It's been three weeks since I began the Great Blog Experiment of 2010... And now I need a vacation. My thanks to my reading public -- those I invited into my daily life and thoughts -- all eight of you! Your comments and your presence have made me smile. When I resurface on the web, I shall let you know. My wish for all of us: safe travels and bold adventures!

On the agenda today: getting together with the gals who I made pals with from my internship site. We're going to write notecards to some folks from the church who don't get out much (no, not me) or who we think would like a cheerful surprise in their mailbox. I'm supplying the cards and the Valentine stickers.  

My cache of writing paper is noteworthy -- in its extent. I used to write a letter every day, more or less, during undergraduate school and twenty years beyond. I stopped around the turn of the century. Things took a turn... Maybe I ran out of things to say. But I didn't stop acquiring stationery, so I am glad to share the wealth for this endeavor.

When I set this up, I didn't realize it would be SuperBowl Sunday. I was going to watch, albeit not that intensely. Just needed an excuse to graze on snacks. 

My fractal plan went ka-floo-y. (It's a technical term.) I got to the museum in plenty of time, ready to get my ticket for the show, whereupon I found out that the show was already sold out. The 6 o'clock show, the 7 o'clock show, and the 8 o'clock show. What kind of a nerdy town is this? A throng gets advanced tickets to the planetarium, a $10 ticket for a 45 minute presentation on advanced mathematics...? On a Friday night!? Date night for the pocket-protector crowd? 

So I'll do some advanced planning of my own for the next First Friday Fractal night in March. I'll use my gigantic brain to buy a ticket early.

Looks like Saturday is about over. I was scheduled to pick up a friend at 11:30 this morning to go to a birthday party for the father (turning 88) of another friend. I woke up at 11 am. Seems like I've been behind ever since. At least we beat the father to the party, who was moving slower than me.

I love HBO. Been a fan now for a year and a half. I don't know how I've lived so long (sooooo long) without it. Last night I watched a new documentary put together by Rosie O'Donnell called A FAMILY IS A FAMILY IS A FAMILY. It consists of short interviews with young children about their take on what "family" means. The kids were cute, and very savvy. Of course, families run the gamut of possibilities -- inter-racial parents, single parents, moms and grandmothers, two moms, two dads, etc. Several kids spoke gleefully about being adopted. A girl at the end summed it up nicely, that your family is who tucks you in at night.

The show had great music, too. One song was about a girl who celebrates being an only child. She's never lonely because her parents play with her, and the uncles and aunts and cousins and grandparents come over to visit. Another eye-opening song was the girl who ponders what to do for her science project and then decides it should be about her -- she loves the fact that she was conceived in a laboratory dish. O the times, they are a-changin', eh? It was a fun show.

And the fun continues today as I ponder science up close and personal. (Not so personal as to create a new person -- pleeease!) I'm heading over to the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, my first visit. It's around the corner from the art museum which is a favorite hang out of mine. They've got a special presentation on fractals going on that want to see, being the detail oriented person that I am. [A fractal is "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole," a property called self-similarity. -- Thank you, Wikipedia.]

Doing laundry. Watching TV. What a life, eh? I just learned, via the History International channel, that the mummified dead of the Incas got dressed up in jewels and fine clothes, and went to lavish parties with other mummies. (Now that's the life... or death?) They accomplished this by means of a devoted class of attendants, who also carried them through the streets on parade, and carried them into battle. They owned all the best land and the best stuff, and were catered to day and night. These "Royal Dead" sounded more like the Royal Pain.

On the other had (and isn't there always the other hand, mummified or not), these so-called devoted attendants got to eat and drink the food and beer that was set before the Royal Dead. Got to live in their palaces. Got to look spiffy in parades. Ok, there was the occasional battle. Nevertheless looking after the dead was a cushy life. They got to "speak" for the worshiped Royal Dead, making deals with the living. They became devoted to their greed. Thus the Inca empire unraveled. True, there were other factors like the Spaniards and their small pox.

The moral of the story: When one group decides to be the spokespeople for another group whose voices aren't as loud (yes, I know, in this case they were dead -- but I'm making a point here), exploitation follows. And centuries later it becomes an expose on TV for viewers who wonder during the commercials if their whites will come out bright. Deep thinking on a Thursday.

The first Wednesday of the month is free admission day at the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History. But it also turned out to be a snowy/cloudy/cold day. So I stayed home. Let's see, I could be arty all on my own... and I guess I am, here in my creative blogworld. That's not to say I don't have buckets of arts-n-crafts material (stuff) lying around the apartment. If it really were in buckets, I'd be way ahead of things.

Sometimes for a lark I watch a show called "Hoarders". Or maybe it's for shock therapy. Boy O boy, them those people really have problems. The fact that there is no place free of debris to sit down in my casually kept home should give me a clue to my own hoarding tendencies. On the other hand, I don't understand people who don't bring their own chairs with them, wherever they go. I mean, really. How short-sighted of them.

Tuesday. Casino Day. Ate discount buffet. Won some. Lost some. Lost as much as won. Coming out even I claim as a victory.

Had technical problems with the blog tonight. I blame Comcast. This after watching Frontline on PBS this evening about the cutting edge internet world. Study done at MIT on their students, how the kind of multitasking used in emailing, googling, gaming, etc. makes overall performance sluggish and disjointed. How on an exam over material that could have been processed by minimal attention in class and on the reading assignment resulted in a grades of 75. This from the best and the brightest at MIT as they sit in classes with their laptops.

Commentators did say that there were plenty of nay-sayers when we went from letters to telephones. With every tech advancement we lose something and we gain something. Hmm, maybe life is a Casino after all.

The sunshine is beckoning me out of the apartment. Destination unknown. The food in my fridge is boring so I see a restaurant in my future... And I'll take a library book along for company. Not the one about crows. I'm into a novel set in a small town outside of Santa Fe: two sisters, one an artist who paints for a small greeting card company; the other an actress whose Hollywood experience has been small time roles. 

Hmm, "small" seems to be the word on parade here, but the book is rather lengthy and I am only a small way into it. And the library would like it back today. Small chance of that happening. In gloriously sunny ABQ, the public library has no late fee. O Happy Day.