Lots and lots and LOTS of ground to cover

Okay, so the last time I posted to this blog was in April of 2010. That's a long time ago. Only a little bit under a year. Basically, I suck at this, but I'm determined to update this blog more regularly from now on. There are many things I want to share, so I will try to be as brief as possible on each one.

In between when spring classes ended and my summer class (Digital Librarianship) began, I took about a week to go visit Eamon on his base in Groton, Connecticut. He had class every day, but we still got a lot of quality time. We spent a particularly lovely day wandering around the arboretum at Connecticut College. I was hoping to see lilacs, but the season had already ended. However, we did find a scenic little pond to sit by. I used the timer on my camera to take a few pictures of us, but none of them really turned out well, so I'll show you an adorable frog that was sitting in the water. He (she?) was extremely well camouflaged, and sat completely still. I love the little bumpy eyes :-)


On my way back from Connecticut, I stopped in LA to...gasp...attend my 10th high school reunion. That may not seem like a lot to some readers of this blog (ahem) but it's one of those moments in life when you realize how quickly time passes.

My summer class was on a super-accelerated schedule, and we were done in about 3 weeks. Then it was time to gear up for Bulgaria! I had already decided to stay in Boston for the month of July to rehearse with Divi Zheni (the group I had sung with for a year, and would be traveling with). Plus, that would put me within 2 hours of Eamon by train, and that was a huge bonus! I had been checking craigslist for sublet requests, but most people needed the whole summer, and I wasn't going to be gone that long. I was vacillating about whether or not to post with my specific dates, especially because my situation involved trusting people with my cats, when I stumbled upon a request for a sublet from a lady in Northern California whose daughter was planning to move here. She wanted a home base for about a month while she helped her daughter look for a place to rent. They already had their plane tickets and needed an apartment from July 4th-August 6th, and she said they loved animals and would happily take care of pets. Hallelujah! It didn't really matter to me when I left, and I knew I could find someone in my building to help out with my cats between the 6th and my return on the 18th. We talked on the phone and signed a sublease agreement and I arranged my flights so that I could be here to meet them and get them settled in and then leave that day. Sometimes things just work out!!

Eamon and I got to spend every weekend together in July, which was such a nice change from being halfway around the world from each other! I would go down to Connecticut or he would come up to Boston, as our schedules permitted. I was staying at the home of our dear friends Sue and Jo (they were actually traveling or up at their summer home in Maine for most of the month, but we did get to see them a few times!). Sue is my mom's cousin's sister-in-law, and they reached out to us when we first moved to Boston and made us feel so welcome when we didn't know a soul. If you are Jewish or know Jews, you know that the definition of family is fluid and inclusive. Sue and Jo quickly became what we call mishpocha in Yiddish - framily, if you will :-)

Suffice it to say that Bulgaria was amazing. The Koprivshtitsa festival (the international folkloric extravaganza that we were lucky enough to experience as well as perform at) was worth the trip alone, but then we took off on a 10-day tour around the country with the most knowledgeable guide and interpreter I have ever met. This woman was a veritable encyclopedia, extremely well-versed in the history of Bulgaria's various conquests (its position on the Black Sea is particularly strategic, so every empire you can think of had control of it at one time or another). I learned so much and took hundreds of pictures, which I still have not categorized and edited down, but I have a few to share!

Here's a picture of me in the full traditional costume that my group performed in:


Sparkly, no? My mom's group, Nevenka, was also at the festival to perform, and then she joined my group for the Grand Tour! It was awesome getting to visit all of those amazing places with my mom!

Here's Mom and me at a distillery in the "Rose Valley," a swath of just-right weather and soil conditions for growing roses that runs straight down the middle of the country. Mom, the Rose Queen, was in her element :-)


I was particularly impressed by the architecture. Some parts of Sofia, the capital, reminded me of Italy and France, other areas were dominated by Communist-era edifices, and the Turkish influence was evident in the many beautiful mosques. Here's my favorite building from Plovdiv, a beautiful old town we visited toward the end of the trip.


The attention to detail on these buildings was what struck me most; almost no surface is left unadorned, but it's all so tasteful and elegant. Look up the Rila Monastery if you want to be absolutely gobsmacked; I could never do it justice here!

Moving right along..

