Happy autumn! (At least I think it's autumn...)

I have to get in one more blog post in September, so I can have at least ONE month where I have a decent number of posts. I’ve been such a blog slacker this year. There has been not enough, and, in turn, TOO MUCH going on around here to result in a nice, steady blog habit. Perhaps I can remedy that for these last few months of 2009…

But for now – how about a random thought post? Hooray! :)

Thought #1: Did I just say “these last few months of 2009”?? I can’t believe it’s almost October. It seems like barely a few months ago we were excitedly planning our move to Chicago, and now here we are still in Austin with new jobs and no plans to go anywhere any time soon. Just goes to show you, you never know where you’ll be from one year to the next… This is the time of year I really start to miss living in the north -- I miss the cooler temperatures and the colorful trees and the smell of burning leaves and fireplaces... basically, all the things that provide evidence of the changing of the seasons. Sigh... maybe I'll need a sweater in November... definitely by December... I hope...

Thought #2: The Yankees are the AL East Champions!!! Can’t wait for the post-season!

Thought #3: I have been attempting to be a better time manager, as my job seems to be getting in the way of my free time. How dare it. So I went ahead and bought myself a little day planner (something I’ve never bothered to do in the past) and started making lists and writing down reminders of things I need to do. I’m also trying something new this week – on Sunday, I chopped up all my vegetables and put them in plastic containers in the fridge, so when I want to use them, all I have to do is pull them out of the fridge and they’re ready to go. I find that the majority of time spent when cooking is all the prep/clean-up work. So hopefully this will save me a few minutes when I’m making dinner…

Thought #4: I broke down and bought the new Dan Brown book last week, even though it’s gotten some bad reviews. I’m only on chapter 13 (which, as anyone who’s read a Dan Brown book knows, is somewhere around page 20… :)), but so far, it seems to be right on par with his other books. I mean, you’ve got a mysterious society shrouded in secrecy, a huge scientific lab running state-of-the-art experiments, a city full of symbols that no one but Robert Langdon understands – it’s Angels and Demons and the Da Vinci Code, American style. But maybe that’s why it’s gotten bad reviews? Because we’ve seen it before? Ah well, no matter to me… I love a good story, even if it’s a retelling of a story I’ve already read… :)

Thought #5: I’m going to Chicago next weekend! Columbus Day is a holiday where I work, so I have a long weekend. So mom and dad and Rick and I are all heading up to see Eric, and Bob and Jeanie are flying in from Montana to join us. I can’t wait – we haven’t been back to Chicago since our sad trip up in February, when we had to fly to the city and drive our car back down here. I’m looking forward to a happier trip this time, with some good food and good coffee and hopefully at least one trip to Ghirardelli…

Okay, that's about if for now... I need to post this before I fall asleep and miss my "one more post in September" window... :)

It's the little things...

Oh to be mesmerized by something so simple...

She was really interested in that candle...


Oh, hey, look! The sun is shining behind an object! I must take a picture...

(Oh, I guess I AM mesmerized by simple things... :))

A few more random pics...

View of the Alps from the plane...


A road winding through the mountains (I really loved the view on the approach into Venice :))...


Some of the colorful houses of Burano, one of the islands near Venice...


Yes, I'm obsessed with pictures of alleyways...


This is obviously self-explanatory... Oh, it isn't? ;) Okay, here's the story -- our 16th anniversary was the day before we left for the cruise, and someone (MOM! :)) told the dining room staff about it. So they brought us a "Happy Anniversary" cake, and then the (Indonesian) waiters proceeded to sing "happy anniversary to you" to the tune of the "happy birthday" song. Only it ended up sounding like, "happy versary to you... happy versary to you..." They never quite got the "anni" part into the song. :) (But hey, that was a lot better than our 7th anniversary, when we happened to be on another cruise and the waiters brought us a cake that said, "Happy 70th Birthday." There was either a misunderstanding in the kitchen, or some 70-year-old in another part of the dining room was eating a cake that said, "Happy 7th Anniversary.")


Dad, cooling off in Croatia... the bag he's holding contains a necktie -- while we were in Croatia, we learned that ties originated there. (So to all the men who hate wearing neckties: you can blame Croatia. :))


One thing we noticed about Greece was that there were a LOT of stray cats and dogs wandering around. Apparently they don't have any sort of humane society or SPCA. This cat was outside the museum we visited in Santorini...


