Bippity Boppity Boo Book

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More of Sarah's art

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Polyhidrosis: (n): excessive secretion of perspiration. EXAMPLE--One familiiar health club problem is the fellow with a bad case of polyhidrosis who has yet to discover the communal benefits of wiping the equipment after using it.

See . . . I told you!

The canyon is pretty big. You can tell because I have provided some helpful perspective in this image. (Yep, those are people on that rock ourcropping.)
The canyon is SO big, you might be tempted to call it Grand. (You may do so if you wish.)


Sarah battled the immense size of the canyon by using binoculars, which, I am told, made it easier to see fine details far off in the distance. And, as I have tried to indicate prior to now, binoculars are helpful when confronted with a natural phenomenon as phenomenally vast as the canyon.

When confronted with something so enormous, all you can do is stand tall and face it with a resolute mind and face.


"Can you spell vast, Sarah? V-A-S-T. Good. I knew that you could."

Scenes from a rest area

Kids, after all, are kids. That often means their tiny little bladders can't take the hard slog of road miles like the adults can. That often translates into frequent stops. So, take advantage of it.
If you find yourself stuck between places, trying to get from somewhere not so interesting and attempting to get somewhere that is much more interesting, then take cute pictures of cute girls when you get the chance. (Especially if they enjoy posing.)

Yes, there are many wonderous things that you can find at a roadside rest area. Not all of them are cute kids. Some of them are of a decidedly different nature.

Like informative plackards that honor obscure but vitally important highway engineers! Yep, I guess this dude would have figured prominently in my dissertation . . . if I had ever gotten around to writing it, huh?

Departure temperature

Welcome to Arizona eastlanders!

Here, as you can see (in the hellhole that is Phoenix) it is 96 degrees at 8 o'clock in the morning.

Here, we are departing our Phoenix hotel and heading several thousand feet into the air to visit that wonderous natural formation, the Grand Canyon.

You might have heard of it; it's a pretty large hole in the ground. Opinions are mixed about how the hole got there and what exactly caused it to form. But, I'm here to tell you that it exists. I even took pictures of it, which I will show you shortly.

Tombstone, AZ

Wedding night and beyond

The wedding took place in the early evening, in a botanical garden in FBs old neighborhood--the same neighborhood that the previous day's rehearsal dinner was held in.

The chairs overlooked a small hillside that gave a nice vista to the gardens below. Everything was in bloom and very pretty.






We all sat very somberly and serenely as people tend to do at weddings. It wouldn't do to act like a fool or something during a most important moment in a friends life. (That sort of thing only happens in movies, I reckon.) But once the wedding was over, the fun and merriment could begin. After wandering through the receiving line and wishing the happy couple all good things, we headed downhill into the shade (mercifully!) to get refreshing drinks and wander the botanical garden grounds while dinner was being set up.





See . . . dignified! That's how you act at weddings!




















During my perusal of the rose garden portion of the botanical grounds, it seems that Jack snapped my picture from afar. He immediately termed these my "JFK photos" and I have to agree. I purposefully changed the images to black and white to make them seem more portentous, but I think you can imagine me in the Oval Office (or the Rose Garden I suppose), drinking a whiskey sour (or something) and deciding how best to teach those commies a nuclear lesson they wouldn't soon forget.

Anyway . . . there was a nice dinner, interesting conversations with Spec's and FB's old friends and much dancing and merriment. Since I am not a dancer by trade or by nature, I didn't participate that much in this phase of the evening. Spec (bless him) drug me out there for one dance, but I mostly left it to the more skilled, the more enthusiastic, etc. I really couldn't afford to sweat through my shirt and suit coat much more. It was rather humid that evening.

Just trust me that we all had a good time. I didn't take pictures of the reception . . . sorry.

The next day, before we hit the road back to C-town, we stopped to have brunch with those that remained. It was a nice, relaxed atmosphere back in Chestnutt Hill, talking a bit more with everyone and preparing to say our goodbyes.

For me, it was a nice step out of my normal husband, parent routine. I am extremely grateful to Lynda for allowing me to go and spending the whole of a holiday weekend without me.

And thanks of course go to Jack, Cordelia, and Raisinette for their companionship, driving skills, music, and everything else that made it a fun trip there and back again.


Final thanks and best wishes for many, many happy years together go to FuzzyBlu and Spec who invited me and put on a great weekend.

More Phila. tourism

While wandering around the historic blocks of Philadelphia's historic areas, we saw many places that are extremely recognizable to people for both historical and mythological reasons. I don't know if Betsy Ross actually sewed the first flag recognized as the Stars and Stripes banner, but I do know that she lived in Philadelphia. Here is a picture of her house.


