We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Programming...

... to bring you this Breaking News Bulletin!!!

Osama bin Laden's dead! Right, you knew that... and this probably isn't what you come to read this blog for. Ok, ok, let's try this one: the tulips are blooming! The Washington tulips are blooming!

I'll get back to the Stream of March Nonsense in the deserts of Arizona in a moment, but in April, right here in Washington State, it was time for the annual Skagit Valley Tulip festival, and the tulips were in bloom and on full display. So, while I'm still catching up on the oh so very random, random lives and times of Arizona, a brief interlude for things Pacific Northwest:

The Skagit Valley tulip fields all in bloom, in front of snowy Mt. Baker

Reds and Yellows in long, even rows

Erica and I came out to see the tulips in the middle of April. The tulip pictures were spectacular - pictures with me? Occasionally silly...

A bright hybrid orange sneaks in between the fiery reds

The purple-white's were really awesome!

Want more pictures of beautiful tulips? Here's an entire album, courtesy of Facebook.

The Tulip Festival

Posted by Alex on 2011/04/26

photo album The Tulip Festival: 39 new photos

Tags: Mt. Vernon

And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming and the nonsense of Arizona. And by now, I, of course, mean 'as soon as I get around to posting next... which should be fairly soon, I hope.'

Prescot, Arizona and the Home of Dr. Evil

Stream of Nonsense continues...

Did you know that Dr. Evil has a modern and spacious Southwestern Headquarters? It would seem like he does, judging by this visual:

You mean somebody just felt it would be a good idea to build a house looking like this!? Arizona Nonsense! I shall continue to choose to think it's Dr. Evil's not-so-secret Southwestern layer...

We were actually in Prescott to catch up with Cat, whose house bore no resemblance to Dr. Evil Properties. But she had lived in Seattle as recently as three years ago, so the Nonsense may not have gotten into her blood stream quite as much yet.

Hi Cat! Did you know Dr. Evil's winter office is just a mile up the road?

Arizona ... Welcome to the Stream of Nonsense

Arizona... it is absolutely a gorgeous place. Sedona, the Grand Canyon, Lake Havasu - all lovely. All weird in their own right, but in wonderful, natural ways. Most of the rest of the state? Stream of Nonsense, for no good reason that I could figure out. Take Yuma - it's a roasting hot, dust-filled, inhospitable little spot lying right where California, Arizona, and Mexico come together. Does it have much of anything going for it? Not as far as I can tell. Yet, just as you start approaching it, you find yourself confronted with vast trailer park encampments filled with hundreds of Snowbird RV's... These would be Northernly retirees who have chosen Yuma, Arizona as an ideal place to spend the winter months. Nonsense, I tell you, Nonsense! At least, the little restaurant where we popped in for lunch had been rated as the best place to propose in Yuma... so the town's got that going for it(?) There's also a sushi restaurant we spotted near the highway... nothing quite like sushi in the Arizona desert to make you visualize horrible and immediate food poisoning... We chose to steer clear...

A bit more of the stream of nonsense, in pictures:

An Arizona Cactus snake

A native Southwestern Dragon

Yuma-tainment

What to do for fun down here

Really, you just can't make this shit up!

And finally, the Arizona coup de grace:

Mark your calendars!

Catch the Gun Show sign in the bottom right?

A bit more detail about the AZ stream of Nonsense in the next couple of posts... And I'm even going to meticulously avoid mentioning any Congresswomen getting shot...