Found out that this weekend was the first day of the Logan Square Farmer’s Market. When it’s running, this has been a Sunday tradition for me and Liz. Sometimes we’ll stroll through after a brunch out at Lula Cafe; othertimes, we’ll have a late breakfast made of things we’d grab at a few different booths.
I had forgotten how friendly and nice most vendors are – if you express an interest in an item, they’re usually more than enthusiastic about telling you its history, how they acquired it, what they know about it. While some vendors are simply selling off old junk to get rid of it, many of them are collectors – passionate about a particular type of item, and very into the things they place on their tabletops.
A fantastic touch was that one of the radios was playing an old episode of Flash Gordon. I’m guessing it was actually a recording, but the effect was great – the show coming through one of the older machines, along with all the old time advertisements (the one I heard was for children’s nose drops).
From time to time, I’ll encounter objects at flea markets or antique stores – objects from my childhood. And when I see them, it’s a weird trigger: a brief sliver of my life/past has suddenly manifested, and is for sale. Whenever this happens, it’s a mixed feeling. Part of me feels old to have owned something that now appears in an antique store.
This morning, Liz and I headed out into the early AM and ran around the boulevard. It was our first official run of 2013, and it was a rough re-introduction after many months away.
Given my strong dislike for all things financial, I totally lucked out. Being married to someone who has a Master’s degree in Applied Statistics definitely has its benefits.
Liz has been super hard at work on a Macaron dress for a long while now. She started it in July of 2011, but has recently spent a lot of time working on and finally finishing the dress. Though I’ve ceased to keep track of all her projects on here (ever since she got her own blog), this one warrants a special look. There’s a ton of intricate work involved – lots of lace, a lot of hand sewing, a lot of complicated things I don’t quite understand. The end result is pretty spectacular.
Normally, if we’re off doing our own projects… Liz is in the living room, and I’m in the office – she’s on her sewing machine, I’m on my Mac. But tonight was a nice change of pace. We both got to hang out at the same spot, and went about our tasks.
You have to understand – there was a good deal of pausing between the first few messages. Just out of nowhere, this shows up on my phone and it sits there. I can see the “…” showing me that the person on the other end of the phone is typing, but I’m just totally shocked and confused as to what’s happening.
At one point, while I was sitting at the bar, I looked over and saw two women huddled near the phone. The lady closest to me was instructing the other woman – who then got on the phone, dialed a number, and began semi-shouting into the receiver: “Please help me! My baby fell into the water, and she’s not breathing. I don’t know what to do! Please somebody, help!” From where I sat, it looked like they were playing some kind of really terrible, cruel prank on someone. But the woman on the phone was insistent with her fake distress, and kept it going. The woman closest to me saw my puzzled look, and gave me a wink.
After leaving Aruba, we had two full days of sailing to return to the States. With our land excursions at an end, we spent the rest of our time on board the ship, hanging out.
Just outside the Aruba Ostrich Farm. We learned that the males have dark feathers, and the females have gray ones. Part of the tour involved an opportunity to walk up and feed the ostriches (using a bowl). We were warned that the ostriches liked shiny objects, and advised to remove jewelery and such.
Due to the weather throughout the night (it was a rough one), we were pretty delayed on our way to today’s destination: Curaçao. While we were planning on arriving sometime in the late morning, we didn’t pull into port until around 4:30 PM. Kind of a bummer, since we were hoping to have a full day ashore, but wound up only having a small handful of hours to look around.
We were warned by the captain that we might be in for some rough travel, and he advised folks who might be prone to motion sickness to take some Dramamine. I’ve had a bad history of seasickness – most notably when I was traveling to Cozumel a few years ago. I made the mistake of trying to video our ferry ride, and watching the camera viewscreen while we were moving more or less did me in. I felt nauseous for a few hours afterwards, and it was a terrible feeling that took a long time to get rid of. It wasn’t something I really was wanting to experience again.
Starting at around 9:00 AM, the cruise began shuttling people from the boat to shore in what are called “tender” boats. Each person on the cruise is issued an ID card, which is typically used at meals or to buy things, but they’re also used to track passengers – we each had to get “scanned” on departing and re-entering the ship.
I was a bit nervous about getting seasick on the ride over, and a few times the tender boat made some pretty serious dips in the water. But I focused mostly on the horizon, and arrived on land without being too much worse for the wear.