Deadlines

If my blog had deadlines, I would probably be much better about posting things. If I had faithful readers and paid ads down the side instead of a list of the other blogs I read and the Daily Puppy, I would feel more of an obligation, I'm sure, and make the time for it. As it is, I put items I want to blog about on a list which then carries over to the daily list of things to do not all of which ever get done.

The day after tomorrow, though, is the deadline to enter photos in the photo contest being held by the Charlottesville Photography Meetup Group, which I recently joined. Each paid member can enter up to three photos. The top 10 photos will be mounted as 20 x 24 prints for the fancy reception on July 23, and the people who took the top three photos will win prizes that I imagine will be awesome. I'll actually be at a wedding in Chicago that weekend so will miss the party and the announcement of the winners. That's okay, because I don't really expect to win anything. I don't consider myself a serious photographer; I have enough other time- and money-consuming hobbies already to start taking photography as seriously as most of the other meetup group members do. The photos I entered, for example, have not been post-processed or put through software such as Adobe Photoshop or Gimp. They are as they were taken; I haven't tweaked anything. There are people in the group who will not show other people even one photo that has not been post-processed and who would likely be appalled that I am about to post three here. I just like these pictures and hope that other people might, too. Taking them made me happy, and sharing them with other people makes me happy. Would I be happier if I put in the time tweaking and fine-tuning them? Maybe, but I doubt the difference in happiness would be enough to justify the time it would take, especially on the up-side of the learning curve.

All that said, here are the photos I entered. The first comes from our month in Hue and actually made its debut on my trip blog accompanying some musings about how I used to be a better photographer than I am now. I like the depth of field in this shot, though I achieved it only by accident. Having just gotten a basic lesson in digital photography from the same friend who introduced me to the CPMG, I could probably do this shot now intending for it to come out as it did, but that doesn't mean I like this accidental shot less.

The second photo is from our hotel in Reykjavik, Iceland, in February. It was one of those quickie things as I walked up to the room and looked down at the spiral the stairs were making. Somewhere, I have a film print of the spiral stairs at the Vatican, and they're much more glamorous. What can I say? These stairs may not be glamorous, but they're fun to me.

The final photo I entered is one that appears in this blog just a post or two back, when I wrote about my trip to New Mexico in April. The hand sits on a shelf in one of the huge prop rooms maintained for In Plain Sight. I took several shots of the hand, but this is my favorite. It's a simple shot, not much color and not many things to see save for the hand and the rolls of paper beside it. Simple but somewhat elegant? Maybe that's what drew me to it.

If you want to check out the competition, all the photos entered can be seen here. I think mine are photos 61-63. Younger son will probably add three of his to the collection tonight or tomorrow; I expect they'll be better than mine. Still, you never win if you don't play the game, so I might as well play. Stay tuned for a month, and I'll post the outcome sometime after July 23.

A Taste of Adventure

Travel is always an adventure, one aspect of which is trying new food and drink. When I spent a summer in Spain during my college days, I set the challenge of trying at least a taste of everything new that I was served. I ended up trying--and liking--some things I probably never would have tried at home, octopus and squid among them. When I went to Vietnam last year, I was not quite so open, vowing not to even taste dog or cat were I offered them. Different spices on meat that I consider fit to eat, fine, but meat from an animal I consider to be pet material? No way!

Meeting up with the Aussies in New Mexico gave me the chance to try something I'd only heard of and not necessarily in complimentary terms, Vegemite. For those who may not know much about Vegemite, here's the Wikipedia summary: "Vegemite is made from used brewers' yeast extract, a by-product of beer manufacturing, and various vegetable and spice additives. It is salty, slightly bitter, and umami or malty — similar to beef bouillon. The texture is smooth and sticky. It is not as intensely flavoured as British Marmite and it is less sweet than the New Zealand version of Marmite." The Aussies had some along and were all too willing to share, so I had to give it a go. They warned me that the other Americans with whom they'd spent time had not liked it, but I wasn't going to let that stop me. Diane from Canada didn't let it stop her either, and here's her reaction. She went straight for the milk, which seemed to help. I didn't have quite that reaction, though I can't say I'll be seeking out a jar here so as to have my own supply. As Wikipedia says, it's salty, and I didn't find the taste to be one I'd like first thing in the morning, for breakfast. I tend to like salty foods later in the day, occasionally or often with a beer. I think I'd like Vegemite better under those circumstances than for breakfast.

