Posted by barb on Sep 16, 2005 in
Pictures,
Travels I played hookey from the first couple sessions today and ran off to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum just a few miles outside of Tucson. Wow! Best $9 I’ve spent in a very long time. The museum is part science museum part zoo part botany lesson. It’s situated smack in the middle of the desert, and it seems that the designers of the museum tried to disturb that desert as little as possible. The trails are lined with native cacti, many of which were flowering or with fruit today. There are several live-animal exhibits — from a river otter to a black bear to praire dogs to ocelots. There are also two aviaries – one with a variety of birds and another with hummingbirds. Winnie and I spent about three hours at the museum, and were able to see much of it, though we missed the “Desert Loop Trail” with the coyotes and javelinas. I highly recommend this museum if you ever find yourself in this neck of the United States.
Tags: trip report
Posted by barb on Sep 15, 2005 in
Pictures,
Random Thoughts
Tags: trip report
Posted by barb on Sep 15, 2005 in
Pictures,
Random Thoughts
Cheesy hologram crucifix seen at El Charro in Tucson.
Tags: trip report
Posted by barb on Sep 13, 2005 in
Random Thoughts Dear Dallas-Fort Worth Airport:
I don’t care how shiny and new your hallways look. I don’t care if you have interesting-looking shops for me to waste my time and money in while waiting for a connection. I don’t even care if you have lots of fast-food restaurants so that I can grab a bite to stave off hunger during my cross-country trek.
What do I care about, then, you might ask? Clocks. For goddess sake, put a freaking clock or two around the concourse. I’m not asking for much. Just a display of the local time on a wall somewhere on the concourse other than the “departure” or “arrive” schedules (on which I couldn’t actually see the time — I assume it appeared at the bottom, which would only have been visible from a good twenty feet away, and then likely illegible at that).
This might come as a shock to you, but unlike shoppers at a random mall in middle-america, it is not a good thing for your customers to lose track of the time. I understand that shopping malls want their customers to lose themselves at the mall — spending for hours and hours without realizing that the sun has long since set and the moon is high. However, when customers to your shiny-new stores get lost in time, they delay flights.
Sure, the flights may not actually wait for the passengers, but in this post-911 age, there are rules about luggage flying to destinations before their assoicated passengers. So, in the worst-case scenario, should someone get lost in time, and completely forget about their flight (or, more likely in the D-FW case, have no access to the current time) they will cause the baggage handlers to locate the errant passengers’ luggage in the already packed cargo bay. In the not-so-worst-case scenario, said passengers will arrive, huffing and puffing, onto the plane late, and expect that their space in the overhead bins is still free.
Of course, setting aside the worst-cases, it is just nice for your passageners to know what the time is, so that they can feel free to wander through your interesting stores and grab a bite at your numerous fast-food joints, and not feel rushed to return to the gate 30 minutes before boarding just because they don’t have a watch.
So, I implore you, and many other airports across the country…nay, across the world…to feel free to liberally install clocks throughout the terminal.
Sincerely,
A not-so-worldy traveller
Tags: rant, trip report
Posted by barb on Sep 11, 2005 in
Pictures My desk is no longer safe!
Tags: toys
Posted by barb on Sep 9, 2005 in
Cute Pets,
Pictures This is Ares’ idea of a good time. He loves to help at the computer, especially when the weather is cool enough that he wants a bit of extra warmth.
Tags: pets
Posted by barb on Sep 7, 2005 in
Cute Pets,
Pictures I suspect that Ares and Artemis are rebel spies looking for weaknesses in this Star Destroyer. Sadly, I don’t think they’ll have too much trouble.
Making Star Destroyers is hard. (Read the “hard” with the appropriate whine.) The basic structure was easy enough, but I’ve tried twice to make the bottom panel work right, and it just won’t go. The Emperor wouldn’t tolerate me for long, that’s for sure.
