Seeing as the whole point of the Florida trip was to shoot Andrew the racecar driver, I feel obligated to at least post one photo. So here we go… here’s Andrew the racecar driver.

You heard right. While giving them their much-adored belly rubs, to their enjoyment I also rubbed their armpits… only to later find out those are actually their breasts. Yes, I rubbed manatee boobs.

After taking a forty-minute boat ride in 50-degree weather, I hopped in the river (wearing a wetsuit of course), and proceeded to swim over to a spring. The water was a little murky from the spring and a little pessimism began to wash over me. “I’m not going to see one,” I thought to myself. And after a few seconds of doubt, I am side-swiped by one of these enormous creatures.

At times I had six of them on me at once, all the while I could see many more sleeping just a few feet away. A mother and calf came to play with me, and I watched the baby nurse. There were smooth manatees, algae-covered manatees, and barnacle-covered manatees… but no matter their texture, sadly they all had scars left behind from boats.

After an hour and a half, I started to get too cold and had to say goodbye to the manatees and hello to the hot chocolate. I swam back to the boat and to my life on the other side of the water line.

More photos….

Florida… I dig it. And yes, I swam with manatees. They like belly rubs. It was life-changing.

Took my first trip to the strange state of Nevada on Monday. Strange is the only word I can find to describe my thoughts on it. It was only a two-day trip (for work), got back last night, but I will be heading back there tomorrow morning to catch a flight to Florida. It blows my mind that I now live closer to Vegas than I do to Salt Lake. It’s strange… like everything else in Nevada.

Cross-country at Bryce this weekend. Next stop: Brian Head.

Preschool that is.

Thanks to this guy, I am on my way to sunny Florida next week!

He’s a race car driver, we have a donation program through his racing, and after seeing my website he requested that I be the photographer to go to Florida next week to shoot him doing his thing. Thank you Andrew. Hello beach.

The pup is Ballsy, a Katrina dog. And shoots like this are so much harder than they seem. Note to self: always carry squeaky toy in pocket.

The other day, ten bunnies came in that police picked up on the side of a highway near St. George. It’s unknown when someone dropped them off there, but whoever did didn’t take very good care of them. Six of them were fuzzy lops… a type of rabbit with lovely long hair. But that lovely long hair was matted with their own excrement and full of sand up against their skin. Those lovely long-haired bunnies all had dreadlocks. They have yet to be named, but I have dubbed them the rasta bunnies, and have been pushing for them to be named Tosh, Marley, Bunny Wailer, Toots, King Tubby, and Buju. Yesterday, caregivers began the difficult process of removing their dreads. Welcome to the bunny salon.

Ever since I read the book The Good Good Pig last month, I have been curious about the snorting species. I made my first journey to our pig department the other day, and found everything I read about them to be true. Though they may be a little dirty, they are lovely animals.

Anyone who has ever been shopping with me knows my distaste for plastic bags. I could rant for hours (and hours) about why people should boycott plastic bags. So it pleases me to no end to hear that China has now banned them. If only the United States would follow suit!

I was first introduced to the plastic-bagless lifestyle in high school as an exchange student in Germany. They make you bring your own canvas bags, or buy them there. I was awestruck at what a genius idea it was. Eight years later, I am still using one of those German bags I got at a supermarket in Essen. Now, if I continue to use all my canvas bags for the next eight years, just think of how many plastic bags I am saving myself. How many plastic bags do you think you use in a month? Every time you buy anything, it is nearly always placed in a plastic bag, no matter how big or small, no matter one item or twenty. Every time you go to the grocery store, baggers on average put about five things per bag. You can easily end up with five plastic bags “full” of things that could easily fit in just one large canvas bag. The worst is when they mindlessly put bags inside of bags… like when you buy just one item, something that itself is a bag (say apples or potatoes) and they proceed to put it in a bag. Or when something as tiny as a single rented DVD warrants an entire bag, because god forbid you have to carry a DVD without a handle.

I realize that people just don’t care that millions of pounds of waste could be avoided by limiting their use, but whether or not you care about the environment, you should use canvas bags if only because they are so much stronger, and much less painful to carry when heavy.

What happens when a cat lover is assigned to take pictures of one specific cat? She goes and takes pictures of that cat… and 20 of its friends.

This is Aramis. He’s special. He has some issues. His owner raised him wrong. She babied him, taking him everywhere, always petting him like he was a cat. This is not good. Cockatoos should only be stroked on their head and neck. Touching their back is somewhat like a sexual touch. It’s something they do when they mate. So when they are touched on their back, their body releases a lot of hormones… really, really feel-good hormones. The way I see it, if we were to put it into human terms, Aramis was pretty much in a state of constant orgasm. So it’s no wonder than when he’s lived his whole life like that, he starts to go a little crazy when he’s not being pet. He began plucking out his feathers, and eventually tearing away at his own skin. The self-mutilation may be his way of letting his body release endorphins while he’s not getting the bad touch. His owner had every test imaginable done on Aramis to find out what the problem was, until her vets told her that she was the problem, and that she had to stop petting his back. She couldn’t do it, and had the choice of either destroying her beloved bird, or handing him over to people who could right her wrongs. She did the latter, gave him to Best Friends, and now Aramis is getting some tough love. He wears the collar to help minimize his plucking, and though he gets constant love and attention, to his dismay, his back doesn’t get touched… only his neck and head. It’s sad to watch because he desperately wants to be touched on his back, he positions himself so that is natural to touch him there, but he doesn’t get it. It’s for his own good. Eventually, he’ll hopefully be placed with other birds, and maybe someday he’ll get that touch again… the right way.

Like I said before, I like the bird department. Meet Robin, Roxie, Skittles, Cromwell, Pen, and Paco… the residents of the bird isolation building in downtown Gunsmoke City (that is what I call my town… you should get used to it).