Not such a tame world....

First video from Utah....

So here's a flip movie I worked on last night and in the wee hours of the morning.

This is the video I have of Tab climbing on day #2, the semi-finals. She just sat & watched with me and is horrified that I'm putting up video where she falls. She doesn't seem to understand that I do not have any vidoe from day #1 because the old flip had died literally an hour before she climbed. Sigh.... Just so you know, the video is almost 10 minutes long. I was trying to capture where we were along with some of the process involved in the competition.

You know you took a lot of photos when....

It takes your high speed computer 1.5 hours to download 1347 photos (approx 3.8GB worth).

Yup. That's the final tally from our recent trip to Salt Lake City. I've only now gone through the first half of photos & it'll be awhile to get them all organized & uploaded into an album. I may end up only posting them to a Facebook album, b/c Typepad can be slow & cranky sometimes. Stay tuned -- I'll update shortly.

In the meantime, here's a teaser: [Scroll down]

Some background: our first night there we stopped at the local Target to stock up on snacks for our room fridge. Walking down the aisle I spotted cases of Tab soda. This was my granddad's favorite soda that I remembered from my childhood. I hated the stuff -- always thought it tasted too strong & almost bitter. But I also remember, at 8 years old, being sent to the basement to get more cans to restock the kitchen. So between the fact that we call Tabitha "Tab" all the time & my Granddad connection, I had to stage this shot. Fortunately, she wasn't interested in buying any to try -- she's a Dr. Pepper girl all-the-way -- and there is no way that I could have stomached drinking 12 cans of the stuff. Still, made for a great photo & eventually a great scrapbook layout.

So we arrived safely....

in Sunny Salt Lake City. In spite of Tab's snafu clearing security. She decided to pack two different Gatorade bottles, full of [You guessed it!] Gatorade. Security wasn't amused. Her climbing gear bag got hand searched & she got to watch her drinks get trashed. Really though, that was the biggest hiccup.

Well, we also arrived to check in to be told the flight was overbooked and that in spite of having tickets we still didn't have seats. We ended up being split up. I sat with Tab in the back & a nice guy relinquished his window seat for her. Michael got parked next to a toddler for the flight. I fully expected him to come tell me we had an emergency switch that he & I had to do, but he hung in there well.

The flight itself was great. When Tab wasn't a "window hog" the scenery was amazing. Love the mountains & love how gobsmacked Tab is that there is snow at the very tops. The Salt Lake was huge, and is a very interesting green color from above. Tab is chomping at the bit to go visit.

Interestingly enough, we met a number of Tab's teammates at the airport & we're all at the same hotel together. It was cold in the airport, so I had my "Team Texas" jacket on and was approached by a very nice woman asking if we were "associated with all the rock climbers?" Turns out that she is one of the technical judges and coaches at the international level. So we gave her a ride to her hotel and I greatly enjoyed the time we spent chatting. She had some very nice things to say to Tabs, and I hope we run into her a couple more times while we're here.

We've already checked in, unpacked, tested the wireless connection, and Tab is currently in the pool with Michael in attendance. We just got back from a mega-dinner at Fudruckers and all three of us ate ourselves into pain. I am only a very short distance away from a food coma. So pardon the typos -- I'm falling asleep at the end of every sentence....

Tab & Michael made themselves at home pretty quickly too:

So far the weather is beautiful. It's 96 degrees but feels cooler to me because of the breeze & low humidity. I love being able to see the mountains nearby. SLC is a larger city than I thought it would be, with some serious highway systems & construction. Our rental car is small but functional - just! It needs a tire rotation & alignment, so that will be a source of constant frustration for Michael. In the meantime, people here are friendly. I find myself mentally pondering "LDS or Not LDS" fairly often. I find the church of LDS fascinating, but as much as I would like to learn more I'm pretty happy being my underactive methodist/catholic self.

Well, my 2 cents thus far. This was mostly an update & test to see how well the wi-fi wok....

So blogging on the open road....

Or the Courtyard Marriott as it may be.

That's right. Me and the family have hit the road and we're coming to you live from Virginia. Michael is here for a work conference. Tab & I are here to soak up some national history in nearby D.C. We decided to spring her out of school this week and go for her 10th birthday. We managed to keep the trip a secret until about 8 hours pre-flight. That's when I gave her a brand new suitcase and told her to get busy. [I ended up having to repack, since she was only bringing shorts & tank tops.... It is after all in the 50's....] Wish you could have seen how shocked & surprised she was as she finally started to understand what we were telling her, and that she wasn't really going to take the TAKS test, and she really was going to skip school, and she was going on a trip by plane. Wa-Hoo!! Then from that point on she was all giggles & smiles.

