A Fantastic Time

It's been a long time since I've been on here, but this deserves much more than a simple Facebook post, so here I am!

I recently attended a conference in Denver, Colorado for work, and as it turns out a very dear friend who retired a while back lives in the state, and it was a wonderful opportunity to pay her (and her dear husband) a visit.  I only had a couple of days before I had to get back home, but we made the most of them.  Naturally, we took some time to catch up, including visiting several really wonderful local restaurants, including a great barbecue place and a neat farm-to-table place.   When we went out-and-about, our first stop was the "four corners" monument, where four states meet (NM, AZ, CO and UT) and you can stand in all four at once.  Technically, the monument is not exactly on the meeting-point given some interesting early surveying results, but it was still a lot of fun.

Look, Mom, I'm in four states!

Here I am with my friend Lillian.

After being in four states, we went on to visit the Anasazi Heritage Center.  This is a museum dedicated to ancient ancestral pueblo peoples.  The term "Anasazi" was briefly settled upon, but the modern-day descendants are a very diverse group each with different languages, and none really liked the Navajo word that was chosen (which may or may not translate "ancestors of my enemies").  So properly, the term is "ancestral puebloans," but by the time that was agreed, the Heritage Center already had a name.  There was a really neat wall showing a timeline of pre-pueblo inhabitants of the area, describing what we knew of their tools, their crafts, and their lives, and exhibits of recovered artifacts.

For our second day, we went to the Mesa Verde National Park, which includes several sites built by the ancestral puebloans.  Lillian and her husband both volunteer frequently at the park and knew a lot about it, so it was like having my own personal tour, which was awesome.  Our first stop was the visitor's center, of course.  It features a neat central atrium with a fun statue of a "storyteller":

Do we look alike?

After the visitor's center, we went to the on-site Museum, which had more interesting artifacts and exhibits.  These included a clay pot in perfect condition found mostly-buried, containing 900-year-old corn that had been preserved untouched.  

Then, it was time for our Great Adventure.  One major site, "Spruce Tree House," has a paved trail leading down into its canyon, so visitors can hike down and look at it up-close.

Spruce Tree House seen from the top of the canyon.

Now, while the hike would not be too terrible for an able-bodied person, an able-bodied person I am not (in case the pictures didn't prove this...).  Lillian and Jim, however, were kind and brave souls.  They didn't want me to miss this, and we saw this as a chance to act as "guinea pigs," seeing how accessible things really were (or weren't).  Though at the end of the day we did have a few constructive comments for the park about improving access, we made it to Spruce Tree House and (more importantly) back up and it was really incredible.  Sure, it's one thing to be in a museum somewhere that has a pot behind plexiglass that was found a zillion miles away, but to actually stand and touch a place where people lived hundreds of years ago was a unique experience.  

The other sites we visited, we viewed via overlooks which were nicely paved.  These included a pit-house (one of the earliest permanent houses built in the area), a site called Square Towers, and the largest site, Cliff Palace.  As I told my friends, some of the site names (invented by white men, of course) made me think of the kind of flowery names given to appartments or condo buildings.  (I can hear the radio ad now: "you deserve the Cliff Palace lifestyle!")

Looking down at Square Towers

In front of Cliff Palace

 I also got to see a lot of wildlife on this trip.  There were mule deer (in plenty), scrub jays, rock squirrels, chipmunks, prairie dogs glimpsed from a distance, and the respective caboosae of a grey fox and a coyote.  My favorite, though, was seeing about a million hummingbirds of three different species visiting the two hummingbird feeders kept by my friend.  I understand both feeders are emptied on a daily basis, and the displays of aerial combat could have kept us occupied for hours.

The final must-view sight, the evening before I had to depart, was a clear view of the Milky Way.  I've never lived anywhere dark enough to actually see it, so this was my first time to witness it.  Between cloudy evenings and my being an hour ahead of local time, we feared that it might not be possible to get a glimpse of it, but the final night was perfect, so we spent some time stargazing.  There was a meteor shower on, which wasn't as cooperative as we might have hoped, but I can't say I feel cheated--the whole thing was wonderful.

Of course, I am back home now and back to my regular daily routine.  This makes the kitties happy, since "mom" is here, which is all that really matters to them.  But I'll probably be dreaming of Colorado.

A Motley Crew

Working full-time does not necessarily leave a lot of time for a social life, but luckily for me I have several colleagues at work who have become friends to me, and unless some serious scheduling conflict comes up, we like to meet up each workday and go out somewhere for lunch together.  This group was already in existence when I first joined the workforce, and it seems to have cohered largely thanks to one particular colleague who, in light of this being a public blog, I shall refer to as Super Sociable Guy. 

