Ahhh, back in the USA, and workin' to get caught up.  If you've followed the last couple days, you know we were in Cancun celebrating my friend Tina's 40th birthday as well as a handful of other November birthdays amongst friends, and you know the weather was, well, IDA'ish.  I ate enough resort food for the next year... for 3 people.  My elbow and ankle are on the mend from my [not-so] graceful Segway mishap.  And my camera is likely rusting away as we speak from all the salt water spray she encountered while trying to get a few beach images in 40mph winds.  Oh, and one of the more impressive and embarrassing factoids about the trip was that Kylie polished off two lengthy books in the span of three and a half days while we were there... impressive because in total she read about 900 pages; embarrassing because I managed to read a total of about 4 dinner menus. I'll finish off the Cancun trip with a random collection of images from the last couple days.

Looking up at one of the chandeliers in the lobby.

A summary of our stay in Cancun.

Here's the gang.  These next two were taken by an airline pilot.

These next three shots were inspired my the photographic genius of my buddy Jeff (pictured in the image below).  I had set my camera down and walked away after doing a 3 second exposure of the resort theater where we did Tina's surprise birthday celebration (see next to last photo below), and he had picked it up and started firing off a few images not realizing it was set in manual and for such a long exposure time.  Most of the images were a whole lotta blurry (I mean art, Jeff), but in one frame someone had taken a photo in the background with a point-n-shoot camera, and the flash from that shot had temporarily frozen the action in one of Jeff's shots.  The result was pretty serendipitously cool, so I had my friend Laurie come over with her point-n-shoot camera and we recreated the set-up... again and again and again...  (Sorry I drained your battery, Laurie, but hey, you did end up with about 20 random profile shots of a couple people!)  To recap, I had Laurie stand about to one side or the other of the subject, and after I pressed the shutter release for a three second exposure while hand-holding the camera, I told Laurie to fire her camera so I could use her flash to light the subjects.   First up, Jeff and his gangst look.

Then the birthday star, Tina.

And finally back to Jeff moving in on Kylie.

Here's the theater Jerry and Tammy talked the hotel into letting us use for a pre-dinner party for Tina at no cost, with a DJ and bartender included.

Oh, and in case anyone is wondering since i did have a few questions about this on Facebook, we stayed at the Hotel Riu Palace Las Americas.