is quite embarrassing, at least in my humble opinion.  Maybe I will churn up some courage and post it later.  Perhaps some comments will encourage me to do so.  🙂

The Calmer Side of Phil

The Crazier Side of Phil

A More Normal Side of Phil

Usually, when I go to the zoo, the turtles are just sitting there soaking up the sun, but on Saturday, we happened to show up shortly after they had been fed.  Lucky for us, turtles take a while to eat and I was able to snap a few pictures and a video.  In New Mexico, we had lots of turtles living in our backyard.  It was like a tropical paradise for them with all the plants we had.  They weren’t nearly as big as this guy, of course.  Isn’t he cute?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMXq6S8cF90[/youtube]

Morgan Rose Ireland Yvette DeWitter

Well, if she wasn’t The Devil, she was at least some sort of undead that hell spawned.  Sadly, my kitty is no longer with me.  Her visa expired several months ago, and she had to return from whence she came.  I miss her so much.

I miss her trying to steal my dinner, her hissing at me because I told her she had to go outside,  and her few and far in between kisses.  I miss the conversations we would have.  No, really, my cat talked to me.  She was by far the most vocal cat I have ever known.  I doubt I will meet another one quite like her.

I really wish I knew what happened to her.  One day she was here, looking evil as always, and the next day she was gone.  Even her buddies, Dopple and Thames, have disapeared.

Her greatest moment ever was when she peed on this guy who had to stay over one night.  She peed directly on his crotch while he was sleeping.  When he woke up, he thought he had wet the bed.  I have never laughed so hard in my entire life.  He turned out not to be such a good friend not too long after that, and so I thanked her.  Seems she knew before I did that he was a no good dirty rotten rat.

She liked Phil though – a lot.  I wonder if she liked him because she knew he was allergic to her.  That is what an evil cat would do, I think.

Ah, I miss you kitty.

I have spent hours watching our fleet of hummingbirds feed and fight and all I have to show for it is two stupid videos.  I had to post them though, because they are just that adorable.  I wish I had a video of them dive bombing each other over and over. That is a pretty funny sight.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqySZH–xKE[/youtube]

My favorite part is when he sticks out his tongue.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF7aPzXd9a0[/youtube]

If they would just sit still long enough and let me get closer, I could probably get a half decent video, but no – they hate me.

I think that I have been using too many words lately, so lets take a break and look at some pictures I’ve taken in the last couple of months or so.  If you believe in a picture is worth a thousands word, well, then technically I am using even more words in this post.  🙂

I was very sad that this little bee was dying, but he did allow me the opportunity to take some pretty cool pictures. I swear it looks like he has teeth.  Bees don’t have teeth do they?

I don’t know why, but I really like this picture.  I just wish the stupid fire hydrant wasn’t in the middle of them.  Who puts a fire hydrant in the middle of set of trees?

One of the cabins located at Cedar Lakes, West Virginia.

I must have take 30 pictures of this dirty little statue, and this is one of the only ones I liked.

I think I have a thing for statues.

Really, I do.

On Saturday, I went to Dunkin Donuts.  I like the donut holes(Munchkins) they have.  Phil and I usually go in and eat, but since he was not feeling well, I left him at home and decided to go through the drive through instead.

I decided on the 50 Munchkins, instead of 25, not because we are pigs, but because I figured we could eat them over the next several days. (As I write this, we still haven’t finished them.)  The price difference wasn’t that big either.  For 50 Munchkins, it cost $5.99, I think.

When I got to the window, a young black man asked if I wanted all the flavors.  I told them yeah, and off he went to fill my box with assorted Munchkins.  A few minutes later, he came back to the window with a bulging box.

“Be careful,” he said.  “It’s stuffed for you.”

I told him thank you, and drove back home.  When I opened the box, I knew immediately that I had more tan 50 Munchkins.  Phil thought I should count them.

Would you believe that for $5.99, plus tax, I ended up getting 106 Munchkins?  Yeah, 106.  I totally think I got my money’s worth.

Yesterday, Phil and I went to McDonald’s, not because we particularly like eating there on any sort of regular basis, but because we were tired and hungry and it was convenient.  Cooking at home was not an option.  We wanted food to be prepared and handed to us.

