Life at Palmer Station, Part I

If you can see them, I'm one of the people on the ground in the hard hats. My first week was intense, fast paced, very fun & challenging. Even though there was some familiarity with ship offloads, (USAP folks aren't allowed to work the pier at McMurdo), it was a new experience helping backload milvans & moving them onto the ship. Every muscle in my body was used & stretched and at the end of the day I felt like I'd done a hard days work. All the bits & pieces came together, and the all the people I work with are so helpful & generous that my first week, which could have been hellish, felt very supported aided by the awesome "get it done" mentality here. The food here is amazing, everyone seems to get along well with each other, and it feels nice to be the ones to help clean up our own station. This is truly a magical place, and it does not feel small or claustrophobic as I had feared. There is an air of comeraderie that transcends such feelings, and I feel lucky to have gotten the opportunity to get here. And most important, I get to be in an awesome climate, where there is very little sun, and no direct sun. and in June!

Journey to Palmer Station

Still reeling from the incredible trip to England and Ireland, my usual 10 days or so of processing time was backburnered as I hurried to pack & get myself ready to deploy to the smallest of the Antarctica reasearch stations, Palmer Station (the top photo shows the wee station in the background.) The journey involved three nights in denver for "orientation" - I learned all about scaffolding & how to safely climb ladders, but it was basically back on the payroll for me, with some plush cash thrown in for travel & food. There were 4 of us going down to the station for the remainder of the summer (3 1/2 months) and we bonded in the way strangers do who are going into an exciting and unknown adventure. We ate free hotdogs at the hotel to save our cash, and on the morning we started our 25 hour flying ordeal I was saddled with a 74 pounds steel trunk to check in with my luggage. It caused a lot of flack at the airline counter, not to mention having to push this thing through so many airports that I had a pulled back muscle by the time I was on the boat. Anyway, the plane journey ended with a really fun 2 days in Punta Arenas. I was surprised at how much I liked the city, or maybe it was the buzz we were on, those of us who chose to "plow through" our jet lag and stay awake all day, as we wandered through the city for hours stopping for meals, espressos, shopping, taking photos. The third leg of our adventure started when we boarded the LMG to spend the night while it was docked, for it's 8:30am departure. We were to sail for 4 days until we got to the station. Life on board took on an epically funny life of it's own. Our routine was to sleep through breakfast, watch two movies before lunch, eat lunch and watch movies til dinner or sleep more, then eat dinner, more movies before settling in for our 10 - 12 hour death naps. The movement of the boat was like ambien for me. If I tried to lay in my bed & read I just passed out. The rough seas while crossing the Drake Passage were super comforting  to me, just loving the pitching and rolling of the boat.  On the 5th day we got to station & hit the ground running with orientation, working, and a happy reunion with the Willbaker!

