of course, joy has always been my middle name...

However, today is just wonderful. And this last week was terrific. Which should be more than enough reason for not updating for a week.

So back tracking a bit:

June 15, 2004 A different kind of beautiful

Carlsbad Caverns are not my style, but even I can acknowledge that it was incredible. And cave swallows are awesome! There had to be at least a hundred of them swooping, soaring, and diving in and out of the large cave opening. And then we walked until my toenails dug into the front of my shoes, and we still kept walking, past devil's spring and through devil's hump, and I went camera happy until Lydia reminded me that the best stuff was later on. THEN we walked around iceberg rock... and no pictures I could take would adequately convey the size of the the thing. It fell from the cave's ceiling - 200,000 tons of rock! We kept walking. Fairyland and remembering Grandpa, how he'd always say, "See you in fairyland." good memories. Then the top of the cross and the big room. Mirror Lake was ripply, but beautiful. Bottomless Pit, however, was interesting. First, we thought we'd walked past it and would have to loop back around. How does one miss a bottomless pit? Then we passed one that you couldn't see the bottom of, and I promptly dubbed it bottomless pit. Lydia just shook her head. Eventually, we reached the "real" Bottomless Pit. 140 feet below us and 370 feet from floor to ceiling, it was incredible, but it was still a bit of a disappointment. They lit it a little too well, and while the bottom was not clearly visible, it was quite obviously there. Incidentally, my favorite speleothem is the draperies, and I don't know who on earth gets to name all this stuff, but it could be fun.
After Carlsbad, we drove through the mountains for a few hours. New Mexico has trees! Real trees! Tall trees! Non-shrub-pretending-to-be-tree trees! :D They were beautiful, as were the mountains! But all this was nothing to White Sands. We arrived about the time the sun was setting, and as the name implied, there was white sand. Acres of it. With small green polkadots on the edges. And beautiful white dunes everywhere. And among the first thoughts was, "this would be so much more fun if I had more energy." Lydia's dad tried sledding. There is a reason sleds are generally associated with snow and not sand... the thing inched down a 60 degree slope. Lydia took a more direct approach - dune jumping. This involved leaping from the top of the dune and landing about seven feet down. Then making smaller "hops" down the rest of the dune. I could never muster the courage or energy to go more than three feet. I still sank into the sand up to my knees though. Climbing back up was another matter. There were what looked like miniature tire treads weaving all over this one section of the dune. They were beatle tracks... (silent begging for a pun) Anyway, after playing around on the first dune we'd come to and taking a few pictures, we drove further in. By this time the sun was down. We went up on top of another dune and looked at the stars and the white dunes in the starlight and the glittering lights of not-sure-what-it-was-but-it-was-far-enough-away-to-not-interfere-with-star-gazing. It was beautiful. There are no other words that fit. For one thing, the actual stars were brighter and I could actually find the big dipper on my own. For another thing, it feels like the darkness is literally alive with stars as though you could see yet another star just by looking in the space between stars.

June 16,2004 Alas, Poor Puddles...

We got back from White Sands around 11:30. Which made it midnight by the time we had eaten. Mrs. Fisher fed the chickens, and we collapsed. Around four that morning the dog started barking like crazy. Apparently, the gate had been left open. Upon checking, something had been in the yard and around the chicken (coops is the right word, but they're really more like rabbit hutches). The next morning, it was discovered that Puddles, the half Indian Running Duck half Blue Swedish daughter of Ping, was gone without a trace. It was concluded that the large coyote they had seen earlier had eaten her.
Despite this dismal beginning it was a good day. We celebrated Lydia's birthday of a month or so ago. I got to spend more time with the three of the phantom phive that I got to meet. We had an incredible lunch at Bountiful Bakery followed by carrot cake. Then returned to Lydia's to watch Return of the King. It was very fun. Abby spent the entire time (except the parts cringing from the giant spider) promoting and demoting Legolas. He began the movie as captain obvious. Somewhere around the middle he made it to general obvious. (four stars even) Then there was talk of admiral... but by the end he was back to captain obvious.

June 17, 2004 Forget Dairy Queen!

No offense, Texas, but there is something better. Caliches! It's named after this thick clay mud that forms in New Mexico, and it is the desserts answer to the blizzard! I had a key lime sundae and it was wonderful. Lydia let me try her mint chocolate chip with chocolate ice cream caliche which was also fantastic. And then we ate our hotdogs when we got home. Sauerkraut! Yay!
We also got two ducklings at a feed store. They are adorably fuzzy. The smaller one earned the appellation cricket for continuous and piercing cheeping (what on earth is the sound ducklings make called?). The larger one was dubbed Salta. Translation: She jumps. And she certainly did, out of the bag, followed by a scrambling climb up onto Lydia's shoulder. They are dark grey with light yellow bellies, and to the best of the experts' guesses, Blue Swedish. (don't ask how gray and yellow equals blue, this is the magic of ducks.)

June 18, 2004 There's no place like home...

And aren't we glad! I returned to the humidity and wilted. I arrived around five managing to be about an hour late and having missed lunch. We went to a Christian bookstore to pick up a book that Mom and Grace ordered last time they were there (roughly a week ago, odd how that works...). And I got my first Five Iron Frenzy cd. Up until now I've only borrowed them. Then we went to Olive Garden to celebrate Father's Day since Grace went on a week long mission trip to Florida starting at 5:30 on Saturday.
Long story, but I also managed to get a dress... lovely grey and silvery thing.

June 19, 2004 for lack of a better title

Nothing too interesting. I unpacked and finished reading Warlords of Nin. Hung up some stuff. Brainstormed. Read blogs rather than updating my own.

June 20,2004 After staying up until two listening to The End Is Here, well, actually before that, I arrived at the conclusion that I actually like combat chuck.
Woke up and listened to medley. We went to two churches today. Honestly, I wasn't crazy about either one. Let's not even mess with worship - which was more traditional than I'm used to at the first, and a recording at the second. The first sermon felt like it twisted examples into pretzel shapes to fit the points. I realize it's better to warp the illustrations than the scripture, but still... The second jumped around a lot as well as committing the English only fallacy quite blatantly. However, both were interesting, and I do have some things to chew on.
And I mowed!