Bored?

Are you sitting there bored sometimes and looking for something meaningful to do that won't put you into a sweat or even have you leaving your computer? Something that encourages you to not only do some good, but allows you to be online in order to do it?  Something with no long-term commitments?

Search no more.....

The Smithsonian Institute needs people to help transcribe thousands of papers, journals and studies that have been housed in its attics for eons.  Not only are you helping to preserve the history and discoveries of the past, but imagine how good that will look on your resume....

You can click on the link above to read a little more about the project, or you can simply go to Smithsonian's site directly and start browsing the projects currently in need of transcription and see what strikes your fancy.  And its not as if you are taking on a complete project on your own... you work on this at your own pace and, wherever you leave off someone else will be allowed to continue.

How easy can this get?  No training, in fact the only qualifications needed are that you can read and type (both of which I am certain are talents you possess if you managed to make your way here!)  So make time in your lazy afternoon to be an armchair explorer and help shed some light into the forgotten past.

Texas Trip - Day Four (Part 1 of 3)

Final day in Texas....(sorry for the delay on this post but I wanted to clean up some photos to upload for this one...)

Day Four, as with every other day, saw me getting up early.

We had a lot to try and tackle today and didn't want to miss a minute of it. As it was, I was awake long after Richard left (hey, I just got engaged... it would have been a complete miracle for me to have fallen asleep quickly!) Found out that Richard had a fairly sleepless night as well.

Richard showed up with a container of raspberries to munch on (I'd been teasing him for awhile since I'd learned he'd never tried raspberries before and how I definitely had to pick some up on this trip to share with him). We shared them while I finished tossing everything into my bags (note... he now likes raspberries). I was wearing the sundress I'd originally planned to wear at dinner with his parents.... so I looked nice. Richard, on the other hand, was sporting a new t-shirt that proudly proclaimed he was a Ghostbuster...complete with VENKMAN name badge.

Men and their taste in clothes....

He offered to wear his dress shirt again since I'd hoped for a picture of the two of us together, and ran back down to the car to fetch it.... a bit rumpled now, but a moment or two with the iron had that taken care of. Wish I would have known at the start of the trip that hotel rooms come with irons and hair dryers... there's two large items I wouldn't have had to haul across state lines with me!

While he was in the bathroom changing, I did a last couple of laps around the room to be sure I hadn't forgotten anything. Once we were both ready he once again lugged my bag down to the car and drove me around front to the manager's office where I checked out of my room for the final time. Its sad to say, but I am going to miss that place....

We decided once again on Cracker Barrel for breakfast and spent a nice hour or so just chatting.... no rush, no itinerary pressing down on us (though we really did have one)... and no mentioning that I would be flying home later that day. Once again I had the thought of how wonderful it would be to see this man sitting across the dinner table from me for the rest of our lives... how wonderful now to know that this thought will soon become reality.

After breakfast we drove downtown and visited the Alamo.

I took a lot of pictures...some of Richard, but mostly of the site. Sadly, I forgot to hand my camera over to some other tourist to get our picture together.

We wandered the grounds, hand-in-hand, as the heat rose and we both began to bake. Richard especially, since he was sporting a very bright sunburn from the drive back north the day before. As we prepared to enter the Alamo itself, a large sign proclaimed the site to still be dedicated as Holy Ground by the Catholic Church and that no pictures within were allowed. An employee of the Alamo told us to turn and smile for the camera before thrusting a card into our hands and ushering us inside.

Not exactly a way to prepare yourself for something so profound... being essentially peddled by the tourist trade on your way in the doors.

Inside the Alamo is a feeling of such great weight.... calm, but you definitely feel a hush come upon you as you walk that small space (the mission is incredibly tiny). The walls are still gouged in spots from gunfire. Picturing the siege and the horror and pain that took place within those walls was humbling. Little kids on some kind of tour were tossing out questions in rapid succession and fellow tourists were laughing and talking... and I just walked reverently from space to space.

We exited to the side and immediately across the way is the gift shop.

No offense to the powers-that-be that use these funds to help support the upkeep of this site, but the center of the room is of interest because it houses various Bowie knives of the era, excavated cannonballs (much smaller than I had imagined them to be), guns and buttons.... it was a historical junkie's heroin. We walked slowly down both sides and just soaked it all in.

The outer edge of the gift shop though... well... total pandemonium. Little boys screaming as they chase each other around the store, wielding toy guns and Calvary swords, and little girls looking over all the local wildlife plushies (armadillos, bison, horses and, for some reason, monkeys). Ashtrays and shot glasses emblazoned with Davy Crockett's famous quote "You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas". Replicas of the Alamo itself... you name it, they probably had it. There was a nice book section though where I picked up a book ("Sea of Mud" about the retreat from the Alamo by the Mexican army) but, on the whole the gift shop turned my stomach... especially after just coming from the site itself it seemed rather tasteless (sorry baby!)

I was happy when we finally got out of there and back out onto the grounds, and I quickly put that behind me as I drug poor Richard from place to place to inspect the memorial plaques, cannons, a really neat baptismal font from the original mission, and other such historical fodder that appealed to me. He also patiently waited while I took photo after photo of what must have seemed odd things (doorways, windows, steeples... I went a little overboard probably in order to make up for not really getting any pictures up til this point!)

And speaking of pictures... below is a bit of what I snapped. Oh, and that shot taken before we entered the mission? Turns out on your way out you can buy a copy of the picture they took. I walked up to see what we wound up with but we didn't end up buying it... the gal snapped the picture with Richard tucked back a step or two and that hideous picture killer (perspective) had me looking miles taller and about 4 times as round. Okay, it probably wasn't THAT bad...but that's what I remember.















