vacation

Where does the time go?

They say (revise that to IT IS SAID, ‘they’ will be dealt with in another post) that as you get older that time goes by more quickly. Maybe that is why I thought it was just the other day that I posted. Where does the time go, indeed. I just spent a wonderful Easter weekend with my family up in Connecticut. All of the little kids are still insisting on growing a foot between visits and losing teeth and getting cuter. Heck, one of them even got her drivers license!

But that is nothing on the feeling old thing that my daughter pulled on me on Tuesday last, when she had the audacity to turn a quarter century! 25. Amazing. She is a beautiful woman now, don’t you agree? She graduated last May and is still looking for full time work. The only jobs she’s ever left have been because she moved away from them, and even those she found hard to quit, because her boss’s would bend over backwards trying to keep her. She worked for me while in high school and I will honestly say that she was my second best employee. (It’s ok, she knows I favored her boyfriend, Ozzie.) She will do ANYTHING at this point. You won’t regret hiring her for almost anything, almost anywhere. ANYONE???)

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Checked in on Dad on the way home from Connecticut. As you may know we have an odd relationship, but he is enjoyable to be around. Keep your thoughts flowing positively in his direction, as some of those spots have re-appeared on his lungs.

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So, now that I have all this free time since I am not writing anything currently, you’d think I would have made headway in the studio, in any fashion, right? Wrong.

But, I DID open an ETSY shop. I am selling my photography. I have only two prints available at the moment, because I want to be able to order them, sign them and ship on demand, not have a large inventory. At least that is my idea for the moment. I am TOTALLY open to suggestions as to that thought, by the way. Part of that is probably my lack of confidence in what is considered ‘good’ by other people. The pictures I like are not always saleable. Or maybe that is merely the deep-seated procrastination in me.

I decided to just do it! I have been debating, plotting, thinking and ruminating over my photographs lately. I pull them up on PSE6 and play with them; I colorize, and age, and re-touch new and old images and generally have a grand time playing with them.

…but, it is time to motivate. Get moving in a direction that means something…I need to be more active in pursuing this goal; not forgetting the show deadline at PRAC every month, get down to the show, put art in the show..

…is it laziness or fear?…whichever…

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What else….hmmm. Here, click on this link to my husband’s photo page. He went crazy at the New York International Auto Show last week, and has written a very good intro and his captions are amazing (even if you think he may be speaking in tongues)

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They think a tornado touched down at the corner of Temple and Puddledock this evening…far better than last year this time, when it shredded part of our roof at work, while i was hard at work under it …(a half mile from tonight’s action…it may be time to get out of DODGE!)

OK. Think we are all caught up.

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We are off to Florida on Friday for a ten day vacation…. Beach, sand, sun, seashells…. Bring it on!

Memories are odd things…

Memories are odd things.

I went out last night, to look at the Christmas lights at the Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens. The night was chilly-not more than the mid 30’s. There was no snow (This IS Virginia), but we were bundled up in the appropriate winter-like fashion-scarves, gloves, hats and even a blanket for Evelyn’s wheelchair, so it FELT wintry. I meandered ahead and behind Timmy and his mom, taking photos (BIG surprise, right?)

So, there we are outside, in the dark, in the cold, and the lights are bright and festive. My mind traveled back to a trip I took in 1989 with my girlfriends. (No one do the math… I do not want to believe it was that long ago, ok? There is a reason I am NOT attaching any of the photos I just discovered of us back then. We were Young, and Thin, and Rene still had hair…) The five of us met up under the Kodak sign in Grand Central (I DID say it was a long time ago, right??), and there began a happy tradition of girls vacations, that last to this day in varying incarnations.

I think it was one of my best vacations ever. We traveled to Quebec City, via Amtrak and an overnight stay at a friend’s home in Montreal. And then crashed again at Rene’s a few days later when we missed the sole train home. (Were the helium-filled heart balloons the first or the last night of vacation? Who gave them to us anyway, was it Rene or Daniel? And WHY were they so nice, allowing 5 virtual strangers to crash, penniless and ill, on their doorstep??) We wandered the streets of Old Quebec, we enjoyed Bon Homme and the Winter Carnival, we marveled at the snow sculptures, and generally had a blast.