Ireland, Part III, An Daingean

The town of Dingle is on the Dingle Peninsula, the westernmost tip of Ireland, with a stunning view of The Great Basket Islands off the Slea Head tip. With some of the most beautiful scenery in the country, it has been the setting for such films as "Ryan's Daughter" & "Far & Away". The locals always talk with horror of Tom Cruise & Nicole Kidman's Irish accents in the latter movie. Despite the fact that it was hotter here than any previous day I'd been in country, I walked around Dingle in a cloud of happy memories. 25 years ago my friends & I drank and sang in these 100 year old pubs until they closed, and I knew that I would return to Co. Kerry again, and have a dream of someday buying a house here, which I think I could actually swing. Since this was the last night of the jeep tour I was just going to go to bed early & not go out in the evening as my days of endless hiking had caught up with me and I was mentally preparing to fly back to the states. As I was lying across my bed in my pajamas at 9:00pm, reading one of those tacky British tabloids, I heard a little knock on my door, and knew it was my travel companions seeing if I wanted to go out & hear music with them. I sighed when I answered the door knowing I wouldn't say no, as it is insane to come to Dingle and not go hear traditional music - which I love tremendously. We went to a pub that was full of tourists & two guys were doing a pretty good job doing traditional ballads, but were doing lots of hokey stuff too...I asked if they took requests & the guitarist looked annoyed as I'm sure he thought I was going to ask him to sing "The Eyes of Texas" or some other such nonsense, but I had been wanting to hear the old Scottish ballad Peggy Gordon for so long, & when I requested it he seemed stunned, and said "I haven't sung that song in twenty years" and looked at his box player & then started in on it & I could tell they were truly enjoying doing it as it is a passionate song & it was sung quite passionately. I couldn't help but get a tear in my eye, as I first heard that song in Dingle on my first trip & never forgot it. Needless to say, I was glad I'd come out. After a few crowd pleasers they asked if anyone wanted to come sing a song with them so of course I wanted to do it, hoping they'd let me pick the song (I was dying to do "Auld Triangle") but we did Molly Malone, which was silly, but I got a few jokes in so it was good craic. We left after a few hours and on the way to our hotel heard some blistering fast jigs coming out of another pub & stopped in for some foot stomping good stuff. These guys weren't trying to please the crowd, but themselves instead, so the music was incredible. I stood outside to cool off while the sweat soaked musicians were taking a break, and had super fun conversations with some locals on the sidewalk. I'd gotten so I could tell a Cork from a Kerry from a Dublin accent, and this one guy didn't seem to have a "tick" one at all, so I asked him where he was from & he said Limerick, which, contrary to it's name, is a rough & gritty place. In Dingle, the first language is Irish so anytime we would go into shops, locals spoke Irish with each other so we couldn't understand them. They also paint over the English versions of their city name on signs (see picture) as there is always some friction over The Gaeltacht purists and those wanting to cater to tourists. I have tried to learn some Irish with online lessons, & it requires a commitment as it is such a bizarre language. It was the perfect end to my Irish experience, and made me feel like I still had plenty of dreams in my pocket to shoot for. I said an emotional goodbye to my travel pals, as they were going on for two more days of touring & I was taking the train from Tralee back to Dublin for my last night before flying to Texas (where I was really looking forward to air conditioning!). Back in Dublin I was giddy again...walked around town until bedtime, and felt sad about leaving Ireland. I have to pack for Palmer Station now, and I'm not sleeping as is my habit when I travel. I am so looking forward to spending the austral winter in Antarctica...one place that is guaranteed the hot sun will not follow me...but Ireland has stolen my heart again, as it did 25 years ago. I went again in '92 and 2000, but this trip was more like the first one: magical!

Ireland, Part II

It's really hard to choose pictures to post from this country, as it seems to have been created to make gorgeous postcards from. But I am prejudiced, as this is my favorite country, and it is not just the physical beauty that startles me, but the combination of that with the people, the music, the history, and the passionate intertwining of all of these. This was my 4th trip to Eire, and it reignited some of those first feelings Ihad when I came in 1984 (ie: this is my home!). But first, I was utterly surprised to see that my tour group had only 3 people on it! The 4th person is the driver & tour guide. In a 4X4, we were able to go to places I'd never been to on my own or on the big busses, as these places are off the tourist grid. My travel companions were a mother & daughter from Louisiana, who were so easy and laid back for people who'd never travelled before. We were in a jeep that could carry up to 14 people, and it felt perfectly comfortable with two of us in back, one riding up front with the driver. They were my perfect travel companions as they eat snacks and road food instead of eating in restaurants (which drives me crazy on vacations) as we see food as fuel and not something to spend hours futzing over. This tour was interesting as it was for the more intrepid traveller, but we stayed in quite luxurious lodging. (The place I'm currently in in Dublin is like a flop motel, but I wanted something lower priced on my last nite. I'm so spoiled now that I'll pay extra next time.). Our first day was doing two touristy things but after that never again. We went to Rock of Cashel, which is stunning, and the Blarney Stone (which I skipped cuz I kissed it last time), and then wended our way down to this unbelievably beautiful place called Gougane Barra in West Cork, which was on a lake with an excellent hiking trail that was two hours straight up, and the countriest tiny church in the center of the lake. This was the day when I realized it was going to be hotter than it even was in Texas, we had all packed for chilly weather, and there is no air conditioning in this country. And the sun stays up til 10:30 or so, so I was taking my walks very very late. The group hike would be high noon, and my fellow travellers were sun worshipers, so I went on my own in the evenings, which was better for me in so many ways - mostly that I got to go as fast as I wanted. Full Irish breakfast was included in the package, so we ate with our tour guide, a sweet girl named Jean who was trying to burn her milky white skin as much as possible. They said it had rained everyday for 3 years until the day I came (I am not making this up) and there hadn't been a week like this in years. The tradeoff is we had this tiny group so we got to decide what we wanted to do, it was like we just had a personal driver who took us off roading a bit then asked us if we wanted to do this variety of optional activities. Anne & Kate were beach people, and I'm a town & culture person, so we compromised a bit. I sat in the jeep while they played on the beach, and they tolerated my gushing at the South Pole Inn. The most wrenching decision we had to make was whether to do the Skellig Islands. This is something I have always wanted to do, they were iffy (on some of the things we would all have to do it or it wouldn't go), but in the end I decided all day exposure in this ultra blinding sunshine might make me heatstroke so I didn't go. This would give us more time in Dingle, which I didn't want to have to scrimp on. Most of the towns we stopped in (Portmagee, Glengarriff) were tiny and adorable, but we'd arrive late so no shops would be open and there might be one pub. Dingle is the capital of traditional Irish music, in the Gaeltacht (which is a place I want to spend much more time), and was where I came 25 years ago and have never forgotten. The girls were all for having a day in a sizable town with shops & being on our own after bouncing around in the jeep for 4 days - so it was great to be able to all agree we wanted a day in town. But I am going to save more about Dingle for my "part 3" posting...because it is my heart's mecca. So for 3 days we ate giant breakfasts and loaded up the jeep with our bags in oppressive sunshine, got dropped off on 2-3 hour hikes in the sun (which sometimes I did anyway, because logistically I had to), & survived by jumping into cold streams & soaking my clothes. Found awesome scrambling rocks, and climbed over & down sheer rock faces to the sea, scaring the living daylights out of my new friends. There was no set itinerary, we could do what we wanted, and it was the best of both worlds: freedom & structure. At the end of the sweltering day I pulled off my thick jeans & wool socks & took a cold shower & laid around for the worst (hottest) part of the day (5-8:30pm), and then it was mercifully coolish & I went on a big aimless ramble, which has become something deeply satisfying to me. There was never any pressure to do stuff together....I hiked by myself & the girls moved a lot slower as they wanted to take lots of pix. I liked the more rugged trails & they liked the roads...so we were a great team letting each other move at our own pace. Our 4th (and my last) evening were going to be in Dingle. I expected no emotional response other that to be in this beautiful place that I came to 25 years ago & had one of the greatest times of my life. I was to be surprised at how this place affected me yet again.

