this image pretty much sums up the bahamas excursion, in spite of the drama surrounding my getting there. more to come.

debacle

i've been feeling even more star-crossed this week than usual. the other night, for example, as i was heating up leftover turkey sloppy joes for dinner (heavy into the american comfort foods right now - last weekend it was glorified baked beans, this week the joes - both straight out of my grandmother's old crock-pot cookbook) i managed to spill absolutely everything before I could get it to the plate. sloppy joes on the counter. salad dressing in the crevice between the stove and the counter (yuck). grape tomatoes skidding across the floor. a real boon for bea. not so much for me.

so should i have been surprised when, upon leaving stained glass class last night, i got a message from my cousin t, with whom i'm supposed to meet up in the bahamas this weekend, saying that, while i was flying to freeport, the other three were flying to nassau? and the two were nowhere near each other? and i might have to fly between them? and that would cost loads and get me there very late at night? guess not.

needless to say, a breakdown ensued. spent almost two hours on the phone with orbitz and american airlines when i got home - during which time BOTH of our home phones went on the fritz in the middle of a transaction with the elusive customer service reps. and the upshot is $154 and i don't get to nassau until 10 pm (vs. mid-afternoon for everyone else - but to do that would have cost $400). so much for a quick, cheap getaway with the cousines.

and what's really weird is that i KNEW we were going to freeport. nassau was NEVER in my mind as our destination. and i was completely, expensively WRONG.

now, about that stained glass class. this was the first of 8, and as i told d, i'm definitely not a glass prodigy. last night we learned the basics of cutting the glass with a little tool that has a steel wheel at its tip and is completely awkward to hold and to use. we practiced cutting out basic-seeming shapes - leaves, fish, moons - with this implement, and the result, at least in my case, only vaguely resembled the original design. i'm told we'll get better. i'm told there are ways to smooth out all those jaggedy edges. most of all, i'm told i'll learn to respect the glass, without being afraid of being cut by it. because "the glass knows when you fear it." and all this time, i thought fear of flying glass shards was a smart instinct.

in which we "participate" in the volvo ocean race

May 2006 030
Originally uploaded by na_praha.

yesterday, after drew, scott songer and i ran a 10k across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge (and survived, joints intact), we went out on the derricks' big fishing boat with a bunch of folks to chase down the seven yachts competing in the 2006 volvo ocean race, as they left annapolis to sail to new york. unbelievably cool. there were a zillion other boats of all descriptions on the bay and yet we were able to get very close to the racing yachts as they flew by us, the u.s. ship "pirates of the caribbean" firmly in the lead.

stay of execution

i finally finished my paper on lincoln's temperance and cooper union addresses. it was, in a word, shitty. here's another word: scant. i actually had to do that thing with the margins, where you make them as wide as possible and kick the font size up a notch, just to get to the minimum page requirement. very tenth grade.

then, in class, i realized there was a factual error in the paper. and i had two or three moments of clarity as to what i SHOULD have written about. my whole academic life flashed before my eyes.

and then, when someone attempted to hand in his paper, the professor was mystified. "isn't this a week early?" it wasn't. but he let us pretend it was, and those of us who wanted to could keep working on our papers. i was one of only two who opted to. and i actually had to think about it, because it sure was nice, in those few hours between finishing the paper and contemplating turning it in, to feel like it was done, even crappily so. but i decided it would be nicer to turn in a decent paper.

so if you don't hear from me next week, you know where i'll be: holed up in front of the computer, trying to say something that's not yet been said about one of the most well-documented public figures in history. yeah. good luck with that one.

*image from constitutioncenter.org

skyline drive

last weekend, rick, betsy, drew, bea and i met in virginia's shenandoah national park to camp for a couple of nights and hike Old Rag (seen in the distance behind us in this photograph taken sat. morning on Skyline Drive).

r & b got out there on thursday in "bonnie," their trusty little camper. we followed on friday night, getting there around 10:30 because of an ill-advised stop at baha fresh (we couldn't pass up "enchilado-styling" our burritos, which is the baha fresh equivalent of super-sizing, only instead of extra fries you get extra melted cheese and sauce and require knife, fork and a lot of napkins - not driving friendly).

but the happy news was that because we got there so late, we never had to pay the $15 park entry fee. nota bene, anyone planning a trip there. and because it was late and cold and bonnie was warm and already set up, we ditched our tent and crowded into the camper to sleep. we realized the error of our ways the next morning, when, at sunrise, bea decided that jumping on everyone's heads was a brilliant idea. this, after a night spent in a bed slightly wider and shorter than a twin, with two adults and an excited pup. somehow we forgot this lesson and repeated the whole thing the next night. but by then we had spent 7 hours "hiking" Old Rag (at the summit, it's more like bouldering), and slept like, well, old rags.


on saturday we got up and dined on fried bagels (highly recommended) before driving a meandering hour along Skyline Drive and through historic Sperryville (where an ambitious little shop announced, "Antique Tables Made Daily!") to the base of the mountain.

since dogs aren't *really* allowed on the mountain, and we were determined to bring bea, we decided to use the longer but less well-tread fire road to get up the mountain, figuring that once we got up there, it wouldn't matter what way we came down, even if we were caught with the dog. this way proved to be heavy on the wildflowers, and so we got in touch with our innter botanists using the new magnifying loupes the derricks had brought. yes, we are earnest. thank you for asking.



we didn't make it to the summit before we stopped for lunch, which felt like cheating, but turned out to be smart - we needed fuel for an ascent and then descent that required every muscle in our bodies as we pulled ourselves up over towering boulders, leaped over deep canyons, and dropped into narrow channels. bea is basically a mountain goat in disguise and only had to be handed across a gap 3 or so times. this was not one of them (you can see her head in the center):
for our dedicated fans, there are more images here: http://flickr.com/photos/10516738@N00/tags/shenandoah/