Speaking of salt, Sarah makes a mean margarita, from scratch, no margarita mixer allowed. I even helped squeeze the limes. Margaritas were new for the Aussies, and Gilly's reaction to hers was even better than Diane's Vegemite face. Here it is, in sequence. First, the preparation ... then, a sip ... then the reaction ... followed by ... and ... and then ... and finally ... I think that's relief that the first taste is over. Not to worry. Gilly survived her first margarita, just as Diane and I survived our first tastes of Vegemite. We all had a taste of adventure and lived to tell and laugh about it. Plus, the Aussies ended up with more Vegemite left than they might have had Diane and I really taken a liking to it, and some of us ended up with seconds and more on the margaritas.

And just in case any reader is wondering, both Diane and Gilly agreed to my posting their photos here. Yes, I asked them since they, after all, have much they could tell on me should I inadvertently tick them off.

Continuing Right Along ...

As I was saying, I was in New Mexico with friends for a few days, and since they were very fun friends, it all made for some very fun days. Diane, from Canada, and I met up at the Denver Airport on a Friday and flew together to El Paso, where Sarah, our NM hostess, picked us up in her new-to-her Mazda 5 mini-minivan, Bling. Bling was not having a good day, though, and wouldn't let the rear passenger-side door open when we stopped for drinks and snacks before the drive to Las Cruces. No worries. Diane, who was sitting in the back, just got out the rear driver-side door. Sarah was a bit miffed since the rear doors had supposedly been fixed with the 30-day warranty period that had by then ended. Little did we know then that by the end of the trip, Bling would become known as "the Clown Car" when both rear side doors stopped working, threatening to strand six women who wanted to go places. It turned out to be a good thing all six of us had senses of adventure and humour. (I added the "u" in honour of the Canadian-Australian element of the story.)

Our first stop Saturday morning was the Las Cruces market that covered four blocks of the pedestrian mall downtown. If you wanted it, you could probably find it there, from flowering plants to kitschy purses
to dogs. This one was not up for adoption, though there were plenty that were.

I missed out on a photo of the two-level dog stroller being "driven" by a woman with also managing two dogs on leashes, one in each of her hands. Diane and Sarah stimulated the local economy at several of the jewelery vendors, while my major outlay was made at the knife maker's stand. Each son now has a hand-crafted knife chosen to fit their particular personalities and needs. I told Sarah that on my next visit, the knife I buy will be mine.

Sometime around the time we left the market, the second rear side door stopped working, so I started putting the front passenger seat down all the way and crawling through to the back seat. Diane then put the front seat up and sat there. We still had to go back to the El Paso airport for the two Terri and Gilly, the two Aussies, but we figured that we could put one of the far rear seats down, someone could go in the rear hatch and occupy the other seat next to all the luggage. The middle two seats would have to be accessed via the reclined front passenger seat.

The Aussies' flight from Dallas to El Paso was delayed, so we had some extra time to kill at the El Paso airport. They do have some nice metalwork there. as well as a rather inane message on their arrival board. What other kind of message do they expect me to watch for? An auditory one?

Fast forward to the Aussies having been picked up in El Paso and returned to Las Cruces, and the final friend, MJ, arrived from Texas in the company of her husband Wayne, who took group photos with each person's camera then beat a hasty retreat to his hotel. He planned to go hiking the next day, while we went to White Sands. With a sixth person added, the Clown Car came into her own and merited a dedicated photo sequence. (Video exists, too, but not on a camera to which I have access.) Here's how we got into the car all day Sunday. First, Gilly reclined the passenger-side front seat to "assume the position" in the passenger-side middle seat. This allowed Diane to crawl through to the driver-side middle seat. Then, with the passenger-side rear seat down, Terri climbed into the driver-side one. Of course, this all took place somewhat simultaneously. That's MJ, waiting for the passenger seat to go back up. A place for everyone and everyone in her place.

