… for this photo of my mother in Oslo just a few years ago. She always appreciated the fact that Norwegians throw a big party every year for her birthday and she got to visit the country several times over the years, as part of her many travel adventures.
It’s a big day here at Chez 10K — Dear Daugher’s birthday. Hopefully, we’ll get to have a little fun family time this weekend…
Which all reminds me… DD is no longer going to be known as Dear Daughter here on the blog. We’re going to switch to real made-up names instead. There are a few reasons for this. First, a friend suggested that using the old usenet/message board convention is kinda creepy and dated. I can see that — it does go back a while and it’s not terribly creative. Plus, the problem with “DD” is that some people might actually pronounce it in their heads and start thinking of Dear Daughter as “Dee Dee.” With all due respect to anyone with that name, it’s not something Dear Daughter answers to.
So, like a lot of bloggers out there who want to protect the privacy of those around them, I’m going to start using nicknames for the people I talk about a lot. Henceforth, Dear Hubby will be known as “Ralph” — it’s a name he answered to in college (it amused a friend of ours to call him that, because that made us Ralph and Alice). And Dear Daughter will now be known as “Emmie.” Dear Puppy, brave soul that she is, has decided to go on the record with her real name, Nonnie, because it’s such a cool freakin’ name for a dog — it is supposedly a diminutive form of a Portuguese word meaning “little mistress of our home.” It’s also the name of a character in the very cool narrative told by Laurens van der Post in A Story Like the Wind and A Far Off Place, which Emmie and I loved reading together, over and over again, when she was a little girl.
So anyway, that’s a long way around to saying: Happy Birthday, Emmie! May this be your best year ever!
After spending four of the last six days in the car, I’m so over this view:
It was a fun trip, it was great to get to see (most of) the family and I’m very happy to be home for the (rest of the) summer. More later!
p.s. Rabbit rabbit and happy Aunt Kay’s birthday, everyone!
I’ve been thumbing through some old photos lately and have discovered quite a few overlooked gems in the archives, so at some point I think I might start a new feature for sharing blasts from the past. In the meantime, though, in honor of Father’s Day, which much of the world is celebrating today — with some notable exceptions — I thought I’d share a couple of photos.
I don’t get to spend Father’s Day with my father this year, but last year was a treat because the holiday fell on the same weekend as our annual family gathering. When he’s not at the office, my father can usually be found on the tennis court, so that is where I captured the second image below. The first one probably reaches back almost fifty years, for a study in (surprisingly little) contrast. I found it last year when I was perusing the old family photo albums. I think it’s a picture my mother snapped back when my parents were still a carefree couple — before the five children, and the wonderful chaos that arrived in our wake.
I think the same easygoing, energetic spirit is visible in both images.
I was going to post about trains tomorrow, on Mother’s Day, because my mother was one of the biggest fans of trains. She journeyed across America and back numerous times on the train, enjoyed the gorgeous ride across Canada, rode the Orient Express, and had adventures on many other trains in Europe, Asia, North America and Austraila.
So, I naturally thought of my mother when I came upon this post by Kvatch about how we need to refocus on rail here in the US. It’s an argument people have been making for years (though much to my mother’s frustration, it’s mostly fallen on deaf ears as Americans have continued their long-term romance with automobiles), but I think we might finally be at a pivot point when it comes to trains.
The days following the attack on the World Trade Center demonstrated how vulnerable we are when our airlines can’t fly. And recent chaos at our airports has shown that it doesn’t take a major disaster to effectively shut down air travel. We not only need a good backup transportation option for when air travel is disrupted, but we also need to seriously consider the environmental impact of flying and consider alternatives whenever possible. Trains fill both these needs.
I recently attended an information session about a Maglev train route that might eventually run from Savannah, Georgia to Chicago, Illinois (which would stop in Chattanooga), and the benefits are numerous. Maglev trains are quiet, efficient, very clean, and they can carry freight — and especially when you factor in the typical delays involved in flying (like baggage check, endless waits at security checkpoints and required early arrivals), they can be just as fast as flights on many popular commuter routes. Americans are way behind Asia and Europe in developing high-speed train technology and routes, but now that gas prices have us looking for alternatives to riding all alone in gas-guzzling SUVs, we might see some progress toward the planning and implementing of some high-speed train routes.
As I said, I was planning on posting about all this tomorrow, but via mindful mission, I just discovered that today is National Train Day. Why May 10th? Because “on May 10, 1869, in Promontory Summit, Utah, the ‘golden spike’ was driven into the final tie that joined 1,776 miles of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railways, ceremonially creating the nation’s first transcontinental railroad.”
So, happy train day, kids! Get your Choo-Choo on! 
This image is a repeat (from a few years ago), but it’s the subject’s birthday today (I hope it was a good one!) and I don’t have any original content. It’s been a loooong day and I’m soooo tired (the weather was really gorgeous, so hopefully I’ll have some more spring photos soon!).
DD and I spent the day today driving around North Alabama, which is always fun. It was a fairly colorless day and quite foggy before noon, so it wasn’t a great outing in terms of picture-taking, but it was nice and warm out and the company was good. We’ve both been busy lately, so it was good to spend the time in the car, getting caught up. Plus, I really enjoyed getting out the house for a while — I’ve been pretty cooped up since the dog’s been sick.
The main purpose of our trip was to pick up a kegerator I bought on eBay this week (an upgrade for us). That took us to the upper edge of Huntsville, which looked beautiful this morning as the fog settled into the valleys, below the tops of the area’s hills where the sun was breaking through. While we were in the neighborhood, we also hit Unclaimed Baggage and the Lodge Outlet Store, and we rounded out the day with a really great lunch at a Mexican restaurant (Buena Vista) in Scottsboro, AL.
It was pretty cool for a spontaneous outing.
Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last–far off–at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.
So runs my dream: but what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.
