Things that glow

One of my absolute favorite things about summertime in the South is the lightning bugs. We had them in Southern California, too - they were called fireflies there - but I don't think they came out at night en masse like they do down here.

Last weekend I was in D.C. celebrating the fourth. We were on the way to a cookout when we drove by an empty lot between houses that was completely alight with the incandescent insects. I love phosphorescence in all of its forms, and that's what this post is all about.

Also handy because then I don't have to talk about my job search or the fact that J currently lives hundreds of miles away...
Synchronized fireflies (ahem, lightning bugs) in the Smokey Mountains of north Tennessee and North Carolina.
I originally saw this piece in Southern Living yesterday in the dentist's office (heh) but since I couldn't find that article online, here's the phenomenon covered in the New York Times.

Basically, a whole slew of male lightning bugs blink in unison in order to attract females. Apparently it's like a symphony of lights. Not sure if it impresses their women, but I would love to see this. The NYT piece covers the bugs in Elkmont, Tenn., during the first two weeks in June.

The Dismalites of Dismal's Canyon outside of Phil Campbell, Ala.

Dismal's Canyon is also where they filmed the backdrop for When Dinosaurs Roamed the Earth on the Discovery channel

I actually have seen the dismalites before. We had a group trip in 2009 to see them and enjoy the canyon for a weekend. They have campsites as well as a couple of lovely cabins and a swimming hole. The canyon (and the dismalites) are the major attractions, though.

You go on a guided tour after dark in the summertime to see the tiny bioluminescent worms. Gajillions (this is an official count) of Dismalites light up the sides of the cave walls like a starry sky.

image via

Also, Dismal's Canyon is home to Burr's Hideout - apparently where Aaron Burr hid out for days after he shot Alexander Hamilton. Lots of old graffiti on the rocks too. Definitely worth a visit.

Cave graffiti at Dismal's dating from 1936

Phosphorescent plankton on the beach at Dauphin Island, Ala.
I've been fortunate enough to see this one, too, as a part of a field studies class I took my senior year of high school to Dauphin Island Sea Lab. My friend, Dustin of Spawning is Imminent (why can't I find your blog anymore, Dustin? Please explain this to me) was lucky enough to study there for a summer in college.

At any rate, it was amazing - standing in the complete dark and kicking up the sand in the surf. The entire area surrounding your toes lighting up as you disrupt the plankton.

Dauphin Island is a barrier island and quite remote - not very many city lights. So serene, and the glowing sand makes the experience otherworldly. I'd love to go back. No photos, unfortunately.

This completes my shortlist of favorite things that glow. I have no idea why I found it necessary to write this post.

Hi, I'm 27 and I live with my mother.

It's not so bad, really. She brings me coffee every morning with frothed almond milk. I actually get to work on time because of the coffee-in-bed ritual.

She's an excellent cook and great company. And she helped me clean out three years of abandoned hobbies and detritus friends have left behind from house parties and get-togethers. I feel guilty about that, but am so thankful that she was here.

So, it's been a while since my last post, and definitely not for lack of activity. Life activity increase = blog productivity decrease. C'est la vie.

I've been up to a lot! J finished grad school in December (yay!), schlepped through months of unsatisfactory work (boo) while searching for a satisfactory first-career job. He got an offer in May (yay!) right around our first anniversary. Who can believe I didn't blog about that one?!

J gave me some truly gorgeous anniversary flowers - birds of paradise, lilies and others - pictured here in case I never get around to dedicating a post to our anniversary... which is entirely possible.

Anyway, after months of anxiously awaiting news, a company that makes yogurt offered him a job! After ages of waiting, the usual "we need you to start... YESTERDAY." occurred. Chaos ensued.