Finally, the passenger-side rear seat got raised, and I went in over the back. We only had to do this full routine for one full day, but in that day we got into and out of the car at least five times.

We were lucky that the first time was not at the "border crossing," because I'm not sure what the border patrol folks would have thought of the routine. No, we did not actually cross a border and leave the United States. It just so happens that there are at least two points along New Mexico's interstate highways at which all traffic bound away from the real border must stop. An officer asks about the citizenship of everyone in the car, and non-citizens are asked to show their passports. Our Aussies and Canadian had their passports handy, though the officer told the Texan in the car that she might want to go back and get hers. The drug-sniffing dog--at least that's what sort of dog I assume it was-- did not alert on the Clown Car, so we passed through with no problem.

White Sands was a huge draw when the chance to go to New Mexico to meet Terri and Gilly came up. I first visited White Sands when we had a similar gathering of quilters in Las Cruces two years ago. I found it to be an incredibly powerful landscape, a truly magical place. The white sand has passed for snow in photographs, and they actually remove the sand that blows onto the road with snowplows. The Visitor Center also sells saucer sleds and wax for, yes, sledding down some of the dunes. I expect that the National Park Service (White Sands is a National Monument, not a National Park) knows that people will try this whether it's allowed or not, so they might as well help it be done safely. There are signs along the first part of the road that ask folks not to sled or play in the dunes at that point, but to wait until further in. If you think I'm pulling your leg about the sleds, here's the sign outside the gift shop at the Visitor Center. In addition to passing for snow, the white sands could easily be a beach, particularly when viewed from the boardwalk from which one can observe various native flora and fauna tracks. What appears to be water off the end of the boardwalk in this photo is actually the mountains in the distance. As you walk along the boardwalk, though, you really, really expect there to be a beach and water at the end. Alas, it's just more sand, albeit beautiful sand, albeit sand in which one can make a pretty realistic snow angel. Unfortunately, the sledding photos were taken by others, so I can't prove we did sled down one of the dunes in a saucer sled. It was a blast, though, probably just as fast as snow would have been. I commend Diane on the job she did waxing the sled.

Back in Las Cruces, we stopped for lunch at the Double Eagle in Old Mesilla. Besides very good food and service, it had a side room with an amazing stained glass ceiling. Then we did some shopping, including at a shop with a room full of crosses. The next day, Monday, we headed north to Albuquerque, where another friend, Carla, is working as the set decorator on the USA series In Plain Sight. Since MJ's husband was coming along, we had an extra car, helpful in that we no longer had to do the full Monty of entering and exiting the Clown Car. But back to In Plain Sight. On a movie or TV show, the set decorator is the person who decorates the sets, which sounds much more trivial than it really is. She's the one who makes the setting that the viewer sees believable, from the loose change in the dish on top of the dresser, to the hodgepodge of junk that always seems to accumulate in one of your desk drawers, to the mismatched furniture some characters might have in their living rooms.

As you might imagine, decorating sets requires access to, well, just about anything and everything. Carla says that Google has made her job so much easier than it used to be. Still, the show keeps rooms full of life available for immediate use, everything from chairs to clocks to things that can hang to produce for a market scene. There's even the kitchen sink. There's also this cool hand, which I'm including simply because I really like this photo. Returning to the production facility after a late lunch (though not as late as the cast and crew were having that day since they don't eat lunch until six hours after they start for the day, which that day was at 10:00 a.m.), we actually ran into the star of the show, Mary McCormack (who plays Mary Shannon). I was quite impressed with how gracious she was to a bunch of random people being shown around by the set designer. She introduced herself and suggested we do a photo, not just there out in the hallway, but why not in on the set, in "her" apartment? So we did. As astute readers may have figured out, the man in the photo is Wayne, MJ's husband. And that's MJ at the opposite end of the photo. In front of Wayne is Gilly, then Terry, then Mary McCormack (whom viewers of In Plain Sight will recognize), then Diane, then me, with Sarah in front of Diane and me. Carla was the photographer. I'm still amazed at how pleasant Mary was, but then maybe I'm jaded by having read of too many celebrities who are just too full of themselves.

