L'aventure américaine

Randal and I were reminiscing about what we were doing ten years ago and how we marked the end of the first decade of the 2000s.  I thought back to where I was in December of 2009 and then remembered that I had done a blogpost to close the decade.  It was fun to look back on it and the one constant of my life...  I have no idea where life will take me in the next ten years.  So.  Ten years ago, I had recently moved to Phoenix.  I was lonely, but working at my first job that really paid well and I was really a grown up.  I filled my days with reading, educational activities, and actively seeking and securing solid friendships.  I embarked on self-improvement projects and worried that I would never meet the right person and would never get married.  And today?  One, it will be a miracle if I get through this blogpost in one sitting without a kid calling me.*  But, as for the rest..  We have relatively recently moved.  I...

Wow.  It was an amazing vacation...  amazing.  Sterling and I saw so many beautiful places and things. Porcupines, bears, seals, whales, bison, mountain goats, prairie dogs, bald eagles and so many more things that I'm sure I haven't remembered.  The ferry rides, the mountains, the glaciers, the Pacific Ocean, the aspen groves, the wildflowers...  And a fantastic travel companion who could put up with me and I with him, so happily.  It was an epic vacation...  truly a once in a lifetime trip.   Sterling and I prepare to enter Alaska. We celebrate our entrance to Alaska! A false front in Dyea: a town that was the starting point to the Klondike Gold Rush (and the Chilkoot Pass) in 1898.  Hardly anything exists there today. Sterling is happy to be on the ferry, headed through the Inside Passage. A labyrinth that we walked outside of Juneau. Sterling in front of the Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau. Calving off the Menden...

So, life has settled back into the mundane routine lately.  Work and home and groceries and so on.  That is, if you included putting a roof on a new house as quickly as you can and packing up boxes with labels such as, "Books for Baltimore!" and "Books to open in our new mansion in Detroit!"  But, we're toodling along at a breakneck pace. And in the midst of this Phoenix chapter closing, I am trying to downsize my things.  Which has been an adventure.  A Craigslist Adventure: It started off so well initially.  I decided that Odie's treadmill did not need to move to Baltimore with us.  Thus, with our quickly imposed delivery fee, Sterling and I were able to make $145 one day after the posting.   Wonderful! I thought.   This will be lucrative and fast!  And then things slowed down...  Way down. I have since had one scammer and 3 pornography sites be interested in my vacuum and lamps (vacuum, really?  How cliche.) I have ...

And so the final leg our journey commenced with just Sterling and I cruising along in the Opal.  As previously stated, we headed to Luxembourg first for two reasons: 1) I couldn't seem to navigate to Strasbourg and 2) We thought Luxembourg might be as cool as Liechtenstein.  So, we arrived in Luxembourg City and although hungry, we were happy! Luxembourg was just a little bit of a bust though.  It was Sunday, so everything was closed except the extremely expensive restaurants that were open due to a marathon in the city.  We did get to walk quite a bit though, enjoy some views and saw some Luxembourgian hookers near where we parked (still better than Pisa...  nothing was stolen!), so it was all in all, a satisfying trip. But, we headed to France and decided to stop in Verdun, since the name sounded vaguely familiar.  (It was a big battlefield during World War I and is famous for the amount of devastation that occurred during the time.)  It was ...

October is coming and not a moment too soon. While it has been a good summer and many good things are in the works, it has been a long stretch as well. Firstly, the weather. It's so hot and I have been tired of it since mid-June. I sighed as my seatbelt burned me today and look forward to a trip home to Indiana where I can bring out the scarves and feel goosebumps on my skin outdoors. Secondly, our BMT unit. I have been working on the bone marrow transplant unit since January, which is really such a short time compared to most of my coworkers. But, in these last few months, I have fallen in love with the patients and the nurse practitioners, the style of work, the coworkers, and the passion that everyone brings to the unit. Banner Health (the company that Good Sam, my hospital, belongs to) is opening a new cancer center outside of the city and their BMT program is not open yet. This means that our patients have to transfer to the Mayo Clinic, our doctors and NPs and nurses a...

VA.CA.TION... I believe that an extended period of time can consist of just one weekend and thus, I packed up again and headed north with my dog and new buddy, Sterling Engine (hereafter: Sterling). Tick, tick, tick went the thermostat as we drove away from Phoenix and yip, yip, yip went Odie in the backseat as he realized where we were headed. And a grin settled on my face as sweat stopped rolling down my back. 80 degrees is goooood. Top 5 Moments: 1. A harvest moon lent an air of daytime to the night... Pre-fantastic thunderstorm, that is. (Thank you, tent, for keeping us dry.) 2. Hobo dinner of vegetables and sausage and bacon and eggs in the morning... Oh so delicious. 3. Eating nectarines with Humphrey's Peak in the background and the distant Grand Canyon in the foreground in the middle of The Abineau/Bear Jaw Trail. 4. Not having cell phone service for 36 hours. 5. Signing the date, "9/11" in the hiking log yesterday and paying homage to the event, through me...

My friend Jean Ellen is probably my hippest friend here in Phoenix. She always has the scoop on the most interesting events and activities around. And she did a bang-up job this weekend by taking me and another friend of ours to the Brides of March Pub Crawl: an event that you can only attend dressed in wedding dress, whether or not you are male or female. She shopped for us in a thrift shop in which there were only three wedding dress and bought all three. We were fated to go to this event as each dress found its perfect match in one of us. And so we started in Tempe and took the Light Rail to Phoenix with around 50+ beautiful brides marched around with drinks in hand. There was chest hair and make-up and earrings that were hot-glued on. There were long skirts and veils and white satin galore. It was fantastic. If you happen to live in a city that does this annually, I guarantee that this is an event not to be missed!

I think that it's eyeliner karma that led me to this weekend's Honor Ball to benefit Scottsdale Healthcare. It was an invitation from The Good Doctor that allowed me to experience my first black-tie affair since prom. And at this event, there was an open bar and better food. Also a lot less crying in the bathroom (that I could see) and a lot more schmoozing. The evening was a great one though because I got to wear my newest love... a vintage Ceil Chapman dress circa 1950. It was a mad-dash to get ready for this event in three days and I had at least two melt-downs in the Scottsdale Fashion Mall due to shopping fatigue. However, I could have stayed at the vintage dress store for hours and I loved how the staff and the customers gave me their opinions on whichever dressing I was trying on (i.e. "Too tight... too short... Not enough 'pop'... Perfect"). As soon as I tried it on, I had a feeling that this was the dress I would go home with because I love...

Why did crazy Libertarians and Republicans and the odd Democrat have to take the benign "tea party" for their party name? It means that when a liberal Dem wants to actually have a real tea party, her friends get all worried that she's gone all right-wing on them. I'm taking the tea party back. I also wanted to include a picture of my Christmas cookies. I have been a cookie apprentice to the cookies masters for the past few years (that is my mother and her friend, Sandra Tokarski). A few days ago, I branched out on my own and produced 5 different kinds of sweet in one day. I was beat and sugared out. And I missed having a cookie apprentice who has to do the dishes at the end of the day...