Butterflies!

My wife and I visited the Botanical Gardens while they had a butterfly exhibit in the conservatory. It was pretty cool. We had about 2500 butterflies flying around and close to 10 landed on us. This was one which my wife didn't jump when it flew on her (surprisingly). I thought this was a very good picture. This is an Orange Longwing butterfly.

Earth Day 2009

I know this is really late. But I'm just trying to get caught up with all the stuff I've been wanting to post. Being in school full time and making movies and working part time really tore away at my available time, the rest I tried to dedicate to my wife.

This post is about Earth Day 2009.

This day has been adopted by the "green" movement often by simply turning off energy consumption and enjoying the outdoors.

While working at a retail store, I encountered many middle age, middle class, usually if not uniquely white males who seemed rather annoyed by the "green" movement. They touted off their beliefs saying that the earth is fine and will always be fine, holding to the ideology that earth is limitless in what it can take and what we can do with it.

I simply suggest here and now the idea that ignorance certainly proves bliss in their lives. I wish they could go to the ocean and see the massive heaps of trash built up and stuck in the ocean currents where many species of our earths food chain are being harmed.

To me it proves ignorance when one continues to think that Earth is limitless when everything else that is natural is limited. Your bodies are limited, the lifespan of any organism is limited, and so is the Earth. It proves ignorance to believe that dumping chemicals and trash into water won't somehow inadvertently affect our lives. We are affected by everything we do and everything we do to the Earth.

There are many other ways we are affected, but I won't go ranting on about this subject. I just hate ignorance, but I cannot stop it. All I ask is that people would educate themselves before using cultural bias to ignore modern factual proof. It may sound like a stupid idea, but unless you know enough about it, don't be ignorant by believing in something you don't really know enough about.

Disclaimer:

I cannot claim to not be ignorant myself. I am human and therefore have ignorant tendencies that I try hard to fight against. I am more annoyed at my own ignorance than others.

OK, I'm finished with that little rant. It was inspired by what I have learned over many years, and what I hear from typically middle aged individuals who like to say to me "I hate all this green movement stuff, it's stupid" but yet have little to no facts supporting their belief. They simply hold to an old cultural ideology that isn't correct.

Anyway, my wife and I in support for Earth Day did what we tend to do often:

• Turn up the temperature on the A/C, or turn it off
• Open up the doors/windows
• Turn off most/all unnecessary electronic appliances
• Light a bunch of candles for light at night

Below are a few pictures of our house taken with my phone. The phone camera has a really hard time capturing soft light when it bounces off surfaces, so the fact that you can even remotely see everything within each room proves that we could see plentifully, and could even read in this light. It wasn't as dim as it looks in the pictures.

Living Room/Kitchen Bar

Bedroom Bookshelf (The small candles were at least 4 inches away from anything flammable)

Bathroom

My Wife's Birthday Surprise

Here are a few pictures. She mentioned awhile back that she wanted to go to BJ's for her birthday, so I kept that in mind. I called ahead of time to have a spot reserved for us, with roses at the table. We got there earlier than planned so the roses didn't arrive till shortly after we did. They were very nice and good with the service. My wife was born at 6:59, so I asked that they bring out her favorite desert with a candle in it at that time. They were a little ahead of schedule, but not by much, and at 6:59 I wished her a happy birthday. She said she really liked it.

The food (left to right): My fish & chips (not recommended although I prefer healthy tastes), Sweet Onion Strings (EXCELLENT appetizer), Her parmesan crusted chicken (good). Obviously all eaten of of.

Desert: mostly eaten Oreo fudge/brownie with cookies and cream whip cream and ice cream on top. AWESOME desert.

We got an extra desert too, they accidentally made two.

Some of the pictures are washed out because of a light glare, fixable with my editing skills, but I won't worry about that for now.