Bad on Bagpipes

A year or so ago, some friends were over for dinner, and - inexplicably - we started this list. I just rediscovered it in with some other papers, and, well, here you go:

Songs that would NOT sound good on bagpipes

Jingle Bells

Jesus Freak - dctalk

All Out of Love - Air Supply

It's My Life - Bon Jovi

I've decided to start using the phrase "That's as bad as Jingle Bells on the bagpipes". I'm hoping it'll catch on.

Summer Reading

My summer reading pile, in no particular order:

Here in Daytona - not that I envision a ton of time for reading, but better to have too much reading material than not enough - I have brought the Lewis, the Miller, the Johnson, and the Kirn. I'm halfway through the thin-though-dense Lewis and am sorry for having put him down for his fiction for so long. And I'm sort of glad for having lost the copy from the library over Spring Break - I'm reading The Four Loves at just the right time.

That Time of Year

It's that time of year, again (already). Late spring - marked by an acceleration to the finish line, exacerbated by a late spring break.

As we ready ourselves for the season, some Kahlil Gibran:

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.

And he said:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they do not belong to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Though manifest not of our physical selves, our arrows are just as much a part of us as we them. We are bows, built to bend, but not break. We flex in His hands, entrusted to do that to which He calls us. Designed to launch, yet retaining some resonance from the shot. May we trust the Archer's eye, and trust the Air to carry those arrows toward their targets.

3...2...1...

I finally got to see a shuttle launch all up-close-and-personal!

I often disparage the local news channel, especially after having been edited to sound like an absolute ignoramus, but one thing they do really well is NASA coverage. I just happened to see, sometime on Friday, that there was a shuttle mission scheduled to launch early Monday morning. And, most fortuitously, I am on Spring Break right now, so even if it had been scrubbed, I still had a week's worth of early mornings available! AND it was scheduled for 621a, about 30 minutes before sunrise. I thought I had totally missed my last chance for a night launch in August, but no! Hooray! So I immediately made plans to drive to the coast. Which brings me to this morning:

At 200a, after grading papers for what seems like a fortnight, I made myself a travel-mug of coffee, packed up a bag and a lawn chair, and drove off towards Titusville. I was aiming for Space View Park, across the Indian River from Cape Canaveral. It took about 40 min to get there from home (not so on the way back...), and at T-2.5h, there were a fair number of people out and about, but I was able to get free parking within a couple blocks. Before I even got to the park, I noticed a grassy area right up on the water in front of a condo building, and with some prime seating available. So I dropped anchor there, between two palm trees, about ten feet from the shore, with a clear view of the floodlit launch pad. The only thing missing was the park's live control-room audio, but I did have (read: steal) someone's free wireless signal, which meant I could follow the launch blog. And besides, once things get going, you know it!

There was a quiet electricity running through the still-small crowd, and people of all ages were sleeping on blankets on the ground, waiting. The hush was almost reverential. I had packed my ipod, a book, and some knitting to pass the time, but after being up for almost 24h by that point, all I wanted to do was sleep. I was wearing pants, a sweatshirt, and a turtleneck for the 50-something-degree air, and as I was getting out of the car, I thought "why do I need my blanket, it's fine out?". Fool. I know exactly when the lowest temperature of the day happens (right before sunrise), and I hadn't taken into consideration any shoreline breeze when I made that judgment. So, without the expectant giddiness of an imminent shuttle launch, I'd have been pretty miserably cold and sleepy. I managed to nap in my lawn chair for about 20 minutes or so. Checked the blog - everything was still go for launch. There had been some concern about fog and low cloud, but it was perfectly clear. I curled back up in my chair and got another 20 min of sleep. I woke up just in time to miss the ISS passing overhead (grrr). I looked behind me and the crowd around me had quadrupled and had a completely different energy about it. 20 minutes to launch! In what seemed like hardly any time at all, I heard a shouted countdown from one of the viewers somewhere behind me!

