August 2006 Archives

Giselle is soaking up the books. And then resoaking them up if she doesn't get any new ones in her clutches. We picked up the full set of A Series of Unfortunate Events for her when we celebrated our Anniversary last January. eBay rules. Boy was she bug-eyed and excited when she opened that box up.

She was in the middle of re-reading Where the Red Fern Grows and The Two Towers when we headed to Oklahoma last week. While we were there, we hit the Elk City Denny's more than a couple times because we were on perpetual Arizona Dinner Time, and everything else closes at 9 PM in the semi-rural plains. Somehow or other, our waitress got into a conversation with Giselle about what she was reading, and they decided they were twins separated by ten years or so. She made a few reading suggestions for Giselle to hit next, including the Anne of [insert location here] series. I ran across the series at Bookman's a couple days ago and picked them up for her. She's deep into the first book (the Green Gables one) and according to Amanda has given it a hearty thumbs up. (She's into thumbs-up and head-nodding these days.) I also snagged The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn for a hint of Twain. And then Of Mice and Men because doggonnit, I'm going to get her to read some Steinbeck.

I should also note that she wants us to move to Oklahoma. The vast, teeming number of cousins, the outdoor escapes, the farm animals, the crystál méth...oh wait. She wasn't there long enough to develop that craving. But then she encountered the dilemma of what to do about being further away from her Phoenix cousins. So we'd have to move them out somehow. Then they could all form a militia. If properly chronicled, it might make a nice series.

It's picture time!

Back in May, I attended a conference in Chicago and managed to slip away one afternoon take a walk through part of the city. This is the second city, after San Francisco that I've visited that really impressed me with the beauty and depth of the architecture. (I am not well traveled.) For whatever it's worth though, the downtowns of Phoenix, Tucson, Albuquerque and LA don't do much for me. Downtown Chicago was a pleasure to wander. Here are a few of the photos (click for larger images):

Here we have the Broken Slinky Plaza:

And yonder in the distance is the Sears Tower, to which I was headed:

I got up to the observation deck in time to catch the sunset:

As the sky darkened, the city started to glow from beneath like a rugged lump of hot charcoal catching a hint of a breeze:

The tall, pyramidish building at the top center of the photo is the John Hancock Tower. The third tallest building in the city. I walked over to it the next evening, but decided I was too tired to hang out and take pictures from its observation deck. I'm kind of sorry I didn't do that.

Things were burning pretty regularly around Flagstaff a month or so ago.

This shot shows the tongue of smoke peeling away from a big Fire in Sedona last month:

Here is a slurry bomber drawing a bead on a fire that started in the middle of Flagstaff, a couple miles from where I work:

This is a fire we came across near the Sunset Point rest stop while driving down to Phoenix last month:

This is a shot of the Belt of Venus rising over one of the astronomy observing sites I use at Anderson Mesa:

Here we have your basic lightning storm from the front porch:

A couple weeks ago, my sister, Jennifer and her significant other, Matt came up for a visit and we drove off to Lockett Meadow for a hike. This is pretty much at the core of where the summer thunderstorms like to blow up and I was wondering what it would be like to race with convection. Well, pretty stinking scary is what it was like. I know that getting hit by lightning is like the gold standard for rare events and all, but that doesn't help much when you're sprinting down the muddy trail with hail pellets lodging in your ears while you count the distance to each lightning strike in hundred yard increments. The best part was the drive back down the cliffy road in the blinding rain and hail, trying to race erosion down this crumbling dirt scarp while the guys with mud-caked Jeeps are Cap'n Dan-ing the other way to meet the tip of the lightning rod. And you and your joke-of-a-car Honda are just so much debris in the road to be scaled on the way to the top. We were all pretty wound up and mostly glad to be alive when we got back. I'm thinking maybe the library next time.

Speaking of which, here is a shot of Amanda reading during a quiet moment before it all broke loose

(That book she's reading is all puffed up like a flaky, fluffy biscuit now :D )

We also just got back from our annual pilgrimage to Oklahoma. Pretty much next-to-nothing in the way of pictures this time, so I don't get to bore you with any of those.

Alright, that's it for me.