We got here fairly easily. Had a late flight, got the rental car [she wanted the Longhorn Orange SUV, we directed her towards the white Rav4.... Guess you can take the Longhorn out of Texas, but  you can't take the Texas out of her....] Got to the hotel & into bed at 2am. We were all back up by 9am to get breakfast before it closed. We had to make an emergency run to the nearby mall to get me some rain gear and then we took some scenic detours but got to the National Museum of Natural History. We saw some awesome stuffed animals, amazing dino's, and then the Hope Diamond. I got some "wicked-good" pictures today.

Unfortunately, I don't have the computer to camera cable, nor a card reader, so you'll just have to stay tuned. I did managed to snap this with my cellphone camera on the plane when we were waiting to take off, then I e-mailed it to  myself. Seriously, this is some "gee-whiz" technology, but unfortunately the phone-cam is low resolution. More later. Tab won't go to sleep until we all do and now she's on hyper-over-drive....<sigh> tomorrow will be a long day....

Teasers....Part 2

Moving on to the reception....

There was group dancing.

There was Tab dancing with Dad. (She'd die if she saw real swing-style dancing. Then she'd give Michael a serious hernia when she tried to get him to toss her around like that.)

And there was Tab dancing with  Mom. (And yes! At this point I'd given up on my heels and since we were staying at the hotel, I'd gone to the room and gotten my slippers. So many women were soooo jealous....)

Tabster even got her Great, Great-Aunt Dot up on the dance floor! I honestly think my daughter managed to dance with every person at the joint. Not bad for her first wedding. And yes! "We did dance all night"

Another favorite of my favorite cousins: Apparently they do this at every wedding. We can't stop them. We try, but it's some sort of disease -- disco-itis or something....

Even got my Mom dancing a little bit. Notice Tab running away in the background? This is fortunately not the only 3 generation shot I got....

And a sentimental favorite, "Me & the Girls" [Ooooh, I feel a scrapbook layout title coming on....]

Here's a little bit of a tease.... (part 1)

Photographically speaking, of the family goings-on on the east coast, during our recent trip.

These are a few of my absolute favorites out of that legendary 962 pictures.

The bride (my cousin BonBon) and her dad (my Uncle D.) Love the back lighting effect in this one as they just stepped into the chapel.

This was serendipitous, but I loved the effect of photographing a photograph in progress. The hand belongs to one of my cousin's husbands and I love the soft blurriness of BonBon & her dad.

I did, of course, capture oodles of wedding party shots, but I know for a fact that I was the only person to capture this image of the bridesmaids and I LoVe it!

I sat off to the far end of one of the pews so I could move around without disturbing anyone else. This allowed me some "free & clear" angles to capture certain people very clearly. One of these was yours truly, Miss Tabitha, being herself. [Honestly, she did fabulously for it being her first wedding, first family trip, first visit back East, and first time meeting 95% of these people....But I couldn't resist showing ya'll just a little bit of what drove me crazy for 8 days....]

Then this is what I consider the "pay-dirt" photograph of all time from this family gathering. Those are the hands of my beloved Grampy & Nana....

And of course we hope that this is "Happily ever after...."

The trip to Berlin....Final thoughts....

So the day to head home arrived and we spent the morning packing & cleaning up. A dozen or so girl scouts can make quite the mess, you know. [It must be the cookies....] By late afternoon we were headed back to the train station, boarded & settled in. Once the train got rolling, it took very little time to reach the boarder with East Germany and the train was again boarded by East German soldiers & their viscous German shepherds. Just like before, all of our passports were collected, the shades were pulled and night had fallen.

Some time in the middle of the night we arrived at the East German & West German border. At that point we experienced a serious delay in travel. It was starting to get light, and yet again we were the disobedient scouts and kept peeking around the shades. What I saw at that point triggered some deep thinking.

Usually it seems that once a West bound train was near the border, but still on the Eastern side, there was a "search station" that had to be cleared before the train could continue to Western Germany. And search is not a strong enough verb to describe what the East German's would do. Literally the engine of the train would be dismantled to make sure that no one had hidden within the engine. Guards with dogs & machine guns would use mirrors to look up underneath the train to make sure that no one was hiding above the axles. This stop would last from an hour to 3 hours or more. It appeared that most of the time, rather than dismantle & reassemble the engine, they would swap off one and replace it with a just rebuilt one that was "clean" -- no hidden people inside. It was just our luck that day, that there wasn't one to replace our engine with, so we waited & waited & waited for ours to be rebuilt & reattached so that we could continue on our way back home. The most unusual part was that it was light enough outside with the early rising sun that we could make out some of the activity going on. Typically, this would all take place under cover of night so that the train travelers would be unaware of what was going on.

