July in New Orleans

Happy B-Day Shelley!!!



Whew! It's been awhile. Here are some photos from over the past month, a bit of stuff has happened.


We dog/house sat in Old Metairie, a suburb of New Orleans this past week. It was like staying at a spa! It was the home of one of Lindsey's co-workers and it sure was nice. Here is one of the dogs we were watching, Wesley, and he just stayed in the closet most of the time...poor guy.


We had a big pasta dinner on the patio our last night while the neighbors had a party with a live jazz band, pretty nice.


We went to a training this past weekend to help people evacuate from the city if there is another evacuation. We were even served MRE's for lunch, which are standard army/evacuee dining.

It wasn't too bad having a hot tub and a pool for the week.


I don't know why my shirt is off in every photo...but here's the inside of the house. In the back corner they had a huge big screen TV that was built into a cabinet and mechanically rose out with a remote...best part of the house.

Some day...

This is the other dog that we watched for the week, Wenis... He was a little more lively and pretty funny. We had a good time with him but he was pretty mishieivous.

Our old Peace Corps sitemate Amanda came to visit for a couple days and we took her all over the city. It was a lot of fun to see her, just too bad that it was only for three days! We took her to Jean Laffitte National Park and only saw this one little alligator.


Amanda and Lindsey at the park, and then we rewarded ourselves with some sweet drinks from Sonic.


Here's Lindsey and a bunch of her social work buddies.

Binzer's B-Day and Phish Road Trip

Happy B-Day hon! Most of you probably know by now that Flag Day is known as Binzer Day in most circles. So, this past weekend we did some celebrating for the best wife on this side of the Mississippi. This past week we also drove up to Tennesee to see Phish, one of my favorite bands who I haven't seen in years.

This was at the W Hotel in the French Quarter, where they opened the hotel up to the public for movies on Sundays in the courtyard. We basically went to swim because it's so darn hot! At 8 o'clock at night, it was still 90 degrees. So, we had Lindsey's B-day party at the hotel with some friends, it was a lot of fun.

Woohoo! Free pool! Wish we had one in the backyard, but this sure worked.

There were these outdoor beds and lounge chairs set up as well, pretty nice.

For Lindsey's B-day dinner I picked up some snow crab legs and her favorite vegtable, spicy corn. She was pretty pumped, happy B-day honey.


Our friend Christian made Lindsey a t-shirt for her B-day, her made his own screen printer and is starting to design t-shirts.

This is the Ramada at Ft. Walton Beach Florida where we stayed for one night after our camping trip failed. The beach sure was nice...too bad it was super expensive and we could only afford one night!

Here is the lot scene at venue in Knoxville. It's really fun to see the carnival atmosphere and just walk around to see what the slews of entrepreneurs are up to. We bought a couple t-shirts and also had some great french bread pizza, all courtesy of other fans who are trying to make some money.

The show was a lot of fun, and it was Lindsey's first Phish show!

While we were in Tennessee we ended up driving past Chickamauga, which was one of the first millitary parks in the US. This was one of the biggest loses for the Union army during the Civil War and it was neat to see the canons and fields all preserved.

Tennessee BBQ, this was really good, but Lindsey's belly wasn't too happy later.

Alligators and Baldwins!

Here are some of the photos that my Mom took while her and my father were down about a month ago. We didn't post many photos because I accidentally deleted all of them! Whoops! So enjoy.

Concert, Band, and Movie Star

We had another action packed week. We just went to to a tribute concert to Fats Domino last night which featured BB King, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Wyclef, and a few other artists. It was a lot of fun, and ever more fun because I recieved free tickets from work. We even got into the box suites at the arena for free food and drinks!

Tracy Morgan was the host for the night, he was pretty funny. We also sat right behind his girlfriend in the second row for part of the night.


Here's us in the 2nd row! Lindz was so pumped to get this close for Wyclef, it was a lot of fun.

I was so glad to get to see BB King, he's about 82 years old and could still smoke on the guitar. I just wish he had played longer.

I didn't really expect much from Little Richard, but the show was great! He had a huge band and they sounded awesome.

