Happy Birthday Mattie & Anna

Wishing you both a great birthday.

the ebb & flow of memory

There is no way to predict what will set off a wave of memory, but once it washes over me I can’t get thoughts of my father out of the forefront of my mind. Like the time we were at a stop light and I looked left to see this Japanese cyclist resting on a bench. Or last week, in my sleep. That night, I had a dream that I was in Greece, or somewhere that looked like it according to my mind’s eye, a Greece created from my own imagination. In dreams, you just know some things.

In the dream, many of my extended family members were there, milling about and socializing against a backdrop of sand colored ruins. I held a camera in my hand, and as I looked through the view finder I saw my father turn towards me and smile. The lighting was perfect, and his smile warm as it always was – I desperately wanted to capture that moment on film. As I adjusted the focus and tried to take the photo, something jammed and I couldn’t open the shutter. Lowering the camera, I tried to identify the problem, and fired a random test shot.

Raising the camera again, I looked through the viewfinder just in time to see the shadow of a cloud sweep over his face. I tried to ready myself for the lighting to change enough for a photo, and then I woke up.

Well, he wasn’t here when I woke up either, but at least his smile is always  there in my memory.

Blue Mountains, Rice Harvests

Some new photos of familiar scenery.

I love being back here. Every view is breathtaking, and every moment spent enjoying the scenery, marvelous.

Roadtrippin 2010: Chicago

I have been meaning to share some of the awesome things I’m getting up to during this, my last substantial summer vacation for the foreseeable future. One of which is the road-trip that I took to visit my fiance in Chicago. The drive from Atlanta to Chicago took around 12.5 hours each way, but I broke it up on the way there by spending the night in Nashville with a friend at her new apartment. We had a fun night where in addition to enjoying the good company and seeing her new home, I was also lucky enough to share in the Bridal Shower gift I had given her only a couple of weeks earlier (a margarita-themed basket with Pier 1 margarita glasses, lime juice, sweet & sour, margarita salt, and the secret ingredient Herradura 100% agave tequila ♥).

After a good night’s sleep I woke up to knock out the last 7 hours of driving, which quickly turned in to NINE hours as soon as I ran into metro Chicago traffic. Up until that point it had been an enjoyable drive, and I hadn’t hit any major delays or traffic snags. There is even a great stretch of a dozen miles or so of massive wind turbines which dominate the horizon in both directions for as far as the eye can see. And it certainly is quite a sight! (Upon consulting with the vast knowledge of the internet it seems that there are actually two farms – the Benton County Wind Farm and Fowler Ridge Wind Farm – boasting more than 400 turbines between the two of them)

Eventually I fought my way through Chicago’s dreadful traffic in order to meet up with my beau. We went to dinner with some of the other men and women studying to be Navy Corpsmen. It was great to spend time with him and to meet some of the people he had been telling me about over the phone. When he finally had weekend liberty, the two of us headed away from the Naval Base and in to the city.

Chicago has a dramatic skyline, and is quite a city to look at. We had a great time exploring the city on foot! We walked along the Millennium Mile, explored Lincoln Park (where we saw a wedding! ♥) and basked in the availability of stores like Trader Joes and Columbia within a few blocks of each other. It was so much fun to just see Chicago, and it was a blast to people watch on her streets. I was in awe of Lake Michigan too – when you look across the lake it seems unfathomably vast. The two of us wrapped up our first Chicago night with a romantic dinner at Brasserie Jo’s. I liked the food there, but honestly I was a bit disappointed to find so few veggie restaurants in Chicago when I searched online. I’m sure I could delve deeper and find more vegetarian and vegetarian-friendly establishments if I lived there.

The weekend also happened to time perfectly with an Air & Water show, which we caught glimpses of every day. On Sunday we went to the Lake Shore beach to watch it for real. It was great! There were tons of people out, riding bikes, eating ice cream, playing volley ball, and soaking up sun. We watched tons of trick flying and the beau taught me about the various planes – what they were called, what they were for, and whether or not they’re still used in the military. We saw sea hawks/black hawks, warthogs and many others, but my favorite was definitely the stealth bomber. It was apparently the kind used during the Vietnam war, and it was unbelievably quiet on the approach, suddenly roaring shortly after it passes you by. The plane passed us twice. The first time was at a moderate place, but on the second pass it flew by so fast that a few moments later it almost seemed to leave a sonic boom in its wake.

black hawks

stealth bomber

This whole trip was a blast, but after a cumulative 26 hour drive I am sick of driving for a while. I think I have reached my threshold for long-distance drives for a while (And that’s something I am surprised to hear myself say). Chicago was really nice though, and I would love to visit again.