Our anniversary trip to New York City turned into a frantic apartment search. We found a place; signed the lease; came home; rented a 22-foot Penske truck (her name was Penny) with a tow dolley; loaded almost all of our worldly possessions to said rental; drove in lightning storms and heavy construction maxing at 55 mph and listening to a crappy suspense book-on-CD through Tennessee, Virginia, D.C., Maryland, Delaware and finally Jersey; unloaded in the rain in New Rochelle, N.Y. (27 minutes by express train to the Big City and home of Dick Van Dyke on his show, apparently - things you learn from old people); unpacked; visited with our friends Christina and Daniel; and proceeded to sleep through three alarms and two phone calls from the airport cab driver at 4:45 a.m. on a Sunday morning.

Penny

I eventually made it home, exhausted, just in time to work on Monday to a cat on hunger strike. At my mother's house.

It's only temporary.

Holy hell, I need to find a job. I'm working on it.

It's only temporary.

More to come...

In the meantime:

• this is hilarious
• J started a blog! About food! We can blog together. Because, obviously, we don't live together right now.
• It's only temporary.
• I'm looking for work. if you're hiring.
• Charles is eating again. Her backbone still feels like a xylophone, but she is definitely perkier and eating her nom again. Phew.
  

Did you know that there are mobile truckers' chapels at certain truck stops?

I want to walk Scotland.

I just have to find the vacation time to make this happen.

I have been completely absorbed in the Outlander series about a time-traveling British woman from WWII era and her life with a 17th century Scottish highlander. Sensational? Bodice-ripping? Yes and yes. But also really absorbing and quite historically rich. I've learned all of this stuff about 17th century Scottish uprisings and early American colonial history.

Anyway, now I've romanticized the Scottish highlands and want to visit. And then I see this in my Washington Post travel email. I need to go. I need to take 18 days for vacation and walk this. They say walk, not hike. I may not be the most outdoorsy, but I can walk for millions of miles. Just don't ask me to jog or run and I can go forever. AND you don't even have to camp - there are B&Bs, self-service cabins, hostels and inns all across the trails.

Courtesy of the Washington Post - check out the rest of the slideshow (!!!) You'll want to come on this adventure with me.

This reminds me of another incredible book I read quite a while back - It's Not About the Tapas (hm, by the looks of that Amazon link, Ms. Polly Evans writes a whole series of travel books. I will be checking those out...) - that made me want to bike Spain. But walking seems a bit more accessible. The author of the Post piece is a food writer for crying out loud. That makes him like me. If he can do it, so can I. I mean, the hardest bit on the trail only has a two-hiking boot difficulty meter. Out of five. This is doable.

I'll even compromise. the first leg of Brian Yarvin's trip is the long-distance West Highland Way that only takes eight days (or stages), according to my the impressive Scottish walks website.

The West Highland Way was Scotland's first long distance route and remains by far the most popular. Stretching for 150km from Milngavie on the edge of Glasgow to Fort William at the foot of Ben Nevis, the route offers a fabulous introduction to the Scottish Highlands. Those wanting to add an extra days walking could even begin in the heart of Glasgow, reaching Milngavie by following the Kelvin Walkway.

I can take a ten-day vacation. I'm thinking anniversary trip. Thank you, Outlander series, in your historically titillating excessiveness, for reigniting my wanderlust. I'm going to make this happen. Just give me time. And help me figure out how to somehow include a kayak excursion to further pique J's interest in this enterprise...

If you're into this travel fantasy (hey - it'll eventually become a reality!) stuff like I am, this WaPo newsletter had a Europe guide that also featured renting a house in France, cycling through southern Portugal and exploring Ukraine's ancient walled city. I have some more article reading to do :)

Oh! Also - A Town Like Paris. Another travel daydreamer's must-read. The author moves to Paris to work a Parisian government job (sadly, probably not so cushy anymore...) and totally immerses himself in la vie Francais.

Bejing

EF - Live The Language - Beijing from Albin Holmqvist on Vimeo.

(By the way, these all came from the ModLife blog, which is almost always interesting reading.)

I am fairly sure I'm more of a Europe girl than an Asia one, but this does make me want to explore the asian side of things as well... Can you study abroad for work? Sigh.

Oh, to be a study abroad student again...

