(phoenix -> DC) home

i left the phoenix conference before it was over so that i could meet justin at IAH and fly with him back to DC. normally we pick someplace exotic to travel to, but this winter i just couldn't afford any more travel. so we stayed in DC and did exciting things like replacing my tire and windshield wipers. winter fun. for christmas he gave me 1 gig of memory so i could take pictures again with my phone, but the phone can't handle anymore than 128 mb. finding a store that sells 128 mb sony duo memory chips wasn't easy.

(phoenix) snooks!

there were some surprise snooks at the phoenix conference! jen snook and bella snook! what a treat! here are kelly and bella through my crap phone camera.


second cousins or something like that.

(kingman, az) blah-blah-blah

blah-blah-blah

words by ira gershwin
music by george gershwin

i've written you a song,
a beautiful routine; (i hope you like it.)
my technique can't be wrong,
i learned it from the screen. (i hope you like it.)
studied all the rhymes that all the lovers sing;
then just for you i wrote this little thing.

blah, blah, blah, blah moon,
blah, blah, blah above,
blah, blah, blah, blah croon,
blah, blah, blah, blah love.

tra la la la, tra la la la la,
merry month of may,
tra la la la, tra la la la la,
'neath the clouds of gray.

blah, blah, blah your hair,
blah, blah, blah your eyes;
blah, blah, blah, blah care
blah, blah, blah, blah skies.

tra la la la, tra la la la la,
cottage for two,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah
darling with you!

----
i found this old sheet music magazine at my grandma's from oct 1977. i would have liked to have known the gershwins.

(orlando -> phoenix - kingman) to visit mah

the most notable thing about the visit to mah's (besides the fact that it took 15 hours to travel there from orlando) was the next door neighbor's christmas display inside her mobile home. it was a huge, three tier christmas villiage (metroplex?) with fountains and trains and planes and singing choirs and trees and snow and people and houses and stores and basically everything you can imagine. i wonder if my grandma and i were the only people besides her and her handyman to see it. it baffled me. she also had a very elaborate nativity scene set up on a long folding table outside her door. again, i tried to snap a photo, but...memory full.

(dc -> orlando) SED

post after the fact:

devon and i were honored to perform at the Baha'i SED conference. Jack Lenz, who was coordinating the artistic presentations, found a way to fit us in. adam crossley sang a silly song about peanut butter and invited me to play some cheesy string pads with him. he can always make the audience laugh.

i would have had a lot more fun hanging out in florida if i hadn't been so concerned about failing my classes. in the end, i got an A and a C-, but both were generous grades. i wish i'd taken pictures, but my phone is always out of memory.

*(dc) two spiral cement truck citings

although i have no photographic evidence, i have seen two spiral cement trucks here in dc recently. the first was while sitting at breakfast with devon last week. busboys and poets is right next to a construction site so there are always lots o' cement trucks, which makes this my favorite breakfast spot. this truck had an honest-to-goodness spiral-painted drum, but it wasn't a tight spiral. very loose, more like curved stripes, blue and black. i ran wildly through the restaurant trying to get my camera to come on and get a photo, but...as usual...camera too slow.

the second was yesterday walking home from work. of course, i'd forgotten my phone, so there was no wild running-down-the-street-chasing-traffic-and-fiddling-with-handheld-device scene. but this one was the coolest i've seen. it was an old faded yellow drum with a slightly darker yellow spiral that looked like it had been painted by hand or maybe less faded where a huge spiral sticker had once been - sort of how it might look if i went out one night to vandalize cement trucks. i loved it. and this one was spinning. it was perfect and beautiful. without the stress of having to take a photo, i just admired it as it drove by and watched it as it spun.

and afterwards i closed my eyes and thought of my friend's dad. i never knew him, but cement trucks will now always hold a twinge of sadness alongside the joy.

*(greenbelt) goddard culture photoessay pt 6

my office stuff arrived from JSC a couple weeks ago on two pallets. at least 4 different people now have made reference to these pallets blocking the hallway. i keep forgetting to take a picture. i haven't been able to unpack them because they were tied with thick metal straps that no pair of clips i could scrounge from building 2 labs would cut. finally, today the resident genius lab-guy showed me how to show the straps who's boss. the next step is to unbolt the wooden crate and disassemble the other one that's a bunch of boxes wrapped in plastic. this will have to wait till after xmas.

i'm so glad they treated my fragile ones gently by putting them on the very top protruding out above all the others. i guess they thought by "fragile" i meant "smash me."

*(dc) the beauty of frank zappa

"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid." - Zappa

*(greenbelt) goddard culture photoessay pt 5

more from the hallways of building 2.

(dc) fun with hank