We’ve spent the last two days in the Shenandoah Valley, which is beautiful this time of year. We spent most of yesterday on Skyline Drive. Today we’re making our way back home via some of the beautiful Virginia backroads.

Tonite we’re in Norfolk, VA, attending the last night of the River Rats reunion with Leandra’s dad. Tomorrow we make our way across the state to Harrisonburg, wine tasting along the way. If the weather cooperates we’ll go up and down Skyline drive on Monday and Tuesday.

I’ve mentioned previously that we have copious amounts of mint growing in our backyard and we are always looking for excuses to trim it up some. Well, Tuesday night there was a special about the Kentucky Derby on tv while I was preparing dinner and a segment dedicated to the mint julep highlighted a particular brand that is the official bourbon of the Kentucky Derby, Woodford Reserve.

I thought to myself, hmm, that looks familiar.

It turns out that we have a full bottle of the stuff (unbeknownst to me) thanks to my dad’s generous shopping spree last Thanksgiving. So, in honor of the Kentucky Derby this Saturday, I made myself a mint julep last night…

…let’s just say it’s not for me.

I hope Eric enjoys bourbon.

As our practice post indicated the other evening we got new phones this week. I choose the LG enV (left) and Leandra got the LG vx8300 (right). Both have better cameras and (a little) better reception.

I really like the keyboard on mine, and I’m hoping to use my new phone as a PDA replacement (i.e. calender and contacts). It should also make posting from the road a little easier. We’ll see how it goes when we travel to Virginia this weekend.

Side note: The current Verizon plans start at an $20 extra a month more than old plan, but fortunately we were able to just renew our old plan which has enough minutes and texts for us.

Eric has been posting quite a few photos of our backyard here, but I’d like to continue the tradition of a separate garden page as well… so the one for this year is now up with photos from February, March, and April.

The New Zealand Herald story “America’s war on tourists” has been making its way around travel blogs, providing a viewpoint on visiting the US from other countries. Unfortunately, I’m not surprised that we’ve been voted the “most unfriendly destination for foreign travellers.” As I’ve written before, recent US government policy seems to treat all visitors with suspicion. Quite simply, this policy is shortsighted and embarrassing and will end up hurting us economically - and not just in terms of tourism, but in science, engineering, etc.

We just got new phones tonite, so I’m testing the camera on my new enV.