EF - Live The Language - Paris from Albin Holmqvist on Vimeo.

And there are more... I believe I'll share them one at a time since I am the worst blog poster ever lately. This will give anyone who happens to look at my blog something to daydream about :)

Voyage

I love the holidays. But, as I'm sure is the case for many people, they are bittersweet. In addition to the joy I feel being around loved ones and eating food and looking at lights and glittery paper and ribbons, I also reflect on those lost. Bittersweet. On my way into work this morning, I heard this poem and it rung so true. Anyway, not much more from me today, just this:

Voyage

by Tony Hoagland

I feel as if we opened a book about great ocean voyages
and found ourselves on a great ocean voyage:
sailing through December, around the horn of Christmas
and into the January Sea, and sailing on and on

in a novel without a moral but one in which
all the characters who died in the middle chapters
make the sunsets near the book's end more beautiful.

—And someone is spreading a map upon a table,
and someone is hanging a lantern from the stern,
and someone else says, "I'm only sorry
that I forgot my blue parka; It's turning cold."

Sunset like a burning wagon train
Sunrise like a dish of cantaloupe
Clouds like two armies clashing in the sky;
Icebergs and tropical storms,
That's the kind of thing that happens on our ocean voyage—

And in one of the chapters I was blinded by love
And in another, anger made us sick like swallowed glass
& I lay in my bunk and slept for so long,

I forgot about the ocean,
Which all the time was going by, right there, outside my cabin window.

And the sides of the ship were green as money,
and the water made a sound like memory when we sailed.

Then it was summer. Under the constellation of the swan,
under the constellation of the horse.

At night we consoled ourselves
By discussing the meaning of homesickness.
But there was no home to go home to.
There was no getting around the ocean.
We had to go on finding out the story
by pushing into it—

The sea was no longer a metaphor.
The book was no longer a book.
That was the plot.
That was our marvelous punishment.

"Voyage" by Tony Hoagland, from Hard Rain. © Hollyridge Press, 2005. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Interestingly enough, my granddad was a ship captain. So was my uncle before he retired. My dad was in the Navy too. In her early twenties, Mom sailed from L.A. to Australia on the beginning of her great adventure that eventually led her to my dad in Spain.

My uncle posted this photo on his Facebook sometime this summer... it's of him on his ship in Vietnam. He met up with my dad there - he's in the reflection.

Granddad had Alzheimer's and many of my more vivid memories of him were in this state since I was old enough to remember. He told this amazing story about when he first left Norway to work on a ship, they still sailed on masted sailing ships. I'm sure it was part of some sort of hazing ritual, but when he was young, they dared him to climb up to the uppermost mast and balance there, entire ship and ocean below, on his belly. Crazy. Crazy what you remember when everything else is gone... Crazy how many life-changing moments in my family, on both sides, began with a ship.

a rediscovered classic.

After our own fabulous, relaxing, entertaining honeymoon in Vegas, J and I have been meaning to Netflix Honeymoon in Vegas. We finally got around to watching it together Monday night (I forget how nice it is just to sit down and watch a movie sometimes...)

I adored it - we relived our honeymoon a bit which was awesome as we both are beyond ready for another vacation... In addition to the nice memories, the movie was ridiculously silly and mood-boosting.


Elvis impersonators - black, asian, kid, skydiving and others... SJP in a string of awesomely bad (verging more on just plain awesome, actually) early 90s supertight dresses. Nic Cage in my favorite version of what he does, cringe-inducing and simultaneously endearingly sweet. Vegas, Hawaii. All of these things made for particularly awesome viewing.

Pure escapist pleasure. Check it out if you're feeling like a vacation. Or a sweet soundtrack of Elvis covers.

I'm going to try to keep this going with more frequent, but short and sweet posts with whatever happens to grab my attention. We'll see how this goes :)

Another Vegas shot or two, just because:



If you ever do find yourself in Vegas, please visit the Neon Boneyard. It was so incredibly cool; deconstructed Vegas. Vegas that was. Fun contrast to see what used to be (here) compared to what is now (on the strip.)

