Understatement

Top Story, originally uploaded by Infrogmation.

Powerful. i love flickr.

Around The World And Back Again

Wow.  It feels like an eternity since I last posted anything.  I have been around the world and back...so I guess it's understandable.  But this is long overdue.

When asked, it's hard to tell people about my trip to Italy and Greece.  It was so mind-blowingly amazing, I have difficulty putting it into words.  I learned that I'm not a very organized traveler - at least not now.  Maybe if I travelled more, I'd be better at it.  For example, I would sometimes forget my camera or forget to carry extra batteries.  My pics are missing at least two major portions of the trip the first part of Rome and the whole tour of Pompeii just to name a few (I was so bummed!)  I lost my shower  bag and had to buy all new products.  I was able to sort out what I needed at a local grocery store in Athens to replace it, but one or two items were a gamble.  For example, what I thought was face wash turned out to be eye make-up remover.  Luckily I hadn't put it on my face before making that discovery.   

We started out in Italy.  It was very hot and humid.  We wandered around Rome, the Vatican City and the Colosseum.  The people, culture and architecture were beautiful.  The drivers were nuts.  One fellow traveler said if she had to drive in Rome, she'd still be sitting at the first stop light we saw the day before waiting for someone to let her in.  That probably wouldn't be me.  I am an assertive driver although I would still be nervous.  Mopeds are everywhere (there are probably as many mopeds as there are cars) and vehicles weave in and out of traffic, cutting people off, honking.  We saw Pompeii, Capri, Sorrento and Positano.  I know I'm leaving places out, but can't remember them all.  One of my favorite hotels of the whole trip is there, the Grand Hotel La Medusa.  You will not be disappointed if you make a visit there.  The surrounding area is not the best, but the hotel is central to many activities and places to visit.  And even if you decided to just stay at the hotel, the grounds are beautiful, the pool crystal clear, the food to die for and the staff are warm, charming and professional.  ok, I didn't mean to turn this paragraph into an ad for that hotel, but I guess we can call it what it is (an ad!).  We also had a wonderful dinner at a family run restaurant on a lemon farm (lemons are everywhere here which stands to reason since one of the famous local products is their limoncello, a popular lemon liqueur). 

We then took an overnight ferry from Brindisi, Italy to Patras, Greece.   The temperature had been (and continued to be) around 110 degrees each day.  When I do manage to say a bit about our trip to people, I joke that I looked like a shipwreck survivor in most my pictures - all sunburned, windblown, no make-up and glassy-eyed.  But in that sort of heat, nobody really cared - most of us just wanted to be comfortable.  Olympia, Delphi and Athens were wonderful too.  Aside from the La Medusa hotel and dinner at the lemon farm in Italy, my favorite part of the trip was our last day in Athens.  We had the most free time that day and got a chance to strike out on our own for a while.  We took a cab to the Plaka to do some shopping.  The shop owners were so kind and inviting and while, yes, they were very assertive, they were also usually very respectful and knew when to stop.  For example, a woman spent almost an hour trying to help my daughter find a dress and after all that time, my daughter decided against buying anything and we left.  Later that day we passed the same shop and the lady came out to see what we had bought.  At first I thought she was a bit miffed that we hadn't bought anything from her, but as we spoke with her longer, I sensed nothing of the sort - just genuine curiosity about our purchases and friendliness.  We had difficulty hailing a cab to get home (public transportation was on strike that day) and one restaurant owner suggested we wait under the mist dispensers they had hanging outside to cool off the patrons, even knowing we probably wouldn't be buying anything.  I just really, really enjoyed getting to know these wonderful people.  Obviously I'm not saying there aren't rough or dangerous areas in the places we visited.  In fact, most of the five star hotels we stayed in were in rough areas and we were warned to be smart about the types of bags we carried and to be aware of who and what was around us to keep from getting pick-pocketed.  But for the conscientious traveler with a fair share of common sense, most would do just fine. 

All in all, it was a GREAT vacation!  And very memorable for my 16 year old daughter who earned the trip by following through on a promise she made at 13 to stay away from boys until she was 16.  Way to go, girlie!! 

By the way, I saw windmills all over Italy.  But that's for a later post.....  

Europe or BUST!!!

