Short & Sweet & Long Overdue…

Posted by Erik | Filed under Uncategorized

People really should keep up to date with me on MySpace. Yea, I know, you have to have an account to see anything.. Hopefully in the coming months I’ll completely wipe out this site and redploy with something like WordPress. Just need to find a decent script to convert all my old blogs.

I?ll try to force myself to expand on a bunch of thoughts and ideas in the very near future…

But so far 2008 is just lovely. My winter jaunt to London, Ireland (again…this time Dublin, Kilkenny, Kinsale, Cork), Amsterdam, Brussels and back through London once more was great. I picked up a British Sign Language book (almost nothing in common with ASL), learned the Irish sign language alphabet, saw Christy Moore perform, loved Amsterdam, remembered how good the beer and chocolate are in Brussels and caught Cabaret before leaving London. There?s a photo album containing only the shots with Junior - little stuffed animal of Martina?s I took with me - here. Might get around to adding a bunch of other non-Junior shots eventually.

We spent Super Bowl weekend in San Francisco. Rained all day Saturday but poor weather never bothers us. Sunday was better. Except for the insanity of air traffic ground holds for flights inbound to Phoenix Sunday night - delays due to the huge number of private and general aviation craft departing the Phoenix area. Sat on the plane 90 minutes before leaving the gate.

I went to Orlando for a weekend in mid February. I hung out with my longtime buddy ol? pal, Anna. Got some tasty Giordano?s pizza, hung out at Universal Studios? City Walk and went to Epcot Center too.

For St. Patrick?s Day, Martina and I spent three days in Chicago. My second time spending that fabulous day in the city, this time was much better. Saw the river dyed green and the parade on Saturday. We got Chicago hot dogs, one full Irish breakfast at Fado?s, awesome Polish food from a huge buffet and my favorite deep dish pizza from Giordano?s. We spent most of a day at the free and excellent Lincoln Park Zoo and visited Navy Pier and the John Hancock 94th Floor Observatory.

The last night there, I went solo to the Gaelic Storm show at House of Blues. I miss traipsing around the country from pilar to post to see the shows and I wish I could justify going to Australia for a festival they?ll be at near Melbourne in June. Anyhow, I was deep in the middle of the crowd but they definitely saw me. Got a mention by name from Twigger as part of a joke comment and at the end Murphy points and says, “This man flew all the way from Phoenix, Arizona.” Gotta love appreciative musicians that give a damn.

Now it?s really late, or really early on April 7th. We?re almost done with our ASL 102 course and have recently been searching for summer programs to join. We?ve found an ASL Immersion program at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. We?ll be escaping the oppresive Phoenix heat in July for a cool college town and Canada?s festival capital.

Future travels - I?m always contemplating where to go for a weekend or longer. Domestically, San Francisco and Chicago are always on the return list - in fact I?m considering requesting permission from work to relocate to Chicago in about a year, possibly less. Back on the travel options, Portland and Boston are hopeful weekend trips, as is New York but it?s so annoyingly expensive there right now. A cheap enough ticket would see me back in Hawaii too, on Kauai or Maui since I?ve not been to those islands. Still need to go to Juneau while my sister?s family is there so I hope to get that crossed off the “must see” list too.

Longer term - we have a desire to go to Europe for the Christmas markets but the exchange rate is so damned frustrating. I?m seriously considering Australia for the Australian Open and to finally satisify my thirst to visit Van Diemen?s Land. For less expensive options I?ve been interested in Buenos Aires, Santiago and Punta Arenas for a long time. Belize doesn?t look extremely enticing but it?s affordable and English speaking so it?s on the list too. So are Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo, Guadalajara or Mexico City, Mexico and Costa Rica. Time will tell!

Permalink | April 12th, 2008

Leave a Reply