This is for you, Eric -- the coffee commercial picture! (Not as good as YOUR coffee commercials, of course... but we tried... :))


In addition to alleyway pictures, I also happen to be obessed with "sun behind object" pictures... (although Rick may have taken this one... :))


A tree-lined street in Athens...


I love this picture -- Cindy brought one of each of her kids' favorite stuffed animals and photographed them in different locations, so the kids' animals could "travel" with us. Here we are with one of them (I like how Nick just popped up in the back of the picture... :))

Yay!

I am temporarily taking a break from posting any more vacation pictures (although several more are coming soon... I've found a few more good ones I should've posted :)). Instead, I am posting this picture of Chris Chavez, my dad, and Guy with Mustache (I'm sorry -- I don't know who the guy with the mustache is... I'm sure he's a very nice guy... I just don't happen to know his name...):

My dad was awarded Inventor of the Year at St. Jude Medical for his work on the Eon Mini, which you can read about here, if you're interested. But basically, he got an award because he's awesome. (That's what the clock that he's holding says -- Awarded for Overall Awesomeness in the Field of Being Awesome. I mean, I haven't actually SEEN the award yet, so I'm just guessing... but I'm sure that's close...)

I'm just glad they weren't giving out awards for "highest number of steps on a pedometer." :)

Ephesus...

I think I'm almost done with all this picture posting, although I'll probably post a few more random pictures some time this week. This batch is from our day in Ephesus:


The port town of Kusadasi, where our ship docked...


One of the marble (what else??) streets of Ephesus...


Looking down the street toward the library...


The Temple of Hadrian...


The Library of Celsus...


Another shot of the library...


Looking up through the walls of the library to the blue sky...


A Tale of Two Tans... Cindy, on the left, with her nicely-bronzed arms and face, looks like someone who has been out in the Greek and Turkish sun for many days. Whereas I, on the right, look like someone who has been hiding indoors. The sad thing is, I actually HAVE a tan in this picture. But my "tan" seems to be everyone else's "dead of winter" shade. (Our taxi driver in Athens even made it a point to tell me he hoped I had plenty of sunscreen with me... he didn't express that concern to anyone ELSE...)


The public latrines... really, REALLY public... people would just sit right next to each other. And in the winter, rich men would have their slaves sit on the marble first, to warm it up...


The amphitheater, which is still in use today...


That's Cindy down there, testing the acoustics of the amphitheater with a song -- and even up in the higher rows, we could hear her. I even tested it myself by standing in the middle and asking Rick if he could hear me -- and he could. You know a theater has good acoustics if you can hear ME talking... :)


The theater from afar...


Me with the amphitheater in the background...


We were feeling hot and extremely thirsty on the way back to the ship, so we bought some water and "Uludag Limonata," which turned out to be a sickeningly sweet lemon drink. We ended up adding some of the water to it, which made it taste a little better... but not much. (However, as you can see, we were so thirsty we drank most of it anyway... :))

Mykonos/Santorini...

The next set of pictures, starting with Mykonos:

The view from our ship...


We went into town with Nick and Cindy and stopped at this little cafe for coffee and gelato...


I tried a traditional Greek coffee, which was good until I had finished off about two thirds of the cup -- Greek coffee is made by grinding the coffee beans until they resemble coffee-colored powder, and then pouring water directly over the grounds. Nothing is filtered out. So after you've consumed most of the coffee, you're left with a cup full of sludgy, powdery coffee grounds...


One of the snow-white buildings on the island (a church perhaps?)...


Nick in front of Nikos Tavern...


Me, looking... perplexed? Confused? Annoyed? I can't tell... :)


Mykonos apparently is known for its pelicans, but we didn't see ANY near the water (where you'd expect pelicans to hang out). We DID, however, round a corner in the middle of town and see this one, preening itself on a cafe patio...


And now, Santorini:

Here's a view of the town from our ship -- looks like a typical Greek town, right?


Panned out a little farther, you can see that it's situated on a bit of a hill...


And panned out even FARTHER, you can see that the entire town is actually perched on top of a CLIFF. In fact, Santorini is built along the caldera of a volcano -- our ship was anchored in the middle... so if that volcano had erupted again, our ship would've been in trouble. :) Santorini is also one of the theoretical sites of the legendary city of Atlantis...


There are three choices to get into town -- cable car (which is what we chose), a long walk up a winding, steep path, or a donkey ride (up the same winding, steep path... I felt really sorry for the donkeys... :)). I would've happily walked the path, except for the fact that even on the cable car you could smell those donkeys... I don't even want to know how bad it smelled on that path...


