Tiffany's George Drives his Subaru to Bryce Canyon

Amanda's childhood

Gen's farm

Casey's motorcycle

You Would Think...

...that I would finally get back to giving you all advice about how to prepare for the disasters of the future, or how to celebrate the survival of the present.

But no; instead, I'm going to upload a series of four watercolor paintings that my friends and I worked on in Wisconsin earlier this month, because time is running out for us to get them uploaded to the ARTastic watercolour challenge.

After reading Jeffrey Sachs's The End of Poverty, about which I could rant for days, but you can just look at my review on goodreads.com, and reading one of the world's most terrible romance novels, I started to re-read The Happiness Project. Gretchen Rubin says at the beginning of Chapter 3 that her research revealed, "that challenge and novelty are key elements to happiness."

I have an additional comment: watercolor painting is also a key element to happiness. I think it falls under the category of "play."

That said, follow the general link to "http://impendingapocalypses.blogspot.com/" or simply google "The Memoir of Narrow Escape" to see the images.

The Vegas and Holbrook Selfie Series

It is exactly what I said it is.

Alex and me at the Venetian for education, gelato, and the Plants v. Zombies slot machine. 

The truck. I was delighted that the plate reflected the ultimate destination. 

Me at our wigwam in Holbrook, #5. For those who wondered whether the wigwam had a bathroom, etc., you can see that it is a free-standing normal motel room encased in a concrete teepee. The wigwam is on the inside, which you will see in a moment. 

Sign posted at the hideously slow DQ where we got dinner, listing the miles from Holbrook to many many destinations in a variety of directions. Wish you could read it better. It lists the distance to Chicago as 1,570. 

Inside our wigwam with the quintessential traveling supplies: instant coffee, extra crunchy peanut butter, and Gold Bond. 

These are, sadly, the very best photos from the entire 2,575-mile trip. The huge storm in Amarillo on Day 2 (the evening that followed the snapping of this last photo, above) REALLY threw us for a loop, and I don't think we took many photos at all after that. I will tell you all about our stormy adventure in a future installment of the Memoir of Narrow Escape. 

For now, this evening I am off to claim my 1,000th geocache at an ice cream event in Illinois. 

The beginning of the trip

 

WOW! It's been almost two full weeks since I have posted anything. That means that you're about to witness...

the sweetest comeback ever!!! Just kidding. I cannot compete with the Twinkie, nor do I hope to try. I do however think it's cool to have a photo of that box, because I doubt that it will say, "the sweetest comeback ever" forever.

ANYWAY, the "I quit," cat is now officially out of the bag, so I thought I would spend some time posting some personal stories and photos. These are from the beginning of the summer. I posted ONE before, when I was pretending that the 2,575 miles we covered was just a random fun all-American road trip. That one was the back of my Subaru crossing the Continental Divide. In reality...

it all started on a date I don't remember and can't find from going through my text messages or my calendar where I apparently didn't record it. It was early June. While dropping off a tub of U.S. History teaching materials at Krista's house, I whined and complained that I wasn't getting any packing done. A few days later, Krista came over and made me put the pedal to the packing metal. Some tactics: she only allowed me to keep 3 bags. Three. Of forty-something (probably more like 12, but felt like 40-something) to start.

Krista has since moved to Texas. She already has a job and a legally registered vehicle, two things I don't have. Good job, Krista!

Next, on June 7th Amanda came into town to try to sell her house and to have one last Las Vegas hurrah with her 2nd-favorite Las Vegas roommate, including goading me to finally get that tattoo I've been wanting since the age of 16...

I posted some photos of our shenanigans earlier under the guise of "leaving for the summer."

Amanda was a big help as she continually said, "What can I do to help?" This was different from Krista's tactic, and I appreciated both.

Amanda has since sold the house, AND we just had an awesome weekend at the West Bend Ca$h Bash geocaching event in Wisconsin.

Finally, on June 12th, Jodi and Alex arrived. We sent Alex on multiple trips up and down the stairs, and Jodi noticed a bunch of things that needed to be taken care of in crevices I never would have noticed if she hadn't been there.

On June 15th, we frantically ate freezee pops and tossed the last things into boxes and crates (including one load of laundry fresh from the dryer) while Two Men and a Truck packed my Penske truck with ratchet straps.

AND that, my dear lovely readers, takes us to the end of my motivation for today.

Look forward to photos, especially from our favorite stop, Holbrook AZ, later this week.

Coming Soon, to a Driveway Near You...

It's that time of year again, folks: time for the quasi-annual semi-collaborative family garage sale at Mammaw's house!

In preparation, I have been instructed to go through the books on the bookshelf to determine what to keep and what to try to sell.

Are you familiar with Prevention magazine? Well, back in 1985 the authors of Prevention wrote a book called Everyday Health Hints, in which you can find the following handy checklist which will tell you whether you are sick of your job:

 

More about that a little bit later, and on Facebook, etc.

 

I doubt you can read it, but I made it as big as I could so that you could try. Anyway, six years later in 1991, the same authors published a book called The Visual Encyclopedia of Natural Healing. You're gonna love these illustrations.

 

 

As you can see above, among all sorts of other useful information, it includes these drawings of exercises to do to help alleviate knee pain. Below is something I think a lot about, and the illustration on the lower right looks like me, which the authors say is good. 

 

 

The Visual Encyclopedia... actually already has a pricetag on it, presumably from a former sale. I'M KEEPING IT! Take that. Come to think of it, there was a period of time in the early 2000s when I was really into visual dictionaries, but I certainly haven't seen any of them lately.

 

I have decided to contribut two of the natural healing/health advice books to the garage sale, keep the two I posted photos of here, and of course to keep the one that was published the year I was born.

 

Drum roll please.

 

OH YEAH! I know that, like me, you'll be waiting with bated breath to hear all that this manual has to say.

 

You know that I do not easily part with the flotsam of my life. We also went through some old coffee mugs and only marked four, I think, for the garage sale, out of a cabinet full. So, two books is greater than zero, and will make later room for two more books we didn't know we had.

 



Continuing the Globalizing Trend...

...suddenly the number of pageviews on my blog has become dominated by Chinese spambots. To which I say, a bot audience is better than no audience at all! So.

A very long time ago (self-hyperlink), I told you about a random geographer that I follow on twitter, in the context of describing the seemingly-now-defunct Z World Detroit. The same geographer is at it again, today passing along a link to this article entitled, "We are surrounded by zombie architecture."

A more recent tidbit from this blog, which you're sure to recall, was my description of the Elkhart County Fair, and how Miss Gokey said that if she were going to die on a ride, it should be the one invented for the 1893 World's Fair. As we were boarding the wheel, I commented that ticket booths from the fair still occasionally pop up in Chicago. You can read about where to see the fair's remnants in this old Tribune article.

"We are surrounded by zombie architecture" discusses the fact that a Chinese gazillionaire wants to reconstruct London's Crystal Palace, which was constructed for the Great Exhibition of 1851 and is now as defunct as Detroit (by which I mean, of course, Z World Detroit. Ahem.). The article's writer is a professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago. He states, "The building's absence...is ever present." He questions the wisdom of the reconstruction, contending that, "Reanimation can't bring back the original but rather invents a new form of the present."

This reminds me of a lesson we already learned when we read Stephen King's Pet Sematary back in middle school.

He refers to the proposed rebuilding as a "cartooning of history."

It is an extremely interesting editorial and well worth the read if you have time.

Are there any spaces in your life that have been "cartooned" as they have been restored?