My daughter and I are getting closer and closer to our trip and its finally beginning to seem real.  It is my second time to Europe, but to a completely different part this time.  And I get to share it with my 16 year old.  Taking a trip like this seems sort of extravagant, especially considering how financially rough it is for a lot of people right now, but this is more than just a splurge.  This started a few years ago actually.  A colleague of my husband's suggested we bribe our daughters to stay away from boys for a predetermined length of time by offering them a trip to wherever they want to go at the end of such time period.  It seemed a bit far-fetched to expect a teenager to stay away from the opposite sex that long, but we thought we'd give it a try anyway.  At the time, our oldest already had a boyfriend and had missed the opportunity to participate, but we made this offer to the remaining two daughters.  One declined and one took us up on it.  The one that decided to try it was 13 at the time.  We agreed that she wouldn't go out on dates or see boys until she turned 16.  To this day, there has never been any indication that she ever broke that promise.  She then chose Greece and Italy as the destination(s) for this strip.  And that's where we're going.  Failing to follow through on a promise of this magnitude is NOT an option, regardless of circumstance.

Clean Renewable Energy

I just got home after a couple of days in Lewiston.  The drive is about five and a half hours from the Idaho/Washington border, across farmland, the Columbia river, Snoqualmie Pass and into Puget Sound.  The last couple times I made this trip, I noticed that more and more of the wind turbines were popping up everywhere on the nearby hills along I-90, just west of the Columbia river.  I've always been fascinated by them.  Initially, it was mostly their looks - white, sleek columns towering into the sky, elegant and willowy.  I've always liked their purpose and what they stood for - mining clean, renewable energy resulting in a more evolved and sustainable future for us and our planet.  That gives me hope. 

Eat Healthy, Buy Local

Ramping up for the South Tacoma Farmers Market this summer!  Share it with every Foodie Locavore that you know!!!! Thank you so much!  

  

Iconic

I mentioned before the photograph project I'm doing.  One of my favorite pics was of a young tanned girl in an old fashioned bathing suit and swimming cap.  She was sitting on a large metal ice chest that had "Pepsi-Cola" written on the side in red.  What really pulled the whole thing together was that she was also drinking a Pepsi while sitting there.  The colors, the style, the Pepsi logo.....  we couldn't have created anything better to package all that is Pepsi in a single picture.  It's gotten the most hits out of any of the pictures of Chuck's that I've uploaded to flickr. 

Well, yesterday, I was looking at my stats for my account and noticed a few unusual referrers.  One I recognized because of the "pepsi" name in the site address - www.pepsimax.dk - obviously a Pepsi site of some sort.  And the other was www.sonico.com.  Upon further investigation, turns out this is also a Pepsi site, I just didn't recognize it by "sonico".  I discovered these sites were showing Chuck's Pepsi pic to their website visitors.  I LOVE THAT!  I got very excited about that and had to share....   More later....    :)

Photographic Documentary

Lately, I have been more into my photography than anything else.  I started using flickr and uploading my pics to share with anyone interested.  I joined various flickr groups, based on interest....One is a group for pictures of antique signs.  Another is a group for self-taught photographers.  And yet another for pictures of abandoned buildings.  There are literally millions of groups to choose from.  And now I have another photography project I'm passionate about.

Before I explain further about the project, however, I should set the background for how this came about.  After my husband's mother passed away last June, Lyle temporarily went to live with his step-dad Chuck to help him get stronger and back on his feet.  A few months ago, Lyle found some old slides of pictures Chuck had taken spanning from the fifties to late seventies using two different Zeiss Ikon 35mm cameras.  The pictures cover events from his college days at University of Idaho, time in the armed forces in Korea and Japan, as well as the first ten years or so he was married to Lyle's mom.   Lyle picked about 30 of his favorite slides and showed me the next time I was out to visit.  I absolutely fell in LOVE with these pictures.  We found many more slides after that, and they were ALL a very poignant photographic documentary of this man's life. 

And now we come to the photography project.  Chuck has given me permission to share the pictures on Flickr.  Here is the plan:  Lyle and I are going to have all the images transferred to CD.  The original slides and a CD set of the copied images will be retained by Lyle's family.  I will retain a second copy of the images and upload about half of them onto flickr.  I say 'half' because out of the lot, that's about how many I would comfortably share on flickr based on the content - i.e., the photos that are either iconic of the times or are of places and events that can be appreciated by a much wider audience than just myself, my husband and our immediate family.  The remaining half are private family photos that will and should be kept just for family and will not be uploaded to flickr.

It's Sunday night and I just came back from visiting Lyle and Chuck and I've brought all 700+ slides with me.  I will have them copied onto CDs sometime in the next few days, uploaded to flickr sometime within the next couple weeks and return the slides and copies the next time I visit.   I am very grateful to Chuck for trusting me with all the original slides and allowing me to share his phenomenal pictures.   I hope others enjoy the his pictures as much as I do.