We can officially call this trip a success!  By Saturday evening there was one more married couple in our midst, looking happy and beautiful.

The ceremony was held in the church where andrea sings.  it’s old and beautiful in its simplicity.  The ceremony itself was fairly religious w/out being that preachy youmustobeyourhubsand crap that is sometimes said (I’ve always found that particular brand of dogma pretty entertaining considering that I’ve never been to a wedding and heard all of that nonsense and thought, you know, she’s going to totally agrees with and will follow all of those sentiments!).  The reception took place at a gorgeous Italian restaurant that had this big deck garden in the back and out there they had a bar and dance floor set up.  After a couple hours of dancing and eating the couple whisked off to their hotel and we went back to ours to hang out.

The next morning we met up with a few people for brunch and then headed for the airport.

I loved having the break, believe me, but I feel like I need a few more days to recuperate from the lack of sleep on this vacation!

greetings from the lovely state of texas!

since my last publish some major mileage has been covered. we spent a lovely morning in madrid (pronounced MAAAdrid) looking at quirky galleries and having lunch at a cool (and perhaps only?) local saloon. tif was right – maaadrid is funky and fun. it’s a very small artist village in the New Mexican foothills and was definitely worth a stop. later we headed to santa fe. i don’t think we did it much justice with the time we allowed but we walked around the old town and plaza area, had a great meal at a new mexican style place and then did some hanging out in our hotel room, which was the nicest we’ve had along the way. it’s the only hotel in NM that is Navajo run and besides having prickly pear margaritas in the lounge the rooms were quite nice and spacious.

the next morning we went to a locals breakfast place/coffee shop and i think we all had something with a southwest flair. i had a turkey sausage hash thing with green chili that came with pinto beans. mr. s had a lovely and huge breakfast burrito w/ black beans. then we hit the road for Roswell to check out some alien freaks. unfortunately we weren’t able to track down any clans of alien watchers but we did buy some fun alien merchandise so the stop was worth it. our goal was to make it south to see the carlsbad caverns but we were 10 minutes too late to enter the cave so we went back out of the national park and had a very nice old school dinner at the velvet garder. they had alien beer. sweet.
after careful consideration we decided on the brilliant plan to stay for the bat flight at carlsbad caverns and then drive all night/morning to houston. i don’t know if this was a good plan. right now i’m feeling literally crazy. i think i got about 2 hours total sleep last night in the highlander. we used to love the highlander. now we hate the highlander. but anyway. i digress. the bat flight was actually a very cool experience and even though i’m insane now i think it might have been totally worth it. carlsbad caverns has about 39 miles of discovered caverns and in those caverns live a fuck load of bats. and when i say fuck load i mean LOTZ of bats. every evening at dusk the bats emerge from the large cave entrance and so they’ve built an amphitheater so you can sit and watch them. the park ranger was talking away about bats and their eating habits etc and then all the sudden she says oh here they come and sure enough this huge swarm of bats comes swirling out of the cave. it was really interesting because they totally funneled out and up (i guess it’s hard for bats to fly straight up so the circular pattern is normal) in this huge tornado mass. what we thought was going to be this 3 minute experience was still going on about 30 minutes later with no end to the bats in sight. it was pretty amazing.

after the bats we hit the road (about 9:30 i guess) and made it to houston around 8 am this morning with a stop for breakfast. we are all exhausted and trying to prepare for the first of many wedding related activities. the wedding party is attending a dinner thingie at andrea’s aunt’s and then the bachelor/ette shenanigans begin.

Meat Beards
Exploding Baby Spider Boob
The Stupid Wake-up Line

On the road, we’re currently driving towards Albuquerque with an eye to stop at Madrid, which my hair dresser assures me is a very cool and funky town. I’m assuming she’s right since she herself is cool and funky. These last couple days have been action packed. Yesterday we drove through the Navajo and Hopi country and aside from the confusing time situation it was an interesting drive. As many of you know and may scratch your head at, Arizona doesn’t observe daylight savings time so even though we had crossed time zones we were still keeping to our beloved pacific standard time. However, upon entering Navajo country (which takes up a large portion of northern Arizona) where cooler heads prevail, daylight savings time is in full swing…except for in the Hopi Mesa towns (and the Hopi reservation is located within the Navajo reservation) which apparently side with Arizona on the daylight savings debate. So, we don’t really know what time it is.
Yesterday we also went on a hike at the Canyon de Chelly where there are some old cliff house ruins. The hike was very hot but beautiful. And it was probably good to get some exercise since we’re spending so much time in the car. Traveling together has been great thus far. Some hilarious times, some confusing times, some nice phrases that I’ll be compiling here. Three out of five of us have a serious addiction so mornings have been interesting before coffee has been procured. I have marveled at the seriousness of this addiction, from greg drinking a cup before even getting out of bed to us stopping at a coffee shop directly after a diner breakfast where we all had drip coffee.
Our eventual destination for today is Santa fe which will be a nice change from the very small towns we’ve been stopping in so far.