I had hardly been at work for moer than a few days when I was first approached by Super Sociable Guy.  He isn't in my working group, but he's from the next group over (remember, super sociable) and he heard through the grapevine that I have an interest in music.  He had the same interest, and moved quickly to sound me out about joining a community orchestra, one of the two I now play in, and the one which happens to have a concert coming up this weekend.  (Incidentally, he had a hand in forming the second orchestra.  Did I mention super sociable?)  Anyway, in the process of recruiting me to the musical cause, he invited me to join the Lunch Bunch crew.  That being the sociable thing to do, and all. 

The cast of characters who attend most regularly are a colorful lot.  There is myself, and the Super Sociable Guy, of course, who tend to lean towards the left politically.  Opposite us are two other members of the crew, who tend to the conservative.  So once conversation gets rolling (a given with you-know-who in the mix) it can get lively.  The last member of the regular crew sometimes joins in (he seems to align more with myself and Mr. Social when he does) but he also just sits quietly aside sometimes, being a person of more intellectual interests.  Others join us occasionally--friends and family of the main buch, mostly, and the occasional random colleague we manage to snag. 

A typical gathering of the Lunch Bunch goes something like this:  I notice the time, and put in a call to one of the others so they can initiate the Daily Herding of the Cats.  Usually, this is the job of Super Sociable Guy.  He rounds up the others, and if they don't get side-tracked talking to someone (it has a tendency to happen) the gang appear on my doorstep a short while later.  We then select a driver from among our number who has a vehicle suitable to the day's needs, and pile on in.

Then we decide where we might actually want to go for lunch. 

Someone--generally the driver--will ask the group where we all want to go.  We all just look at each-other and shrug: Eh, we dunno.  Where did you want to go?  At this point, no strong opinions being ventured, we proceed to to simply pick a place from the exact same list of seven or so places we always go to.  To ensure a little variety, the rule is that we try not to go to the same place more than once in a given work-week.  That is apparently suffiicent to liven things up. 

Admittedly, our town is not huge, so there aren't exactly a million places to choose from, but even then our list remains pretty short.  I don't know if it is just a facet of the Engineer/Scientist personality type, or if there is some other explanation, but by and large we seem quite content to fall into a routine and keep it.  Not necessarily out of any deep love of the exact routine, but more because we have found soemthing that seems to work, and it saves mental energy to just stick with it. 

Sometimes it strikes me that we (people as a whole) spend a lot of our lives this way, and even if they make us uncomfortable sometimes, I think that people who can enter our lives and nudge us to step out of the familiar from time to time are to be valued highly. 

Ah, well.  At least I know what's for lunch tomorrow! 

The Social Network

Yes, for a while this was me....

I've generally been sort of reluctant to get heavily involved in social media, for a number of reasons.  I wouldn't say I'm an especially public person, especially about the things that mean the most to me.  I also grew up in the era just before "Web 2.0" really became widespread (I still remember when Facebook only accepted registrations from a .edu email), so I had "old fashioned" ideas about friendship being something that happens face-to-face between people that see one-enother frequently in real life.  Only gradually did I come to appreciate the ability of the web to keep a person connected to old friends now-distant, or to connect one with new people who had shared interests.

It was also hard to ignore the familiar litany of privacy and security concerns that go along with social networking.  Is it really safe to let the world know where you are, what your routine is, and what things you're involved with?  Do I really feel like sharing my patterns and preferences with companies that will bombard me with advertising?  Most anyone I've been around who is involved with any sort of network security regards social networking as the Root of All (security) Evil. 

Lately, however, I've really picked up posting on facebook, added a proper Google+ account, and (as we can see) have started blogging again.  On the professional side, I've even brushed up a LinkedIn account, which seemed to be a good idea for networking purposes.

So far, it's been fun.  I've seen some updates from friends, shared my own updates and enjoyed receiving comments and "likes" in return.  I'm still a little ambivalent about it in some ways.  I don't want to "live" on Facebook and not have a life, or become dependent on social media for validation.  So in a way it is a bit hard to pin down exactly why I chose to dive in, and why I chose to do so now.  Sure, I've had a Facebook account for quite a while, but I really didn't use it much and barely checked it at all.  Well, I have to confess that there was a brief spate where I got sucked in by the games, but that got old pretty quick.  Then I went right back to ignoring Facebook. 

I suppose my new embrace of the Social Internet is in part to do with the fact that it is hard to find a lot of like-minded, reasonably-educated people to hang out with fact-to-face where I live.  My colleagues are wonderful, and I do consider some of them good friends, but it seemed to be important to move in a broader circle than that.  Luckily, I feel like I've found some of that wider circle, but many of them live an hour or so away, and a few in particular share extensively on Facebook, so it is the best way to stay connected with them.  I admit that it also feels nice to also be back in touch with some of my good friends from previous days.

I guess only time will tell how everything will work out, but for right now I am really enjoying myself, and I hope to continue to stay connected.  So, I wave hello across the electronic airwaves, and say "welcome" to passers-by.  I'll be seeing you in cyberspace.