cwmurphy.com

It was crazy serious hot at the zoo. We carried along water bottles in our backpacks and filled, and refilled, and then filled them again, over and over throughout the course of the trip.

NOTE: This manic work schedule has played hell with my travel equilibrium. Making a headlong dash to the nation's capital in the hottest part of the summer, on a Saturday no less, now makes a perfect sort of carpe-diem sense to me. Be afraid.

These photos are fairly representative of what we saw yesterday:
sleepy, bored animals. The few who did look up from their dozing gave us derisive "So that's what the top of the food chain looks like, huh?" glares before promptly falling back asleep.

Fast-forward and we were standing out in the sun, my lovely wife and I, waiting in line with the other pilgrims to enter the zoo's climate-controlled pandatorium.

I wiped the sweat rivulets from my forehead and swigged down more water. "I can smell all that panda goodness from here, baby," I said.

This, we soon learned, is how pandas spend 95% of their time.

SCIENCE-NOTE: The other 5% is apparently spent making fumbling attempts at reproducing the species.

Drawing (perhaps) an unfair comparison, the bears in Pigeon Forge stand up on their hind legs and wave their paws for thick slices of green apple.

Yesterday I was already out in the back lot and tossing my briefcase through the unzipped window of my jeep when it occurred to me, I should let someone know I'm leaving for the day.

The project manager (of the death march) and myself had finished out the last meeting of the day and - realizing we'd be working our fourth 60+ hour week in a row - simultaneously packed up and just walked out of the building.

This morning, however, I learned that I have the entire blessed weekend off.

I almost don't know what to do with myself.

Oh wait.

Yes I do.

We saw the global warming movie as an afternoon matinee. It's very good, this film.

Right now, I'm thinking about an exhausted polar bear, swimming across an empty ocean in the darkness. It paddles, headed towards an ice float that melted away to nothing sometime earlier this morning.

That's such a startling thing to consider.

Such a sad thing. And obvious. And serious.

7/24 update:
Of course, sometimes it really is just about the polar bear. I'm just saying.

The Work, it goes badly. 12(ish) hour days. 6 day weeks. Last week. This week. And all again next week.

And so the death-march plods, plods along.

But pretty soon, the remainder of the France photos. Perhaps even some pretty words.

I slept for four hours longer than I have any other morning in the past week.

Before the sun sets, I'm likely to go to an amusement park.

Or a zoo.

Or maybe movie about global warming. Or pirates.

Yup. I'm in Wisconsin.

I'm here for less than 24 hours.

The question is: can I possibly make it to the Houdini Museum?

(update, 15 minutes later: I miss home)

I'm still going (read: cropping, adjusting, tweaking) through the vacation photos. And this is a slow work, indeed.

Here's what I've managed to cobble together for presentation so far:

Catacombs
Aix
Nice

Coming (in my wildly oscillating definition of) soon: pictures of Paris proper and Avignon