Munching Birdie
As part of my thirtieth birthday, my parents bought me two fantastic lenses for my Digital Rebel. The first lens I bought (because the other one was backordered) was the 70-200L f/4 USM. My research showed that it was one of the most popular Canon lenses and one that covered a range that my kit lens didn't. The 2.8 version of the lens is much better, but it's also almost three times the price and twice the weight. This photo is taken at my favorite Turkish place in San Diego: Olive Cafe in Mission Beach. It was my first day with the new lens and I was itching to take some shots. If you're sick of all the bird photos I've been posting lately, apologies. I love all animals and I love photographing them. I promise I will try to vary the photos. If, however, you do like animals, we spent last Saturday at the Wild Animal Park and there are more animal shots to come as soon as I sort through the images.

Year of Sports
It all started with the Tour de France. I don't know how to ride a bike and I'd never watched the Tour before. Of course, I'd heard of Lance Armstrong, but I'd never seen him ride. Jake got the idea to TiVo the races this year and since I do all my work in front of the TV, I watched the stages along with him. By the third day, which was around the tenth day of the Tour, I was completely hooked. I knew the names of all the major American riders and the big names for all the other countries. I loved the announcers on OLN. They did a fantastic job of giving enough background on each rider to make the races important. And I don't mean excited like a normal person. I mean I was so excited that I'd be thrilled to go to bed every night knowing there'd be another race on the TiVo the next morning. I am now officially obsessed with Lance Armstrong and proudly wear one of the yellow bracelets that support his cancer organization. Though, I must say, I am sort of upset that there were no women in the Tour. Are they not allowed?

One would think I'd be tired of watching five hours of sports a day after two weeks of it. But no, not this year. This was the year of Olympics. And not just any olympics. This year, we had to watch Phelps. He was going to rock the olympics and we weren't missing it. Thanks to another obsession by Jake, this time one of swimming, we watched every one of the swimming finals as well as some of the semi-finals. We, of course, watched the road and mountain biking. We watched synchronized diving. We watched some gymnastics. Another three weeks of four-hour long sports watching.

Just when I thought I was done watching sports for the year, the Red Sox decided to beat the Yankees. As a Boston native, Jake's a fan and such, we had to watch the playoffs. Actually, we missed the first three games, catching only the last two innings of the second one. We caught the ending of game four and the second half of game five. No one could stop me from watching games six and seven all the way. The Red Sox miracle meant we had to watch all the World Series games as well. Talk about another two weeks of five-hour sports TV.

What makes all this sports-watching astonishing is that this is more than I've watched in the last thirty years combined. Literally. What's even more fantastic is that even though Jake was the reason I got into each of the events, I got way more obsessed than he ever did in each case. It got to a point where I couldn't think of anything but who was going to win and counted the minutes down to the games and races. I learned all the names, I read all the news coverage.

The only sport I'm still staying away from is football. I have a really hard time following the ball. Also, the biggest commonality between all the sports I've watched is that they are all non-violent. Football is too much about people crushing each other for my taste. But, at this point, I can't promise that I won't get into it come Superbowl time. Maybe this year I will watch it for something besides the commercials.

Then again, our baby is due the day after the Superbowl this year so we might be watching that one at the hospital.