And the award for Friday Wrap up goes to... Tuesday

Yeah, I know. Late again. I'd like to say that I'm doing constructive things, but mostly I'm eating and getting sand out of my luggage, so don't waste that sympathy. Save it for poor James Cameron. Heh.

To the (late) Friday wrap up!

- we returned from our trip to Puerto Rico in one piece, and with a minimum of awkardly located sunburns, a key metric in how much you enjoy your vacation, I think

- I met an amazing photographer, who I am hoping to do lots of work with in the future, named Pat McDonnell, You should check him out here: www.medicinebleu.com

- my friend Amy and I went to Hae Doon Wae Korean bbq last week, and it was scrumptious. I have this game I play where I go to a different foreign food joint each week, partially to expand my palate and partially to annoy my boyfriend. The less recognizable the food the happier I am (though I passed on the barbequed tripe). Pictured above, the wreckage of our table.

- I also went to the Bookstore in Atlanta and had Duck Breast with mushroom risotto, which was so good I may have to let Jason, my buddy who recommended both the restaurant and the dish, date my sister. Her husband may mind, though. Jason, you can date my mom.

- Katheryn Bigelow! You go girl. Anyone who gives us Bodi deserves an Oscar.

- Please, PLEASE go to http://dianevadino.tumblr.com/ , website of the excellent writer Diane Vadino, who is Bunnyshop, one of my favorite travel and fashion blogs. She has audio excerpts from her last book, Smart Girls Like Me, up now, and is putting up excerpts of what looks to be a hilarious book about her Mongolian adventure, which I am still jealous off. Check it out.

- I just found out how to add multiple photos to my blog. Watch out, world.

And we're back!

Back from an excellent week in Puerto Rico - actually I've been back for a week, but laziness and procrastination is how I roll. So there. Above, view from my apartment in Jobos, on the northwest coast of the main island, complete with point break and surfers - in honor of Katheryn Bigelow's finest film, Point Break. You go, girl. Enjoy that Oscar.

Lots to come this week so stay tuned! And now we are done with the silly TV references.

Friday Wrap-Up

This is a new section on the blog, designed mainly to give my lazy ass a way to post something without straining myself to much intellectually. Which is not hard to do, as you can imagine.

And since I am writing this on Sunday, you can already see where we are going with the issue of tardiness. Well, at least I'm not raising expectations too high too soon.

So! A round-up of the weeks weirdness:

- I know I am late to this train, but Johnny Weir? Totally Awesome. And, I might add, ROBBED at the Olympics.

- Bought myself a cool crystal-and-fake pearl necklace that I turned into a bracelet, to wear to the beach this week. Since it was only 5 bucks at Ross, I figure I won't care if I get sand all over it. It's very Coco Chanel-ish - will post a photo soon.

- tried two new recipes this week, Chicken Caccitore and Morrocan Chicken Tagine, both from the excellent "Ready When You Are" cookbook by Martha Rose Shulman. My only complaint: if you advertise something as a "one dish meal", it shouldn't really take 6 pots to make it in, should it? (the Moroccan Chicken). Just sayin'.

- speaking of chickens, we relocated one of our chickens, Greta (aka Miss Personality, pictured above) to the farm of her birth, because she had gotten so noisy. Robert the Chicken man, on taking her out of her transport box, took one look at her and announced, "Um... yeah. That's a rooster." Which explains a) the noise and b) why she never laid eggs. She/he has been replaced by our new chicken, Lucy, who Robert assures me has no sexual identity issues. Amelia, our other chicken, seems fine with it.

- Fave quote of the week, stolen from tem internets: "When my life flashes before me when I die, it's gonna make a GREAT movie. Grab your popcorn, 'cause sh*z took some CRAZY turn's in the '80s...." I couldn't agree more completely.

- Went to Machu Picchu Peruvian Restaurant with Alex and my friend Jason for Foreign Food Friday (albeit on Wednesday, because that was the night we all had off) and during a conversation about extraterrestrials - don't ask - Jason dropped THIS bit of wisdom: "how pathetic would that be, if when we finally make contact the aliens are dressed like the bee gees in 1976, because that's when they picked up our transmissions?"

Because if there is anything worse than unexpected alien visitors, it's unexpected alien visitors wearing polyester pantsuits with flares,platform shoes, and large gold chains nestled in their chest hair. The earth may well stand still in shock.

On the Road. Or Boat.

Alex's vacation is this week, so we are off for our annual week of sun n' fun in Puerto Rico. We usually do a five-day trip, with 3 days on the west coast on Jobos, and two days on Vieques Island, which is where this pic was taken two years ago. See everyone in a week!

