Friends, it's been a busy last few months.
I've always been interested in travel, leaving home behind, seeing the world, but George and I crammed so many trips into this year, I think we may have hit a serious max. We started the year in Greece (seriously, I just went back through my blog to add all this up and I went "wow, Greece was this year?". That's kind of what I'm trying to say.) After that, I spent some time in New Orleans, then a few days in Grand Cayman. After that, San Antonio, Houston and Austin. And that is just taking us up to June, where this post starts! I don't know that I've ever been so excited not to have travel on the agenda. From here, it's just a trip through Amish country tacked onto an upstate New York wedding and back to New Orleans for Halloween. Probably by then I'll be itching to leave home again anyway.
And most of you know I've just returned from The Netherlands and England. But before I can even go through those photos, I need to talk about The Bahamas and Madrid! Phew. It's been crazy.
Waaaaaaaay on back in March, I went to Grand Cayman. About a month before the trip (which was about two weeks after I bought tickets), I realized that I really should get scuba certified to take advantage of the location. So I did my online courses and my confined dives (in a swimming pool) the weekend before the trip. A few days after that, my ear clogged right up and stayed that way for two weeks - I had injured myself in the pool not equalizing properly. So, scuba in Grand Cayman was out. That necessitated a new round of Open Water dives to complete my certification. This time, I successfully cajoled George into joining me, and we set off to The Bahamas.
I didn't take many photos there. I was busy getting my dive on. And I don't have any pictures from underwater because I was attempting not to drown. Scuba was both fun and terrifying. The longer I go since I dove, the more terrifying it seems. During one of the drills, 60 feet below the surface, I took off my mask as part of the exercise. For some reason, this is one of the most uncomfortable things to do underwater. Something about not having your nose in a dry environment feels very, very wrong. I started to freak out. Like, a lot. But I knew I couldn't just shoot up to the top like I could in the pool. I just had to calm myself down. I did. And the dive went on. But it was the last dive we did and I spent the rest of it trying to chill out. And now the farther we get away from it, the more scared I am to make another dive.
Plus, we both injured our ears! It may turn out that our sinuses just won't play this game.
Also, The Bahamas was super-overrated. It was mostly beaches, and not great ones, resorts and supremely mediocre food. The only thing that saved us was the World Cup. Otherwise we would have spent literally every evening at Senior Frog's (admittedly fun the first night). Grand Cayman was a thousand times better for scenery, beaches and scuba.
So that's just the Bahamas! A week later, we were on a plane to Madrid. George does a lot of academic conference-type things each year, and Madrid is a site for a recurring one. I joined him for 10 days and while he was conferencing, I was out exploring the city.
Madrid was cool. It's a huge city and, at least in July, it was rockin' with cultural events, festivals, museum things and lots of other stuff to do. And World Cup games all the time (Brazil - Germany WTF???) One of my favorite things about the city is that all the museums are open super-late - many until 9pm and all the big ones have free entry for the last two hours of admission. So I saw the Prado and Reina Sofia. I've seen a lot of world-class art museums. Not gonna lie, it's a little draining.
Here's a quirky thing: many of the buildings say "Asegurada de incendios". Secured against fire. Seems like a pretty strong and impossible-to-assure claim.
This is a vibrator in a vending machine.
We were there for Pride and it was a rockin' street party of a good time. This was set up for the parade the next day.
That night we went to Casa Patas to grab some flamenco. Pricey, but you gotta do this kind of thing sometimes.
One of my favorite bits about European capitals is the way stores specialize. You get this in New York some, and not anywhere else in the country. A shop just for clocks, or pens, or plastic kitchenware. This is a shop for mirrors. That's it. Just mirrors.
For some reason the parade was molasses slow. We watched one or two groups move over the course of more than an hour. So we quit to go watch some more futbol.
I convinced George to steal away from physics long enough to go to Toledo, where he spent the entire time working on physics, womp womp. Toledo has all the medieval old-city charm Madrid lacks. Way on back in the 1700s, some important Spanish dude whose name I forget decided to move the capital from Toledo to Madrid. They needed to build all kinds of awesome new capital buildings and such and of course they weren't going to build them in the lame-ass medieval style but instead in the relatively no-nonsense 1700s style. That's why Madrid isn't so great to look at, old-building-wise: its medieval center is actually in Toledo.
This is the only photo we have together in Spain. It's focused on the background. What can you do? I think this was even take two. Alas.
Toledo was pretty great, as you can tell by the relatively large number of photos I took, compared with Madrid.