At that point I really started to be thankful that I did not live in a country that people were dying to break out of. It suddenly made sense to me that if someone was desperate enough to jump on a train and suspend themselves above the axles and risk being crushed to death, or would risk being horribly burned while hiding within the engine; well that must mean that East Germany & East Berlin were some fairly awful places to live.

So as the sun began rising higher, a nice golden yellow light washed over the horror of the train search and at 10 years old I began to appreciate how lucky I was to be born an American.

I was so happy to reach the West German side, since that meant the East German guards had left & the passports had been returned. The remainder of the ride back to Heidelberg was uneventful -- other than us all talking about what we'd seen.

Since that point in time, I have not taken for granted that I'm not stopped & searched on my way to the grocery store, or as I drive to my brother's house. That I have enough freedoms to work hard & provide for my family, and that I enjoy these freedoms without any immediate risk to my life or limb. Not so in a different place in a different time, 30 years and 7,000 miles ago....

So we got home Thursday....

Completely exhausted. Tab & I had an hour delay in Newark -- seems our outbound plane hadn't arrived yet and "No Plane -- No Fly". Flight itself wasn't terrible, just long with constant opportunities for Tabitha to "expand her world" and learn more manners. I was very happy to see Michael at the baggage claim and to head home.

Two nights in a row of 4 hours of sleep were seriously catching up with me, but I was determined to get all the photos downloaded. I managed to set a new personal "best" for most photos per day. The total count was 962, not counting the images that I deleted on the fly. Averages out to about 143 per day over about 6.75 days. It will be awhile to get through all of those.

Worked a 10 hour day Friday. Was canceled to work on Saturday, so called Douglas up to see if he had any weekend plans. I was in the mood for some family fun and I'm totally loving that he & his family are only 3 hours away now. So he & the boys drove up this morning & we all headed to the Star Wars exhibit in Ft Worth. If you're anywhere near the area, you simply must go. Even if you don't love Star Wars, there are lots of exhibits that show how the special effects from the movies have inspired science to keep up. Lots of hands on stuff for the kids to do from building a magnetic hover craft, to riding a hover craft, to building robots. We ended up with Doug's three, our three, and the three girls from both our neighbors. All the kids had a blast!! Especially the grown-up male ones....  :-))

Since everyone was behaving and it was close to 8:30pm, we headed back home & treated everyone to dinner at Sonic. Yum!! Fried mozzarella here I come!!! Then, Tab wanted a sleep over with the girls. So Doug & family had the guest room, and the girls all took over the up-stairs. Until about 45 minutes ago. Drew came down to tell me he thought there might be a problem (he'd been up there playing pool with the girls). Miss E. had seen me twice about a tummy ache, so I was thinking we had a tummy flu setting in. Nope. Turns out the three oldest decided to stand on top of the pool table and dance on it. I caught Tab, Miss H & Big Miss E all on the table dancing away. That was a party killer. Hollered at all of them. Called the parents at both houses & sent all the girls home. As far as I know, Tab is still upstairs & crying. I told her that she could decide where she's sleeping but no more party for tonight.

Frankly, we have rules in our house about no jumping on the furniture, no dancing on the furniture, treating the possessions in our house respectfully, yadda, yadda. So to find two 10-year-olds and a 9-year-old dancing on my pool table sent me right past angry to completely livid. Between moving the pool table twice and having it re-felted each move & once more for cat damage, I've got nearly $5000 invested in the piece of furniture. So it is completely beyond me how any of them could think that dancing on the table was an OK thing to do....

Their respective sets of parents met them outside my front door, and repercussions will be felt I'm sure. Me, personally, I'm enjoying that the volume level has dropped by 70% at my house. Doug & Michael are playing video games, and soon I'm headed to bed. Just needed to blog a bit. Will be working on photos some tomorrow and will hopefully get some albums up & posted. I have lost track of how many people want CDs of what photos, but I'll be working on that too.

So more later....And I haven't forgotten that Berlin still needed to be finished.....

The trip to Berlin....Part 3....

As I hadn't gone on the walking tour in East Berlin, my chaperons & I probably spent the full three hours or so at the museum. I later heard the walking tour had been fairly dull because everything they had seen was essentially the same shade of grey & the same shade of bleak. A few years later when I read George Orwell's 1984 I pictured East Berlin as being the city in his book. The museum itself was an absolutely fascinating place, and was the starting point for my realizations that I had been pretty lucky to be born where I had.

After seeing photos of what some escapes had left behind, I started to understand that there was a very good reason that other countries would refer to us as a "bunch of spoiled Americans!" One story that made an unforgettable mark was the story of a young man who was so desperate for freedom that he has literally made a run towards the barbed wire as it was being installed, technically 10-12 feet within the East side of the actual East-West border. So as this young man ran he was shot from behind by the soviet guards and bled to death because he hadn't been able to reach the border.  The guards later went out & dragged his body back to the proper East side. So while the American guards had watched this happen, they were helpless to aid him because he was still on the East side of the border. This was the infamous "No Man's Land." There were photos of his body from the American side on exhibit, and even at 10 years old I sense the tragic loss of life due to what amounted to pointless politics. Like I said, this was a life-changing  72 hours.