Hello all, long time no post! As most of you know, Dahlia J has been a rather busy worker bee for the past couple weeks but I have you know I finished my biginvitationrushofjune at 6 AM on Saturday, just in time to pack, mail everything off and have breakfast before Andrew took us to the airport. I have to admit I haven’t done an all-nighter in a long time. Mr. Slanky does them fairly often, especially before trips but I always catch a few hour nap. The plane ride was lively for a plane, something I noticed on another Vegas flight. People were just more chatty in general I guess because of where they are going? Not sure. Anyway, the attendant in control of the intercom was very funny. At one point he gave us an update on our flight progress: definitely closer to Vegas. At the end of the flight he announced that someone onboard was celebrating their first flight and their 100th birthday and then after a pause he said that we should all wish the captain happy birthday on the way out. Oh and upon coasting to the gate he told us to remain seated because this portion of the ride can be quite bumpy and that it was the captain’s fault or the flight attendants’ fault. It was the asphalt. Ok perhaps you had to be there.
Our Vegas evening was pretty good. We did some gambling (amy won, I won a little at slots, mark lost, greg lost a little at slots and we have no idea about david since he’s such a hardcore gambler, money was flying all around) and then we ate at Samba, the Brazilian grill, which was totally as yummy as last time we were here. I ate so much I made myself uncomfortable for the rest of the evening. Finally at 11:30 I was very done for the night since it was still technically my Friday with the no sleep and all. I’m impressed with myself that I made it that long!
This morning we made a trip across the amazingly long Vegas block to the MGM starbucks for the coffee addicts and a quick stop to see the lions before hitting the road towards the grand canyon. We stopped briefly at the Hoover dam (big!) and did a tad bit of walking at the grand canyon before watching the sunset which was really nice. It’s totally true that pictures just can’t capture how amazing and vast this place is. You just have to see it in 3D. I think we all wished we could spend a little more time looking around the area but this is a surgical strike trip so that wasn’t in the cards. This evening we made it to Tuba City and after scavenging for dinner at a Sonic (which was our second option after a mcdonalds) where they were turning off all the lights as we pulled in and for some reason it took like a half hour to get through the drive-up window, we’re now getting ready for bed. We’re in Navajo country now and unlike the rest of Arizona they observe daylight savings so we’re trying to get used to it being an hour later. Navajo country is also dry so no beer with dinner! Tomorrow we’re headed to look at some of the Native American sights around the area as we make our way further east.

It was brought to my attention that a certain someone many of us knew and…  is now celebrity. I guess she left the “entertainment” buisiness. Well, here is link regarding her knew position if anyone is interested.

 http://www.komotv.com/about/people/fournews/5304976.html

I’m finished with student teaching – managed to only cry a little (which I think helped some of the students only cry a little too…), I think it helps that I may be subbing in my class in a couple weeks and I’m planning to go back for Field Day .  One binder and one masters thesis to go…  oh, and maybe find a job.

Herein, we have a nice little study in contrasts and perspectives. A couple days ago, the lead story on the local section of the Seattle P-I focused on the results from a survey of the impact of the arts on the local economy - Local arts groups rev an economic engine. It says that the arts fuel the Seattle economy to the tune of $330 million, from direct spending by the organizations as well as by their patrons.

Sounds good, huh? The article mentions that the study was run by Americans for the Arts, which it describes as “a national lobbying and research organization.”

Economic impact studies about the affect of an institution on the local economy sound familiar? The Supersonics, City of Renton, etc. have trumpeted various studies on how the NBA/WNBA can benefit the area. There’s been studies that have said the opposite — that most pro sports have a negligible impact on local economies. That’s an issue for a longer post, but the arts article got me thinking.

Would the P-I lead with a story with the headline “Local team revs an economic engine” and take a study funded by a lobbying group for that very team at face value? I would hope not. And there would certainly be howls from readers if they did.

So why apply that logic to a study about arts organizations? Well, there’s no controversy about building a new opera house right now, for one thing. But there’s certainly more to it — about the general attitude towards arts as compared to, say, sports in this community.

The relative economic impact of these two groups are certainly different — I imagine there’s a much more persuasive argument that money spent by employees of arts organizations is more likely to be within the area as compared to sports where many of the highest paid employees don’t live in the region.

But if the knee-jerk reaction about a study of the economic impact of sports paid for by a sports lobbying group is healthy skepticism, then the same should be applied to this arts study.

On Sunday we went to Emerald Downs to watch the horse races for Andrew’s Birthday. Almost a year ago to the day we (keiko, peter, andrew, mark and i) were at the tracks too, only that time was in Japan. I don’t know if that means it’s become a tradition but both times were pretty fun. I feel like the Japanese crowd was maybe a little more excited and into it but on Sunday we threw our money away like the betting champs we aspire to be so you can’t ask for much more than that. My full-proof betting plan of always choosing the #2 horse and the horse with the best name (and if those happen to be one in the same, also choosing the prettiest horse) payed off by a few bucks. I think I thoroughly annoyed amy and mark by constantly asking them which horse they were “voting for” instead of “betting on” but other than that we had fun. Here’s the birthday boy with his racing form.

Ok, here’s my first attempt at a monthly song lyrics entry. I’ll try and post a song that I’ve been listening to often, though I’m sure I’ll come up with a few classics from time to time.

Let’s Call It Off

by Peter Bjorn And John

When you decided to knock on my door.
Did your remember what happened before?
It just didn’t sparkle it just didn’t grow.
Somethings are better to leave unexplored.

Did you agree, we just let it be,
And did you agree, It’s a must…
Let’s call the whole thing off.
We just have had enough of us.
Let’s call the whole thing off.
We just have had enough of us.

I know many people who met the same way.
Relations that lasted for more then one day.
But i don’t wanna know why we couldn’t do more.
Somethings are better to leave unexplored.

Did you agree, we just let it be,
And did you agree, It’s a must…
Let’s call the whole thing off.
We just have had enough of us.
Let’s call the whole thing off.
We just have had enough of us.
Let’s call the whole thing off.
We just have had enough of us.
Let’s call the whole thing off.
We just have had enough of us