You know you're from Michigan when...

This has been kicking around for years in different forms, before blogging and maybe even before the Web came about.:

You know you're from Michigan when...
.... you define Summer as three months of bad sledding
.... you have ever gotten frostbitten and sunburned in the same week
.... you can identify an Ohio accent
.... you point at the palm of your right hand when telling people where you grew up
.... octopus and hockey go together as naturally as hot dogs and baseball
.... traveling coast to coast means going from Port Huron to Muskegon
.... a Big Mac is something you can drive across
.... you have no problem spelling Mackinac Island
.... you have as many Canadian coins in your pockets as American ones
.... you know that a place called "Kalamazoo" really exists
.... you bake with "soda" and drink "pop"
.... you don't have a coughing fit from one sip of Vernor's
.... you know what a Vernor's is
.... you know WHY Paradise is colder than Hell
.... your car rusts out before the brakes wear out
.... if you think of Indiana as the South
.... half of the change in your pocket is Canadian.
.... you know that Pontiac and Cadillac are cities (and people!) as well as cars
.... you can travel through Detroit and not get mugged
.... your idea of reaching Climax is driving just past Kalamazoo.

Any such lists for other states?

A very nice river photo in Montana

I took this photo from near the mouth of the Lewis and Clark Cave in Montana a few years ago. I don't think I'd bothered to look at it until yesterday, when I noticed "that is one of the nicest landscape snapshots I've ever taken". I figured I would share it. Just a nice photo, that's all. Make sure to click and blow it up.

Sinclair Sign, Somewhere in Idaho

I snapped this picture somewhere in Idaho a few years ago. I think it was near the nuclear section of Idaho, but I didn't think to on the look-out for radioactive brontosaurs. I tend to stop at Sinclair stations when I can, because they seem to be so rare, I always liked the dinosaur, and I have memories of my dad getting green plastic dino toys when he'd fill up the car at one.

Here's a rather specific question. Sinclair Gas Stations. Does anyone see them anymore? Does anyone remember them anymore?

Meerkat at San Diego Zoo (2006)

This is probably the best of the meerkat photos. The bright sun and shade did not make for the best lighting for photography. The San Diego Zoo has several tiny meerkat compounds scattered all over. You can watch them for hours. They look so wise and polite, but I think they are just some kind of weasel.

Blurred Sea Horse

Back to California, to the Birch Aquarium at Scripps in La Jolla.

Too bad this fellow is blurred. There are a couple of reasons: it's kind of hard to get a good focus on an aquarium photo, and the tail and the fin were moving. The fin on the back is always moving very fast: this is the propelling fin. I think this one was just a few inches long. They are always a lot of fun to watch.

Male seahorses experience pregnancy. Female seahorses do not.

Can you find the sea dragon? (September 2006)

Can you spot the sea-dragon (From the Birch Aquarium near San Diego).

Las Vegas Jellyfish (September 2003)

The mesmerising jellyfish tank at Shark Reef at the Mandalay Bay casino.

The Cats of Rome

This is one of the myriad feral/stray cats of Rome. Large numbers of them inhabit the Coliseum, the Palatine Hill, the Forum and other ruins and places in the city center. We were told that a charity feeds them lots of pasta, which might sound nice, but it does not meet a cat's nutritonal needs. I hope they add vitamins or protein or something similar.

The cats were not friendly. They tended to stay away by themselves. Astonishingly enough, there are estimated to be 300,000 feral cats in Rome living in over 2000 colonies (http://goeurope.about.com/cs/rome/a/rome_cats.htm).

You will see some of the other cats in later entries in this blog, but not all 300,000.