I hadn't taken much photographic equipment - no tripod, no telephoto, etc, just my phone (for video) and handheld SLR - because I wanted to actually experience the launch, not "watch" it with my nose stuck behind a viewfinder, trying to get a good shot. I partially succeeded. The photographer in me, though, couldn't help herself (especially with all the tripods set up around me), and I wound up still trying to make some pictures. My photos turned out pretty crappy, but they're not meant to be art, just mere snapshots for my own memory.

It lifted off, and, boy, is the view across the water at night something else! While the first splashes of pre-dawn blue spread across the eastern sky, Discovery rose pretty high pretty fast. It still took a while (a couple minutes) for the sound to finally reach us. It was unlike anything I'd ever heard. A constant, rolling rumbling thunder that just kept going. Spread out over us like ripples in a pond. It's amazing what 30-miles-closer-to-the-coast does for viewing. Shuttles always take off towards the northeast, away from home; as it gets downrange, it gets harder and harder to see, especially with the curvature of the earth and houses and trees obscuring the horizon. Not so on the ocean! We could see it clearly and high for a long time. Even solid-booster-rocket separation (for which everyone cheered - so cute!). As it continued to slip the surly bonds of Earth, this lovely comet-like corona formed around it. I'd never seen anything like it before.

And of course, all that water-vapor spewed into the mesosphere makes for some stunning clouds, particularly after sunset. One of the most beautiful launches (and subsequent clouds) happened about a year ago, just after sunset, also with Discovery. Same lighting, except back-lit instead of from the front. As the sun sank below the horizon to us, it left just the top part of the exhaust trail brightly illuminated, then splashed it with reds and oranges against the inky sky. This time, as the shuttle rose, the sun spot-lit the very top of the trail and continued to illuminate more and more of it as the sky grew lighter.

I stuck around for about 20 minutes after the launch, knowing that trying to get into my car and head back out was a ridiculous idea. Besides, I hadn't actually made it down to the park, and I was praying for a bathroom. I wandered over to the park, which was clearing out, and I was really glad I'd set up camp where I did. The park is nice, but I feel like I had a better viewpoint with far fewer trees and people. I milled around, taking pictures of the filaments of cloud that were starting to tangle and twist in the jet stream. Finally joined the bathroom line, then headed back to the car.

I'm eternally grateful for the GPS in my dashboard, and I realized that I could probably circumvent some traffic if I headed south and joined up with I-95 one exit south of the one I took. Foolish move #3 (#1 was the 24oz of coffee in my system with no bathroom nearby, in case you were keeping track). The on-ramp to I-95 for which I was heading was closed. I don't know what the deal was, but I wound up taking a circuitous route involving SR50 through Christmas, 520 back southeast to the Beeline (SR528) and finally home. After about 2.5 hours! In retrospect, I'd have slept in my car for an hour, grabbed breakfast in Titusville as the rest of the tourists were clearing out, and gotten home at the same time a bit better-rested. Lessons learned.

Nevertheless, I can't wait for the next one! There are only about four left, if we're lucky. I can't help but wonder what will befall the area when the space program changes with the demise of the Space Shuttle program. The Space Coast already seems like a bit of an anachronism, what with the low-rise mid-century ranch homes and this late-60s mystique about the place. You expect to see government engineers with short-sleeve dress-shirts, pocket protectors, and heavy black-framed glasses working in fluorescent-lit offices with acoustical tile and green metal file cabinets. Very I Dream of Jeannie. Some of my compatriots in the bathroom line were of an age that made me think they'd lived on the coast since the inception of the space program, when their husbands (or maybe even they, but that glass ceiling hasn't been cracked for that long), took a job at the insistence of a young president on an otherwise sleepy beach in Florida some forty years ago. They'd probably seen hundreds of launches - rockets and shuttles, successes and failures - and yet they still come out at dawn for one more before the fleet is mothballed.

I have mixed emotions about the shuttering of shuttle flight with no viable alternative, save for some private-venture upstarts. I'm all for progress, and I know that programs get scuttled and funding gets cut, but the space program seems to be dying a slow graceless death even as Discovery gracefully takes wing above it all. Is the Last Frontier nothing but boring to us now? Maybe it's a symptom of a greater trend - as we look around more at ourselves and less to the heavens.

