No, I’m not kidding. Let me give you the backstory.

The husband and I are planning to go to Guadalupe Mountains National Park in November and we started planning a few months back.  We went to our local Whole Earth Provision Co. to check out the camping gear and we were really shocked at how expensive everything was.   Isn’t camping supposed to be a relatively inexpensive activity?  Going back to nature didn’t seem as natural as we thought it would be.  At least not in the way that Whole Earth was suggesting.

I went home and started looking around for tents online.  Campmor was recommended to me as a good resource for camping gear so I surfed through their pages.  I also surfed through some camping forums.  Most campers recommended 2-person tents that were well over $300.  And it wasn’t just the tent.  There were the sleeping bags that were $200 a pop.  Then there were the Therm-a-rest sleeping pads that everyone said was a must-buy, which ranged from $75 to $150 at the REI store.

Needless to say, we put off the camping idea for awhile.

Until the husband started coming across several websites and forum posts about 4-runner owners that sleep in the back.  The nice thing about 4 runners is that the back row of seats fold down completely (and easily) flat so that you have a six-foot (maybe a bit longer) flatbed in the back that’s about as wide as a full-size mattress.

Camping suddenly became affordable again.

We knew the cold front was coming in on Friday night so we decided to try out the set up.

An important part of the setup was buying AirShades:

They are basically model specific screens that fit over your car doors so that the breeze can blow through and ventilate the car but don’t let the bugs in.  I don’t think mosquitoes will be a problem since the temperature in that part of the country averages around 40 degrees at night in November.  But it’s nice to have.

You can see how the back row of seats fold up nicely.

Here’s the tent fan we bought that will also help ventilate the truck.  It was so nice and breezy Friday night that we didn’t need it in our trial run.

As you can see, the husband’s 5′10″ frame fits easily when stretched out.

This picture shows how roomy it is!  As an added plus, since we don’t have to worry about a damp ground, we can just bring our down comforter instead of buying fancy sleeping bags.  We might still invest in some sort of mattress pad but we probably won’t shell out the extra money for the Therm-a-rest sleeping pads.  I know I can get cheap mattress padding at Wal-Mart for twenty bucks or so.

You may say that this isn’t real camping– but honestly, sleeping in a tent isn’t all that appealing to me.  I’m excited about the trip because of the hikes we’ll get to do and the hopefully red maple trees.  I’m a city girl at heart.

And hey, if I can save several hundred dollars, why not?!

As you know, the husband and I went to Washington D.C. this past Labor Day weekend to visit our good friends, Andy and Christine (pictured above at Cantler’s Riverside Inn in Annapolis, Maryland). We didn’t do the monuments because of the husband’s recovering knee, but we went to a lot of good places to eat and had a really relaxing weekend in one of the coolest cities in the nation. Contrary to what I was expecting, the city has a real southern kind of historic charm to it and is definitely a place I’d like to visit again sometime.

Some neat places we went to include: Cantler’s Riverside Inn; The International Spy Museum; Five Guys Famous Burgers and Fries; Larry’s Homemade Ice Cream; Capitol Hill Baptist Church; Jaleo; Rhodeside Grill; Kramerbooks & Afterwords; Legal Sea Foods; Union Station; Arlington National Cemetery; and Georgetown.

We’ll definitely do the monuments next time.

You’ll probably see the pictures floating into my flickrstream as I get time to process and upload the photos.

School has really picked up as far as the workload goes. Every week we have a pretty thick stack of reading to do but the reading is always interesting and enlightening.

Tennis is probably my 3rd favorite sport to watch (after basketball and football) and I’ve really been enjoying the U.S. Open. I’m currently watching the Henin/Williams match and it has been awesome. Justine Henin is incredible. It is amazing to watch her small 5′6″ frame dominate on the court. Her matches are especially fun to watch because she’s so quick and can return some pretty impossible shots. Venus just spiked this one shot and the crowd went wild thinking she had won the point but Justine got to the ball fast enough to lob it over Venus’s head. Greatness.

