Cirque Du Soliel

Good evening. I thought you might enjoy a picture of my bitchy kitten after a long day of doing nothing. Actually this was taken about 8:30am in the morning and she had been sleeping with me till about 7am so really it is an hour and a half of doing not much to get this tired.

So yesterday (Sunday) I went to my 19th Cirque Du Soliel show. It is the newest touring show called Kooza. There is always some symbolistic meaning behind all the shows. It is not like I can ever figure out what the hell it is. This was something about a kid flying a kite and still being a king. Oh hell, I have no idea. But it was totally cool and I loved it. Like all 18 before. Here is a picture of the tent that it was in. This was set up in the parking lot of the United Center in Chicago.

That is the one thing I did not like. I go to Chicago just enough so that when I am reading directions I am all cocky that I know were I am going but when I am driving I start to doubt myself and second guess which road to take and that is when I get messed up. It does not help that there is a Hwy 90, Hwy 94, Hwy 294, and Hwy 290. Who the hell names these roads anyway, pick a different freaken number already!! I pulled off only once and had to look at a map to be sure I was going the right way. I had to go almost all the way to downtown to get here so traffic is always bad. Here is a photo of the bumper to bumper as I made my way out. It does not really show how many cars there were but I was driving so you have to excuse the bad photo.

Back to Kooza, the show was amazing and the music great. They do some scary stuff and 1 guy almost fell from really high. I was so scared for him and he happily caught himself at the last second. That is the closest I have seen at any of the shows someone get seriously hurt. For whatever reason during the last half of the show I started to get a pounding headache. I am not sure if it was from looking up so much cause I was in the front row and they do alot of stuff high above the stage or if it was because of all the flashing lights. Either way the drive home was awful. And of course it was RAINING!!! AGAIN!!! I swear I am going to start building an ark cause it is the end of the world.

I had my 2nd most frightening highway experience on my way home. The 1st was several years ago when my car spun out after I braked to avoid an accident when some asshole pulled out in front of me. I was going 70 mph and spun through the median ending up sideways in uncoming traffic about 2 seconds from being crushed by a semi when I had the presents of mind to backup just in time. I can still see that truck drivers face, he knew there was nothing he could have done and me being in a ford focus I would have been killed, no question. Anyway back to this one.

On the way out of Chicago there is a ton of construction. As the saying goes there are 2 seasons for car travel in the north, Snow and Construction. The lanes split so that there was an express lane (meaning you can't get off at the exits) then 2 lanes of "normal" traffic. So I am in the express and there are concrete barriers on 1 side and construction barrels on the other. Well, there is a semi (do you see a theme, always a semi) on the other side of the barriers and it has rained so it splashes up this huge amount of water onto my windshild. So that was sort of scary but I could see again in a second so not to bad. Then he hits a bigger one and water comes at me over and over...I can't see anything in front or sides for between 5-8 seconds at least. And when you are going 70 MPH on the highway with concrete on one side, construction equipment on the other and a car not far behind that is freakin scary. I was so worried I was not keeping the wheel straight enough or that the road would curve. I am happy to report that when I could see again I slammed on the gas and raced past the Semi before it happened again. It was really frightening, I had visions of them peeling me off the barriers.

After that nothing much happened till I got home, with my splitting headache getting worse by the second. I made it into bed about 8pm and flipped on the tv, next thing I knew it was 9pm so I just called it a day and went to bed. I could not lay down it hurt too much so I slept leaning against 2 pillows. I woke a few times, still with the headache but am happy to report that when I woke up at 5:15am the headache was almost all gone. Thank goodness cause I am not sure I could have made it through work otherwise. I have not slept that long in I could not tell you when. So that was my exciting Sunday...good show, scared as hell, and sick as a dog.

Vacation Part 4-the final chapter

I am back for an update and will hopefully finish talking about my vacation on this one. Although with me one never knows. So lets start today's blog with a lovely photo of my dad feeding a big lizard. This was taken in Aruba where the lizards are nice and big. My parents just love seeing them and my dad just can't get close enough.

Ok, back to my vacation. I left off on Wednesday of my trip while I was in Phillipsburg the Dutch Capitol. I had lunch at the Holland House which is totally expensive but the food was good and they have a nice patio outside with a great view. After that I wandered around to the stores I like to visit and picked up my few gifts and a couple of things for me before taking the long walk back to my car and thankfully it was right were I left it. St Maarten has a small problem with car theft.

Then it was back to the hotel for more reading, swimming in the pool or the ocean, the choices were overwhelming. One of the evenings, I can't remember if it was Wed or Thur I had just showered and hopped into bed to read when I hear someone yelling my name. Considering I went on vacation alone it sort of freaked me out. Turned out it was Marvyln, the manager of the hotel. A giant leatherback turtle had come onto the beach right down from the hotel to lay it's eggs. I followed her outside and their was the largest turtle I think I have ever seen in real life, it had to be 4 feet long at least and 2-3 feet wide. They said the eggs were the size of golf balls, by the time I got there she was covering them up with sand. There were some tense moments when we thought she was confused cause she could not seem to make it back to the ocean but after about 20-30 min she found her way back and we all cheered, it was so cool.