Required Reading

It's Spring Break (finally!), and I have an overly ambitious reading list. To which I will permit myself to attend once my term grades are finished. At this rate - and now that I've trimmed it a little - I've got to read about a book per day - ambitious indeed! But I think I will plan to spend a couple days at the beach, which will make for good reading time.

Tea With Hezbollah, Ted Dekker

The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran

Orthodoxy, GK Chesterton

The Four Loves, CS Lewis

Miracles, CS Lewis

Up in the Air, Walter Kirn

Atonement, Ian McEwan

To Own a Dragon, Donald Miller

The Curve of Binding Energy, John McPhee

The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion

I know I've poo-poohed CS Lewis and his fiction for so long, but now I want to read some of his apologetics. Some of these books have lingered on my to-read list for so long, others are first-in-first-outs. Such is the nature of my bookcase. And with the gigantor Alachua-County book sale coming up this month, I'd be doing well to get some of these read before I inevitably buy more.

I've been doing a lot of just-in-time reading lately. I'll pick up a book, read a few pages, and then have occasion touse what I read in conversation not a day or so later. Today, another interesting synchronicity. Almost two years ago, I heard a a reading at the wedding of two friends - part of which I made note in my notebook. I always intended to ask them what it was from but never did (and I see them all the time!), and my paraphrasing didn't help me google it. After an emphatic recommendation, I requested delivery of The Prophet from the library. It arrived today. I slipped it out of the envelope and opened it to casually flip through it, when right there, on the first page I open, in the middle of the page, is the very passage I noted at the wedding:

"And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course."

The Scent of Trees

This morning, on the way to school, I was singing in my car - as I do, loudly - when I drove through the orange groves on either side of the road. The scent of springtime orange blossoms is enough for you to stop your car in the street, but all I did was stop mid-verse to breathe in. Later, on the way home, passing the trees again, the stirred-up atmosphere made for more fleeting fragrance - far less intense than the heavy velvet of scent hanging in the still and dark air. But just enough of a flirtation to remind you of its presence. However long it lasts each year.

I am reasonably certain heaven must smell like an orange grove in blossom on a warm spring evening.

Or else like a eucalyptus grove.

The scent of central-coast eucalyptus was even more pervasive, in that it is fragrant year-round, not just for a season. Always present. The cool, humid air forever thick with it. It reminds you where you are. It reminds you of where you used to be.

Category 2

Several of my current favorite songs all have the word "hurricane" in the lyrics. I like to think it's not because of my meteorological background (after all, it's my husband with the tropical experience), and that it's all a mere coincidence, but, really, who am I kidding...

How He Loves, Jeremy Riddle

Listen

Winter Snow, Audrey Assad

Watch

Crashing Down, Mat Kearney

Listen

and just for good measure, even though it's not currently in my On-The-Go:

Hurricane Eye, Paul Simon

Listen

I also think Jars of Clay's latest album The Long Fall Back To Earth is brilliant and that you should listen to it. Repeatedly. And also mewithoutYou's latest, particularly The Fox, The Crow, and The Cookie.

NYC, Day 1

Had a mixed-bag kind of day today.

It started rather inauspiciously when I discovered that I had lost my favorite rhinestone airplane brooch from my winter coat. I halfway recall having it catch on something last night, but I can't remember whether it was at MCO or EWR or anywhere in between, but I don't suppose it matters. And a quick scan of the internets shows no duplicate on offer anywhere. I wish I didn't attach such significance to stuff and things, but I really miss that pin.

Anyhow, I had been looking forward to my day out on my own in the city all week. I hadn't done much in the way of trip-planning, so I was mostly planning to re-visit places from previous trips. It has been just about three years since I was last here (Spring Break 2007), which is by far the longest I'd gone between visits in the last ten years or so. Previously, I'd managed to make trips here at least once a year. Anyhow, my point is that I didn't have much on my to-go list that were new. Which is perhaps what set me up for the day I had.

