Archways

And on to St Louis for a great long layover! Another crewmember, Brian and I went out about town to see the sites!










Our hotel












It used to be a huge warehouse that they converted. The decor was all painted. Very cool.


















Beautiful city hall. I loved the architecture around St Louis! Everything had a special detail that distinguished it.

And of course, the St Louis Arch! "Gateway to the West"









So much more impressive than expected.


























View from the top! Busch Stadium of the St Louis Cardinals to the left; State Capital to the right.










St Louis specialty!
Fried ravioli!











Brian got many more great pictures, coming soon to Facebook!

90 MPH

Work for 3 days. Clean, paint, pack, move for 3 days. Work for 3 days. Get rerouted during trip. Home to a new house! Dinner with friends in town! Unpack. Cold shower (yipes! but not so bad once your nerves are numb..). Organize! Decorate! It's been 90 mph this week and I'm loving it!

A layover in Seattle where we flew over Mount Ranier, just southwest of Seattle.










View from the porthole (better than any view on the ground!)









Followed by a layover in Raleigh where I went out to a wonderful Indian lunch, followed by Baklava dessert at a Turkish teahouse with Karl.


















And the new house!























My room!

Falling

Well, it's back to work after the flu and with a running start! 10 days in a row, exhausting, though fun.

First a stop in Rochester, NY























Church front downtown. The back was all eroded brickwork, very picturesque.

Then back to Atlanta for a dinner with Baron at OK Café! Great and much needed fun times.







Even the chicken pot pie was festive!













Then I got another Rochester trip, but it was a much longer layover so I drove over to Niagara Falls for the day! I have to admit the drive was just as much fun as the sightseeing because my rental car was a brand new 2010 Mustang with a V6 engine and iPod connection. It went fast. And had that great all-American roar to it.

















The first rule is never to name something.. so, I called her Sally appropriately (though maybe not too creatively). It was fun for the day!

















Onto the Falls!, I crossed into the Canadian side to get a better view..













American Falls















Canadian or 'Horseshoe' Falls

I think that approaching the Falls was more powerful than actually seeing it. The thundering but unseen presence is more exciting than standing before it somehow. Though, watching something so incredibly powerful is quite breath-taking!




And on a completely different subject.. Someone once asked me how I wanted to be proposed to and I spontaneously answered at the airport. Yeah, not so much. But I do wish someone would meet me at the airport one day. With flowers would be nice. It seems I delve into the attitude of whatever style of book I'm reading.. maybe I need to not read English Romanticism next.

In other news, I all out chef-ed tonight. I made a ratatouille dish, baked potatoes, black-eyed peas with greens, and biscuits with sweet tea for dinner. It was way too much and it was wonderful. I can't wait to start cooking big meals for people again! Hopefully that will be soon as I'm moving into a house with friends next week! Woo hoo!

On the mend

Emily is still sick. It's been 10 days of not-too-productive yet restful recovery, but I'm still symptomatic.. So I called out sick for yet another trip! My manager suggested I file a short-term disability claim as well. So, I'm now officially short-term disabled! Depending on what is approved, I might even get paid for the trips I missed! Here's to hopin'!

The past month has just been a roller coaster it seems. I was sitting pretty sturdily mentally/emotionally but apparently it was a small ledge, because I was kicked off without much effort. And it's all been so empty lately! And I lost interest in things around me, which in turn just made me sad that I wasn't excited about anything or anyone! I started the challenging climb back up, then, the oh-so-ominous swine flu! And it made me miss multiple engagements. (Baron, we will be going to a Beyoncé concert somewhere, sometime!) My week(s) of recovery have served me well though, because I am getting back up there! I'm so excited about getting out of the house and going on some newly planned vacation-trips that I'm feeling much more upbeat!

Another sign I'm feeling better, I'm back in the kitchen! Steak and eggs for lunch. And I made a simple yet delicious chicken casarecci pasta for the fam for dinner. I missed having all my kitchen items and spices out. :)

Whoa. I just saw an ad for Hawaiian pineapple upside-down pancakes at IHOP. Yes, please.

Brick Wall

Emily is miserably sick.

With the flu.














My 'culture' was sent off to the CDC office to see what strain of flu I have... We'll know in a few days hopefully! I've hit a brick wall with this one, and I was running way too fast to hit something so hard.

In the mean time, this is giving me time to update everything! I've been working lots lots lots (maybe those 2 all-nighters in the same week weakened my immune defenses? I'm going to say yes).