I spent one of my last days on a guided tour of Avila and Segovia. It was pricey and super-rushed but turns out 10 days in Madrid really isn't that many! These two towns were pretty seriously great.
This is an honest-to-god Roman aqueduct from the 1st century.
And then we went home, tried to get work done and not spaz out and almost immediately hopped another plane back to Europe. But we'll get there. I've been back for a week now and I'm just enjoying catching up with friends, cooking and eating healthy food and generally not pushing it every. single. day. I make travel into work and I love it, but it's also really nice to be home.
I haven't done a personal post in ages. I get behind. It happens. Actually, I've just yesterday evening come back from a trip to Madrid and I leave next week for The Netherlands and England! I thought to myself: self, put up those Madrid photos before you get slammed with the next batch of travel photos. Except, I have three months' worth of other crap from various travels and adventures that I haven't posted. So instead of "hey, I just got back from Madrid!", you get a bunch of random stuff. Enjoy!
In chronological order, just cuz:
George was gone for a big chunk of time at the end of March, so I decided I would take a little trip somewhere. Kayak (with its very helpful Explore engine) told me Grand Cayman had a decent flight. I did a tiny amount of Googling and decided - what the heck - I'd spend a few days on Grand Cayman. Several weeks later, I picked up the tiny Frommer's guide to the island, and when I started reading more, I realized that people basically only go to Grand Cayman to scuba dive. So, again - what the heck - I decided I'd get certified. I crash-coursed the online tutorial (this was supposed to happen in New Orleans but the system wouldn't work on my iPad). I did my confined dives (in a swimming pool) the weekend before I set out for the island.
Only... womp womp, I injured my ear during the confined dives and it was still messed up when I got to the island. So I couldn't dive! But it was OK. We were still in the middle of the godawful can't-take-any-more-snow winter (remember?) and I was so so so happy to be in the sun, walking on the beach, drinking pina coladas. I didn't take many photos. I was just chilling the hell out. It was really nice. And the snorkeling was exquisite. In fact, even if you don't dive, I highly recommend Grand Cayman. It's a heck of a place.
These are some random images from when George and I took a little hike/walk around Great Falls. Turns out my x100 had flipped over to manual focus and I didn't notice... for like, a month. I am a brilliant photographer. And an even more brilliant blogger, because I'm posting these terrifically out-of-focus images.
More walks with George - random things around DC.
This is my very best friend David. He's a big shot doing IT and when the remote wouldn't work in his conference room (over massive amounts of Lebanese food), he tried hacking it - with pieces of a server. He's a handy guy to have around.
I get excited about thunderstorms.
A buddy of mine, John, and I went down to the Mall when a bunch of cosplayers were attempting to break the Guinness Record (of having the most cosplayers in one place). They didn't make it (by a loooooong shot) but it was fun anyway.
This is my husband, doing his physics thing. We went to San Antonio in April - him for a conference, me to check out the city. I really liked San Antonio - lots of stuff going on. They do a lot better than many other Texan cities by actually embracing their Mexican heritage, rather than trying to shove it under a rug. A rug made out of Walmarts and Applebees.
Then we crossed the state to visit our favorite miniature person.
And we spent one day in Austin. They have a great turtle pond and there were scads of baby turtles. This is a baby turtle resting on another turtle!
Later in May, we went to Savor - a ridiculous, enormous, expensive craft beer festival held in the National Building Museum. It was cool, but it was way too much beer to try to choke down (more than 100 different kinds!) and it was pricey as shit. It was a fun experience for one night, but I can't imagine we'll be back. This picture of a bunch of plants has absolutely nothing to do with Savor, except that I took it at the event.
More hiking. Following Greece, I've been trying to get out and walk about amongst trees more often.
I don't remember why we were way the hell out in Herndon on this particular day, but we stopped by the Frying Pan Farm and there were tons of baby animals!
At World of Beer. I don't remember why, but there was good light on George.
A photography meetup with some buds. This is staged, but the others are not.
And that's it! For now. I'll get those Madrid and in-between photos up... eventually. You know how it goes. And for friends and relatives and people who enjoy posts like this, I've been doing snapshotty, don't-care-what-it-looks-like, document-my-life type stuff over on Instagram. If you care what I'm up to on a daily basis, that's a much better medium. I obviously can't be trusted to post anything here regularly about my actual life.
I went to school in New Orleans and lived there for a bit after graduation. Katrina hit my senior year of college and I watched the city pick itself back up. New Orleans is a deeply personal place for me, but also a place I hardly know. When you go to college in a town, you really only experience life as a college student, and half of that through a silly self-induced drunken stupor.