I planned quite an ambitious schedule. I knew that once Mr. Jenspin arrived, we likely wouldn't go at quite a breakneck speed, nor would he be terrifically interested in endless thrift-shop shopping or art museums. So, I crammed my solo day in the city full of those very things. I decided to get an early start, because I didn't know how long it would take to get into the city from New Jersey - this being the first time ever I wouldn't be staying with my Manhattan friend. I stayed up relatively last night, researching opening hours and directions and addresses and filling in my new fancypants city book. Plus I'm operating on a significant sleep deficit, so I knew it was going to be an exhausting day.

At some point, I took out my camera to take a picture. I had "charged" my camera battery the night before leaving so I wouldn't have to tote my charger with me. Well, when I pulled my camera out to take a picture at some point in the morning, I discovered that my charger had effectively DIScharged my battery. So now I had no camera, instead, I now had a couple useless pounds to tote around all day, taking up space in my bag. I had to resort to my phone camera, which meant no creative control and, thus, no artsy shots of Grand Central like I was planning. :( It did, however, offer instant uploads. At least it has that going for it. At one point, I popped into a camera shop and explained my predicament, and asked them their price on a charger. Admittedly, I was hoping the guy would offer to just charge it for 10 minutes or so and send me on my way, but no. Silly midwestern altruism, sure, but it certainly would have been appreciated. Because I had no intention of spending $50 on a charger.

Across the street from the curmudgeonly photography shopkeeper was a delightful little Belgian cafe that had packaged Liege waffles in the window. I ducked in and bought one as my afternoon snack. I probably would have enjoyed lunch there, but I was on the move!

I discovered last night that the Strand bookstore had closed their Annex location downtown, and I didn't think Century 21 alone was a sufficient draw downtown, so I aimed for their 12th and Broadway location. I liked the Annex better because it just seemed like there was a better selection, reminiscent of the stacks at university - endless numbers of rows of musty old books and utterly delightful. Anyhow, I asked them about an obscure author, and they have never had any of his books in stock, ever. Wow. That's impressive! Anyhow, I had been hoping for that (again, high expectations) , so it was a bit of a bust when they didn't have any. I looked around a bit, bought a Paulo Coelho novel for $4.95, and saw a book that looked terrifically interesting, but I didn't know that a) it's very recently published and b) it was a pretty good price until I got back to the hotel and looked it up on amazon. So I will go back and get it later this weekend.

I continued on my long loop around the east and west village, stopping at a couple shops, but again, either finding them shuttered and moved (Broadway Panhandler), or without what I was seeking (Pearl River Mart). As I walked around, I just chose a route based mostly on the direction of the Walk sign at an intersection, and I found myself on streets I knew, seeing shops and restaurants in which I'd been before. Pleased at the familiarity, I pressed onward towards a Housing Works thrift shop. I had been in one of their stores (and bookstores) before, and they have a really well-edited collection of items in lovely condition. I didn't recall that they commanded such a high price, however. I love to look for neckties at thrift shops - they're always so cheap. Here, though, I found some lovely items, but at $25 or $40, it was hardly thrift! Another frustration.

Popped into a fountain pen store - the likes of which I wish we had at home. Everything from Pilot Varsity to Montblanc. Bought myself inks and pencil lead: a bottle of Private Reserve in Sonic Blue, a pretty tin of J. Herbin cartridges in Rouge Bourgogne, and some red and blue Pentel mechanical-pencil lead!

Down the street from the pen place was Grand Central Terminal. I had had grand designs of getting artful shots in the station, but alas, I had to settle for camera-phone pictures. Did pop into Penzey's, the Official Spice Supplier to our household for some curry powder, garlic powder, cinnamon, and whole nutmeg.

