2009 So Far So Good

I started this year with no anticipation of travel. NO real plans and only the vague “let’s try to go see the #1kid” possibility. I was in VA/DC for New Year’s Eve but it was an uneventful “daughter duty” trip and I headed home on NY’s day.

The following week the Delightful DDD was doing her After Iraq Tour and I was lucky to be one of her stops. We giggled like girls and enjoyed the visit.

February was week one of vacation so the man and I headed to FLA. Flew into MIA and a leisurely drive down to Key West. Two nights on Islamorada and a visit to a very old family friend. Neither of us had been there before. Good food, wandering in town and on beach.

Planning a trip for the second part of the week but Kid2 decided to come here for a visit. If we are lucky he will stop by to see us. We lure him with dinners out.

March brings a short visit to SFO lugging 3 bags of computer stuff to the kid. Lunch with Loupgarou on the beach. Always fun!

March also brings an ill wind of second badly broken leg for Malaikah the cat and my very first EVER sick day with the flu. Man and I see Les Misérables here in H Town. Nowhere near as good as the LON production, but another notch in his Less Miserable belt.

May Another Official Vacation Week and I make quick plans for a NC Road Trip! Flew into GSO and drove to Winston-Salem. CW Eldridge of tattooarchives.com works his magic again, then Dinner in Durham with a cousin who shared many of my childhood summers. Off to Fayetteville and dinners with DDD and several military museums. I find I can drive on my own with man as navigator.

Then the BIG TRIP to Seoul Korea. I laugh when I think of how many people actually asked me if I was going to NORTH or SOUTH Korea. Well, technically, I did visit both as we walked around the table into the North Korean side of the room at Panmunjom. This was my first trip to Asia. ( I really don’t count crossing the bridge in Istanbul) The sights and sounds and food are incredible and I loved every moment of it, including the one day of pouring rain.

June had Kid2 coming here for …was it 2 months? Did he come and go? We hardly see him while he is here so I tend to forget. :-\ I stayed put and actually earned a decent pay check.

July DDD pops in to be my date for RANCID. We are center, 3^rd from the rail. I survive the pit! *go me*. We both have a departure flight at 7PM Sunday and I head back to VA/DC for “duty” and VNV Nation show at the 9:30 Club.

August A 2 day trip to NC turns into a week as we deal with family issues. We do eat very well, having German, Jamaican, Chinese and good ole American BBQ. Dinner with friends from HS.

September Three day trip to SFO. Lunch with a friend from grade school, dinners with Kid2 and Loupgarou. Trip to the SF zoo. The tigers are lazy and the lion is watching us. Green Day’s American Idiot at the Berkeley Rep Theatre is fantastic! We meet Tony Vincent on the BART.

I started buying AFI tickets, dreading that I might not have the time off. Pittsburgh, Boston, and Houston already in my hands. I still have one more official week of vacation and the probability that my work hours will be devoured by others seeking to make more $$$.

October Well, I ended up taking the whole month off! First trip to PIT. Hook up with 3 other friends, and Menace, DDD, and I Crash Love at the Marge's home. Fantastic show, JP and DH come out after. I spent Monday trying to get home. New ink for me.

The following weekend to NC again with the man. We spend Monday trying to get home. Do i sense a pattern here?

BOS: Hang with sister, dinner with good friend, AFI. ON the side rail turns out to be THE BEST place to view. Home again on a Tuesday w/o problems.

CHI: Packing ... more later. Yes. another show. Solo this time.

Life is good. Or as good as it can be. :-)

Everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Dr Pangloss

What in the World?

Recently I was telling someone about our very own Funeral Museum here in North Houston and the Prison Museum up in Huntsville. Two very interesting and often thought provoking places to visit. This led to stories of other strange places I’ve visited. I am NOT talking Ripley’s Believe it or not. These are real Museums.