A few streets away from Betsy's home is Christ Church--one of the oldest and most important Episcopal Churches in the United States. Famous people like Ben Franklin and other signers of the Declaration of Independence are buried in the church's cemetery.

















Jack had to go back to the car and feed the parking meter. While Raisinette, Cordelia and I waited in the shadowy cool of the trees around Christ Church, Raisinette read a Philadelphia ghost story.



After Jack returned, we headed off to see the Delaware River. It is the border between Philadelphia and New Jersey, which is on the other side of the bridge pictured. We didn't have the time or the desire to cross the bridge and visit the Garden State, so we headed back into town "Reservoir Dogs" style in search of food.














We found a restaurant that I hope was a local place suitable for getting authentic Philly Cheese Steaks. I kept my order simple--steak and onions with Cheese Whiz. It was good and I chowed down.

Day 2--Tourism

When we arrived in the historic area of Philadelphia, Jack T. found a great parking space a block from what is probably the most famous building in the city--and likely the second or third most historically famous building in the whole country--Independence Hall.

In order to get inside, you needed to get a ticket and we didn't really want to spend our only time on that day standing in lines.


So we convened on the other side of the building to discuss our options. (Here you can see a picture of Raisinette, Jack, and Cordelia considering options.)


Here is the reason why we decided not to try and see the Liberty Bell--surely the most famous broken bell in this country. The line for tickets into the swank new building that houses The Bell was pretty long. And remember that we had pledged not to spend our time standing in lines.


As a result, this is as close as I got to the Liberty Bell during the trip. I was told that the bell is inside this posh new structure, and that it is close to the big window. You can, I think, see some people standing around where the bell is set up. (In fact, this website confirms that the bell is, in fact, in that place.)

Day 1--Rehearsal Dinner

The first day in Philadelphia Jack Thunder, Cordelia, Raisinette, and I attended the rehearsal dinner for Spec and FuzzyBlu. It was held in the very nice suburb (?) of Chestnut Hill. We gathered at a local restaurant alongside many of the couple's family and friends. I knew absolutely none of them, but that didn't stop me from taking pictures, enjoying friends, enjoying food and drink.

Here, for instance, you can see Raisinette and Spec goofing it up as usual. He doesn't seem at all worried or concerned that his wildcatting days of singlehood are mere hours away from disappearing forEVER! But it's easy to get distracted from reality when hanging around with the likes of Raisinette. She's been known to wander moonily about. And why not? The whole weekend was pretty dreamy.

Here are the couple saying a few welcoming words to everyone. I don't remember what, exactly, they said. I'm sure it was something like "Hey, thanks for coming. We think you guys are all the best possible people in the whole world and if Abraham Lincoln, Ghandi, and Jesus all showed up, we'd tell them that they had to go find somewhere else to party, cause we've already got the best group of partiers that ever gathered to party. . . . And speaking of Lincoln, Ghandi, and Jesus, that reminds me of a joke. . . ."



Here is Raisinette posing beside a neon pig sign. "Why?" you ask? Well, it's because she's a good sport and allowed me to take the picture, but there is a slight story behind it. And that story goes like this:

While waiting for Spec and FuzzyBlu to arrive, we're standing around the upstairs portion of the restaurant. Raisinette and I are standing and chatting beside the partition wall that separates us from the flight of stairs going down to the main floor of the restaurant. While we innocently chat, suddenly we are bathed in harsh reddish light from the unnoticed pig sign turning on. We were a bit taken aback by the sign's "neonocity" and its piggish shape. So, we decided to commemorate the occurance with the picture. Great story, huh?


Here we have Cordelia, who tolerated us all weekend long, never complained that I kept inappropriately telling everyone and everything to "Suck it" if they earned my wrath, and always took pictures of me doing stupid things. You'll see a few of those before it's all over. This is the first picture of her on my blog. Yea!

LOST season two finale FOOD

The DHARMA brand cake was mysteriously tasty . . . almost TOO good, if you know what I mean. You simply can't trust food that appears out of nowhere and tastes that good. Questions must be asked sometimes, even on THIS island.

Mysteries deepened when we realized that DHARMA was also supplying the wine. Was the Hanso Foundation trying to weaken our cognitive faculties? Did it think that we would be tricked so easily? We're not simply gonna take the "cheesy fish crackers" and go along on our merry, button-pushing way! We demand answers! Where's WAAALT!!! It's the viewer's right (DRINK!) to get some answers!
But, the food WAS that good . . . and soon question and mysteries faded away in favor of face-stuffing. The cake, fried plantain chips, exotic fruits (including several mangos), avocado fiesta salad (with optional gorgonzola), fish sticks, and shrimp/potato/leek soup (not pictured) were consumed with gusto. In our satiated state, we enjoyed the mysteries of the episode.