Puttering in the Study

J.R.R. Tolkien reads and sings his The Hobbit and the Fellowship of the Ring

I started rereading The Lord of the Rings a few weeks ago bit by bit in the study in the evenings, and earlier this week got the ION turntable that converts albums to .mp3 files.  I put this one on first and downloaded both sides this morning.  Side 1 is Tolkien reading the riddle sequence between Bilbo and Gollum from The Hobbit in 1952 on a newfangled tape recorder owned by a friend.  Side 2 is various excerpts from The Fellowship of the Ring, mostly songs and poems.  I've had this album since high school, and had really enjoyed it, but obviously haven't heard it since the old turntable went down in 1993 or thereabouts.  Really enjoyed hearing it again.

2006 Europe trip - part 3 (Egypt & Rome)

It's been over a year since I posted parts 1 and 2 of our November 2006 trip to Europe for our tenth wedding anniversary.  A few days after that post my dad passed away and we were covered up in Christmas and funeral activities.  Since the process of extracting my notes of the trip out of one program and putting them into a second - then into a third and adding photos is a real effort it's taken a while to find time to finish the posts up.  But here it (finally) is.

When I left off on December 16, 2006, I had just covered the day at sea on November 17 after spending our 10th anniversary on the island of Mykonos, where we enjoyed lunch at a seaside sidewalk cafe watching Elvis.  In have attached a few pictures below, but for the complete photo tour see the album at right - it's just was too much trouble to attach everything again!

November 18

The morning of the 18^th found us at Port Said in the entrance of the Suez Canal, where we boarded buses for the several hour drive to Cairo to see the Pyramids.  It took about three hours of travel across the desert to get to the enormous concrete metropolis of Cairo.  We crossed the Nile and headed south paralleling it to see the step pyramid at Sakkara .  We then came back north to the base of the plateau at Giza to have a very nice buffet lunch at Mena House Oberoi, which was some kind of hotel.  We then had a very quick stop to shop before the buses took us up to the pyramid complex at Giza.  We had thirty minutes (yes, only thirty minutes!) to see the pyramids, and our tour guide offered us tickets into the central pyramid’s tomb chamber.  Jamie backed out pretty quickly – the passage was very small and hot and humid and a claustrophobic’s nightmare, but I pushed on and eventually got to the tomb chamber where I sat on the stone sarcophagus and rested before coming out - very excited I'd made it, as you can tell.  We then had time for short camel rides before boarding the bus for a trip to a scenic spot for pictures, then a ten minute stop at the Sphinx (just as it was closing).

We then boarded the buses for the long night-time trip back to the ship, and did some shopping pierside to get souvenirs.

November 19

The next day our ship was in Alexandria, which was unrecognizable from the ship – turned out we were in the “new” part of the port, and the old harbor didn’t come into view until we were in buses for the city tour.  I had just finished my book on Alexandria and thus had some idea what we were seeing when we toured the fort that occupied the site of the old Pharos lighthouse.  We then stopped at the old Roman theater (where Egyptian TV was shooting a scene for a CSI-type drama) and then at the new Alexandria Library, which was really impressive. 

November 20

The 20^th was a relaxing day at sea – we went to an art auction and saw the Cinemagic show in the theater that night.  I think it weas that night that we went to the art auction reception and had our picture taken with Pino and the print of his that we bought.

November 21

The 21^st was our last day on the ship.  We went to a cooking show, then a galley tour, another art auction (and had some of our art framed), did laundry, got our photos, and packed to get off the ship early the next morning.

November 22

We had to get up early to get off the ship, and were taken by bus back to Rome and our hotel on Via Veneto.  After getting settled into our much smaller room, we headed out on foot to see the Baths of Diocletian and the Museum of Rome, and had lunch across from the Baths in a small “mall”.  Dinner was at Il Fiammifero.

November 23

The 23^rd was our Vatican Museum tour.  We met our tour guide Dr. Antje Ingeborg Wolf at the hotel and took a cab to the Vatican, where she said it was actually about as uncrowded as it ever gets.  Had a phenomenal tour of the Museum and the Sistine Chapel, and ended up in St. Peter’s Square.  We had lunch at Isola Pizza, and then went to wait for our tickets for the Scavi tour.