First on the list Lima, Peru!









We walked down to the coast line.











It's currently winter in the southern hemisphere, apparently that doesn't matter when you're that close to the equator. It was cloudy, around 65 degrees, but very pleasant after 105 degrees in the South.















My selections of Ceviche - the national dish of Peru. Fish cured in lime juice. It's one of those foods that I love, but can't eat much of (it starts to taste funny) But how often do you get to eat Ceviche in Peru!


Then on to Guadalajara, Mexico!
Left Atlanta at 9pm, fly to LA, then to Guadalajara arriving at 6:30am. Rough night.
After a dead-to-the-world nap, the crew met up to go shopping!








Calle Juarez, the shopping district




















Cuttin' up some coconut.
He was using a machete earlier.
















Snack time! Coconut pulp sprinkled with sugar and lime juice. $1.









































Ahogada de camarón













A time out for the food as usual. Ahogada (meaning drowned in Spanish) is the typical dish of Guadalajara. Toasted bread filled with your choice of meat, then drowned (hence the name) in Mexican red chili sauce. Served with a spoon. No fork.









Llamas need no caption.


























I watched Garden State while being confined to the bed. Forgot how much I liked that story.

Parrots, Pretzels, and Pangs

Usually I work about 3 days a week on average (85-90 hours).. this month I'm working 5-6 days/week (115 hours. It's kind of craziness, but I'm makin' that moneys. Hopefully it'll be worth it. :)

Another Stuttgart trip! I like Germany.







This guy was so fun. As he played, his parrot would hum, chirp, squawk, whistle and bob along with him.








Other than that it was pretzels, German truffles, walking street, and beautiful weather.

I'm still quite spooked about the whole Air France disappearance (BBC keeps an event timeline, if interested). The whole thing seems a bit hushed-up. I have my own theories about it which I whole-heartedly believe. I now feel a quick jolt of anxiety every time I walk on a plane - not fear that the same thing is going to happen to me.. I can't explain the pang, really.

And Thanks for the messages of love, too. They mean more than it would seem. :)

The bad thing about working so much.. I've lost my ever-grounded inner peace and I can't seem to take enough time to just stop, focus, and reground myself. The real problem is that I know exactly where I lost it, but I don't want to travel back there to regain it. That means I'm building from scratch and it's taking all of my energy to do it.
I apologize for the vagueness. I think the last part is more for myself than for the blog. :)

Time Flies

"If the plane goes down, damn
I'll remember where the love was found"

I don't know how many out there have heard of/are following this Air France story? (Read about it on BBC). A large Air France plane leaves Rio de Janeiro bound for Paris. Somewhere over the ocean it hits a huge thunderstorm and dissappears from radar. Some pieces of the destroyed plane have been found (across 56 miles of ocean), but nothing to give a hint about the crash nor survivors. No bodies. They just vanished. And there was never a crash landing so they speculate that the plane broke apart completely while still in the air. That's just not normal for a large jet, even in a thunderstorm. Alien abduction, anyone?

Edit a couple hours later: the debris they found was not actually from the Air France Airbus that vanished.

Needless to say this is.. I can't even define how it makes me feel. But if you hang out with me this week, you might get a "how much you mean to me" speech. Or, at least I'm thinking it.. very loudly.

On a less tragic note, I've been thinking a lot this week about Time. Is it linear or does it move in a circular pattern? I've read two very interesting books lately arguing for the latter.
Are we here for just a short second, or are we able to come back again in spirit, beginning another circle? And if Time does repeat itself, are we able to hold on to the Wisdom and experience we previously gained (even if it's latent knowledge)? I do hope so. Humans are creatures of habit, generally, following circular patterns throughout our lifetimes. Even if your habit is something as erratic as traveling, never with set schedule, never with a plan.. you stay in that pattern (and once you're used to it you can never go back!). So if circles define our individual lives, it's only plausible that the Universal whole of all our lives also operates in circles.
Another thought (thanks to Beth for discussing this one!): with every circle that we traverse, do we join in the evolutionary scheme? Are we getting more advanced with each lifetime that we spend? And I don't mean more advanced as in technology or things that we build, I mean more with our inner energies and intellect. If the human race was made in the likeness of God, could we be evolving to be more like Him? And if God is simply the sum of all the positive energy flowing in the Universe, will we connect better with spirituality and Nature in the future? I hope so on this one, too.

The few people who do follow this, you mean the world to me and I love you.
I love you I love you I love you.