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I made a huge mess at the house before I left. I over-watered a couple of plants and flooded some spots there shouldn't be wet. I had to fly to Monroe, LA on Wednesday afternoon to meet a client. Airports are interesting places to people watch. I'm surprised at how big this "camo" crazy is with kids these days. It seems every third kid has camo attire on... usually frayed. Every 10th kid has pink camo... /boggle. The flight out was uneventful, but the flight back (post terrorist plot foiling) was a pain in the ass. I read in the in-flight magazine about this little GPS gizmo that plugs into your cars onboard computer and records streaming data on acceleration/deceleration, speeds, locations, etc. and pushes them to a USB flash drive that can later be imported into software that parents can use to track their child's driving history and where they've been. Big Mother is always watching! There was a shirt at the airport that read "Beer! Now cheaper than gas." It cost $70.74 to fill my truck up the other day. Ridiculous. The night I landed in Monroe, we met our client for drinks after work. I hadn't eaten and the beer, Crown, and Makers on an empty stomach was brutal. Eventually we ended up at this place called The Waterfront Grill on the banks of Bayou DeSiard. I had their specialty: Catfish DeSiard with Shrimp Rakhee topping. Crack sauce. Mostly business on Thursday and the highlight of my day was really the struggle with airport procedures getting back. I met a man in Louisiana that told stories of hitting a shotgun shell with his lawnmower blade and blowing the side of his mower off while grooming the yard. He told another story about him and his girlfriend drinking beers near the river and tossing a handful of .22 caliber bullets into the campfire, realizing while they were in mid air what he'd done, and having to run and hide behind trees so as to not be shot when they went off a few seconds later. Oddly, it wasn't until he was done with those stories that I noticed the missing end of his index finger. Every year, Erin would plan for months in advance to make my birthday special. She would give me a luau every year as a tradition with all sorts of activities for the guests and keen decorations. She really put a lot of work into it and it was always special. Tomorrow is my birthday and I couldn't stand the thought of being home alone for it. I miss her. I drove to Corpus Christi last night to see some old friends and get away. Rob and Beth I've known for most of my life... easily since I was a single digit youth. Rob and I were inseparable when we were kids... two peas in a pod. I arrived at Beth's house just before dusk and we caught up. Rob showed up a little later on his new Buell (which I of course had to test drive around the block) and we headed to The Pelican Club where Rob's wife, Tammy, joined us momentarily. Keep the mind busy. If I stop, it all catches up with me. Having to shelf my Rocky Mountain panoramic project for a while, I came up with something else to kill time as I wait to get old and die. I'm going to rework some of my color landscapes into black and whites. I did a couple already and put them on my Flickr page, but I'm not sure I'm happy with the work yet. I'm been using a single RAW file (the digital negative) and reexposing it into multiple frames and then using the bits I like from each to extend the dynamic range of the shot a little on either side of the original exposure. I dodge and burn manually and use a lot of layers as I work toward the final result. Anyway, that's that. I am headed to City Tortilla Factory to eat a few taquitos in Sean's honor and then I'm going to my mom's to see my handsome little boy. More time passes.