A few days before this, Phil’s mom had given me a coupon for one of McDonald’s chicken sandwiches.  All, I had to do was purchase a medium or a large drink, and the sandwich was free of charge.  I couldn’t remember if I had ever had one of McDonald’s chicken sandwiches, so I thought it was a good time to try one.

When I stepped up to the counter to order, I told the lady standing behind the register that I had a coupon and went to hand it to her.  Before I even was able to move my hand forward, she promptly told me that they did not accept coupons.

This confused me.  I looked down at my coupon just to double check that I was holding a McDonald’s coupon and not one of their competitors.  I wasn’t mistaken.

“What do you mean, you don’t accept coupons?” I asked.

“We don’t accept coupons.”

“Okay,” I replied, “that’s ridiculous.”

“Our manager told us not to accept them.”

At about this time, another lady approached the register.

“McDonald’s is not corporate,” the new lady said.  “Each restaurant is individually owned, and the owner makes the decision on whether or not coupons can be accepted.”

“Well,” I said, “I want you to tell your manager/owner that he has made a very poor decision.  Because you can’t accept my coupon, I am going to take my business else where.”

“That’s fine,” the new lady said.  And with that, Phil and I turned and walked out and headed to the fast food joint next door – Hardee’s – Phil’s favorite place to eat.

Yeah, I know, I sounded like a complete bitch, but I don’t care.  It’s just that I don’t think I have ever had someone tell me I couldn’t use a coupon before – especially a legit, non expired one.  I once had a Domino’s take a coupon that I found in a city hundreds of miles away.  All they asked was where I got it from and then took it like normal.

And just so you know, it is the McDonald’s located at 7011 Parklane Rd Columbia, SC 29223.

When Phil and I lived in Fuyang, we really wanted some syrup to go with the pancakes we were trying to make.  Our attempts at making the syrup ourselves never produced Butterworth results.  So, we did the next best thing – we asked my mom to send us a bottle of maple extract to help give our concoction some maple flare.  We didn’t ask for a bottle of syrup because it would have made the box weigh too much and a heavy box sent to China isn’t cheap.  Sending just the syrup probably wouldn’t have cost that much, but our wish list always seemed to grow when we found out someone was going to be sending us some western goodies.  🙂

The extract did help with the taste of the syrup, but we could never get the consistency we wanted.  Eventually, we gave up and decided we would just have to wait until we returned back home to get the good stuf.  When it came time to move to Shenyang, we packed it up with all of our other stuff.  We weren’t about to scarifice any of our western goods.

A week after we got to Shenyang, we were told we would be moving again.  Phil and I weren’t particularly pleased that we would be uprooting ourselves again, but we repacked all of our goods up anyway, including our maple extract, and headed to the beautiful city of Xiamen.

In Xiamen, we unpacked everything and refused to pack again unless we were traveling or moving back home.  And for the next three months our maple extract sat quietly on our shelf, unused.  When it came time for us to go back to the States, we offered up all of our western goods to our dear friends, Patty, Eddie, and their daughter Elisa.  We knew they could get some good use out it. Elisa swore it was Christmas when we brought all of our stuff over to them.  🙂

Well, up until a few days ago, I would have thought that our maple extract had finally run out of gas and found a permanent home in a landfill in China or some other needy westerner’s cabinet.  Interestingly enough though, neither happened.

Instead, our maple extract jumped on a plane back to the States stashed away in a suitcase – destination Miami – when Patty and her family decided to leave China.  After a short stay there, it decided that it wanted to do some more traveling, and hopped on the next flight to Colombia – the country, not the city where I live.  For the next four weeks our maple extract took in the sights and then decided it wanted to settle down for a spell – somewhere else.  So, off it trotted to the airport and booked passage to Argentina, where for  at this moment in time, it still resides.  At least until Phil and I travel to Argentina next November, pick it up, and bring it back to the States with us.  🙂

I don’t know how many miles our little maple extract has traveled, I just know it’s a lot.  Perhaps, there is a section in the Guinness World Records that it would qualify for.

You have no idea how long I have been trying for a good shot of a bumble bee.

A pretty flower I found up in West Virginia.  Stupid shadow.

It’s amazing that I got a picture of this little guy at all.  Every time I tried to focus he’d fly away.  He’s got such big eyes!