Nothing much more exciting happened until Saturday. Now we move back to my friends Anne and Hans. So remember I told you that I asked them to make my mom a pendant. Well, here it is.

How cool is that????? I love it, I told mom that if she hated it I would keep it, I was really hoping that she hated it, no such luck. She loved it too. Anne designed it after I fumbled around trying to tell her what my mom would like, my description was basically small but unique. Not alot to go on but they did a damn fine job. It is about the size of a quarter. The tanzinite is from some earrings I picked up several years ago but always hated, don't ask me why I bought them, why the hell would I know? I was totally bummed that I could not afford to buy/have anything made this year. Now everyone needs to go check out their website http://www.meevis.com/ to see all the other cool stuff they made. If you go to Hans' blog you can see the totally awesome spinning ring he made, he started it while I was there. It is so cool to watch him turn what looks to me like a chuck of ugly metal into some beautiful work of art. So neat.

To side track from my story one more time I made Anne and Hans a quilt that I brought with me and I thought you might enjoy a glance at it. It was small and made to be a wall hanging or a throw for over a chair since in St Maarten there is not a real need for quilts or blankets of any kind. I am not sure this picture is very good. I took it on the bed of the hotel and the light blue background does not really do much for it. If you have not noticed I have self esteem issues and was wigged out about giving it to them. I kept waiting to hear the tense, "isn't that nice", with the underlying "how fast can I get rid of it once she is gone". Happily they seemed to like it so either my radar was off or they really did like it. I got the same way when I gave my mom her quilt at Christmas. I had visions of her throwing it at me telling me it was the ugliest thing she had ever seen....did I mention the self esteem issues?

Ok, back to my vacation. So on Saturday night Anne made fondue for my birthday and invited over Claire and Barry. God, I hope that is his name, my brain turned off and I can't remember. Anyway they are good friends and we met the last time I visited. They are great fun to talk too, Claire makes my sides hurt from laughing so much. We all sat around the table trying to figure out how to get the food in and out of the pot cooked, still attached to the fork, and hopefully ours since we all had a bunch going at once. It was too funny. Anne had covered the table with tin foil which was a brilliant idea so then we just had food everywhere. Anne also remembered that my favorite dish is Tomato & Mozzarella salad so we had some of that too. I swear I could just eat that everyday for breakfast and never get sick of it. We talked and laughed and had a real nice time, I so look forward to it every trip.

Sunday morning I was back to my reading, swimming, and walking the beach. All in all I read 13 1/2 books on vacation. Now keep in mind that I am a really fast reader and one of the books I skipped alot of pages, she just went on and on about feelings and images, bored me to tears but I was already too involved and wanted to know what happened to the people. It was like a 450-500 page book and I bet I read only 300 pages or so and of course the ending sucked. One other book I read about 50 pages then trashed but other than that all the ones I brought were good.

So the days past quick and before I knew it, it was time to come home again. I left on Saturday at about 2pm. My flight was supposed to leave about 4:45pm and of course it was delayed but only by about 30 min. When I got to Charlotte I was so busy rushing to get to my gate I failed to notice that flight had also been delayed. Once I really looked at it I saw that my 10:20 flight to Chicago was now 1:45 am in the morning. When I made it to Chicago I still had a 2 hour drive home to make so I was less than thrilled. At least for once the airline did something about it and managed to pull another plane out of the hanger and we managed to get up in the air about 12am.

And to make my already long day longer by the time I got to Chicago they were having thunderstorms. So I got off the flight, made my way the 2 mile walk to call the hotel to come pick me up and take me too my car. It is now 1:30 am in the morning and I am so tired I am in pain. I get in my car and of course it has to make a funny noise so the whole drive home I am worried that the wheel is going to fall off and I am going to flip over on the highway. I crossed into Wisconsin and the fog was so thick you could only see a few yards in front of you, by this time I just did not care, it was 2:30 am and I hauled ass home. I was 2 exits from my house when the cops start directing everyone off the highway so of course I had to take the long way home, added at least 10 min to my trip and at 3:20 in the morning that is alot of time. Happily for me Jody was awake so I just called and talked to her so that I would not fall asleep.

3:30 am in the morning I finally, and I mean finally made it home sweet home. My kitty was thrilled to see me so I played with her for about 15 min, showered and fell into bed. Managed to wake up every 1/2 hour or so till 7am, I guess I was just too damn tired to sleep. Finally at 7am I crashed till 11am. So that is the story of my latest trip to St Maarten.....not sure I will make it back next year, especially with gas and food costs going up so fast but I am already planning for my return in 2010....I already have a few books picked out.

Forgive any errors on this, I proof read it and fixed it but it did not save right so I lost that and I am too tired to read it again so it is what it is....see you later, Amy