I really treasure days of solo travel. It's very likely a function of my only-child-ness. Since I travel (or, rather, used to travel) a fair amount for work, I often have occasion to explore new places on my own. Even when my husband and I travel together, our interests are sufficiently different that we'll usually take a day to have separate adventures and then enjoy telling each other about them over dinner. Anyhow, I also don't mind going to a movie on my own, though eating out solo is always a little awkward (even with a book). Nevertheless, I do travel well by myself. Somewhere south of Abingdon Square, heading uptown towards the library (in which I want to live one day), I realized that even if I'm by myself, I'm never truly alone. I tote around with me the people whom I love. I see something and think, "Oh, she'd really love this." "I can't wait to tell him all about that." I also love presents (mostly giving them), and so I'm constantly on the lookout for treats to take back home. Some kind of token to show them that I was thinking of them while absent from them. Postcards often fill the same role - particularly with how much I love mail. Another benefit of solo travel is the freedom to not compromise. I can indulge myself in ridiculous itineraries without having the pressure of a companion to whom I feel I owe a well-crafted experience.

Anyhow.

It was getting on to afternoon, so I had a decision to make. The Met or The Guggenheim. I had been to the former about a decade earlier, shortly after taking my first art-history course as a freshman in college. I have never been to the latter. I wound up at the Met. I figured I wanted to see "Big" art. The instantly-recognizable pieces.

London's National Gallery is incredible for its collection of recognizable artworks. It's also has a more friendly layout, with a map and labeled rooms. The European Paintings rooms were not well-outlined, and very difficult to navigate. Well, after plundering around European Masters, I popped into the shop, where I was reminded of their American art, which includes Madame X by John Singer Sargent, one of my favorite paintings. So I tried to find my way over to the American Wing. Once I finally found my way there (no easy task), I learned that the American Wing would be closed for renovations until 2011. Grrr. So, though I saw some fantastic art (including a phenomenal collection of drawings by Bronzino), I still had a swing-and-a-miss at the museum.

Earlier, my husband had messaged me to tell me that he had jumped an earlier flight, so I had to cut short my dinner plans. Well, cut my dinner plans, period. And to pick him up at the airport, I would need to get back to the hotel, grab a friend's car, and drive to EWR. This was the second-most intimidating drive of my entire life! (First was driving a manual transmission overnight in the wee hours of the morning through the hills of Missouri and into Kansas, as we moved to California. #3 was a pre-dawn drive on the opposite side (Between Melbourne and Adelaide) to take pictures in sunrise light. Eeep - the NJ Turnpike and toll booths without easypass and the very real likelihood of making a wrong turn and ending up in a tunnel into the city... I realized how dependent I am on my own car's navigation system. I looked up directions to the airport, but neglected to figure out how to get back to the hotel. All's well that ends well, certainly. It just took a phone call to a friend with a laptop and Google Maps to make sure we stayed in New Jersey and didn't wind up in Pennsylvania or Manhattan.

Today's soundtrack: an eclectic mix of club/dance tracks to which I would never have listened, had someone not given them to me.

In the Kitchen

Spent a ton of money at Whole Foods tonight, but the company and subsequent dinner was totally worth it.

So far tonight, what's come out of my kitchen:

Saveur Lamb Burgers

A riff on these, sans mustard and sauteed onions. Amazingly good on toasted wheat buns with feta, cucumber, and a sprinkle of lemon juice. Served with Israeli couscous and a steamed artichoke.

Roasted-Banana Browned-Butter Banana Bread

I have a hard time thinking any banana bread is going to be better than my mom's, but I'm willing to give this one a go.

And some organic whole-milk yogurt is inoculating as I type.

Tomorrow, I will make a week's worth of scones to go with my double cream and apricot jam. Probably grill a teriyaki pork tenderloin and some fresh pineapple spears. And some felafel in pita that I've been craving for a few days now.

As much as I adore computing in the kitchen, I figure it's just a matter of time before I have to explain the cake flour in my laptop to my sysadmin...

Long Weekend

Even though (because?) I have tons of work to do this weekend, I'm really glad for the holiday weekend. This morning, I worked against some of my sleep deficit, which grew significantly this week and left me vulnerable to an opportunistic cold virus. I slept until 930a, which was perfect - long enough for good rest, but not too long that I felt I squandered the morning.

