Dream beneath a desert sky

Whew. December is off to a busy start. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed with work and with life in general right now. Don't expect much blogging from me this month because there are so many other things to finish up before the holidays. I wouldn't be surprised if I don't even touch my video project this month, which is a bummer since I'm getting so dang excited to share it with you.

At least the next few weekends are looking relatively uneventful. Last weekend was sort of our final hurrah before we buckle down and face the weeks before our Christmas vacation in Minnesota. We drove out to Las Vegas to spend Thanksgiving with my grandparents and then up to Zion National Park in Utah for some hiking and camping. If you've been following me on Twitter, Facebook, or email, then this is probably not news to you, but I feel the need to document it here anyway simply because it was such a wonderful extended weekend.

It was pouring rain when we left last Wednesday morning. We cruised across the desert in an unexpected fog, arriving on my grandparents’ place mid afternoon. That evening the four of us hit a buffet, where I showed great restraint and managed to avoid getting the hiccups! It occurred to me while I was there that the first time I ever got what I call the "Killer Hiccups" was after eating at a buffet during my last visit to Vegas (I was thirteen or fourteen at the time). At the wise old age of 29 I finally overcame them by simply not eating so much. I wanted to stay at the top of my game when it came to playing computerized BINGO. That's right -- they have machines that do all of the work for you now. The numbers are still read aloud, but there’s no need to daub cards with ink anymore. Your only responsibility as a player is to yell the word when the machine tells you that you won. So in our case, we had no responsibility at all. Oh well, it was fun to get an inside perspective of my grandparents' night life. They appear to be some sort of BINGO royalty at Boulder Station.

The next day was Thanksgiving. My grandma made a turkey and all of the fixings, and it was very tasty. I was glad to be with family after spending the holiday alone last year. After dinner and some good old-fashioned relaxing, R and I went off to explore the city. This was her first time seeing The Strip and it had been 15 years for me. The place has changed a lot and so has my perspective. We walked a long way, in and out of casinos, stopping in a few shops and for a drink in the Eiffel Tower. Of course we had a good time, but after seeing this town that is all surface we couldn’t help but appreciate the real Eiffel Tower or the real New York City or the real Michelangelo’s paintings more. Maybe that’s the point of Vegas. The façade itself is impressive, but it leaves me with a sleazy, empty feeling. It's a good place for wild night life, but as you all must know, that's not really what I'm looking for.

We got up on Friday and drove northeast to Zion National Park in Utah. Ideally we would have had enough time to see Bryce Canyon and the Grand Canyon as well, but Zion was plenty for two days. It’s quite a spectacular place, a deep canyon carved out of sandstone. Camping was cold, but we had a couple of fires and bundled ourselves up pretty well inside our sleeping bags. We took three separate hikes, the highlight of which involved following a narrow spine with 1500 foot cliffs on both sides to Angels Landing. It was a little daring and quite outstanding. We really fell in love with the park. The only disappointing aspect was high volume of people present over the long weekend. It’s hard to revel in the glory of a landscape when there are screaming kids on the trail ahead of you or a big group of people rushing you out of the way so they can get a photo in front of the vista on which you are gazing.

Check out our photo gallery from the trip. We took 350 shots, kept 150, and posted 80. Many of the shots were scrapped because the light had either too harsh a contrast or was too dim. An improperly exposed sky or a little unwanted blur is sometimes (but not always) enough for me to hit the delete button. But I guess it works out because if I posted a gallery of more than 80 photos, it would be too overwhelming for anyone to view entirely anyway. If I made you wade through a bunch of garbage, you'd surely miss the few decent shots. That's the value of editing.

DC

Today is my 28th birthday. Time goes fast, I don't feel that old, etc. You've heard it all before. I won't get all philosophical on you. My cherry blossom girl and I spent Saturday in Washington, DC, doing the tourist thing. It was good to see the array of iconic monuments and memorials, as well as the awesome blossoms (yes, thank you, I am a dork) currently in bloom. We had a unique dinner (steamed muscles, quail, crab stuffed peppers, shrimp, and white asparagus) at a Spanish tapas restaurant. Afterwards the hiccups won another battle over me. I thought the lack of drinking would keep my system in line, but that theory proved false. Luckily, I have a sweet, patient wife who got me back home safe. She also had to take care of me on Sunday when my left eye was bugging me. Apparently I somehow scratched it the night before because I woke up on Sunday with foggy vision, a painful sand-in-the-eye feeling, and a bottomless tear duct. Miraculously it started to clear itself up by the end of yesterday (I think it was the blueberry/banana smoothie that cured me), and today it's back to normal again. I felt very baby-like and helpless over the weekend, yet also too old and less invincible than usual. I should be in my prime at 28, so what's up with that? Am I going to be one of those people who dread their birthday every year, especially the ones for ages that end in zero? Check with me again exactly two years from now, and I should be able to better answer that.

The Hic-Cup

As mentioned in this blog before, when I get the hiccups, I get them BAD. My thoughtful mother-in-law recently sent me a device that she heard is supposed to be a miracle cure. It is called The Hic-Cup. I've tried just about every trick in the book already, and this one looks similar in concept to the one where you drink a glass of water with a spoon in it, but I'm willing--and hopeful--to give anything a shot. I will say I’ve never tried one that claims to use “sub-sensory bio-electric therapy to quickly re-establish proper function of the Vagus and Phrenic nerves for instant treatment.” How could something like that not work?

The season of the wedding

(photo by Bob Finc)

We were in northern Minnesota over the weekend to attend my cousin's wedding. The picture of us above was taken at the reception, which was a good time despite my suffering from a bad case of the hiccups that eventually built up to a fit of dry heaving. Okay, you probably didn't need to know that, but, man, those hiccups can be deadly. Teach your kids how to prevent them. Anyway, my cousin and his new bride are a nice couple, and I wish them all the best.

The aforementioned wedding was the first of five to which my wife and I were invited over the course of the next three months. I guess we're getting to that age where a lot of people we know are tying the knot. It's a bummer they are all taking place in Minnesota because there's no way we can make it to all of them, let alone the bachelor/bachelorette parties and showers. Missing out on some of them is one of the sacrifices we make when living so far away in an exotic location like Delaware.

We touched down at the Philly airport around 10:30 on Monday morning. Instead of putting in a half day of work, we took a drive to Cape May and spent the afternoon at the beach. R's aunt and uncle are renting a place down there for the week, so we visited with them between thrashing sessions on the waves. The night -- and our enjoyable extended weekend -- ended with a fajita dinner and a drive home.