The day that doesn't exist

...or does it? Happy Leap Year Friday!

Black Bird's hat

Portals

St. Charles Hotel:
"the only hotel in Carson that is
lighted exclusively by electricity.
Best $1 a day house on the coast."

As I am not having a pajama day like some around here, know that I am doing this post to avoid doing what needs to be done, that I do not want to do that I, in fact, dread doing but will, after I post yesterday's outtakes.

Carson City alley

If you need more, go and read about the fascinating origin of the Game of Asha.



Okay. That's it folks. Now move along.

Head trip

I'm writing this in an effort to make the upcoming trip more real to myself. Here is the backpack I will be living out of when we tour those countries currently sitting benignly next to it on the table.

This is all M. Lee's doing. I am ashamed to admit the only thing I know about Guatemala and Nicaragua is that there were ... are? ... guys in the jungle with guns. Costa Rica? Next to nothing other than that a Norwegian friend of ours meets his family there every Christmas for a surf holiday. And let see... what's the name of the other book? Honduras. Crap! The thought of going to Honduras freaks me out even more than going to Guatemala or Nicaragua. Well, no. In order of dread, I guess I rank Nicaragua first, then Honduras, then Guatemala. I think my trouble dolls came from Guatemala. And maybe the cool bag I picked up at a second hand store recently. Nice colors. And I suppose bananas grow everywhere, which is nice, but there's still the problem of guys with guns. Hey, minus the bananas, sounds like
good ol' merika.

But I don't want to give the wrong impression. In the spirit of what doesn't kill me makes me stronger, I am looking forward to this although, for starters, I could rattle off about a million things that I might survive that would definitely not make me stronger. Dread. My ever-present shadow. But I also enjoy challenging and replacing brooding myths with new experience. And, for better or worse, M. Lee uses that to his own advantage. Of course, chances are the worst I will suffer is the pain of being back to school, the Spanish immersion classes but, for the moment, the Theatre of Doom is playing old Saturday matinée favorites and I am there, spell-bound, dropping half of every handful of popcorn onto my lap and the floor, fearing the worst for the heroine as she makes her was across the screen dodging bullets and alligators.

Just one of those days

In a rare turnabout, the starlings scooped the mapgies this morning, arriving at the Bird Park early and vacuuming up all the peanut shards before the tuxedo wearing dandies arrived. And it's raining. Looks like Oregon outside with an extra light filter thrown on for ambiance. That's Nevada for you. Like Greece, we got light.

In other local news, I am now officially in training for an upcoming trek through a bit of Central America, I say trek because this time, unlike driving through Mexico in a jeep filled_crammed_bulging with all the things I think I need to leave the house on any given day... laptop, drawing tablets, pens, pencils, camera, books, shoes, boots, various changes of clothes, hats, bottles of water, food, this time we are only taking what we can stuff into backpacks and, once we get there, riding the bus.

I have always admired the people who traipse through countries with backpacks, staying out for years at time, living in hostels and being very interesting and rumpled, meeting up with friends here and there they met here and there, swapping road stories and travel tips over carafes of wine and whatever other exotics go round the circle. We will not guzzling carafes of wine or anything else for that matter or staying out for years, but, like a lot of people, we will be going to language school, Spanish immersion in Antigua, for as long as we can stand it, two weeks, maybe three, maybe more, we'll see, four hours a morning with a one half hour break. Good for the brain. When we get sick of that, we'll hop a bus and travel a bit. But it's the backpack part that I am focused on and must prepare myself for. I claim that the only reason I take a lot of stuff with me wherever I go is because hey, the vehicle is going there anyway so why not, but that at heart I am like the swift wolf who travels light. I claim that. I have two months to prepare myself.

In the course of writing this, the rain has turned to snow, thus ending our February false spring.

Have a heart?

"The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them, that is the essence of inhumanity." ~George Bernard Shaw

The Humane Society posted some undercover footage from a slaughterhouse in California. Even meat eaters should be outraged and ashamed by this. Any conscious, feeling being would be.

A day in the life
(Warning: graphic undercover footage)

What you can do

(Please do it)

animals cows vegetarianism