It's three-plus hours one way between Las Cruces and Albuquerque, plus a stop at the "border" on the way there, but it was well worth the time in the car to see what goes in to making a TV series. From the rooms full of potential props to the rooms of costumes to the shop where things that can't be bought are built, it was easy to see what a boon something like this can be to a local economy. While the actors and upper staff--producers, directors, and so on--come in from outside, much of the people behind the scenes are hired locally. And the ones that come in from outside need places to stay, food to eat, and so on.

After the In Plain Sight visit, MJ and Wayne stayed in Albuquerque, while the rest of us returned to Las Cruces. The next day, Tuesday, we figured out that the Clown Car could indeed hold five people, four of whom had luggage. Sarah drove, with Terri in the passenger seat. Diane had her usual seat behind the driver, while Gilly had her usual seat behind the front passenger. I sat in between them, on Gilly's duffel bag. All the other luggage fit in the back. Terri and Gilly got on a flight to Denver then Los Angeles and Disneyland, while Diane and I checked into the Wyndham Hotel at the airport, the better for Diane to catch a 6:15 a.m. flight the next day and for me to catch a 6:48 a.m. one. We took a walk that included admiring the amazing statue outside the aiport. What's most amazing about it is how big it is, better shown in this shot. And now I'm back home, in real life again, but hoping to return to New Mexico someday soon. I could see flying into Albuquerque and heading south, stopping to see the Very Large Array on the way to Las Cruces. Then the market and some fun with Sarah and another trip to the magical White Sands. It might be interesting to continue on to Roswell, and/or to time the trip for one of the two dayss each year that Trinity Site is open to the public, the first Saturday in April and October. It's on the list of places to which I would like to return, right up there with Iceland, Vietnam, and Cambodia. So many places, so little time.

On the Road Again...

I'm in El Paso, Texas at the moment, in a very nice suite (a complimentary upgrade possibly because it was what was ready when I appeared and asked to check in early) at the Wyndham Hotel across the short-term parking lot from the terminal at the El Paso International Airport. I fly home tomorrow, leaving at the somewhat ungodly hour of 6:48 a.m. That's why I'm at the Wyndham, a class above the hotel at which I would normally stay.

I've been in New Mexico, visiting with some friends I met in an online quilting group to which I belong. Some of them, I had met before, and others I was meeting in person for the first time. I've met up with Diane, from Vancouver, Canada, several times. I first met MJ, from Dallas, Texas, two years ago, the same time I met Sarah, the superwoman in whose beloved hometown, Las Cruces, we were meeting. I also met Carla two years ago. The newly met friends, Terri and Gilly, are from Western Australia, and were on a whirlwind three-and-a-half week tour of the US, starting in San Francisco and ending in Los Angeles, with stops in Seattle, Chicago, Rhode Island (where Terri's brother lives), Boston, New York, and New Mexico in between.

And now it's later, after a dinner of free munchies at the bar's happy hour, and I'm thinking that it would be better to shower and get ready for tomorrow's 4:30 wakeup call. I'll try to post more about the trip--with photos even!--in the next few days in between a couple of retirement functions, a gallery show I really want to see before it end on Friday, and heading to Abingdon, VA, for the Sunday black belt test of a dear friend. Yeah, it's a busy time of year here.

