Google has a new site where you can customize a start page. It encorporates Google's simplicity with a number of its powerful tools including gmail, news, and, of course, the search engine.

One of the added new features is a Quote of the Day. I have it setup for 3 quotes a day, and absolutely loved one of 'em:

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction."
- Blaise Pascal

...just seems to fit with many of the current events happening with the world today.

Here are a few of the better "scenic" pics taken with the new digital camera while on our honeymoon. Most of 'em make great background images so feel free to click on a pic to download a larger version of it.


(White Rose with Due)


(Heron Waiting for Taxi)


(Sunrise 1)


(Sunrise 2)


(Sailboat)


(Red Rose with Dew)


(Purple Tower)


(Purple In View)


(Mema's Flowers)


(Garden View)


(Bees - this one's my favorite)

Driving out to the Grange Saturday morning, just hours before the wedding, my Best Man at the wheel, we were pulled over. The cop walked up to the window and let Trevor (the BM) know that he was doing 35 in a 25 school zone. He asked where we were going, and Trevor proceeded to tell him about the wedding, and that I was the groom. The cop took Trevor's license and walked back to his car. Over the next few moments, I'm sweatin' at the fact that this is eating into our already short time and Trevor's got a few choice words about the cop, the timing, and everything else.

The officer walked back up to the car, looked at Megan (Trevor's Wife) and asked if she had a camera, which she did. He then looked back at me and said "Sir, you're going to have to get out of the car."

Ok, I'm thinking, at this point that it'll make a great story, so I played along, and he hand-cuffed me over the trunk of his car as they took pictures.



Now this would have been the end of a fairly funny story with a couple of funny pics...no harm, no foul...if Amanda (my wife and fiance at the time...obviously) hadn't, at that very moment, driven by. She looked over at the police car and time stood still as her eyes caught mine. I watched as her face went from curiosity to surprise to anger in a matter of moments. She didn't stop.

Ok, so I hopped on a cell phone and told her the story. It was a "one in a million" chance that she would have driven by on that road at that instant...but I won't live this one down for a long time.

Has it bugged anybody that we (the US) have paid more attention and donated more money to what seems like only a handful of people lost/displaced by hurricane Katrina as opposed to the hundreds of thousands killed and millions displaced by the Tsunami that swept through the Indian and Pacific Oceans? Isn't it interesting how it's front page news when we lose a couple of troops from a bombing in Iraq and how, 6 pages in, we read about the 200+ Iraqi residents that died in the same bombing?

I have been contemplating the reasoning for our reasoning for quite a while, and finally came upon an article about the Monkey Sphere. It's a great read and, even if you are not quite into the whole evolution thing, just read it for its thoughts on social design, which I think are quite interesting.