Yesterday's grey all-day rain gave way to clear-and-cool today, and I spent far too much of it indoors. As the sun sank, I decided to follow the very advice I gave to someone earlier this afternoon. I took a 45-minute walk around the neighborhood and down to the lake. Meanwhile, I got to see/hear some of the early-evening international arrivals and departures on 35R.

Unfinished

Three weeks ago, I stumbled into a conversation with my last-period philosophers about the nature of teaching and why I choose to teach when I could make (and have made) way more money doing something else. One student asked me how much money it would take for me to leave teaching and return to research, and I told him honestly that it would take a lot - if not an infinite amount. Because I certainly don't teach for the money. I left it at that, that afternoon, and we got onto another topic, but I felt like I was hardly scratching the surface. Then, that very evening, not 3h later, I'm reading Colossians 3 in a discussion about work as worship (avad in Hebrew), and there it is. The fundamental underpinnings of my teaching philosophy.

23 Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, 24 since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.

Exactly one week later, as I'm driving in my car, something reminded me of another conversation I've always felt was left unfinished.

Three years ago, someone very dear to me asked why, as a Christian, I would want to be bound by rules, to be subservient to God, when I could be free to do as I please. And I don't feel I gave him a sufficient answer. I said something about the importance of the relationship, and to honor that relationship, to please our Creator, I do as He asks. Because a faith in God isn't about restrictions and rules - He gives us some because He's a loving Father who cares for His children and wants the best for them (the same way our parents would tell us not to touch the hot stove) - it's about Love. Following the rules doesn't achieve salvation, after all. Our mutual love with God does. And our response to His overwhelming love is our obedience to His commands - the greatest of which is love.

I choose to live within boundaries and there, paradoxically, is where I find my greatest freedom. Because living according to God's will and commands, I find, increasingly, affords us freedom from the broken trappings of this world. Instead of freedom to do whatever I like, I am free from so much more - and spared the heartache and want and separation and regret and ramifications that come with the freedom to do whatever I please. Sure, I can do anything I want. I choose not to. Sin enslaves us, not God's commands. God could have easily designed humans to be mindless drones that worship and serve Him at His control, but He instead gave us the freedom to choose Him and His ways, contrary to our very flesh and nature. Even if we are sloppy with it, how much more meaningful is our decision to love Him, then, when the option not to is on the table?

1 Peter 2:16: Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God.

In Exodus 21:5-6, the slave is given the choice between "freedom" or remaining in the service of a loving master. And in doing so, he is adopted into the family as an heir. Galatians 4:3-9 puts it into the context of Jesus.

So also, when we were children, we were in slavery under the basic principles of the world. But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba, Father." So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir. Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. But now what you know God - or rather are known by God - how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable principles? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again?

And thus, my choice gives me an eternal inheritance far beyond worldly wealth.

Well. As time goes on, I feel strangely shy about trying to resume these conversations. I don't know why - it's admittedly silly for someone so prone to non sequitur! Instead, I feel some strange need to throw it all out into the universe, on a blog - I don't even know who reads it - partly for my own closure, partly to atone for having left them unfinished in the first place. But mostly, I suspect, for reasons I may never know.

Sponge-o-Rama!

Today, I took my parents on a Gulf-Coast Adventure. We drove 2+ hours to Tarpon Springs, a touristy community north of Tampa, known for its Greek-immigrant population, drawn originally for its sponge industry. The spongebeds are mostly depleted, but the old-Florida tacky-fabulous "museums" and sponge shops remain amidst Greek restaurants and bakeries.

We arrived late in the morning, and scored free parking (under a wire popular with local fowl, who proceeded to foul my car). We went first to get tickets for a boat tour of the Anclote River and out to the Gulf, stopping at a barrier island (Anclote Key) for seashelling.

From there, we went to lunch at Mykonos, where we had potato patties (patatekeftedes or something similar), flavored with lemon, parsley, and feta, followed by souvlaki, Greek salad, and pan-fried shrimp. Too stuffed for dessert, we wandered the main strip, in and out of shops, wishing I had any desire for a natural sponge. They just look gross. It's a textural thing, but they just look icky. I'll take my hot pink synthetic bath poof over a natural sponge any day, sorry Tarpon Springs.