A few weeks ago, Lindsey and I were supposed to be in a movie it was going to be a brothel scene and we could have made out, but Lindsey ended up getting cut from the scene so we both dropped out. We didn't really know why Lindsey was cut, but I think I found out this past week. I signed up to film in a different scene where they had asked for 'tall, bearded, skinny, scarred, or amputees'. There were a few women in the scene as well, dressed in the corset type outfits that Lindsey had been fitted in, but these girls were certainly not very cute. I came home telling Lindsey that the girls were all pretty 'broken' and that it was no wonder she was cut.

The movie I was hired on as an extra for is titled Jonah Hex. The movie is about some cowboy superhero...not sure if it will be very good, but it has a huge budget and stars Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, and Megan Fox. My scene had Josh Brolin in it and it was cool to see him do a lot of stunts and just joke around with all of us. The best part of the whole experience was seeing how Hollywood works and how movies are made, but it sure was boring a lot of the time! I spent two of the three days just sitting around for probably 14 hours doing nothing.

My scene was a gambling scene where there were about 80 other men, all bearded and dirty, in a big tent watching a dog fight, cock fight, and a monster fight. So, all we had to do was wave money around and yell. I was on camera a few times, but who knows if I'll make it into the movie. Now I'll just have to wait until August 2010 to find out...bummer.

One of the things that was pretty bizzaar was that the extras were seperated out from the rest of the cast and crew. We had our own seperate food and drinks. They also kept trying to corral us into this large back room away from everything. In summation; good food, 14-15 hour days, funny outfits, one girl passed out, I looked like Abraham Lincoln, and made about 300 bucks.


Here's my buddy Christian and his brother John behind me. We've been playing together on Sundays in a little band. Its been a lot of fun.

Greek Fest, Parents, and Hot Pot

Well, I pulled a sweet move and acidentally deleted all the pictures that I took while my parents were here! Ahh!!!! I had so many good ones of alligators, family fun, and other such stuff...bummer. Well, I'm waiting on my Mom to send a CD down with all of her shots. So, you'll have to enjoy the few that didn't get deleated.

Here's Coach cracking up after working on his 'routine' where he hums When the Saints Go Marching In for spare change. Mom wasn't nearly as entertained as Dad was.

Took the folks over to St. Louis Cemetary #1

Of course we had to stop at Cafe Du Monde, my folks were staying about one block away from here in the French Quarter, a really neat hotel. The rate was probably so good because it's haunted with kids who died in a fire in the 1800's when it was a school. We heard they also use to hang people in the courtyard. Oh New Orleans. But at least it had a pool!

Me and Coach

I decided that we should go to this great free concert by our place on Saturday...too bad the festival didn't take place for another two weeks...woops. Well, it was a fun bike ride anyway!


This was Emily's last night in town, so we went out for hot pot. Little did Lindsey and I know that we would ever be soo excited to eat hot pot ever again, but it was great. We even made them put almost twice as much hot pepper in to make it truly Sichuanese.


It was a lot of fun. Had some bad Chinese beer, annoyed the staff by speaking Chinese the whole time, and had bellyaches all the next day...oh hot pot.

Lindsey and I biked over to a Greek Festival on Sunday that had some great food and other fun stuff. We ate gyros and had a big Greek dinner special. We also had pomegranite iced tea, pomegranite snowballs, and Lindsey bought some jangly bell things to wear.

This is from inside the church, we went on a small tour and they said that it was the oldest Green Orthodox Church in the hemisphere.

If you wore a toga, you got in free. We were basically the only ones wearing togas, but we didn't stick around for the toga contest, which Lindsey was pretty bummed about because she thought she had it wrapped up.

This was a cute old guy who was dancing the whole time by himself, and then this kid came out and joined him. Happy Memorial Day everybody!

Went to the beach in Florida this past weekend with our buddies Liz and Christian. We had an awesome time, just great to get away and play in the waves for a little bit.


Sure didn't catch anything, but I did see a school of stingrays go by, that was cool!


Liz and Christian bought an underwater camera and this is the best we could get! Lindsey kept running for the surface.


We went out for seafood and got a ton of crab. Then we went back home and all went out to try and catch crabs, caught a bucket full!

Here's Lindsey and I out crabbing. I was too scared to pick them up with my hands, but the nets helped a lot.


Crabs in a bucket! Here's about the point where Lindsey ran back inside

Lindz and Liz
Aww, here's Lindz and I at the beach. It was such a great trip but I sure did get a little pink.