I think I’m in love. :) I have never been in a city like New Orleans before, or seen a neighborhood like the French Quarter. I ended up wandering the French Quarter for most of the day that I was in New Orleans, in fact. By the time I left the city, I’d gotten: sore…
I’m in N’Awlins! It is… an astonishing mix. Dignified antebellum grande dames draped with Mardi Gras beads on their wrought-iron upper balconies sit cheek-by-jowl with sleek concrete modern banks adorned with cocky neon signs. An ornate “classical” style court building gleams internally from multiple glittering chandeliers I see winking from a side window. Looking up…
Writing this just after finishing the cavern tour in Sonora. Carlsbad’s caverns are much larger, of course, and the rock formations are more… clustered by type, I think, over that span. For example, the deepest the Sonora cave goes is about 150′, where Carlsbad’s underground visitor center (which is not actually the deepest point) gave…
Friday the 13th has always been a lucky day for me, oddly enough. I got my first horse on Friday the 13th, and 13 was my number when I had my biggest win with him while showing. This Friday the 13th was no exception to that rule for me, since that was when I stumbled…
I am become a connoisseur of mountains. ;) Most California mountains are sneaky. They slide under the roads and hillsides, laughing foggy breaths in the dusk and dawn at how well their shaggy disguises of grasses and trees work. You drive along innocently enough, occasionally noticing the clusters of rocky spines along their backs, but…
Writing this on the night of the 8th, from a wonderful little hole-in-the-wall pizza & brews place called Hot Mama’s! I’m muddy, exhausted, starving, and triumphant — I walked the lava tubes! So cool! So muddy! So in need of a washing machine at my next stop too. The township is called Duck Creek, and…
I’m sitting in a restaurant in Las Vegas as I type this, reminding myself that having a touch of heat stroke does not put oneself into the best frame of mind for analyzing one’s locale. It is smotheringly hot! I’ve lived in Texas, Florida, California, and Oklahoma, so you’d think I know how to handle…
Something just for fun today! A friend emailed me an article titled: Do we owe our human existence to the dog? (if that link is dead, try here). Here’s my emailed reply… While this information does not surprise me at all — we can see similar things happening in modern gatherer-hunter tribes today, for example…
Oh, again! Almost forgot: the bus driver on the way out to the hotel was an old Asian man, and on the way back was an old Italian man. Both of them were really nice folks, happy to help me get the right stop. It’s interesting: clearly my small rolling suitcase and my using actual…
There were some amazing names present at the conference — women whose writings I’ve read and been moved by; women I’ve read about as ground-breaking in the field. It was really nice to be able to meet them, even if some of it was just a handshake and a sincere, “Thank you so much for…