Note of the Living Deb

I really enjoy spring. It's by far our best season even though our winters are mild, and so there's only a moderate amount of relief involved. That's because our land can make all kinds of beautiful flowers. And not only can it, it actually does, in large part because state taxpayer money goes toward seeding the edges of highways with wildflowers.

Even if you plant only native plants because those are the kinds of plants that know how to deal with our weather and the kinds of plants the native wildlife is used to, you still have a functionally infinite number of flowers to choose from. (Northerners have to learn a whole new repertoire, but it's really not that painful. You probably only really mourn a few varieties for which you cannot find suitable replacements.)

All the early-blooming plants are now in bloom including our state flower, the bluebonnet, and including my favorite local tree (which blooms for only a week or two each year), the Texas mountain laurel [which is sort of like wisteria in that it has bunches flowers hanging and smelling like grapes (or grape bubble gum), only it's a slow-growing gnarly tree instead of a vine].

Ah, but it's also the time of year when the evil tries to take over the lawn. In movies, evil is dark, but in my yard it is green.

One form of evil is a beautiful bright green plant. The entire plant is sticky, and if I pull it with my bare hands, I get what feels like a mild rash. (I don't know what it's called.)

The other early springtime favorite of my yard is a beautiful dark green feathery plant with dainty white flowers. The millions of tiny white flowers turn into millions of tiny burs that stick to everything and replant themselves everywhere. These flowers are called beggar's lice. They are just about to flower right now. RUN! I mean, PULL!

These are both super-fast growing and super easy to pull, at least if it has rained recently as it often has in spring. But if you leave one plant this year, you will get twenty next year. If you leave two hundred, well, let's say there are reasons that I don't like gardening.

My second day in Phoenix I decided to start my day with a little hike. There was a huge park right near our hotel. I had done a little research but decided to drive to the visitor's center before deciding which trail to take and to get a map.

The visitor's center was closed.

So I tried to find the trail on my own, but that didn't happen. I saw almost no other motorized vehicles but many, many bicyclists.



Even though the road looks like this.



Finally I decided to stop at the next place with some cars parked and see if I could find a trailhead. This plan totally worked, and I began to hike up Ranger Trail.



Just like with the trail I had originally wanted to take, I got a view of Phoenix.



I saw four people on the trail on my way up. First, a boy and his father. The boy was complaining about the heat as I passed, and I hoped he would make it to the top, but I never saw him again, and their car was gone when I returned.

Then I saw an old guy jogging down the mountain. Then I saw a middle aged person jogging down the trail. Can that be wise? Isn't that hard on your knees? These guys were wise enough to be finishing up before it got crazy hot.

Check out this interesting saguaro.



And this little beauty.



The trail I had picked out was described as a three-hour trip that led to a peak. Likewise, the trail I actually found took me 1.5 hours to climb and led me to a peak. Here's what was on the other side (from Phoenix).



I also saw this relatively dense collection of succulents at the top.



Most of the tiny life covering the rocks was black, but I did find yellow lichens.



On the way down the trail, I saw two more humans. One was sitting at the side of the trail in rare shade, panting. The other was jogging up the trail shirtless. As if running up the trail weren't enough, he first had to bicycle to the trail (either that, or the tired guy did)--I saw this further down the trail.



It only took me 30 minutes to get back down the trail.

Closer to the entrance of the park is this lovely building.



And while I'm showing you plants, here is an interesting one from near our hotel:



I really enjoyed starting my day with a nice hike. But then my buttocks were aching for a couple of days after that. (Then, after an hour of hustle dance lessons, doing only two steps over and over the whole time, my right calf was aching for a couple of days. Today, after jogging 30 minutes yesterday, my thighs are aching (though not as badly as the buttock and calf incidents--I had post-exercise peanut butter). Exercise is supposed to make me healthier and make me feel better, but limping every day for over a week isn't my favorite.)

Related news article of the day - Can Running Actually Help Your Knees? by Gretchen Reynolds. A study "followed middle-aged, longtime distance runners (not necessarily marathoners) for nearly 20 years, beginning in 1984, when most were in their 50s or 60s. At that time, 6.7 percent of the runners had creaky, mildly arthritic knees, while none of an age-matched control group did. After 20 years, however, the runners' knees were healthier; only 20 percent showed arthritic changes, versus 32 percent of the control group's knees. Barely 2 percent of the runners' knees were severely arthritic, while almost 10 percent of the control group's were."

A long-term study! With a control group! (My favorite.) These guys were running only 90 minutes a week on average, and there was no mention of them running down mountainsides. (Note that other sports are associated with increasing your odds for bad knee problems.)

Vacation agrees with me.

The biggest difference I noticed when I got back this time was the sleeping. On vacation, I stayed awake until I was yawning a lot. Then I went to bed. Then I slept as long as I wanted. When I woke up, I wasn't late for anything and I hadn't missed anything.

At home, I often don't go to bed when I'm sleepy because I feel I haven't had enough fun yet. I'll stay up way too late reading. Then get up with the alarm. Or not. And hope I get to work on time. And try to think at work with sleepy brain.

Denver had perfect walking weather the entire weekend (except for the parts when it was raining). It smelled good--like pine needles, not like exhaust or grackle poop. (Actually, Austin is smelling nice lately, too--like flowers). I saw worms. And ducks. And mushrooms. And really big houses, one of which was for sale and came with a $15,000 credit to build a garage if you wanted.

We visited the Denver Art Museum. First we checked out some modern art. One thing I remember from that section was a painting of three teenagers. It was larger than life and had pretty bright colors. It was three dudes wearing baggy clothes, cell phones, etc., but in an odd pose involving a wedding ring among other things. The story is that this guy would paint regular modern people in the pose of people in a famous painting and the kids got to pick the painting. These guys chose "The Marriage of [somebody or other from medieval times probably]" even though one of them was clearly going to end up posing as the wife.