CBS does these cheesy player profiles in between games and they said that Henin is superstitious about stepping on the court lines in between points. I’ve tried to see if she steps on any lines and she really doesn’t!

We’re going to a special art tour at the MFAH tonight courtesy of my gift museum membership from my old coworker, Hua. I’ll let you know how that goes.

(photo taken from National Geographic)

Team Seiko is D.C. bound for Labor Day Weekend! (Let’s hope the husband is off of his crutches by then.)

What are your Labor Day plans?

I finally uploaded all the pictures from my weekend trip to Minneapolis. Here’s a review– mostly in pictures:

This trip started off with a great priceline bid by the husband to get the Hilton Downtown Minneapolis for only $55/night when I was willing to fork over $129/night. The serenity beds were awesome. They ran out of king size beds because there was a huge convention at the hotel that weekend so I had two double beds. Who needs that much space, anyway?

The Crabtree & Evelyn toiletries were a nice touch. Everything was very minty-fresh.

I spent most of my weekend taking photos of cool buildings downtown like this one.  I want to sit down at the piano and find out what the music on this wall sounds like.

What’s really neat about Minneapolis Downtown is that virtually all the buildings are connected by skyways (as pictured above). You could essentially explore downtown without stepping a foot outside. I imagine this is invaluable when it’s snowing and thirty below in the winter. The weather was gorgeous when I was there (high 70’s with a strong cool breeze) so I didn’t use the skyways much.

This is one of my favorite downtown photos. I like random posters in repetition.

This isn’t a particularly remarkable photo but it showcases how bike/pedestrian friendly the Grand Rounds trail is!

Minneapolis also has its share of up and coming restaurants and bars like this wine bar, Spill the Wine.

And what’s a trip to Minneapolis without visiting the monstrosity that is the Mall of America?  It’s pretty incredible– complete with an H&M store and an amusement park in the middle.

I’ll definitely go back.  The whole point of the trip to was take a weekend away by myself while the husband was in Thailand on business.  I wanted to pick a city that I wasn’t likely to go to with him and that I could use my frequent flyer miles on.  But now that I’ve been there, I definitely want to go back.  There are still a ton of places I didn’t get a chance to check out like Hell’s Kitchen, Mill City, Dinkytown, the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum (pictured above) and of course the other twin, St. Paul.

I’m not normally a claustrophobic person but the small Continental Express planes are a little too tight for my comfort.

If you’ve never been on a small plane, it’s the kind that has one seat on the left and two seats on the right of each row.

It only had one flight attendant. I can’t imagine how boring it was for her. Usually there’s the giggling and general banter between attendants that make the job so alluring. Socialize, bartend, wear black pantyhose (if you are a woman), and fly around the world– what more could you ask for in a job?

But yesterday, the lone flight attendant, Crystal, was on her own. She served all the drinks, and pulled the heavy cart back up the aisle. She then went down the aisle with a trashbag to collect empty cups and cans. She sat down for about ten minutes, and then she served drinks again. She actually served drinks a total of 3 times on our short two and a half hour flight– which I think is a bit excessive, but she was probably bored!

Towards the end of the flight she sat on her little fold-out flight attendant seat doing nothing. I poked my head out into the aisle to see if she was reading a magazine or book. But no, she was just sitting there.

Anyway, the weird part was when the captain was giving his landing instructions. Usually the captain says, “Flight attendants, please take a seat and prepare for landing.”

But instead he said, “Crystal, please take your seat and prepare for landing.”

It was weird.

This is one of my favorite pictures I took in Cancun.

This is the seatback of an Aeromexico plane.  The pattern is dizzying.  Like one of those M.C. Escher drawings.

I finally sorted through the Cancun pictures!  Not enough time for any overview now but I wanted to write and reassure everyone that I was still alive.  I went home at lunchtime on Monday because my stomach was feeling miserably upset and I was afraid I’d have explosive diarrhea at any moment.  I’m really against public bowel movements so yeah, I went home.  I pretty much slept the whole day Monday.  I researched all the foods I could eat and the ones I should avoid (which is pretty much everything I love!) and grudgingly pulled the skin off of the Boston Market chicken.   I went to bed that night at around 10pm and didn’t wake up the next day until almost 2pm.  I woke up dizzy and thirsty.  I think I was a bit dehydrated because everything I ate just got flushed down the toilet.  No nutrient absorption, you see?  TMI, I know.

