The Rest of the Story

One night while we were there, the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum had free admission. We looked around for an hour and there were, in my non-artsy opinion, a few things worth mentioning. That's all the mention I'm going to give. I'm more into statues and detailed paintings. The few pieces I enjoyed had a hint of detail to them. O'Keeffe wasn't that style of artist. And that's ok.

So we walked around until we found a nice place to eat. Six of us were together, including my advisor. He has been to Thailand several times since I've met him and he likes his food "burn your face off" hot. No thanks. Thai "mild" in my mouth is nuclear blast hot at ground zero. Once it gets going, it keeps going on a runaway reaction. The short story here is that I, once again, ordered "mild" and flames soon spewed out every opening above my neck. My advisor asked if anyone wanted to try his because it wasn't really very hot. No way. Well, maybe. I was already in agony. I wanted to see if a tiny taste would finish me off. It turns out that his really wasn't hot and I ate a bunch of his to cool myself down. We guess they swapped our spicy levels when we ordered (though they got the right food to us). Go figure.

The remainder of my trip to Santa Fe involved several things that, altogether, would bring any grown man to boredom. The last cue stick had its tip broken off. I've played too many games of pool with no tip to chalk up to even pretend I'd have fun trying it again. Then my laptop froze and has not rebooted to this day. So I couldn't get new chapters of my book to listen to while I was on my trip. And I had a half day's travel ahead of me. Luckily, I met up with one guy I met at the conference the last morning before everyone left town. He was the only person I kenw at breakfast that morning so I was lucky that he had his laptop. I asked him if I could download some podcasts for my trip and he was happy to do so. So I got some conference talks. :)

I had a fun time sharing the gospel with several new people that I met. Their opinions ranged from "I believe in God, but think the Bible is for us to interpret" to ignorant atheist. And I'm learning how to share the gospel and be open to any response. I don't try to convince/convert everyone I talk to in a short conversation. Since it takes a person many brushes with the Church before being baptized, I hoped to be a positive brush for these new friends. There's no sense in pushing them away too early.

Now, about the trip home. I was happy to listen to a couple conference talks and then stare around for most of the time. My advisor looked at me across the aisle with his comical visage that gives away an impending quip. "You're never going to make it to Japan or England." I must have looked so funny just sitting there for hours on end. "I didn't prepare very well for the flight," I replied.

Now let's sit down to dinner in the Chicago airport. I had a fantastic bacon buffalo burger. I'm sure the name Angus was in there somewhere. I relished every bite of that burger. Man, my mouth is watering remembering it.

Thinking back, there was a really cool flying animal that I want to tell you about. It was the size and shape of a small hummingbird, but with stripey patterns that reminded me of a butterfly. It, and eventually four more of its species, hovered around some pretty purple flowers. I looked closer at it while trying to get a picture or a video and I saw that its nectar sucker was as long as its whole body, but was curved at the midpoint. It made me think of the word 'proboscus'. So I named it a hummingbirdbutterflyelephant.

And that's the rest of my story.

Don't Leave Home Without It...or Them

What would you plan to take with you if you were going away for a week to a conference in a far off city? You'd plan on Skyping with your family one or two evenings while you were away, you'd probably think of a few DVDs to take with you to watch on your laptop just in case boredom set in. What else would you take with you or plan to do without a car?

Indeed, I planned on Skyping with my hot wife and awesome boys. But, due to limited bandwidth on this small campus we are specifically not allowed to Skype. :( I didn't think of bringing movies, but I am incredibly lucky in that I can login to Netflix and get a movie on demand. Last night I watched MIB. However, MIB II is not available on demand so I went in search for something else.

Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is available...yeah!!! But the two previous movies are not. I guess I'll just watch it out of order. That's hard for me to do. But I'll do it.

One really fun thing that I've done so far is just walk around. The campus is beautiful and I'll put some pictures on here soon. The weather has been nice and partly cloudy the whole time and that has been a miracle. The hot spots have been pretty hot. And it's true what they say, and I had long forgotten it, dry heat is much more tolerable than the humidity and when you step from the sunshine into shade, the temperature drops 15 degrees Fahrenheit. Woo!