Ireland, Part I

I had a great time in England and had started feeling so settled in at the country farmhouse that I was a little wistful about leaving & starting my Ireland journey on my own. But I was also excited, as I enjoy they part about having to figure out to get from the airport to the lodging and striking out on that first walk around the city after ditching the bags in the room. The bus from the Dubin airport to the city center was so easy that I was already checked into my hotel room within 45 minutes of the plane landing. My private hostel room was much posher than I'd anticipated (justifying the high price) but so tiny I could barely turn around in it...but to be downtown after a week in the country was heaven. Once I get going in a big walking city it's hard for me to stop...I'll walk until the bottom of my feet are numb. I had my map of downtown & had seen the Temple Bar, O'Connell St, Trinity University, & most other walkable stuff my first evening. I was totally excited about getting up the next day & having the whole day to do whatever I wanted before joining my tour group on Sunday morning. Saturday I went to the Grafton St. area & shopped. It was super sunny that weekend in Dublin so Irish people were flopped out on every available patch of grass or sidewalk just wreaking havoc on their pale skin. The biggest downside of my whole trip thus far was the amount of sunshine - Texas in July style sunshine, and I was ok with it in Dublin as there was a cool breeze, and I knew there was no way it would keep up - that once I got into the jeep & started going West there would be fog, dark clouds, some wonderful wild and short Irish showers (boy was I in for a rude awakening!). Everyone I talked to in town said it would change, and that they loved this weather so much as to be a miracle from God. I convinced myself it would cool off by Sunday, and spent all Saturday walking on the shady side of the street as is my custom. I saw the Guinness brewery, which was amazing, and is this year celebrating it's 250th year, spitting out 4 million pints of day, of which 1.5 million are exported. I didn't go inside & do the big tour, so as not to be tempted to taste the black stuff (which I associate with so many incredible memories). I loved Dublin, and got to know it better than my previous visits. I ended my day regrettably early as I had to be at the downtown spot by 8:30 Sunday morning to catch my tour group. I had been worried that I would feel too aimless and alone in Dublin after being in a family situation in England, but the opposite turned out to be true: I was so in my element in a vibrant city full of character and intensity that every moment sparkled with focus and purpose, and I was only doing aimless things like wandering about, window shopping, and watching buskers. It was solitude amongst the crowds that I'd been craving.

West Sussex, England

Be Careful What You Ask For...