Eamon finished A-School (his last submarine training program) on August 12th, while I was still in Bulgaria. His family joined him in Connecticut for graduation, helped him pack up and move out, and then took him back to DC for about a week. He still had plenty of time before he had to report to his new command, Naval Base Kitsap in Washington State, so he joined me in Hawai'i the day after my flight came in! We had 10 lovely days together, even though classes started in the midst of them :-) Then we flew to LA for the wedding of our very good friends Rose and Or (Rose and I became close at Kenyon, when we discovered that she lived just over the mountain from my wonderful childhood summer camp). These two know how to have fun and share a wacky sense of humor; the wedding was both laugh-out-loud awesome and a beautiful, personalized affair. One of Rose's brothers built a photobooth for the reception; here's my favorite picture from our set:


You can't tell since the picture is black and white, but my dress and Eamon's shirt were almost the exact same shade of purple. I've mentioned I love this man, haven't I?

I have been promising for a looooooong time to showcase some of the ceramics pieces I've made. Here are a few, in varying stages of completion :-)


I think I made this fruit bowl in my first semester; I took this picture with the camera function on my old cell phone, which was never very good at capturing the subtleties of color; the speckles are more purple than they appear here.

A "nesting" teapot and teacup that don't nest very well, but in my not-so-humble opinion are still quite cute :-) The color, which again is not very accurate on my camera phone, is a lovely kind of oxidized green.


This is a sake set ready for its first firing in the kiln (the "bisque firing"). I intended it as a housewarming gift for my mother-in-law, Kitt, her college roommate Polly, and Micah and Ellie, Eamon's brother and sister-in-law (they've dubbed the house they all share in DC "The Compound"). They moved into the house in the spring of 2010, and I didn't actually get it to them until Christmas, so it was a very late housewarming gift :-)


I tried to make a chip 'n dip bowl, but this ended up less chip, more dip :-) This is just after finishing the piece, before I'd even removed it from the wheel. I was very happy with the way it turned out when I did finally glaze it. This was my Christmas gift to Dad and Margaret.


Another pre-glazed piece (although this one has already been bisque fired). I made this last semester for the professor with whom I took British Children's Literature - we read Winnie the Pooh, among other classics, and I thought she would like the beehive/honey-pot theme. The glaze I used came out perfectly, a lovely honey color. I was very pleased with it (and so was she!). Unfortunately, one of the bees came off, but it still had the same effect.


I just made this pitcher about two weeks ago - in this picture it's just about to go into the kiln for the bisque firing. I'm really happy with the fancy-schmancy handle!


Here's another recent creation before I took it off the wheel. I've been tackling bigger and bigger pieces, and I think I'm making progress (I was never able to make anything very tall before).

You'll notice I tend to take pictures of my stuff before glazing - sometimes before it's been trimmed or even gone through the bisque firing - because if I'm really pleased with something, I want a record of it! Anything can happen in ceramics; being the klutz I am, I might drop a piece on the way to the drying rack. Or it could explode in the kiln, or the glaze could go on too thick and fuse the piece to the kiln shelf - so I think it's always good to take the pictures early :-) Ceramics is good for me for just this reason. I don't like things to be unpredictable, and I prefer having control over things (or hadn't you noticed?) so having to just wait and see how everything turns out is very healthy. I actually find it quite freeing! Not to mention there's something almost hypnotic and meditative about the process of throwing a pot on the wheel. Your mind clears and you're completely focused on making imperceptible adjustments to the shape, height or thickness of the piece.

Well, that's enough ceramics...for now :-)

I was able to go to Washington to see Eamon for my birthday weekend as well as Thanksgiving. I am loving this new proximity!! For my birthday we stayed at a sweet B+B in the Queen Anne neighborhood, a suburb of Seattle. We took the "Underground Tour" which takes you down to where the street level used to be - pretty cool! We also visited Pike Place market, one of the most colorful and vibrant outdoor markets I've ever seen (the fish-throwing guys are legendary).


Don't these chili garlands look like lei??

For my actual birthday, we went out for afternoon tea with all the trimmings (the sugar was even purple - perfection!) Here's my favorite picture:


Did you spot it? No? Look again. Eamon's wearing the tiara they gave me.

Thanksgiving was lovely too, and requires a bit of a back story. Rose and Or took a trip to Hawai'i last March, just at the tail-end of my mom's visit here. Rose and I wanted to get together, so Rose suggested we meet up with friends of hers whom she had met in LA and were living on O'ahu, Melissa and Paul Dylan and their *adorable* little girls. So Mom and I trooped up to the North Shore to meet them - it was a great example of "any friend of yours is a friend of mine" and we all got along swimmingly :-) Melissa and Paul were just about to move back to the mainland, but not to LA, which is part of why Rose was so keen to see them. Well, Eamon and I saw Melissa again at Rose and Or's wedding, and by that time we knew that Eamon would be stationed at Kitsap, and that turned out to be right near where Melissa and Paul had moved to! Melissa, being the sweetheart that she is, invited us to get in touch around Thanksgiving if we didn't have other plans. Well, we took her up on it, and her family welcomed us warmly and included us in their dinner as if we were old friends. There really are some gems in this world.