Another little miracle was finding a pool table near my dorm. Pool is a hobby I used to have and I used to be really, really good at it. In fact, I nearly won each pool tournament I entered at UVSC back in the 1990's. (Notice that I didn't say that I won nearly all of the tournaments.) The "nearly" part resulted in getting nervous in the final game and I played it too safe. I took 2nd place in all but one of the tournaments I played in.

The one thing I brought with me to pass the time was on mp3 player and two books on CD. I began Inkheart yesterday and it got to some good parts today. I like the character names Silver Tongue, Dust Finger, and Capricorn. The other book I have with me (and that I'll likely get to this week because of all the free time on the menu) is called Uglies. Angie told me about it and I'll give it a go. Many of you know I'm more into magic, fantasy, and adventure. I just finished Brisingr and that was a thrill from cover to cover. Oh. And I like dragons. Christopher Paolini has tightly captured my imagination with his fantastic and varied descriptions of his world of Alegasia and dragon riders. I didn't suspect that his writing style and story would reach the pedestal where I put Tolkien and Middle Earth. It's a tall pedestal. And I thought there was room for only one favorite.

I was wrong.

On another happy note, I'm off to dinner pretty soon. And then I'll come back to my dorm and watch something on demand. Probably The Return of the King (extended edition). Ta ta!

Weak Lensing Cosmology

"What is weak lensing cosmology?" you ask? That's what this guy asked too. He fell asleep before I could explain it to him.

This is a bronze statue outside the room where we have our weak lensing conference talks. I still think it's a real person when I see it out of the corner of my eye. His chair bronze and so is the rug underneath it!

Above the Clouds

This post is for Skyler. I was reminded by my sweet Angie that I don't need my data cable to pull pictures off my camera and put them on my computer. I have a card reader!

Skyler, these are two pictures that I took while I was flying on the airplane. I thought of you when I saw these clouds from the top side that we never see from the ground. I think one of them is a rain cloud. They look gray from our house, but they look white from the top. Silly, huh?!

It's 8:37 PM (aka 10:37 PM)

Man, I'm tired. I will probably wake up at 4 in the morning.

Thanks, Time Zones.

The Princess Bride, by S. Morgenstern

Remember the scene from Miracle Max's house? I keep thinking about Mrs. Miracle (Valerie) saying "Humperdinck" repeatedly in a sing-song voice.

Now it's your turn. Imagine Doug and me walking down an unfamiliar airport, looking for the unannounced terminal that held our flight's luggage. Now imagine really awesome LCD screens (without frames...so cool) that display their advertisements and have eye-popping colors to grab one's attention. The one that grabbed my attention was this.

"Enjoy a Wild night with ... Engelbert Humperdinck"

Oh, man.

Who is that anyway???

He's the man with a name worth a million words. Or one short blog related to a cult classic.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093779/quotes (so many good ones!)

The Land of Enchantment

Early this morning I went to the airport with my advisor. He and I left for the airport before I normally wake up. That means I woke Angie up before she normally wakes up. After companionship prayers, I bolted out the door and climbed in a sweet Honda Accord.

It's not mine. It's Doug's. And we had a nice drive and chat on our way to the airport. We got underway without any hiccups.

During the flight I felt some motivation to blog again. Let me tell you, this motivation started years ago...before we moved to Ohio. Angie laughed at the thought because she wasn't into that sort of thing. I don't get the pangs of blogging very often any more, mostly because I want to do my version of creative stuff, which is designing and playing games.

Back to the flight. I was thinking how I would entitle today's entry "Smooth Sailing" and then how I'd explain that flying is NOT sailing. Suddenly, hours of smooth sailing came to a turbulent halt. The last 10 or so minutes heading into Albuquerque made me sick and scared. It didn't help when I heard a white paper lunch sack open up in the row behind me. I like to be in control.

And I wasn't.

So the title of this blog comes from the recorded message on the shuttle bus from the airport to the car rental. After some needed instruction on where to find Enterprise among the dozen companies named, the message ended with "Thank you for visiting Albuquerque, 'The Land of Enchantment'."

I had to giggle. But I have to admit, it's a charming place. The reddish pink surface of many buildings, overpasses, and homes has a cool feel all its own.

It's great to be back in the west.

This Web Page is Not (Yet) Hot and Spicy

Well, this sure looks ho hum. I'll get Angimus to help me spiff it up a bit.

But in the meantime...I have some blogging to do!