Image for 3/14/11 - Mr. Lizard-Man...

Alright, I'm gonna lean on another pic from Key West today. It was a boring Monday and I felt uninspired, so better to remember being back in Key West on a hot Friday, hiking along the moat for Fort Zach Taylor and coming across this fellow. He was about three feet from nose to tail tip and looked well fed. We startled each other pretty good, but he hung around long enough for me to get one quick snap before he jumped into the green water and disappeared.

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Image for 3/13/11 - Another Key West thing...

I walked around all day today with the camera in my pocket, but never saw anything worth shooting. So I'm going to dip back into the pile of photos from the Key West trip for today's image. I took this at an interesting place called the "Pelican Poop Shoppe" that is in a great old building called the "Casa Antigua" and is purported to be Ernest Hemingway's first home in Key West. Now it's somebody else's private residence with a gift shop in the front. If you buy something in the gift shop they give you a tour of the courtyard, which is where I found this weird fellow. The courtyard was wonderful, full of tropical planets and a pool in the middle. A secluded outdoor space within a town. That's a design feature that I think needs to come back.

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Image for 3/12/11 - Goodnight Starling

Out hiking today (seven miles, thank you very much) and came across this beautiful European Starling carcass along Shore Drive. Click the image to enlarge  and better appreciate the iridescent feathers which, according to my bird book, are only seen in the spring. A dead spring bird; the edge between winter and spring; death and rebirth.

Weirdly enough, I saw a second bird cadaver half a block from this one, but it was in the shadow of a telephone pole; badly lit for a photo.

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Image for 3-11-2011 - Doodle Friday

Scanned this out of a notepad at work. I'm not much for meetings. Find that generally they are a waste of time, so the pen and mind will wander. This little sketch was inspired by an old friend, Nino. He passed on some years back after living a long and interesting life. He was happier then this doodle portrays him. I never saw him wear that kind of sweater. Weird the connections a mind will make.

Happy Friday!

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Image for 3/10/11 - Key West Tree

One of the things we enjoyed about our visit to Key West was all of the wild and interesting exotic trees and plants. I like the textures and shapes on this particular tree. I see a weird spaceman on the lower part of the truck with one good eye and one that's wandering. What can you see there?

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Image for 3/9/11 - New Friends from Germany via Key West

We stayed at a great B&B called the Andrews Inn on our Key West trip. B&Bs can be a great opportunity to meet fellow travelers. This can be a good or bad thing depending on the mood and quality of the encountered random humans. On this trip, we hit the jackpot when, over breakfast the first morning, we met Tim and Ines, a couple of nice German people on their first visit to the USA. We got to hang out a bit, worked on our sunburns at Fort Zach Taylor beach, take in a sunset at Mallory Square and share a fun dinner at the Schooner Wharf. Through the magic of Facebook, we will be able to keep in touch. You can never have enough friends.

OK HW