So right when I woke up I quickly sent an email to the folks at the office.  They never got the email and suspected that I was either dead, pregnant, or playing hookey.  I was none of the above.

Having a stomach bug sucks.  I’ve been avoiding fried foods, caffeine, sugar… well, anything tasty, really.  But at the same time, when I eat unhealthy foods, I don’t have any of the caloric consequences.  It’s both bad and good.  The good news is that I’ve lost all of the weight I put on in Cancun.

June is a really busy month.  And who knew Father’s Day was on the 17th this year?!?  Isn’t it usually in the twenties?  Sheesh.

I really want to find some time to carve out a chunk of a weekend to fix this god-awful website.  Nico graciously released a new version of this theme and I can’t wait to try it out.  I will write an appropriately long post about Nico when I’m done as well.  My lovely theme angel from the Netherlands.

Hope everyone’s having a splendid week!

We got back from Cancun late last night.  I’ll put the pictures up on Flickr as soon as I get a chance (and fix this website) but I just wanted to write real quick and say that sometimes when I’m sitting in a plane looking out the window, I start suspecting that I’m Jim Carrey in The Truman Show and everything around me is all a big charade.  The miniature cars on the miniature roads look too perfect so many thousand feet below me.  They look like a Mister Roger’s Neighborhood model instead of reality.  The flight attendant asking me what I want to drink is smiling a little too widely and is a little too cheerful.  I look around for the camera or the boom mic but I find neither.

Vacations are the best but it’s always nice to come home.  Pictures to come later.

I have finally finished sorting through all of my Italy trip pictures and here is the final set:

Cinque Terre.

Here is Vernazza, the sleepy little fishing town we stayed in:

This is off topic but a coworker of mine brought up Alibi Network today during lunch. Apparently it’s a company that helps people lie, cheat on their spouses, etc. So wrong, but so brilliant! What a money-maker! Check it out.

This is old news for Amazon.com faithfuls, but for those of you who aren’t: Amazon has started a new website so you can buy even more stuff online! The website is called Endless– which I think is a weird name for an online store selling shoes and handbags. I briefly read over the concept and I like it. They offer free overnight shipping on everything and you have 365 days to return anything and they’ll even pay for your return shipping. Amazon has always been awesome at customer service so I’m eager to buy from this new website.

Secondly, Ben told us about the pork + coke = worms video over sushi (excellent topic to discuss over uncooked meat) last night and we were disappointed tonight to see all the mythbusting videos on YouTube. It was a complete letdown. I was waiting for white maggots to bust out of the meat and imagine my disappointment when nothing happened.

And last but not least, I finished sorting my photos from Rome.

Here’s the Colosseum (yawn):

And here’s a quick snapshot of the billboards inside the train station:

Here’s an interesting photo of a gathering of men in kilts on St. Patrick’s Day before the parade in New York City. We had a 6 hour layover in Newark, NJ so we caught the bus into town to check out the parade and troll the streets.

I am just now starting to sort through the photos from our trip to Italy. I got through Day 2 last night after the game. (I told you Florida was going to win.)

Here’s another one of my favorites from the parade:

Click here to see the rest of the my New York set.

I love the new Flickr options for layout and the ability to make collections! Finally!

We leave for Italy tomorrow morning.  We’ll be back the following Sunday with a hard drive full of pictures and our hearts full of memories.

Ciao!

We spent a relaxing few days in Austin this past weekend and it was all I had hoped it would be.

On Friday night we hung out at Union Park, a nice lounge on the west side of 6th. It was a beautiful night so the outdoor rooftop patio was perfect.