We also checked out the Psychedelic Experience. The accompanying exhibit was mostly hundreds of posters for bands from the sixties. It was interesting to read that they were not designed to be read but to be interpreted. Unlike most ads, they didn't make it easy to find the information-you almost had to decode the poster, even the font, to get the scoop on what was happening, when, and where.

Then they had another room with the "experience" part. You could watch the TV show "Laugh-in" or make your own poster, for example. My favorite part was basically a documentary showing on the TV in a sixties-era hippie living room that you could sit in. (The coffee table was made of a door lying across two stacks of concrete bricks, for example.)

From that I learned that the summer when Haight-Ashbury was getting a lot of news about cool events, young people around the country got the idea that they could get away from their troubles by running away from home and going to Haight-Ashbury where someone would give them a place to sleep and they could hang out. It reminded me of things I'd read in history books about people running away to "the new land" or during the gold rush. Scary. And this is even though no one was trumping up lies to get their money.

By the following year, there were just too many people and there were too many drugs and it was no fun anymore and not safe.

That night we watched "The Girlfriend Experience." This was a good contrast to the Psychedelic Experience where people wanted to be true to themselves and not have to work. The movie was about people who did want to work even though it sometimes or often meant being untrue, at least to their clients.

It was a good movie for talking about afterwards because then you can help each other figure out what happened in what order. Once you figure out the order things happened, it's easier to see why they happened and thus what actually happened. Ideally you want to be awake and paying attention during the movie.

Unlike most movies, it is about both work life and personal life and how the two are related even when you do your best to keep them apart. And the work part really shows the dog-eat-dog aspect, especially for people who are self-employed, always hustling for more clients. And it's about what it might be like to be one of the dolls from "Dollhouse" if the dolls were doing things voluntarily using their own personalities.

We saw this movie in the Mayan theatre, which reminds me of the Paramount in that it's highly decorated, only this one is in the Mayan Revival style of architecture. Who knew there was such a thing? Definitely cool. Although it was filled with the "cloying stench" of popcorn. Actually, E had a much longer phrase for this aroma that I love, but I remember only those two words.

The next day we visited the Denver Botanic Garden and their totally awesome Jurassic Gardens Exhibit. What that means is that nestled between the plants like garden gnomes or pink flamingos they have dinosaurs. It's like an Easter egg hunt only better because (most of) the eggs had hatched and because when someone else finds a dinosaur, that makes it more likely that you'll find it, too rather than that you won't find it. We met E's grampa there: the edmontosuarus.

We did also look at some plants. T noticed that the new bright green leaves on evergreens feel all rubbery like a koosh ball. This was true of all the different pine species we tried.

Later we saw "Monsters versus Aliens" in 3-D. I barely noticed the 3-D, but I still recommend the movie. It has plot problems but is fun.

Still later we saw "Logan's Run" which R had never seen and which I hadn't seen since it came out. I had forgotten pretty much everything except that the women wore short skirts. The plot was pleasingly more complex than I remembered. However, prepare yourself for huge plot problems, especially the idea that the ending is happy.

We also ate out at a bunch of interesting restaurants. Blue Sky Cafe and Yoga has a sky painted on the ceiling over a wooden floor. Breakfast and lunch are served in the cafe, then the place turns into a yoga studio in the evening. I couldn't resist the hot chocolate onto which they added not only whipped cream but also chocolate syrup and cocoa powder.

We also saw for ourselves Vita versus Lola. Vita is the elegant, affordable, delicious, totally empty restaurant we went to. Lala next door was the totally crowded slightly more expensive Mexican food place next door. We never could figure out why Lala was so much more popular than Vita. We felt that we had made the obvious best choice.

I also had yummy Tex Mex in a café, shockingly good ravioli in a bakery, egg salad on extremely thick but delicious bread in another bakery, noodles at T's favorite Vietnamese place, and other things I'm forgetting now.

We also saw a multi-use area sort of like our old airport and the Triangle and the Domain, only it had evil parking meters that would take your money even if parking was supposed to be free because it's Sunday. (At least we assume it took T's money-she paid with a credit card.) They had a big tourist-destination-type Whole Foods like the one we have on 6th street.

It was great having T drive us around and almost magically know where things were all over town. If one plan got knocked down, she would know something cool to do in a more convenient location.

On the plane home we had a plan to deal with the annoying TV screens on the backs of the airplane seats, which E and T taught us with their eyes rolling: change the contrast to nothing. Unfortunately this didn't work. They said it might not work at first, but would work once the plane was up. It didn't work then either. Or after the seatbelt light went off either. The contrast bar would claim it was reducing the contrast, but wouldn't actually do it. I had one giant sticky note sheet I had been using to keep track of characters that I used to cover up my screen because it was so annoying. Then I realized that R's screen might be broken and tried the controls for mine, which worked, so I let Robin block his screen with the paper for the rest of the flight. FYI, Frontier has more leg room than any other airline I've been on in years except Midwest (which I like even better because they also have chocolate chip cookies). It's the same amount of room as planes used to have.

**

It's weird remembering that my audience includes at least one of the hosts (no, it did not take me this long to think of nice things to say--I just was hoping to get some pictures but then decided to write something anyway). It includes a host's best friend. It includes the people whose recital party we accidentally scheduled this trip during. And whose next party I think we will be able to make it to unless our flight home from our next trip is very late. It includes other people who went to that recital or who stayed away from the recital. And it includes some people who don't know any of the people I have mentioned so far.