Paris. Think Jean Valjean in Les Misérables, running through the Paris sewers. Less Miserable, as I call it. Of course we would go there. In 1980, it was basically a hole in the ground and a small theatre with a French-only video playing. I used my high school French to ask if we could see the video again using the English headphones (as everyone else was hustled back out). In 2000 we took our kids there. The sewer museum is now a guided tour (albeit in French), a self explanatory video show, and a gift shop. Yes, you can see the sewage floating by as you lean over the railing to look. The smell is actually more of a disinfectant right there, but the theatre area still has an …aroma, that makes you wrinkle your nose.

Istanbul. It is only one room, but if you are a James Bond fan (as the man is) you will know that From Russia With Love has a famous sewer scene. Our personal tour guide probably thought we were nuts, but he took us there and paid the insignificant fee for us to enter. What you see is cavernous room, not the long and convoluted course the movie makes us think it is. I hear it is now big on the tourist map, but back then, pretty much unheard of.

Paris Cartacombs (the “municipal Ossuary”)

We went early on a Sunday. We passed 2 other visitors and one lone guard sitting deep inside. It was eerily quiet as we walked. The only sound was our feet crunching on the gravel path and our whispered words. The arranged bones were…creepy. As you leave they check you bag to make sure you didn’t take any souvenirs.

London. Soane Museum is the house and Museum of Sir John Soane’s collections. Admission is free to this packed house. If you are wearing a coat or backpack, they suggest you leave it hanging as there is little room to turn and frequent possibility of knocking into something. Many things are reproductions but the sheer number and variety is wonderful. No photos allowed. Oooops!

Cairo. A zoo might not be the highlight of your Egypt trip, but we like zoos. Our free time was not spent resting, but seeking out the more local attractions. The Giza Zoo opened on March 1, 1891. There were a few groups of people, mostly school girls, it seemed. They found ME interesting and touched my bare arms. This is not unusual in non-western parts of the world.

For a fee of about 10cents, we entered the Taxidermy Exhibit of Egyptian and foreign embalmed birds, reptiles, fish and animals as well as skeletons dating back to the 1800’s. Many were bagged before anyone thought about conservation. They were trophies. The rooms are dark and musty, the specimens a bit dusty, but awesome to see.

Cairo Museum Mummy Room. Opened to the public in 2006, these treasures were still hidden from visitors back in 1982. A museum guard, with gestures and limited English, indicated he would take us into closed off section. Hoping we would not be mummified ourselves, we followed him. There on glass enclosed shelves were dozens of royal mummies in various stages of preservation. We wandered and gazed as our “guide” pointed out specific items and rambled on in Arabic. We tipped him well and thanked him profusely when we slipped out of this forbidden area.

Seoul Seodaemun Prison Museum. Neat and pristine grounds and displays are juxtaposed with torture devices, enhanced with audio screams. Basically it is a museum of Japanese torture of the Korean people through the years. I was appalled at the visual and audio displays but we saw several families with young children who seemed to all have fun entering the various torture chambers to see how they worked for themselves!!

Smithsonian DC Insect Zoo. Check THAT one out if you want to touch the creepy crawlers.

Travel. When I am not doing it, I miss it. When I am on the road, or in the air, I just want to get to wherever I am headed towards. Then after a few days of hotel rooms, I want my own bed again. I suppose that makes my an unhappy traveler, and an unsettled homebody.

I've made a few good trips in the past year. Most within the USA and one where I was the official, and only, driver. ONe where I was the navigator, which I am NOT the best at. And one good international trip that I pretty much set up and did the prep work for.

I really should share my travels more. Maybe I shall over here. For those who follow me, I will endeavor to make the stories entertaining and of interest.

resetting this password

Even though I wrote it down, my old password won't let me in. So I reset it... only to be told that username and PW do not match. WTF????

just what i need...

...another place to blog. I already do enough rambling at myspace. But, ever in the need to bore people with my writings, I AM HERE.

Thank you,
The Management