On Saturday morning, after a typically delicious breakfast with a good pal at South Congress Cafe, I headed over to Uncommon Objects to kill time until the husband came to pick me up. It’s easily one of the coolest stores I have ever been in. I’m not normally crazy about antiques but the antiques in Uncommon Objects are delightfully weird. It’s not just vases and lamps, there are random things like old dentist chairs, old shop tools, different gauges and clocks, and toys and books– it’s like stepping into another world.

We then went hiking at Wild Basin in hopes of seeing a waterfall.

Here’s the waterfall. Not a roaring one by any stretch of the imagination but it was still kind of nice.

Our favorite godson, Charlie, hiked with us. No designer handbag ride for this pup! What a trooper! We are very proud godparents.

We also played some Guitar Hero and Nintendo Wii. Both were pretty entertaining. Not sure if we’ll fork over the cash for either in the time being. I don’t know why but I feel as though I’ve shifted from the early adopters category of the technology food chain to the late majority category. This is probably due to the fact that I don’t own a Mac. I have a first generation iPod Nano!

Anyway, Austin was cool as always and it’s definitely on my list of places to raise children.

We got home last night in time to watch the beginning of the Oscars. I really liked the sound effects choir.

We celebrated the New Year by taking a weekend trip to New Orleans this year. We were there because a coworker of mine was getting hitched and we figured we’d make a weekend out of it. The only downside was that I came down with a miserable cold (body aches and all) but the trip was filled with plenty of upsides.

Here are the upsides, in chronological order and peppered with photos. (One of my new year resolutions is to take more photos. Can you tell?)

Upside #1: The Hotel

We were lucky enough to be awarded the W Hotel New Orleans through the husband’s expert priceline bidding for the killer price of eighty bucks per night. The hotel usually goes for $469 a night so we were pleasantly surprised.
(this picture is from the W Hotel website)

It was a nice hotel, but not a perfect hotel (if such a thing exists). The decor was well-done, although it was a bit too trying at times. For example, there was a large, heavy curtain that automatically opened (like an automatic sliding door at a grocery store) whenever you walked into the lobby. Pretty cheesy in my opinion.

I liked the small touches here and there.

The best part of the room was probably the bed. It felt like a pillowtop and the down duvet was heavenly. Another cheesy point was that the CD player was blasting house music when we got into the hotel. I guess it matched the hotel but it gave the room a weird feel.

I appreciated their attempt at wit/humor.

And finally, in addition to their hotel bar, they had a nice little lounge in the lobby called “The Library” which had real books and comfy chairs.

Upside #2: Exploring Downtown

One of the best parts of the trip was walking around aimlessly downtown taking photos of dilapidated buildings (one of my favorite photo subjects) and looking for places to eat.

Upside #3: Seeing my buddy get hitched (finally)

A beautiful wedding between a beautiful couple. Unfortunately I didn’t get too many pictures of the reception because I was busy eating!

Upside #4: Living across the street from Wheel of Fortune slot machines at Harrah’s

Upside #5: Walking down Bourbon Street on New Years’ Eve

One of the highlights was innocently scarfing down a huge, cheesy slice of pepperoni pizza in front of a not-so-innocent establishment. What is in those hand grenades? I love them!

Upside #6: Trombone Shorty

For the countdown we were in the Jackson Brewery Plaza in the French Quarter.  They had a concert stage set up and Trombone Shorty strutted around the stage with his trombone and trumpet.  He had the entire crowd of all ages dancing to his music. At one point the lady standing next to me said, “Trombone Shorty may be a young man, but Trombone Shorty’s got it going on!” I grinned back at her appreciatively. It was a great concert and a perfect way to celebrate New Years in NOLA. Minutes before the countdown we all hugged each other– pretending we weren’t strangers, and genuinely wished each other a happy new year. It was neat.

It was a cool trip. Real laid back and… easy. Just what I needed.

Click here to see the rest of my pictures.

Chicago was cool, of course. The best part was the conversations, which could conceivably take place in any city but it was nice to be away from home and responsibilities. A close second was wandering around the Art Institute of Chicago with what little time we had before we had to leave the city. It was as good as I had hoped.

My pictures are lousy so I won’t post any. Next week, Maui! Oh, but with the wedding on Saturday, of course.