I am a big believer in the power of intention. My life shows clear evidence of the fruits of powerful desire made manifest. This is niether good nor bad, just proof that our outsides mirror our insides. I have studied and practiced enough Eastern religion to know that your life becomes what you think about - so I try to think of positive things, though I am not always successful, and those negative things show up in my life quite dramatically. Enough new age philosphy for now! I can't help feeling philosophical though, as the recent dramatic turn of events shows me that I am less in control of events that I often think I am. As I was on my last day in Austin, frantically tying up all loose ends in preparation for my European odyssey (actually, I was sitting at a coffee shop, trying to get in my last dose of Weird Austin for a while), I got a call (on a Sunday) from the hiring manager for Palmer Station in Antarctica, asking me if I could sail to the station on June 5th. My trip to London was in two days, I had a 5 day adventure tour booked in Ireland after a week in England, and then I was going to fly to Helsinki June 5th to take a 15 day journey through the Baltic lands, ending up in Berlin, a city I wanted to explore in depth. Long story short is I spent about 48 hours locked in indecisive torment, praying for guidance, and getting more & more information from the Ice folks that made deploying more appealing: the date was pushed back to being in Denver on June 9th, so that I could do two weeks in Europe and not have to cancel the whole trip. Also, the position they were offering me was less of a desk job than the original, and has no supervisory elements. By the night before I was to fly to London, there was no doubt I was going to choose to go to work instead of to play over the next several months. I have been unemployed so long as to be annoyed with it, and the opportunity to go to this tiny station is a rare one. These ancient and interesting countries will still be here when I want to return...and now that I have 8 months of work before me, I will have the security of loads more cash. Also, one of my greatest wishes has been to not ever have to experience summer again. I dread the months of May-September so much that I have been considering moving to Alaska for sometime now (though where I am now, West Sussex in England, has a delightful climate in May). Not only will I be at the Antarctic station during this time, but it will be DARK - something I have wanted to experience for a long time, as I am not a fan of sunshine either. I haven't been wintering on Ice because the season is too long for me to be away from my dog. My mom will keep him for a certain amount of time per year, but he is my responsibility and I do not want to abandon him completely. He is almost 12, and I will probably have to take some time off of the Ice eventually anyway when he starts to go downhill.

So to tie this ramble in with the title, even though I was meticulously planning & researching every aspect of this trip, there was a seed inside of me that felt like something was off about it, that is was not really what I wanted, and was sad that I had not gone to Palmer with Will in March...I would have deployed if someone was not able, but the boat sailed & I thought my opportunity was gone. I would have never guessed in my wildest dreams that I would be able to go down for half the season. And all the while I was making plans to fill in the gaps between tours on this Europe trip I could not ignore that my heart was not in it. It felt lonely doing it all by myself...and I couldn't quite get a handle on why I wasn't into it - even though I know from experience that once I get on the plane I get into the travel groove. I am also staying with a wonderful family here in the English countryside so I will not have a chance to get lonely as I will be with a group in Ireland also. At first I balked at how much money I was going to lose by cancelling the one big tour, and having to buy an expensive one way ticket back to the US, but now that I've gotten my travel itinerary for deployment, the money issue seems irrelevant...I would not have changed my plans for McMurdo or Pole, but for Palmer I'm sure it will be worth it. I will not have time to recuperate in Houston before getting on the plane again, but deep down I asked for adventure beyond the "planned" adventure I had going, and that is exactly what I got. The Siren Song of the Ice is more powerful than my small plans, in this case at least.

Adventure Bound

I took this photo in Taos last week, and it speaks more to the beauty of the place than my photographic abilities. The combination of the unguessable time of day, the clouds that look painted on, and the flatness of perspective that evokes a postcard-like feel make this one of the most intriguing pictures I've taken. The lushness of the sagebrush foreground contrasted against the sears portrait studio backdrop-esque mountians almost make it cheesy, but at the same time this sacred spot at the penitente church on sacred Indian lands is very special to me and the girls I go out here with, so this is a rapturous photo to me.  I've blogged about these painting workshops for years...this was my 12th or 13th one - it is the deepest spiritual work I do, and I feel so grateful to have found this teacher and this work.