I can close my eyes and conjure Rue Petite Champlain, and the piles of snow everywhere. I can see the funicular, and recall the alleyways where art was being sold in the deep cold of February in Canada. And I understood mind over matter, because we wandered around in cold we weren’t used to, for all that we stood on the streets of New York waiting for buses in the snow all our lives. On the radio in Quebec the temperature was announced, I am sure. But as it was spoken in French, and it was calculated in Celsius, we had no clue.

And so we spent day after day outside, and warmed up at little café’s and restaurants like Au Petit Coin Breton; and settled down at night in our hostel exhausted. (And that memory is the only bad one…not the hostel itself, but the traveler from Sweden (I think)  who infected us all with a nasty foreign influenza)

Last night, we wandered into the conservatory to toast our toes and noses a bit, and the heavy moist air of the greenhouse, the tropical plants and colors spurred another memory of Canada, at the Botanical Gardens in Montreal years before our winter visit! And so summer and winter, two trips from another lifetime, flit through my brain, and imbued the lights at the garden with wonder and nostalgia.

All these years later, our vacations together still bring us to tears when we laugh about those good times. Each year we try to continue the tradition in some small way, and while the location hasn’t ever been as magical and romantic a location as Old Quebec City, the fun continues unabated, and the memories continue to be collected.

Our Most Excellent California Vacation


2008-SanDiego-131

Originally uploaded by rteest42

There are a LOT of photos, folks. Like, almost 1000. But I’ve culled that down in half, and I am currently busy looking them over to try to find the three dozen or so that REALLY say Vacation. Yeah, I know– good luck with that!

We went to San Diego a few weeks back, and I was humorously saying it was to get away from the oppressive early June heat wave of Virginia. (Over 103 for days on end with a humidity attempting to reach triple digits as well) It turns out I wasn’t joking! We stayed with three different relatives over the course of the week. One plain old doesn’t HAVE air conditioning. One has it but doesn’t really use it. And the third, well it’s a new high-rise in downtown San Diego, but they were sure to show us how to turn it off if we found it too chilly at night! Seriously, our A/C has been running since early March.

And then they were tripping over themselves, apologizing for the terrible heat, it isn’t usually so hot here, we’re sorry you came out during this weather. It was around 91, and no measurable humidity. We toughed it out!

Beyond the absolute shock at the temperature, we were pleasantly impressed by how incredibly clean downtown San Diego is and I was surprised by the civil quality of the drivers. They don’t even have traffic lights at every intersection, instead trusting drivers to obey 4-way stop signs, and allow pedestrians the right of way. A lovely, if not otherworldly, experience for this New Yorker transplanted to Virginia where there are no such things as pedestrians.

And I have found a new favorite tree, the Jacaranda. What a beautiful, although I understand, fragile tree. The blooms were a wonderful splash of color on the landscape, along with the bougainvillea. Oh, and the palm trees, and the bird of paradise, and the eucalyptus, with its fascinating peeling bark. Timmy laughed and said one entire memory card was going to be trees if I wasn’t careful.

I did remember to take some other photos as well, but sadly realized as we got on the plane that at our last stop, we never did gather Betty and Herb together at the same time to take photos with them!! Sorry!!!

Our flight out was uneventful, if not delayed bizarrely. Anoki and Michael met us and took us out to dinner at a pub called the Tilted Kilt, where Timmy had a sandwich that he then thought about the rest of the vacation. Talk about peaking early!

With our vacation clock firmly set on slow, we managed to make it to the San Diego zoo around 12:30, but had sit down and chat more with the guys at lunch first. Totally fun but definitely cut into our monkey viewing time. Next time, we should arrive at opening. And go for two days. Then, maybe we would have gotten to see everything. However, it was all good, because the baby panda, Zhen Zhen, who was seriously involved in naptime lying on a tree branch, decided to make herself more comfortable. She did some complicated gymnastics on her ‘balance beam’ and turned around and posed for us!

So, for now I am going to leave you with these shots over on Flickr to enjoy. As I edit more, I will post more!