I decided last year that I would return to New Orleans to photograph Mardi Gras, a subject I had never taken a camera to, seeing as I developed my photography interest after school. I bought some plane tickets and finagled some places to stay (with the help of some very generous friends). And then I tried to make connections - for all the things I thought would be important for telling all sides of the New Orleans Mardi Gras story. When I arrived, though, I learned that there is so much to Mardi Gras that I had never heard of, let alone experienced. There were so many many events taking place on Mardi Gras Day - far too many to capture in one trip. I knew I either needed to make this a regular experience, or put aside the ambitions I had going in to make this a book. Now more than a month past the trip, I'm not sure what I want to do with these images. I'm quite happy with a number of them, but I don't know where they belong. Perhaps the best answer is the default: right here on this blog.
I promised myself I would go hard on this trip - not waste time, not be frivolous. But in the end, I'm not as young as I used to be and I can't control the weather. Friday night, Krewe d'Etat night, I pushed it and was very satisfied with my night photos. I stepped off the plane and immediately set out to photograph d'Etat setup and then Hermes. The timing didn't work out so great for setup, but I was out there for both parades, standing under various streetlamps that I found. It's the only way to shoot at night.
I even made it all the way to the Quarter, after a pitstop at the Trolley Stop Cafe, a favorite old stomping ground.
New Orleans is bigger than I remembered, and walking back from the Quarter to uptown that night was not pleasant. It sort of ruined me, physically, for the next day.
Through friends of friends, I was able to march in Tucks, which was definitely the highlight of the trip.
When you're "in" the parade, people pose for you.
The best part of marching was once we got to the Quarter. All along St. Charles, you really could just fall in with any group of people walking and no one would give you trouble. But you need to be with the parade when it gets to the Quarter and all the barricades are set up - folks can't just wander into the parades at this point. It was really need to be on the other side of the barricades. The energy was intense.
I spent a good deal more time in the Quarter and then set myself up to watch Endymion, but I just couldn't anymore and had to go home. Endymion is a trying parade even if you haven't put in a good five miles of walking. But with all the breakdowns and waiting and not having any friends to talk to (boo hoo), I figured it was time to go on home and rest up.
The next day was Sunday and I headed uptown to watch Thoth. I'd never spent much time watching parades from anywhere other than Drunken College Student St. Charles area. It was really fun to see the parades with the neighborhood folks - people who camp in the same place every year and watch their kids grow up together.
That night was Orpheus, and probably my favorite images from the week. The costumes and floats were so colorful, and I had a great time creating compositions with them.
Orpheus I cut short because it was crazy windy and cold. Mardi Gras Day came even chillier, and rainy. I got up early to go see Zulu, but it started raining almost immediately. The temperature was around 35 degrees and it was completely miserable. So I just packed in it in and called it a wrap. Who brings gloves to New Orleans? Not this girl.
So I finally got to photograph Mardi Gras. It was fun. And I imagine I'll be back. In the meantime, if you want to offer me a book deal, I'll be here!
I've always been interested in travel, leaving home behind, seeing the world, but George and I crammed so many trips into this year, I think we may have hit a serious max. We started the year in Greece (seriously, I just went back through my blog to add all this up and I went "wow, Greece was this year?". That's kind of what I'm trying to say.) After that, I spent some time in New Orleans, then a few days in Grand Cayman. After that, San Antonio, Houston and Austin. And that is just taking us up to June, where this post starts! I don't know that I've ever been so excited not to have travel on the agenda. From here, it's just a trip through Amish country tacked onto an upstate New York wedding and back to New Orleans for Halloween. Probably by then I'll be itching to leave home again anyway.
And most of you know I've just returned from The Netherlands and England. But before I can even go through those photos, I need to talk about The Bahamas and Madrid! Phew. It's been crazy.
Waaaaaaaay on back in March, I went to Grand Cayman. About a month before the trip (which was about two weeks after I bought tickets), I realized that I really should get scuba certified to take advantage of the location. So I did my online courses and my confined dives (in a swimming pool) the weekend before the trip. A few days after that, my ear clogged right up and stayed that way for two weeks - I had injured myself in the pool not equalizing properly. So, scuba in Grand Cayman was out. That necessitated a new round of Open Water dives to complete my certification. This time, I successfully cajoled George into joining me, and we set off to The Bahamas.