I less than a week I fly to Europe for 5 weeks. I am doing this trip alone, and am amazed how much resistance I'm feeling as it gets closer. Almost 3 weeks of it will be on tours I've arranged, and, it's not covering huge land mass areas, but many different tiny and interesting sounding countries will be explored. As a native Texan, there is a thrill in being able to drive across an entire country in a few hours - it just seems amazing. So I will be visiting England, Ireland, Finland Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland and Germany. The Finland-Germny portion is two weeks with an adventure tour operator, and the other tour is 5 days on a jeep doing the southwest coast of Ireland (sigh). I feel strange telling people about my life when the economy is bad & people are losing jobs & struggling. I went on two luxury vacations within 3 week of each other and now I'm going to Europe for 5 weeks - I am on the other side of the economic spectrum: flush, money to spend on non-essentials, not only non-essentials but on my "dream" life - when is the other shoe going to drop? Oh yeah, there is no "shoe." (Only the "habit" of guilt, then punishment). It is not in my nature to "enjoy life." I am used to it feeling like a struggle.

When I was a child I fantasized about travel & moving & seeing places I'd never been to. Going to Helsinki feels very exotic to me, as Istanbul did two years ago. I realized that my childhood dreams have come true, but at the same time feel a gravity in my soul. I'm not sure what it is but it feels like with the achieving of a certain status that one has worked hard for comes with some sort of responsibility to one's fellow man - a responsibility to show that dreams are there for a reason - and there is a price to pay for one's dreams, but that's the subject of another posting (long). Travel emboldens me, makes me confident, and makes me want to spread the word that anyone can do this - it's not really all that expensive, but there's a lot of super detailed planning & compiling of details that goes into a trip where you're making all your reservations and plane flights. It was the journey of getting here that was so heady: the seed of the dream, the first taste of it on my first trip to Europe 32 years ago, then many years of daydreaming & scheming & spottily getting to travel, then working my way into my current lifestyle of working 1/2 the year & travelling all I want in the other part. And now I understand why it's the journey that is more important than the destination - because like Spock said in one of my favorite episodes "having is not the same as wanting." Once you get there, there's a little bit of "now what?" There was a time when I couldn't imagine how one got it together enough to by a car, a house, have a stable realtionship. I have never had a desire to have a domestic life, my own family, or to do yard work. I was just designed for something else. I found it and worked for it...but there are moments when I am alone, like now, between trips, where I trying to find the point of it all - was it to show I could do it? Is my life an example to someone whose afraid to "go for it" as my life shouts "go for it!" I am aware that I am not doing this travel to entertain or pleasure myself. Maybe I am doing it to fill time before going back to the Ice, or to have something to blog about, but hopefully there is a deeper reason, reasons I am not even aware of yet. The way I feel after a particularly good trip (this year: skiing) is a joy I never knew existed. And to have new feeling states has got to open up my world and touch those that know me. I love it when I find myself in a place where I can encourage someone to follow their passion, and I see that little spark in their eye. I am really feeling the difference of age too. When I travelled to Ireland in '84 it was about romance and drinking and being the brash Yank. Now I will be more attuned to subtleties (no drinking!) and most look forward to bonding with the people I meet in the tour group: my "family" for the week! So there are some pedestrian feelings amongst all this - I used to just envision my travel life like that scene from "Braveheart" where he is traipsing amongst the Highlands, shrouded in mist, being mythologized in voice-over. The nuts & bolts of planning temper the romance, but the underlying excitement of the unknown will always be my motivation. I don't know what this trip will be like, but I'm sure it will be full of new experiences, and that is one reason I don't feel bad about spending all this money on this trip. The money I "saved" last year has all but dissappeared, but the money I spend on travel will never be regretted.

I used to have a recurring dream where someone was handing me very beautiful jewels and I would run away & not take them. I did not trust that someone was giving me something so beautiful without a catch. The life I have now is the jewel I have let myself grab - and I cannot just say I am lucky...there is some luck, but mostly, I yearned for it, then made it an intention, and focussed on it until it became a reality. Mountains beyond mountains - step by step, anything can be made manifest.

A Mishmash of Meanderings

When I finally decided to stop saying "I hate Austin" and  I "hate this f__king hot sunny weather" I was surprised to find I had a really great week being in hometown. (God, I can't wait til I start travelling again so I have something to really write about!). I was utterly sick of hearing myself say this to every single person I met - I would insist they know this about me in the first few minutes. I had turned into someone I heard complaining all the time about something they could easily change by moving! But the truth is...I don't hate Austin. I love/hate it. So, on Monday I made the decision I would not tell everyone how much I hate Austin & the weather here. I am usually semi-panicking about how to fill all the hours of the day so I signed up for 3 volunteer shifts at three different places. All were really fun & I felt like I'd been at "work," and the places are so grateful to have you there. I felt myself wanting to complain about the sun (it has been what 99% of people of the earth would describe as "gorgeous" weather here these past two weeks- 80's, breezy, sunny, cloudless skies) but I would stop myself and just agree that is was nice or not say anything (no reason to LIE & say I like it). What I realized after a few hours of this was that I wasn't really saying anything, and miracle of miracles, I was enjoying some peace - I seemed to sort of recede into (a usually unwelcome) ordinariness when I wasn't complaining, and this wasn't as dowdy a place as I thought it would be. And then something even stranger happened: I walked outside & didn't immediately say "fuck" under my breath when I saw the sunshine, and I didn't just endure the pain of it, it actually was sort of pleasant. And then I saw my biggest fear wasn't that I would never be able to find a cool cloudy place to spend my down time, but that I might have to accept the parts of me that are like everybody else. Horror of horrors! 