The view of our ship from town...


One of the many narrow, cobblestoned streets -- this one was much less busy than most of them...


A slightly busier street, lined with shops. The crowds really started to disipate after we'd been wandering around for a while, because there'd been THREE other cruise ships anchored in the caldera when we arrived. But by afternoon, our ship was the only one left...


Me on the streets of Santorini...


We visited a museum in town with lots of ancient artifacts -- Cindy and I were quite impressed with some of the circa 1700 B.C. coffee mugs in the collection (actually, I can't say for sure that they were used for coffee, but I would've bought those mugs TODAY and used them... I looked all over Greece for some modern replicas, but couldn't find any...). Anyway -- THIS was the view from the bathroom in the museum. I took a picture, because I felt like I had such a lack of privacy in there -- I could see people walking back and forth, and kept hoping they wouldn't get too close to the window...


Back at the bottom of the cliff, we stopped at one of the only cafes near the water and ordered some iced cappuccinos... NOT Greek coffee... :)

Istanbul...

Another round of pictures -- hopefully I can post the rest over the weekend! These are from Istanbul, and they're in no particular order (I had so many to choose from, it was hard to keep them organized...):

We saw dolphins on our way into the city! They were jumping in the wake left by the cruise ship...

Welcome to Istanbul, where it's only a matter of time until you feel the gleasure... (my dad and Cindy also got pictures of a restaurant menu that had "fired eggs" and "green papers" on the menu... I shouldn't laugh, though -- their English is WAY better than my Turkish... :))

The traffic in Istanbul is crazy... so on our way to the Hagia Sophia/Blue Mosque (Ayasofya/Sultanahmet) area, we sat in front of this sign for a while. We could've just followed the sign and walked the rest of the way... it would've been faster...

Um, translation, anyone?

Hagia Sophia from afar...

The Blue Mosque at night, seen from our cruise ship room balcony... I have no idea what the words mean... I even did a Google search and came up with nothing... so again -- translation, anyone??

This is my, "I'm in Asia!!" smile. Our tour took us over the Bosphorus into the Asian side of the city, and it was my first time on the Asian continent...

A view of the bridge we drove over to get to the Asian side...

The Blue Mosque...

Minaret... (we learned, by the way, that the call to prayer is now a recording broadcast over the loudspeakers -- someone just pushes a button five times a day. Well that's no fun at all -- I expect REAL people to run to the top of minarets all over the city five times a day... none of this "recording" nonsense...)

Random picture Rick snapped of me when I wasn't expecting it...

I love this shot...

Inside the Blue Mosque... it was beautiful, but it was SO hot and stuffy. I'd worn long pants and brought a long-sleeved cardigan so I could cover up, and the combination of heat, too much clothing, and not very much for breakfast was making me feel rather woozy. So I was anxious to get back outside before I passed out... but I still managed to get some decent pictures:

Actually, Rick may have taken some of these... I was too dizzy and food-deprived to remember. :) Incidentally, we were in Turkey during Ramadan, so I thought perhaps some shops and restaurants would be closed, and not everyone would be eating during the day. But nope -- EVERYTHING was open, and EVERYONE was eating. Not that I can blame them -- I was wondering, as the room spun and I began to black out in the mosque (I MAY be slightly exaggerating), how anyone could fast all day in that kind of heat. I had, at least, had a small breakfast and was taking sips from my mom's water bottle. I suppose the people who WERE fasting were holed up in dark, cool houses... that would be the smart thing to do. (That would also explain why everyone I saw outside was eating and drinking...)

Where are we again? Oh yeah -- Turkey! (Turkish flags were all over the place when we were there -- they were about to celebrate a holiday similar to our July 4th. So, just like we always bring out a plethora of American flags in July, they adorned everything with Turkish flags for their holiday.)

I saw these lamps in a shop and thought they were rather pretty...

Walking through the Grand Bazzar, where the shopkeepers were very pushy. I did eventually buy a set of purple ceramic bowls, but I was so flustered by the ever-present shopkeeper that I forgot to haggle. My friend Cindy managed to talk down everyone's prices on everything she bought, and I was like, "awwww... I forgot to do that!" I'm sure the shopkeeper was thinking about how great it is when stupid Americans visit his shop and pay more than they should... sigh... Oh well -- they ARE great purple bowls... :)