It wasn't all gloom & doom on the trip however. We were able to drive near to where the Brandenburg Gate was and I was fairly amused that the gold statue on top of the gate had been turned to face East towards Moscow. Obviously intended at the Russian version of "Kilroy was here!" We also made a trip to the zoo, but didn't stay long because while it was sunny, if was fairly cold.

We had been all staying at a house that was sort of an Army hotel or guest quarters. So after dinner on the last night, we girls played games & talked & did all those activities that 9 to 12 year old girls will do. While we entertained ourselves, the parents had been busy & mustered together a Halloween Haunted House for our entertainment. They had weaved the path from the basement up through the kitchen and out the porch up to the front door. We had to put on a blindfold and be led from spot to spot. It was my first real experience with complete gross creepiness. I remember sticking my hands into a large bowl of water and being told that the spherical objects I was pulling out were "eyeballs". In fact I suspect they were olives, but the gross out effect still rings true! There was the bowl of "jello" brains and the hallway with jumping monsters. All in all, quite the terrifying experience!

It was hard to get to sleep that night, between the Halloween events, the candy, and the general anticipation of soon being home with Mom & Dad. But as all 10 year olds will, we all eventually fell asleep in our sleeping bags.

OK, hopefully the last installment tomorrow or Sunday. Tabs & I are traveling to Uncle Doug & Aunt Lisa's tomorrow because my SIL Lisa was just promoted to MAJOR!!! I'm so totally proud of her & all she's accomplished. So we're going to visit for a short bit & then be there for Lisa's pinning ceremony where she gets her oak leaves. So in all honesty it will probably be Sunday night.....

The trip to Berlin....Part 2....

First, I need to qualify a couple of key details from Part One. Yes the trains traveling into & out of Berlin, traversing East Germany, traveled at night. When we left from Heidelberg, the East German guards & dogs didn't board until we reached the East German border. It had been early evening when we left Heidelberg, so it was dark and probably about 9:30 pm or so when we reached the East German border.The guards did go from compartment to compartment collecting passports for "safe keeping". That was the part that truly began my freak-out, since like any good Army Brat, I had been trained that one's ID papers were of paramount importance. Lose your IDs and you might as well not exist. Had one of the chaperons warned me that that would happen once we reached East Germany, and I wouldn't have been so freaked out. There were initially West German Politzi (Police) on the train when we boarded in Heidelberg, but they joked around with us and were pretty nice. The East Germans though, they were very serious about "Shoot First! Ask Questions Later!"

The train crossed East Germany at night for a reason. Mostly so we couldn't see out, but also because it made it harder for the East Germans to "jump the trains" and try to ride to freedom. There had been one girl in my compartment who couldn't seem to understand that "Don't touch the window blind!" meant don't touch the window blind. So she kept trying to sneak peeks out the window. I could a few glimpses of East Germany, and it was mostly dark with lots of trees. I was absolutely convinced that the guards were going to come in & either shoot us all, or haul us off to some prison for bad girl-scouts who couldn't follow directions. Eventually we all fell asleep & then we arrived in West Berlin. The passports were all returned back to the adults & we went on our merry way.

Probably every one has heard of! "Check Point Charlie. That was the "C" gate access into East Berlin, and the gate controlled by the Americans. I wasn't allowed to go with the rest of the troop for a walking tour in East Berlin. At the time I didn't know why, but was so freaked out by the process of getting to West Berlin, that I really didn't mind staying within vision of armed US Guards. So a couple of the parents & I took the detailed tour through the "Escape Museum" near the checkpoint. This museum was a collection of all the different ways that people had tried to spirit themselves out of East Berlin. I was fascinated with the small baby blue car that had a compartment carved out of the back seat's seat just the size that a person could fold up into the space & be driven across the border.

At this point my mind started to grapple with the idea that someone could live in a place that was so terrible that they would be willing to leave everything behind, including family, that they would literally risk life & limb, and that they would work so hard to find a way to escape. The photos here are sights that I remember seeing when I visited in October 1980. The museum had an observation deck that was about three stories up, with those jumbo binoculars for 50 cents and I remember staring across the span of plain gravel with hurricane barbed wire, areas of mines, and Russian guards staring back at us.

At this time I was starting to develop an interest in history & my Dad talked with me as often as possible to encourage that interest. So the entire museum was a  melting pot to start to understand what life was like "on the other side."

OK, I'm just wiped out. Looks like this is going to become an on-going serial....