Outstanding in the field

So, I found out about this program (organization? movement?) via a design*sponge post and now I'm riveted. How do we get these guys to come to Huntsville, anyway? Naturally, Alabama superchef Frank Stitt (of Bottega and Highlands Grill in Birmingham) has already participated... I know this thanks to OITF's handy Google map of everywhere they've ever had a farm dinner:


View Outstanding in the Field Dinner Site Map in a larger map

(I created one of these for our educators visits of all of the Alabama Math Science Technology Initiative hub sites across the state - love them!)

Anyway, thinking of starting a social media campaign to get them to visit Huntsville.
I'm thinking a Ledges/Mezza Luna collaboration. But of course I am biased. Nowhere in their FAQ does OITF break down how to get a meal in your area, so I'm going to go ahead and assume it's all contacts and convincing.

I would definitely save (and save, and save) $200 for an experience like this:

Outstanding in the Field is a roving culinary adventure - literally a restaurant without walls. Since 1999 we have set the long table at farms or gardens, on mountain tops or in sea caves, on islands or at ranches. Occasionally the table is set indoors: a beautiful refurbished barn, a cool greenhouse or a stately museum. Wherever the location, the consistent theme of each dinner is to honor the people whose good work brings nourishment to the table.

Ingredients for the meal are almost all local (sometimes sourced within inches of your seat at the table!) and generally prepared by a celebrated chef of the region. After a tour of the site, we all settle in: farmers, producers, culinary artisans, and diners sharing the long table.

The dinners generally begin at 3 or 4 p.m., depending on the time of the year, and wrap up around sunset. As the days get shorter in the fall, the dinners last until candlelight is required. Length of each event is four to five hours, and guests often linger at-table well past sunset, reluctant to have the magical evening come to a close.

So, who's with me?! Let's get this campaign started so we can have a fabulous meal at a table like this one, in the DC area...

Paradores!

Hi. I haven't posted since June 25. Holy crap. I need to pick up the pace. So here begins a spate of new posts.

I recently got engaged to a fabulous guy. One of my favorite things about him is his willingness to check out uncharted territories. He's a great traveler too - good sense of direction, go with the flow attitude about experiences - which makes life awesome. What bugs both of us is that we have never been on a large scale adventure together. I've spent the summer in London, visited Norway and Paris, all while in college studying abroad. He's been to China, seen pandas and walked the Great Wall, all with other friends while I worked in DC.

Naturally, we want to have our first major adventure together for our honeymoon. I'm thinking a tour of the Spanish paradores.

Paradores de Turismo de España are a chain of Spanish luxury hotels. They were founded by Alfonso XIII of Spain as a means to promote tourism in Spain, with the first opening in Gredos, Ávila in 1928.

A profitable state-run enterprise, the hotels are often in castles, palaces, fortresses, convents, monasteries and other historic buildings. They stretch from Galicia in the North West through Catalonia to Andalusia in the south of Spain, the Canary Islands and to the Spanish cities in North Africa. (Thanks, Wikipedia)

My parents met in the south of Spain. My mom was traveling with girlfriends, fresh off of a stint in Australia and my dad was stationed in Rota, Spain with the U.S. Navy post-Vietnam. They knew each other for approximately three months before my mom went off to Norway on a road trip with my dad's cousin. When she returned (by plane) he greeted her at the airport, and there it was decided that they'd get married.

So, Spain has definite appeal to me. What better place to start a marriage, than the Mediterranean coast? And on top of that, in the country where my parents met, and kicked off a happy 30-year marriage? There must be something in the water there.

My parents always used to talk about driving up the coast and having fancy dinners at the paradores - paella and fresh fish. Yum. And it looks like they're still at it with the food (uh, YUM!?)