The Scavi tour may have been the highlight of our entire trip, where we went under St. Peters’ and walked though the first-century AD Roman cemetery that sat on the slopes of Vatican Hill, and eventually wound up seeing what remains of St. Peter’s tomb, under the high altar of the basilica, and Pope John Paul II's tomb , where we'd seen John XXIII's seven years previously.  We took a cab home, and had dinner at the Hard Rock Café – we were just too worn out on gourmet food and wanted something simple.

November 24

We were up bright and early again to walk to the Museo Borghese for the morning tour.  We enjoyed it and the walk back to the hotel through the park immensely, but were seriously tired, and took a nap from 11 to 2, when we started our long walk to see the Capitoline Hill (and the Trevi Fountain along the way).  We had lunch at Piccolobuco Ristorante/Pizzeria, and finally made it to the museums on the Campidoglio at around 4 in the afternoon.  We went through those, and looked out at the Forum from inside the hill (an amazing view, except that it was dark by now), and at 6 started our “Night Walk Across Rome” as suggested by Rick Steves.

The night walk starts at the Campo de Fiori, which is a large market, and we window shopped, looking at the incredible foods and flowers for sale.  We then followed the map to Piazza Navona, where unfortunately the Four Rovers fountain by Bernini was enclosed in scaffolding being restored.  The artwork for sale was terrific and made me wish we hadn’t bought things on the ship!.  Next was the Pantheon, which we’d seen before on our first trip, but it, too had been restored somewhat, so there were some new things to see.  We then wound our way back to the hotel.

November 25

The 26^th was our last full day in Rome, and we decided to knock off a few more churches.  We took a cab to St. John Lateran across town with the idea of walking back.  We got there about noon, and after touring it walked back up to see St. Maria Maggiore, where Bernini is buried.  We had lunch at a small restaurant on the way back called That’s amore, then went back to St. Peter’s Square to do some more shopping for religious items we hadn’t found anywhere else yet.  We cabbed back to the vicinity of our hotel, but street-shopping the last several blocks to get pashminas for everyone at the office and another large suitcase.  We packed that evening to be ready for our flight the next morning.

November 26

Our flight home left at 10:45 the morning of the 26^th, and was uneventful. All in all, an outstanding trip.

Watching Star Trek IV with Parker

Parker insisted on watching the Star Trek "where the Enterprise finds the whales" this week, so we loaded this up in the study and watched it over two nights.  Still an awfully good film if you can get over the crew not being in uniform battling Klingons the whole time.

New banner image

Finally decided that the banner I created for this weblog needed to be updated - primarily because the letters were awfully difficult to read across the bookshelves.  So I took a quick snapshot this morning of the study (several actually) and put it to one side, with the text to the other (and on old-paper looking background for that).  I tweaked the text and font formatting and color a bit as well.  I'll update the image later (early morning is not the best time for a photo - the lamps cast a bad shadow on the map table in morning sun) but this will do for now.

On Puttering

I was floored last night by a post on the The View From the Foothills blog called On Puttering by fellow study-putterer Will Duquette almost five years ago which described what exactly puttering is.  It says:

Puttering is a sublimely peaceful activity.  Puttering cannot be done on a deadline; puttering cannot be done in haste.  When you putter, you are intimately engaged in something you love.  When you putter, you drift from one little task to another.  You inspect everything with a lover's eye.  You do a little of this, and a little of that.  You'll likely accomplish nothing that's big by itself, but bit by bit your world is improved.

Puttering is usually associated with a place: a garden, a kitchen, a workshop, a garage, or (as in my case) a study.  The exact place doesn't matter.  The point of all true puttering is that you're doing things that need to be done--and you're not doing them on a schedule or to achieve some larger goal.  You're doing them because doing them satisfies your soul, because they are worth doing for their own sake, and mostly because you've been able to let go of the rush to achieve, step back, and contemplate your special place in peace.

Puttering is how people got things done before clocks were invented. Children putter naturally; only in their case we call it playing. 

Over time I've been accumulating a list of touchstones to tell me when my life is getting too stressful and I need to cultivate a little peace.  If I'm tempted to eat breakfast in the car on the way to work, then I'm rushing too much.  If I get irritated by the traffic on the freeway, I need to relax.  If I'm always grumpy, I need to lighten up.  And if I've not been puttering, I need to slow down.

Life's too short not to putter.

Couldn't have said it better myself.  I feel so ... empowered now.  Now if I could just get Jamie to buy this!