Tags: pets, toys
Posted by barb on Sep 6, 2005 in
Movies I’ve seen a lot of movies lately that I haven’t blogged — I’m going to round most of them up here with a very brief blurb on what I thought, though these reviews may not be all that useful to anyone else. (Mainly I want to remember what movies I’ve seen…)
- Skeleton Key – Caroline Ellis takes a job as caregiver to Ben Devereaux. She begins to suspect that his condition is not the result of a stroke, but rather that he believes that he was the victim of Hoodoo. This was a fun diversion for an evening, though I saw the twist ending coming long before the end. [IMDB link for Skeleton Key]
- Miss Congeniality 2 – Not as good as the first one. As with many sequels, most of the good parts of this concept were done in the original movie, and not much can be added to the second flick. This time around, Gracie finds that she can’t do undercover work anymore, due to her celebrity from her highly televised performance in the pagent from the first movie. She takes to the talk-show circuit as the face of the FBI until her friend, the winner of the pagent, is kidnapped and held for ransom. [IMDB link for Miss Congeniality 2]
- The Jacket – this is a triller about a gulf war vet convicted of murder of a police officer that he can’t remember. He’s sent to an asylum for the criminally insane, and his treatment includes time in a morgue drawer while tied in a straight-jacket. The concept sounded interesting, but the movie itself dragged, and would likely have been better as a short film. That, and I saw the ending coming from a mile off. [IMDB link for The Jacket]
- White Noise – Jonathan Rivers’ wife has recently died, and he starts to hear from her from beyond the grave through the white noise on the radio and TV. The idea of EVPs (electronic voice phenomenon) is creepy (if scientifically unsupported), but this movie was fairly slow-moving, and didn’t really capture my attention. [IMDB link for White Noise]
- THX 1138 – Of course I had to check out George Lucus’ first feature film. This is another of the 70’s bleak look at an over-regimented future. It was based off of a short he had done in film school, and, frankly, it would have been much better as a short. Much of the filler was incomprehensible, and the ending was clear about half an hour before it came. [IMDB link for THX 1138]
Tags: reviews
Posted by barb on Sep 5, 2005 in
Biking A few weeks ago we biked into Ballston along the W&OD trail most of the way from Vienna. When we looked at our bike maps later, we discovered that the W&OD trail ended about 5 miles from where we peeled off the trail. So, today we decided to go to the end of the trail. It was 11.5 miles from Vienna — 23 miles round-trip. So close to our 25-mile trip goal!!
Along the way, there is a swampy area with lily pads, oodles of turtles, and even a frog. We stopped to snap a few pictures — there’s a frog in one of them, though it’s a little hard to make out. If you click through to the Flickr picture, I have a “note” on the picture, showing where the frog is. The other picture has a turtle sunning itself on a small branch. Before we left, the turtle had slid off the branch and disappeared under the lily pads.
We stopped at a Shell station near the end of the trail on our way back for some juice, and Andrew wondered why the station seemed so dead. They were out of gas. I hadn’t seen that yet in our area, but both the Shell and the BP across the street seemed to be out. After we got back on the bikes, we saw another station (Amoco) about half a mile down the trail that did still have gas, and they were selling it at $3.59 per gallon (for regular). And we thought $3.29 was bad a couple days ago.
Total miles on the bike: 23.2 miles
Tags: bike
Posted by barb on Sep 2, 2005 in
Recreation,
Travels Back in February I made some noise about going to Egypt for the total solar eclispe next Spring. Well, we didn’t get our deposit in early enough, and landed on a wait list. Turned out to be a good thing, though, because both Andrew and I have been watching the situation in Egypt, and have been a bit nervous about travelling over there. It’s true that things could get better after the elections, but things could also get worse.
In the meantime, though, my boss pointed out a Mediterranean Eclipse Cruise that will be viewing the eclipse at sea next Spring – we jumped on this opportunity, and have already booked the cruise and airfare. The cruise will make a one-day port call in Cairo, so we will still have the chance to see a little bit of Egypt, and if the situation is bad there, we have the option of staying close to the cruise ship (or on the cruise ship if we’re feeling really uneasy).
I’m really looking forward to this trip. The cruise itinerary will bring us to Rome, Cairo, Cyprus, and Naples. And, of course, we’ll get to see the total solar eclipse.
The only thing I’m worried about is sea-sickness. I know that the general wisdom is that cruise ships are too large for people to feel the water movements, but I’ve talked with a couple other very sensitive people who have gotten seasick on cruises. The good news is that this cruise is in the Mediterranean, which is generally very calm. I’m going to consult my doctor, too, to try and procure some other motion-sickness remedies before we go.
