My friend, Charles, put this post on his site. He has turned off comments, so I’m forced to respond on my own site. How awful.

Charles, you’re not crazy. I do things in a specific order nowadays because I’ve found it just makes it easier to check if you’ve forgotten something. My order is wash hands, contacts, brush teeth. Yara has just informed me that I don’t have an order. She has further informed that I’m not as obsessive as Charles or herself. I apparently, “Don’t get freaked out when things are done out of order.” Okay, so I’m normal. Charles, don’t blame me. I tried to reach out to you as a fellow freak, but Yara has shown my true normal human colors. I can’t relate to you.

Esther, you are probably the only one I can relate to. We are stuck with obsessive compulsives. Well, nothing to do now, but disrupt their daily routines. You get “dog dirty” germs on his computer, I’ll go cut vegetables on the same board as I just cut raw meat on. Mmm…. food poisoning.

So I got back from Cali about two weeks ago and I’ve finally gotten around to writing a bit about it. Let’s see here, I went for a wedding and to see my friend, Anit. He let me stay at his place a few nights and we hit San Francisco for all it’s best. He showed me to some of the touristy stuff. We went to Twin Peaks, Coit Tower, Lombard Street, Castro Street, and just wandered around some. We had some great eats. There are more Asian restaurants there than fast food chains! I ate something ethnic pretty much every day. Good stuff. During the day, I hit most of the other tourist attractions like Fisherman’s Wharf and Alcatraz. I wandered around in the Mission district.

I found out what the world would be like if Sony owned it. This was the Metreon theatre. A giant building that has a Sony Entertainment showcase where I even saw the Aibo dog and more plasma screens than Best Buy. Over at their PS2 store, I got a chance to play a lot of games, it made me realize E3 would be so cool. This store was great, imagine a million square feet like it! Wow. I need to go next year, somehow.

So, I found out what good Thai food tasted like and where real California style burritos come from (Mission district!). Also, the really good food there is pretty cheap. The best burrito shops could feed a pair of people for less than $10. A great Thai place we went to had the cheapest dishes I had ever seen. Plus, they had the best food! So amazing.

I also attended the best done wedding of the season. It was the last for this season (fingers crossed!!). Melanie and Yara run a tight ship and this one sailed into the sunset with no problems. The location at the Marin Gardens was perfect. The ceremony was short, but meaningful. Appetizers came out before I got too hungry. Dinner was excellent. The music was provided by a live swing band with vocalist who was really good. We danced our butts off to that music. By far, the most outstanding part of that wedding were the cakes. The bride’s and groom’s were both delicious with a frosting that just evaporated in your mouth. Truly superb.

Congratulations to Melanie and Jon Stone! Yay!

I’m off to the West Coast this afternoon for my friend Melanie’s wedding. It should be a good time as this is the first time in a long time that I’ve had a chance to actually have some fun there. Usually, I’ve been working with no time for fun.

I’ve got a week to experience the best of the Bay Area. If you’ve got suggestions, I’ll be looking at the website and updating with new tales of fun. Hope y’all have a great Memorial Day weekend.

The Cahaba river which runs next to our house has risen so much in the past day. There was a huge storm last night. The flooding near our house happened the next day when all of the water that fell in north Birmingham caused the Cahaba river to surge down in southern Birmingham where we live.

I took some pictures to show how awesome Mother Nature is. It’s amazing how quickly the water rose and then receded.

Day of flooding	Day after flooding
Here’s how the river looked at near it’s peak and the next day when the waters receded.
My neighbor’s townhouse closest to the river! Her air conditioner was underwater during the worst of it and we were all worried that those townhomes would get washed off into the river.
You can use the three pine trees in the center of the photo to give you an idea of how high the river got. Isn’t it unbelievable? And yet here’s the photo evidence.

UPDATE: So I finally got around to putting up the photos of the flooding. I think they really show how severe it was.
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Sean Shelby, my old roommate, has returned to the States! He’s been traveling around the world for the past 7 months or so. He’s been throughout Africa and Asia, sampling all the local cultures had to offer. His traveling buddy, Alan Huffman, arrived back in the states a few weeks before him. Be sure to say hello while they are still alive as they were in Asia during the SARS outbreak. I’m sure they’ll both survive, despite Sean’s solo trip through China.

I’m glad he’s back. Most of the people who read this site will probably know who he is, so I’m sure you guys are glad too.