Anyhow, we puttered around until boarding time. Off we went! It was a slow tour out of the river in the no-wake zone, but we got to see several large birds and some dolphin frolicking (and later, fishing).

We motored on out to the key, were we went ashore and collected seashells. I don't know why, exactly, I collected so many, but I will find something to do with them. There were so many, everywhere! Way more than the east coast beaches. We were warned against taking any with live critters in them, partly because we should leave living creatures go about their business, and partly because of the dreadful funk they would create. I noticed a bit of funk coming from my trunk (the whole island emanated that scent). Later, at home, when rinsing, I discovered that I brought a couple of the wee beasties home. :-/

Anyhow, following our return to the dock, we drove out to Sunset Beach, but sunset was obscured by some high clouds, so we took some pictures, watched an engagement-photo session, and were entertained by a trio of high-schoolers who lost a football in a palm tree and subsequently lost about eight large rocks in futile attempts to knock it loose. Watch your heads under palm trees in the middle of Sunset Beach, Tarpon Springs, everyone. Anyhow, we took off towards downtown Tampa, where I knew of a Taco Bell with Chili Cheese Burritos. We navigated there, only to find the Taco Bell... well, no Taco Bell. It is now some pizza place. The up side was the car wash next door, where for 5 bucks, I got my car cleaned (including bird-poop-pressure-wash and hand dry.

Not a bad way to spend a day.

Kitsch Tally:

Pressed Penny Count: 2 (well, okay, 3 because the first one didn't turn out well)

Wacky Wavy Inflatable Arm-Flailing Tube Man Count: 4

O-Rama Count: 1

Shameless Commerce

What I'm telling those that ask:

13 weeks of pottery studio time! Who knew this existed?? Would be so fun for summer.

Rain boots! I like these and these.

New Dansko clogs. Mine were a Christmas gift several years ago, and I keep leaving sole fragments wherever I walk. At this point, re-soling is likely out of the question. These are what I have. I don't understand how these are different. But these are really cool!

ipod headphones

New David Gray album

Old Brandon Heath album

Le Creuset Enameled Cast Iron 5-qt Oval French Oven. Like my stand mixer, this is destined to be on my "why didn't I own this sooner" list, I suspect. Or maybe 6.75-qt. I don't know. Not picky on color, but I don't love the orange/red. I should probably haunt LC outlets, Tuesday Mornings, or Marshalls.

Levenger Empyrean Ink

10x10x3-inch and 6x6x3-inch square cake pans. A turntable too.

HK socks!

Lush Snow Fairy shower gel and solid perfume. Also Candy Fluff perfume.

The wide-angle lens I rented this past summer.

Once Upon a Time...

...I had a blog.

It's Thanksgiving Break. And with this prolonged sabbath, I intend to rest. And read. And write. Though I need to read lab reports and write grades on papers, a friend has convinced me to feel little guilt about taking a deserved time of rest.

Tomorrow's Destination: Tarpon Springs.

Peace of Wild Things

The Peace of Wild Things

Wendell Berry

When despair grows in me

and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water,

and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

No Audience

...the world requires no audience, no witnesses...

(Conor Oberst, I Must Belong Somewhere)

At sundown, I often think it strange that the waves continue crashing, the mountains keep on standing, even after they dissolve into inky black. All the beauty on earth is routinely hidden.

The mere fact that I can't see it doesn't keep it from happening. Which immediately feels extraordinarily self-absorbed; I know that these things don't exist exclusively for my pleasure. (Sure, they do, to some extent.^{1 ,2})

Hearing the ocean - but not seeing it - always reminds me of my size in the universe. And the beauty in the promise of a sunrise.

Science Scouts

I'll admit I really only wanted to be in Girl Scouts for the badges.  Okay, and maybe the cookies.  Because you could get a badge for selling cookies!

So, much delight to come across this!

Here's my sash!