It's a Bird, It's a Plane...

There are few things in life better than dogs in Halloween costumes. Brooklyn (Superdog) and Sierra (Guinevere) belong to my nephew and his wife.

Sweden

On October 13th of last year I left for Sweden. With the nine hour time difference, I arrived in Copenhagen on October 14th; then Peter and I crossed over the Baltic Sea on "The Link". It definetly feels like a year has passed. That part doesn't seem surreal. What seems surreal to me is that I spent 10 weeks in a place I thought I could only dream about. Although I'd been to Europe five times previously, EnglandFranceSpainItaly just seemed like your standard American abroad fare, almost Disneyland-ish. Wonderful and enriching to visit those countries, yes, but somehow not exotic.

Scandinavia always seemed like an entirely separate entity to me, as though further north implied being further along to some kind of promised land (my inner compass has always gravitated north rather than south). One of my icebreaker questions when I hosted Dinner with Friends events was "If you could travel anywhere, where would you go?" I remember the first time I put the answer on my own name tag, I had chosen Australia. I remember writing that in with a bit of a shrug like, yeah, sure, I'd like to go there. The next time I used that icebreaker / name tag question I thought about it more carefully and put 'Scandinavia'. It's funny what I pictured when I wrote that. I saw cottages on snowy hillsides and northern lights and tall, beautiful blonde men. I think I pictured Norway first, then Sweden.

Once again Scandinavia seems out of reach. Although I'm thrilled to have seen Sweden and have spent a few hours in Denmark, I never made it to Norway even though it was only a five hour drive away (I remember Peter's friend Kirsten offering to let me drive her car. Always a nervous person I stammered "Oh, thanks, but I've never driven in a foreign country." She shrugged and said "Green you go. Red you stop."

I have no idea when or if I will go back to Sweden. I miss the North Sea and the autumn leaves and the windmills. And of course I miss Peter. We have moments when we talk on the phone or online and seem to remember how strong a connection we have. But there are other times when we don't have any contact at all for up to three weeks at a time. And I never hear the words "Jag alskar dig". Not nearly as pretty as the French "Je t'aime", but hey, I'd love to hear them anyway. I don't know why the Swedes even have such a phrase in their language. Maybe they say it to their children.

If it doesn't work out with Peter, maybe I can meet a Norweigan man online...
I know, I'm crazy.

Bad Hair Day

Portal

Chakra Red

The Farm

Blair and I went to lunch the other day at a place called 'The Farm'. It was suprisingly bucolic for metro Phoenix. Amazingly, it was possible to sit outside and enjoy it (copious over-sized standing umbrellas helped).
We both had sandwiches that featured what the menu should have described as "our homemade razor-crust bread". Crusty was not the word for this baguette.It would have been better suited to species with fangs. It was the kind of bread so heavy and dense you could break a window with it. Other than that the food was great and it was a nice escape from our rather homely and insane work environment.

Said homely and insane working environment features myriad distractions, the two most pervasive being giggle woman : "A-hee-hee-hee a-hee-hee-hee" all day every day. Hyena in a cubicle. Horrible. And then there's basketball boy, 23 going on 9 who dribbles a miniature and surprisingly loud basketball down the aisle before dunking it in the little hoop mounted on his desk. Precious.

So, do I hate my work environment? Surprisingly no. I'd rather have chaos, ridiculous amounts of work and too much noise than a deathly quiet and boring work place. But yes, I could definetly live without giggle woman and basketball boy...

Afternoon Road Trip

My environment for the past seven months has consisted of a cubicle in a big, noisy, open room with windows only in the far distance, and (due to general discomfort with my roommate) being relegated to my small bedroom where the only window faces a wall.
After Dave and I went out to lunch today he asked me what I wanted to do. I thought about it for a minute and said "I think I really need to go out for a drive." Sweet guy that he is, he readily agreed.

He asked where I wanted to go. Unsure, I suggested somewhere with cactus. He pointed at one in the front yard of the house we were passing. I conceded that he had a good point. I'm already surrounded by cacti. So I left it up to him.

We drove west, into downtown Glendale.

Then further west until we were heading out of the suburbs. Dave said he had a destination in mind. Since he had first mentioned driving out to an air force base, I wasn't particularly excited to know what the destination was. All I knew was it felt great to be out of the city.

All of a sudden we came upon fields of tulips in every color of the rainbow (ok, maybe not blue). We were going 60 mph, so what I got when I tried to capture them was this:

Ok, I really like this picture. Those of you with a strongly-expressed 'S' (Sensing) in your Myers Briggs makeup may see only a white blur. But as a laughably strongly-expressed 'N' (Intuitive)it speaks to me of dreams and memories and the motion that accompanies the whirlwind of the pre-conscious mind. Maybe I need to rephrase that, but in any event look to the left and right of the white blur and you will see the color of the flowers.

I was happy to see what our destination was when we reached it...

But Blogspot is not letting me add any more photos to this post, so I will have to create a separate entry.

Afternoon Road Trip Part 2

So here's what our destination turned out to be:

This is not the Phoenix zoo. This is a private one, with white tigers, white alligators and uh, animals with colors. Only one problem: When we got there at 4:00 pm the gate was closed.

To see what we didn't see, go to www.wildlifeworld.com
No worries, it was great just to get out and see the stark beauty of the area.