The rest of the Thanksgiving weekend was nice and laid-back. Eamon and I got some extra time together we hadn't been expecting, so that was just a nice bonus. The ferry trip back to Seattle for my flight home was quite scenic, despite the cold!

I simply have to share this bumper sticker we saw in the parking lot of the Navy Lodge:


:-) :-) :-)

Eamon had duty over Christmas this past year, so I was in LA for the holiday itself, but both of us came to Hawai'i on the 27th, and we had ourselves a merry "little Christmas," just the two of us. We didn't pack lots of activities in, but out of curiosity we did go on the Atlantis Submarine, which is a passenger vessel (much like the ride at Disneyland, actually, but without the track). It goes down to about 100 feet deep in Waikiki Bay to observe the reef ecosystems, including both natural reefs and *gulp* sunken ships and airplanes, as well as structures that were sunk on purpose to boost the fish populations. The shipwrecks and planes freaked me out - they were just so eerie! But there was an impressive array of fish and other reef animals. No turtles or dolphins or anything, but it was fun, and Eamon enjoyed talking shop with the pilot.

Here's what the Atlantis looks like on the surface:


Oh, and here's a picture of me baking scones. Eamon got me this apron at the tea place in Seattle - all the waitresses were wearing them and they came in a bunch of super-cute fabrics. I couldn't resist!


Eamon left on January 2nd and the very next day my very good friend from college, Mindy Stoker, came to pay me a visit! She lives in Ohio and their winter was particularly harsh, so I was really happy to have her come and enjoy the sunshine!

We spent a few days on O'ahu visiting the Byodo-In Temple and some North Shore beaches (Mindy also headed over to Pearl Harbor on a day I had some commitments at school). Then we took a hop over to Big Island because Mindy really wanted to see volcanoes. Well, what do you know, I found a place called Kilauea Military Camp inside Volcanoes National Park. When I first heard the name I thought we were expected to stay in a tent, but we got a lovely little two-bedroom cottage with fireplace and jacuzzi tub, for like $90 a night. There are times when having Navy Spouse status is really quite nice. The KMC is located "up country" (in the hills) so it actually got kind of chilly, but we didn't end up using the fireplace. The jacuzzi jets, however, were quite nice on our feet since we actually did quite a bit of walking and hiking. When we first arrived we made our way up the Kona coast to see a coffee mill and museum; We also stopped at a black sand beach and watched the sunset in Kealakekua Bay. After settling into our cottage, we drove up to the Jaggar Museum to watch the Kilauea Caldera's billowing plume glow bright red - that was a sight!

The next day was all about volcanoes. We drove around the park to check out the steam vents and the view of the caldera from another vantage point, went down the Thurston Lava Tube, and took a little side road to look at the "tree molds," which are deep pits where lava flow hardened around trees, and then the trunks rotted or burned away. It's amazing to think that where you're standing to look into these pits is actually close to where the tops of the trees were!

We asked at the Visitor Center about walking out on lava fields to see flowing red lava, but they recommended against just heading out on our own. We decided to go down to the end of the road (there's a whole chunk of highway that was covered over by lava flow about 10 years ago) to see what we could see. We got down to the parking lot and a bunch of people were gathered looking at some cracks in the lava that were glowing red, which was pretty cool, but there were barriers up and it was really far from the shoreline. There was a company that had set up a tent advertising Lava Walks to go all the way across the hardened lava fields and down to the ocean - normally those fields are off-limits because they're private property, but this company was operated by people who own the houses, and the guides are experts at determining whether the lava is safe to walk on. They were charging $60 per person, and we figured, not bad for the chance of a lifetime, so we signed up! The lava field is really uneven, so even though we were going a fairly short distance as the nene flies, we had to scramble around and climb and it was slow going. At one point we were even walking over cracked lava that was glowing just under our feet - the guide told us to hurry up so our shoes wouldn't melt! Yipes!

But wow...was it worth it! We got all the way down to the ocean and boy, did nature put on a spectacular show. The lava was flowing fast into the water, and the force of the waves meeting up with the lava set off sparks and pops and clouds of steam, and the lava continued to glow red and bubble even as it went under the water. SO COOL! Mindy has a really high-quality camera, so she got some amazing still shots. However, my camera does a good job with video even when it's totally incapable of capturing stills, and I got some real stunners. Here's the best:



Okay, I think that gets me all caught up. I will post again soon - I really mean it!
Love to all,
Sarah