And then it rained. It rained for so long and so hard for one full day that I did not leave my apt. I laid in bed & drank coffee & read two books and felt a joy beyond imagining. I love rain so much. Then the sun came out the next day & I decided not to act like I was in the seventh circle of hell.

One of my volunteer gigs was at the local food bank warehouse. I was on a crew with the IT department of the Whole Foods flagship store here. Our job was to take giant triwalls (they call them "tubs") of baby diapers and feminine hygiene products and separate them into 10 lb. boxes & stack them on pallets. We got a little assembly line going and the IT girls were giggling as the men looked shell shocked trying to discern all the different types of fh supplies. The food bank get donations of tons of this stuff from stores & individuals. The stores can't sell any package that is torn, so about half our products were torn and this one macho guy's job was taping up all the torn packages of maxi-pads, tampons, and panti-liners. He humbly & caringly taped every little tear, and the girls were taking photos of them with their cell phones. This one guy was holding up a triangular box with a perplexed look & went over to inspect & it was a box of panti-liners for thongs. Even us girls are overwhelmed by the ridiculous amount of choices of these products, so we got a kick out of seeing all these guys handle all this stuff so graciously. Another part of the shift I had to package baby diapers with  this 17 year old boy. I was as confused by the diapers as the men were about the thong liners with wings, and there was a point where we realized we'd screwed up our tasking as we'd been told to write the weight on the packages (the boxes were torn so we packed them in their cellophane wraps) & we had been writing the weight of the box and not the weight of the CHILD the diapers were intended for. I've spent about 3 minutes of my 48 years around infants so I didn't think anything when the packages rolled by me all saying "5" or "3" on them...so our team leader came by & said, no "it's the weight of the BABY you write!", so we spent about 10 minutes trying to find that information on the box. Sheesh! (all along I'm thinking, where's the giant "tubs" of birth control people!) Then we had to do adult diapers. I tried to make a joke that we'd covered the human secretion needs from infancy to decrepitude in our shift, but no one laughed, as my crass humor is not universally appreciated. I had so much fun at the food bank I decided to volunteer at the Reggae Festival Saturday night. I stood & took thousands of peoples money as they poured into the show. I got a free t-shirt out of the deal, then buzzed home to meet a childhood friend who took me to an avant-garde theatre piece late night. It was called Tennebrism, and was a two person show about Jesus, Joy Division, and Caravaggio. Local avant garde theatre always makes me love living here so much, that I realize I have to live in a city that has culture. Aside from the reggae festival (which I can hear from my apt right now!), and all the music & theatre, the Hot Rod show was in town too...there is just always so much going on here. 

I also saw two great movies this week: "Adventureland" and the Swedish film "Everlasting Moments." I've never seen a bad Swedish film, and this one had the enveloping gorgeousness of say "The Best Intentions," that incredible film about the relationship between Ingmar Bergman's parents. I also saw one terrible flick (Observe & Report) and one mediocre one "State of Play." Every time I went to the movies this past week my intention was to see "Gomorrah," but no one wants to see it, and when I went by myself to see it today, the projector was broken...hmmm...

So, I figured out a way to make life in Austin not only bearable but enjoyable: do volunteer work, and stop complaining. Seems like I'd have a lot to do as I have a 5 week trip to Europe coming up, but travel is so easy now there's really nothing to do. I bought the tours, the airline tix, some of the hotel rooms...and the rest I'll just wing. I will also be visiting the Motherland: Scandinavia. Yes, I have recently discovered that Kendall, my last name, is a Viking name (Kindahl), which then became Kendal (an ancient English name) when the Swedes settled in the Lakes District of England (WAY before 1066) where the town bearing my surname is located. I plan to visit this town on my way to Helsinki. So, keep reading, exciting stuff is coming I promise!