The other day I began my online parador research and discovered the amazing, comprehensive and completely tantalizing Web site. Seriously considering going to the courthouse to push this marriage thing through so we can honeymoon next week. Ha. There will be some saving of the money before any of that happens, though. But if we do decide to go this route, I will have a goal to push me through the bitter Alabama winter: sunny May skies in Spain. :)

Here's what I'm thinking for the vacay: the site offers rates for routes, scheduled for either three or seven days. (Hello, did I not say that their site is amazingly comprehensive? It's an internet planning addict's dream). All of the routes are themed - culture, nature, WINE, legacy trails through other cultures... Anyway, one of the seven-nighters is a coastal trail. All the way from the northeast corner of Spain, down the Mediterranean coast to the southern tip.

They say on the site that this route takes visitors to some of the best beaches along the Mediterranean coast in Alicante, Murcia, Almería and Malaga. This area is well-known for its tourist attractions but still harbors many pleasant surprises.

I like it. Beach vacation plus culture in Spain. Beach honeymoon meets global trek. And they drive on the right side of the road, don't they?

Don't they??



By the way, I promise this isn't going to be a wedding planning blog from now until May. I have lots of other exciting stuff going on that I'll be posting about, including a Social South new media conference in Birmingham next Friday and Saturday and a trip to San Fran for the Dreamforce (Salesforce users) conference in November to learn how to integrate my work's Facebook, Twitter and other social media efforts with our Web site as well as with our non-profit Salesforce software. Interesting stuff. AND I just signed up for Santa's Village PR again. Whoooeeeee, here comes fall and winter. May will be here before I know it...

mini vacation: 21c Art Hotel

Ever since I heard about 21c on NPR during my morning commute to work last winter, I've been dying to check it out. Finally, in June, thanks to a combination of factors including J having an unheard of weekend off work and me being employed (whoo!) we're heading to Louisville (Louhvul?) Ky. for the weekend. A minibreak, if you will. And I couldn't be more excited...

Really what makes 21c different from all other hotels is it's vast private art collection, amassed by owners Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson. This is modern art: crazy paintings of men caressing mannequins, conceptual films with accompanying dioramas. Red penguins everywhere. Modern art, like my favorite - the Hirshhorn - oh how I would love to work there...

Our agenda for the weekend:

• leisurely, five hour drive from Huntsville to Louhvul with a potential stop in E-Town (as Mr. Addis calls it)
• if we can swing the work schedules, an organic wine dinner featuring french bistro food at 610 Magnolia
• perusing the downtown Louhvul art scene, including two(!) glassblowing workshops
• more eating, at Proof on Main, 21c's on site (and apparently fabulous) restaurant and wine bar
• troll the Urban Bourbon Trail
  
• music and dancing?
• and brunch. no vacation is complete with out at least one brunch.

This "itinerary" should pretty much sums up my idea of a perfect vacation. Leisurely road trip, eating, eating, wine, eating, dancing, distillery tour, eating. Repeat.

Woohooo Friday!

Ca$hville in photos

I've been feeling more visual than literary lately. So, here's Nashville in photos. Friend Michelle told us about cheap Opryland Hotel rates. Once we got there we were able to upgrade our room to an atrium view... lovely. If you get the chance to go, you should try to finagle an atrium room. It made the stay.

View of the Cascades from our room balcony.

Balcony view #2 - the waterfall. We originally were in a third floor room and asked to move because we were directly at eye level with everyone walking by on the walkway. Awkward.

We (and by "we" I mean "I") took a lot of time farting around in Opry Mills. Found a bunch of cute stuff... Just about made J terminal until we hit the end - the Bass Pro Shops outdoor store. That place is huge. And terrifying. Totally packed with taxidermy critters of all shapes and sizes. While J was examining the kayaks and gear I spotted this little beaver vignette that someone cleverly enhanced. It's hard work hacking logs with your teeth. Every beaver needs a value-sized Diet Coke to quench its thirst every once in a while.