I didn't take many photos there. I was busy getting my dive on. And I don't have any pictures from underwater because I was attempting not to drown. Scuba was both fun and terrifying. The longer I go since I dove, the more terrifying it seems. During one of the drills, 60 feet below the surface, I took off my mask as part of the exercise. For some reason, this is one of the most uncomfortable things to do underwater. Something about not having your nose in a dry environment feels very, very wrong. I started to freak out. Like, a lot. But I knew I couldn't just shoot up to the top like I could in the pool. I just had to calm myself down. I did. And the dive went on. But it was the last dive we did and I spent the rest of it trying to chill out. And now the farther we get away from it, the more scared I am to make another dive.
Plus, we both injured our ears! It may turn out that our sinuses just won't play this game.
Also, The Bahamas was super-overrated. It was mostly beaches, and not great ones, resorts and supremely mediocre food. The only thing that saved us was the World Cup. Otherwise we would have spent literally every evening at Senior Frog's (admittedly fun the first night). Grand Cayman was a thousand times better for scenery, beaches and scuba.
So that's just the Bahamas! A week later, we were on a plane to Madrid. George does a lot of academic conference-type things each year, and Madrid is a site for a recurring one. I joined him for 10 days and while he was conferencing, I was out exploring the city.
Madrid was cool. It's a huge city and, at least in July, it was rockin' with cultural events, festivals, museum things and lots of other stuff to do. And World Cup games all the time (Brazil - Germany WTF???) One of my favorite things about the city is that all the museums are open super-late - many until 9pm and all the big ones have free entry for the last two hours of admission. So I saw the Prado and Reina Sofia. I've seen a lot of world-class art museums. Not gonna lie, it's a little draining.
Here's a quirky thing: many of the buildings say "Asegurada de incendios". Secured against fire. Seems like a pretty strong and impossible-to-assure claim.
This is a vibrator in a vending machine.
We were there for Pride and it was a rockin' street party of a good time. This was set up for the parade the next day.
That night we went to Casa Patas to grab some flamenco. Pricey, but you gotta do this kind of thing sometimes.
One of my favorite bits about European capitals is the way stores specialize. You get this in New York some, and not anywhere else in the country. A shop just for clocks, or pens, or plastic kitchenware. This is a shop for mirrors. That's it. Just mirrors.
For some reason the parade was molasses slow. We watched one or two groups move over the course of more than an hour. So we quit to go watch some more futbol.
I convinced George to steal away from physics long enough to go to Toledo, where he spent the entire time working on physics, womp womp. Toledo has all the medieval old-city charm Madrid lacks. Way on back in the 1700s, some important Spanish dude whose name I forget decided to move the capital from Toledo to Madrid. They needed to build all kinds of awesome new capital buildings and such and of course they weren't going to build them in the lame-ass medieval style but instead in the relatively no-nonsense 1700s style. That's why Madrid isn't so great to look at, old-building-wise: its medieval center is actually in Toledo.
This is the only photo we have together in Spain. It's focused on the background. What can you do? I think this was even take two. Alas.
Toledo was pretty great, as you can tell by the relatively large number of photos I took, compared with Madrid.
I spent one of my last days on a guided tour of Avila and Segovia. It was pricey and super-rushed but turns out 10 days in Madrid really isn't that many! These two towns were pretty seriously great.
This is an honest-to-god Roman aqueduct from the 1st century.
And then we went home, tried to get work done and not spaz out and almost immediately hopped another plane back to Europe. But we'll get there. I've been back for a week now and I'm just enjoying catching up with friends, cooking and eating healthy food and generally not pushing it every. single. day. I make travel into work and I love it, but it's also really nice to be home.
George was gone for a big chunk of time at the end of March, so I decided I would take a little trip somewhere. Kayak (with its very helpful 
Only... womp womp, I injured my ear during the confined dives and it was still messed up when I got to the island. So I couldn't dive! But it was OK. We were still in the middle of the godawful can't-take-any-more-snow winter (remember?) and I was so so so happy to be in the sun, walking on the beach, drinking pina coladas. I didn't take many photos. I was just chilling the hell out. It was really nice. And the snorkeling was exquisite. In fact, even if you don't dive, I highly recommend Grand Cayman. It's a heck of a place.
These are some random images from when George and I took a little hike/walk around Great Falls. Turns out my x100 had flipped over to manual focus and I didn't notice... for like, a month. I am a brilliant photographer. And an even more brilliant blogger, because I'm posting these terrifically out-of-focus images.
More walks with George - random things around DC.
This is my very best friend David. He's a big shot doing IT and when the remote wouldn't work in his conference room (over massive amounts of Lebanese food), he tried hacking it - with pieces of a server. He's a handy guy to have around.
I get excited about thunderstorms.