Springing

It's lovely but cold in Atlanta today, the kind of treacherous weather that makes you start thinking of laying out the garden and maybe putting in a few early herbs, only to have them zapped by the next cold front. Oh, Mother Nature, you will not fool me so easily, even though I have the screen door open - I drove home three days ago from Raleigh in the snow. I will not be tricked.

(And yes, I know you don't actually have to have the screen door open since it is already made of screen. Thank you Adam for pointing that out.)

However, it does feel spring-like (spring-y? whatever) and despite the groundhog's dire prediction I am going to post a lovely flower photo taken in Cordoba, Spain, where all good geraniums go to die. They are everywhere, and they are not subtle. They splash out in great bursts of neon pink and blood red, puncuating the white stone walls down every alley. They are the floral equivilent of a silly hat that makes everyone smile.

Let the wind blow, the sun is still shining....

At Heart, in Paris

Hope everyone enjoyed their weekend. I am just finishing up for the night here and am going to finish "We All Went To Paris", a history of Americans in Paris, before I go to sleep. So here's a photo I took in the Louvre, looking down from the second floor into the Coeur Napoleon, one of the sculpture galleries at either end of the building. It has a soaring glass ceiling (it was open to the elements at one time) that throws beautiful shadows across the creamy Loire river marble that makes up the courtyard. Since it's away from the Mona Lisa - La Jaconde, as the French call her - it is almost always empty, so it is a perfect place to sit and rest your feet, and contemplate the dreamy, diffuse light.

"Couer" means "Court" in French - as in courtyard - but I always mistranslate it as coeur, which means heart - appropriate for such a romantic city. More French stories to come....

I know what I saw...

There is a phenomenon, hotly debated among boaters, fishermen, beach bums, etc. - called the Green Flash. If you spend any time watching sunsets over the ocean, you have heard of it. In it's simplest terms, it is a tiny flash of green light that you see when the sun sets. Or, I should say, HOPE to see - the Green Flash is rare, and people hotly debate if it's even real. You can go your whole life watching the sun go down and never see one. Other people claim that if you know what to look for, you can see them all the time.

The scientific explanation is that when you watch the sunset, the last rays of the sun, angling through the atmosphere (I would say "up", but that' s not really scientific) reflect off of moisture in the air, and refract, turning the light green for a moment. Why green? Because the wavelength of the light is in the blue-green range, but the atmosphere filters out the blue and leaves the green.

There is (as always with a sea-borne phenomena) a list of superstitions and portents attached to the Flash. People say it is the soul of sailors, or that it signals that the Flying Dutchman is near (they had fun with this at the end of the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie), or that it fortells a change in the weather. There's even an old Robert Burns story where he claims "those who have seen the green flash will never again err in matters of the heart".

I prefer the more common superstition, that seeing the green flash brings good luck and prosperity. Probably I am projecting here, because I always need a little bit more of both. But in any case, I never saw the flash, so whatever it brought, I wasn't having any of it anyway.

Until....

The sunset photo above was taken on my trip to Greece last fall, on Paros Island in the Cyclades. I spent most of my trip island hopping (terrible, I know) and this was the last night of the island portion of the trip. I was down by the port, taking photos of this sunset - by far the best sunset of the trip, and I was out shooting them every night - watching people feed the inevitable sly cats, watching the ferries come in, taking some more photos.

Just as the last sliver of sun sank into the sea, I took the camera down from my eye, but was still looking out towards the horizon. And there - just in that instant, so quickly that I saw it both through the camera and with my own eyes - it was. Flash. I saw it, and in the instant my brain registered it, it was gone.

Now, I am not the most reliable of people when it comes to visuals. I am forever "seeing" things out of the corner of my eye, I wear coke-bottle glasses or contact lenses that should come with a seeing eye dog, and my hair is always out of control (never more so than at the beach) and getting in my eyes and obscuring my vision (which I will claim is why I am always walking into things). To call me a reputable eye-witness is laughable. But.

I have played that instant over again and again in my head, and it always plays back the same. I saw it. Plain, ordinary me, who is about as average as.... I don't know but I am pretty damn average. Me. Hardly the sort of person who sees extraordinary astronomical events, but there you go. I took that camera down from my eyes, looked at the horizon, and there it was. l remember looking around to see if anyone else had seen it, but no one seemed to notice but me. Had I imagined it? Was it just the reflection off the camera lens?

I don't think so. I saw it. I know I did. My last night in the islands, in a place I loved and knew in my heart I would never see again, the sun flashed a green petticoat, a tiny glance back over it's shoulder. Just for me.

I know what I saw.