Afterthoughts, Icelandic and Wintery

Spring has sprung here, with warmer than usual temperatures the last several days, in the Fahrenheit 70s as opposed to the high 50s normal for this time of year. I shall not complain. A few days ago, on March 17, there was no snow to be seen in our yard (I could see a bit on the neighbor's lot). The last time this was true was December 17, meaning that we spent three months, or the duration of the winter season, with snow. While I remember this happening more than once while I was growing up in Montana, I can't remember its ever happening here in Central Virginia. This morning, the daffodils around the mailbox burst into bloom all at once, celebrating spring in all its finery.

Still, I can't help but feel wistful for the winter solitude of Iceland, a feeling perhaps strengthened by the news this weekend of a volcano's erupting on the Eyjafjallajokull glacier southeast of Reykjavik. We did not actually visit Eyjafjallajokull. Reykjavik was the closest we got, but after hearing our guide talk about the volcano that had erupted near Lake Myvatn, this eruption seems a bit more real than it might have two months ago.

Since I'm feeling wistful for Iceland, it seemed appropriate to offer a few more observations from our time there and perhaps even a photo or two. I am always interested in learning about the local educational system, in particular when students start learning another language. In Iceland, the magic age is around 10, at the end of the fourth of the ten years of compulsory school. This first language learned used to be Danish; now, though, it is English, with Danish coming later. Around the age of 16, or after the 10 years analogous to what we call K-12 education here in the US, students can move on to four years of "college," during which they study their choice of French or German. Depending on the chosen career path, college might be followed by "university," the length of which depends on the chosen career. In other words, by the time most students here start studying their first foreign language, an Icelandic student is working on a third and about to start a fourth. Is it any wonder US students are falling behind their peers abroad?

Completely unrelated to education, Iceland’s climate is not conducive to thunderstorms, and when one does occur it’s probably analogous to genuine snow falling at DisneyWorld. Living in a part of the country very susceptible to thunderstorms (I heard thunder this morning, as a matter of fact), I found it amazing to ponder a country without them. It certainly rains a lot there but without the lightning and thunder we so often have here.

I mentioned in the last post I put up while in Iceland that we had ridden Icelandic horses through a lava field before soaking in the Blue Lagoon as the snow fell. The day after that we went shopping as the snow continued to fall. The next day, the snow was still falling as we went to the airport to head for home. Here’s those three days in photos, starting with the ride through the lava field. That's the husband on the horse right in front of me. And here I am with my horse when we took a break to let the horses graze a bit.
The shots of the Blue Lagoon were less than impressive given that they were taken at night and in the snow. That's me a ways out in the water. They had signs in the locker room advising covering one's hair in a swim cap or hair conditioner, so I opted for the cap, though it's slightly less than fetching when it comes right down to it.
Travel always seems to drive home how attitudes differ in different countries. You'd never see this image advertising a cafe here. I loved the color of the corrugated metal siding on this house. From the central shopping area, you can pretty much orient yourself in respect to this church. I have always loved cemeteries, so walking through this one in the snow was something we just had to do. I loved the color of these flowers on the white snow. If you've read Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, who knows who you might expect to meet walking out of this scene. This scene just seemed so very peaceful. I can only presume that this was planted right atop the grave for a reason, perhaps to make sure the dead person stayed there? Remember the chair built for the world's tallest man? It was big even for the two of us. And the bed designed for him was just as relatively big if you compare the end to where my feet are sticking up.
Note the position of the satellite dish. It really is almost pointed down.
This sign went up in the elevator on the second day of the snow. Finally, a few shots from the airport and on the plane. Here's a sign from a shop at the airport, a blurb for the latest by the Icelandic author I mentioned in an earlier post. There were moments when it stopped snowing and the sun came out. This was one of those. Farewell! Somehow, the name "Iceland" fit the land we left a bit better than it fit the land to which we had arrived a week earlier. Remember the Icelandic language lessons on the seat backs of Icelandair jets? Here are a few more for your education and entertainment.

And on that note, I will file Iceland away with Vietnam, Cambodia, Norway, Italy, and Spain as countries to which I would really like to return. Now to balance those with all the ones I haven't yet been to that I still want to visit. Anyone up for Peru or Egypt?