So, the outdoor store was just terrifying on the whole. Behold, the biggest effing catfish I have ever seen. Apparently it's not unusual for them to get this large. Who knew? I was sharing my newfound knowledge with a kickball buddy, who then told me about catfish noodling (!!!) WTF. One more note about the great outdoors. J informed me that all the stuffed (and live) critters were strategically placed to remind shoppers what the real outdoor camping/hiking/fishing experience is like. And on that note, I've decided that my as yet unrealized camping career will never come to fruition. How about a block party instead? Or some bocce. These outdoor activities are more my speed.

Eventually we made it out of Natureland (alive and unscathed by the ginormous bottom feeding fish). After another prolonged wine and cheese session on our balcony, we headed out to eat. When in Nashville, check out Sunset Grill. We had an amazing prix fixe three course meal there for $20. It was quite the recession friendly vacation.

I am thoroughly enjoying traveling in this economy! You can do so much for so little expense. I'm thinking girls' weekend soon. The end.

Revisiting favorite places

There's not really much reason for this post other than to show off one of my favorite places in DC - Sidney Harman Hall, home of DC's Shakespeare Theatre Company.

It's gorgeous. And I'm going to attempt to make a stop there during my upcoming visit to see The Twelfth Night.

In a semi-related thought... I have so many favorite places in big cities for various reasons - great entertainment, amazing architecture or interiors, good memories. I get nostalgic and make plans to revisit, but as far as some of the beautiful places go, I'm pretty amazingly lucky with my own place of employment - it's an inspiration in its own right. And my house, while modest, is adorable now as well with my lit up tree and increasingly fun decor.

Life here is pretty nice, too... Trying to learn to cool my heels and enjoy where I am while casually planning for the future.

The past was fun. The present is fun. The future will be amazing. All in all, I can't complain.

Things I miss about urban living, part one.

The High Heel Drag Race. Now there's something you don't see everywhere.

Dupont was one of my favorite neighborhoods in DC for a number of reasons: tons of galleries, gorgeous tree lined streets with the majority of the palatial embassy residences, people watching in the circle, Kramerbooks (and Zorba's) and other amazing food...

but what made Dupont was the once yearly, Tuesday-before-Halloween, High Heel Drag Race. In what I can only compare to a Rocky Horror-style cult following, thousands of DC residents flock to the restaurants on 17th Street in Dupont to watch the festivities.
When I attended last year, newly elected Mayor Adrian Fenty kicked off the proceedings and even walked in the pre-race parade.

I love how festive the costumes are (Gwen Stefani and her Harajuku Girls? Condi Rice? Princess Di?!), I love how athletic these ladies (?) are - sprinting... seriously. sprinting... in six- to eight-inch lucite platform stilettos and I love the mood of the crowd.

But most of all, I love that the city - all the way up to the mayor - supports diversity and eccentricity. Like I said, that's not something you see everywhere.

Once: the musical?! My life is complete

Happy Friday to me! Just saw this LAT Culture Monster blog post announcing that Once is going to be made into a Broadway musical.

In case you didn't know Once is the 2007 Oscar winner for best original song, "Falling Slowly" (listen here). Jon Stewart brought Marketa Irglova back on stage so she could give her acceptance speech because she was music-ed off? One of my favorite Oscar moments for one of my favorite movies...

Anyway - the play is announced for the 2010-11 Broadway season and I am THERE. Some of the musicals adapted from films have seemed pret-ty cheesy, in my opinion. Not to be a party pooper... and I'm sure it was adorable, since most Broadway plays are highly entertaining, no matter what the subject matter... but the idea of Legally Blonde on stage makes me gag a little.

But this! This is the perfect, romantic, originally musical movie to make into a Broadway musical. Dublin streets, vacuum repairman/street performer meets Czech immigrant cleaning lady with small child - how much more classic does it get? Ha.

But seriously, the beauty of the movie to me was that somehow, even with the quirky premise, this movie - these characters - have a universal appeal.

I just hope that they don't lose that appeal in musical translation. Fingers crossed. But as soon as a date is announced I will be marking my Google calendar and saving money for a special NYC trip. And now I even have a Calvin Klein-designing friend to crash with in Manhattan!