green chile, sandhill cranes, and josh beckettNovember 27, 2005
First the fabulous trip to Socorro, New Mexico for the Festival of the Cranes, then non-stop family gatherings. It seems like being on vacation is a lot more work than my actual job. Somehow getting up before dawn to see snow geese and sandhill cranes take off en masse from their night roost is a whole lot easier than getting up either for work or for family gatherings. I've still got jet lag and it's only a 2-hour time difference. I think it's "birding lag" instead.I took well over 100 pictures with the new digital camera and got all of them printed. I never (well, rarely) print digital pix. I usually think of them as being for the web. I tried to make a rivetingly interesting DVD out of them to impress La Familia Loca but paradoxically iDVD is too simple minded for me. I couldn't figure out how to do a darn thing that wasn't fully automated and kinda stupid-looking. Maybe next time. So all I did was copy all the photos to the DVD and had the family look at them on the computer. Also showed some people the prints. Still working on editing them down to a manageable number for a trip report here. I keep procrastinating on writing the trip report partly because I feel like I'm still on vacation and partly because I want to make the entry as fabulous as the trip was and that is a tall order.
When it was my turn to break bread and say what I'm grateful for this year I said "green chile, sandhill cranes, and Josh Beckett." After a week and a day of being asked "red or green" at every meal -- and always choosing green --- and seeing more than 10,000 sandhill cranes plus a way wicked lot of snow geese probably the only thing that could compensate for coming home to the traffic on I-93 and the unremitting gray skies was the news that the Red Sox had traded Hanley Ramirez (shortstop of the future -- now shortstop of the Marlins' future) and a couple other prospects for Josh Beckett, Mike Lowell, and Guillermo Mota. I kept walking around the house saying "Josh Beckett! Josh Beckett! Josh Beckett!" Ever since game 6 of the 2003 World Series I have fervently wished for the Red Sox to somehow acquire Beckett. I believe I emailed the Hermit Potter the night of that game saying I wanted the Red Sox to acquire the Marlins "lock, stock, and Beckett" and I've never given up hope. Beckett has the secret ingredient -- the "vanquish the pinstripes of evil" secret ingredient. And he's an awesome pitcher. So, yeah, Josh Beckett is right up there with green chile and sandhill cranes in my strange little hierarchy of fantastically cool things to make up for its being November.
Trip story, pictures, and bird list coming soon.
Today's
Reading
Down the Bay by Wallace P. Stanley
This
Year's Reading
2005 Booklist
|
|
||
Copyright © 2005, Janet I. Egan