A buddy of mine, John, and I went down to the Mall when a bunch of cosplayers were attempting to break the Guinness Record (of having the most cosplayers in one place). They didn't make it (by a loooooong shot) but it was fun anyway.
This is my husband, doing his physics thing. We went to San Antonio in April - him for a conference, me to check out the city. I really liked San Antonio - lots of stuff going on. They do a lot better than many other Texan cities by actually embracing their Mexican heritage, rather than trying to shove it under a rug. A rug made out of Walmarts and Applebees.
Then we crossed the state to visit our favorite miniature person.
And we spent one day in Austin. They have a great turtle pond and there were scads of baby turtles. This is a baby turtle resting on another turtle!
Later in May, we went to Savor - a ridiculous, enormous, expensive craft beer festival held in the National Building Museum. It was cool, but it was way too much beer to try to choke down (more than 100 different kinds!) and it was pricey as shit. It was a fun experience for one night, but I can't imagine we'll be back. This picture of a bunch of plants has absolutely nothing to do with Savor, except that I took it at the event.
More hiking. Following 
I don't remember why we were way the hell out in Herndon on this particular day, but we stopped by the Frying Pan Farm and there were tons of baby animals!
At World of Beer. I don't remember why, but there was good light on George.
A photography meetup with some buds. This is staged, but the others are not.
And that's it! For now. I'll get those Madrid and in-between photos up... eventually. You know how it goes. And for friends and relatives and people who enjoy posts like this, I've been doing snapshotty, don't-care-what-it-looks-like, document-my-life type stuff over on 
I decided last year that I would return to New Orleans to photograph Mardi Gras, a subject I had never taken a camera to, seeing as I developed my photography interest after school. I bought some plane tickets and finagled some places to stay (with the help of some very generous friends). And then I tried to make connections - for all the things I thought would be important for telling all sides of the New Orleans Mardi Gras story. When I arrived, though, I learned that there is so much to Mardi Gras that I had never heard of, let alone experienced. There were so many many events taking place on Mardi Gras Day - far too many to capture in one trip. I knew I either needed to make this a regular experience, or put aside the ambitions I had going in to make this a book. Now more than a month past the trip, I'm not sure what I want to do with these images. I'm quite happy with a number of them, but I don't know where they belong. Perhaps the best answer is the default: right here on this blog.
I promised myself I would go hard on this trip - not waste time, not be frivolous. But in the end, I'm not as young as I used to be and I can't control the weather. Friday night, Krewe d'Etat night, I pushed it and was very satisfied with my night photos. I stepped off the plane and immediately set out to photograph d'Etat setup and then Hermes. The timing didn't work out so great for setup, but I was out there for both parades, standing under various streetlamps that I found. It's the only way to shoot at night.
I even made it all the way to the Quarter, after a pitstop at the Trolley Stop Cafe, a favorite old stomping ground.
New Orleans is bigger than I remembered, and walking back from the Quarter to uptown that night was not pleasant. It sort of ruined me, physically, for the next day.
Through friends of friends, I was able to march in Tucks, which was definitely the highlight of the trip.
When you're "in" the parade, people pose for you.
The best part of marching was once we got to the Quarter. All along St. Charles, you really could just fall in with any group of people walking and no one would give you trouble. But you need to be with the parade when it gets to the Quarter and all the barricades are set up - folks can't just wander into the parades at this point. It was really need to be on the other side of the barricades. The energy was intense.
I spent a good deal more time in the Quarter and then set myself up to watch Endymion, but I just couldn't anymore and had to go home. Endymion is a trying parade even if you haven't put in a good five miles of walking. But with all the breakdowns and waiting and not having any friends to talk to (boo hoo), I figured it was time to go on home and rest up.
The next day was Sunday and I headed uptown to watch Thoth. I'd never spent much time watching parades from anywhere other than Drunken College Student St. Charles area. It was really fun to see the parades with the neighborhood folks - people who camp in the same place every year and watch their kids grow up together.
That night was Orpheus, and probably my favorite images from the week. The costumes and floats were so colorful, and I had a great time creating compositions with them.
Orpheus I cut short because it was crazy windy and cold. Mardi Gras Day came even chillier, and rainy. I got up early to go see Zulu, but it started raining almost immediately. The temperature was around 35 degrees and it was completely miserable. So I just packed in it in and called it a wrap. Who brings gloves to New Orleans? Not this girl.
So I finally got to photograph Mardi Gras. It was fun. And I imagine I'll be back. In the meantime, if you want to offer me a book deal, I'll be here!