Next post we take on the Breckenridge Sunken Gardens... where Richard had originally planned to propose to me.

Collections....

I collect rocks.

Yeah, you read right...I said rocks. Not extravagantly rare ones, in fact most of them are just your everyday garden variety picked up from the side of the road.

"Why?" you ask. Hmmm...I am not exactly sure, but my mom and I had a conversation about this a few years ago. She talked about being drawn to rocks that resonate on the same frequency that she does. She may have something there. For me though I think its really that I love the history that lives in rocks.

A rock can have history?

Yup.

Think of how long it took that chip of quartz or chunk of basalt to work its way to the surface from deep within the earth. Think of the hundreds of thousands of years it has been travelling around the world. Its not such a far-fetched idea, scientists recently discovered that the rock bed of Loch Ness is from the same rock formation that created the Catskill Mountains on our eastern coast (plate techtonics....what an amazing thing, but don't get me started on THAT subject!) Rocks from the time of Christ are still lying around....some rocks even have dinosaur fossils embedded in them!

Which brings me to my collection. A lot of my rocks (as I mentioned before) have no real special "wow factor"....I have a few fossil pieces and some petrified wood, but most of it is fairly run-of-the-mill. I even brought a small box of rocks with me from Washington (as a small aside: Jason, I didn't lie when you helped me move down here...that wasn't a box of rocks you were carrying...the "rock box" was actually in my hands when you asked that question).

I have rocks on my desk and file cabinet at work; on the dashboard, floor and in the trunk of my car; there's a few tumbling around in the bottom of my purse, and I have a small "rock garden" in the base of my computer monitor at work (which has a handy half-circle opening at its base)...not to mention the rocks I have around my bedroom at home, and still more in a box that I haven't unpacked from my last move.

I have rocks that have special meaning to me...rocks from the graves of beloved pets, rocks from the cemetary where my grandparents and baby brother are buried, rocks from trips (and side trips!) along with a few rocks from my visit to the temple last November. I went nuts at a cousin's wedding where she decorated with stones on the tables and was thrilled when I was allowed to take a small handful away with me afterwards (yes I am talking about you Dani!)

Over the years I have received pretty much the same response from people just discovering my hobby. Its pretty much a pause in the conversation, accompanied by a funny look and then I am asked why I would find that interesting. Once I explain about the whys and the wherefores (always adding that it is a hobby that hurts no one and costs nothing!)something amazing happens. Conversations eventually end (as they always do) and we will go onto whatever we have next on our agenda...but I often find the next time I see that person that they will have a rock for me.

I now have rocks from a bosses' vacation to Jerusalem and Bethlehem; rocks from a friend's favorite bay in Alaska; rocks from the bottom of mines, sea beds and craters. Rocks from both the Pacific and Atlantic shores, as well as a funky green-streaked chunk of mica that my boss spotted piled next to a busy road in Mexico (he says he pretty much screeched to a stop in his rental truck, jumped out to grab me a piece and then hopped back in the rig). I have been told stories of concern that luggage was going to weigh too much and of rocks being carried in carry-on bags.

I have also learned just how much people care about me. Time and again I have been told how this person specifically hunted around to find me "just the right stone".

I have had friends voice concerns over being able to get me a present for holidays or birthdays and reassured them that all they need to do is find me a rock. Yup, the same strange looks are given, but I have often found that the rock they found for me was more apreciated than a lot of the other purchased prezzies I was given (no offense to anyone who has given me purchased stuff!) The best part is that they are usually accompanied by a confession that, once the person got into the spirit of the thing, that they actually had fun on their rock hunt. People spotting me picking up rocks will often ask curiously what I was picking up and often go away with a smile when they hear my silly little story.

Its not all sunshine and roses; I have had a few bad reactions to my collection. People have been condescending and said mean jokes about it (people I am no longer friends with, but that is for a whole other reason), and I have had people show exasperation when I pause in public to snatch up a pebble (apparently its embarrasing to some people to be seen doing something not considered "normal"). I have had people rearrange stones on my desk, or even take a few thinking I would never notice (I always do). I think the best example of this would be a gal who was accompanying me to Vegas for a trade show....my boss was driving us down to help set up and then he was going to fly home, leaving us the truck to drive back in after we finished the show.

Dan couldn't wait for me to see the canyon south of St George and kept talking about it miles before we were even there. We hit the canyon and my jaw dropped....for those who have not seen this marvel, it is sheer rock faced cliffs and gullies and absolutely breathtakingly gorgeous. My friend said something catty to Dan about watching out because I will be asking him to stop any second now so I can collect a rock and how he'd better not do it. Bless his heart but he immediately pulled over, hopped out of the truck, and started up the slope next to the road because (as he put it) he was sure he'd just spotted the perfect rock for me. This gal sat in disbelief as Dan encouraged me to hop out, take my time and be sure to find the rock that I really wanted.

Of course it has also taken a life of its own....Dan and Bill (respectively my bosses) now grab me rocks from all of their trips. Dan had to top himself by grabbing a box while he was in Orlando and dumped in sand, shells and rocks from a beach near his hotel, even wading out into the surf to collect a floating coconut! He then shipped everything to me UPS overnight rather than try to carry it all home (or try to explain to airline security why he just had to bring home his homemade "beach-in-a-box).

I have decorated with rocks for so long now that I can't see myself in a home without a few rocks strewn around. I stumbled across a picture last year of a gal who had an interesting collection of smooth river rocks across her mantlepiece...looking like modern sculpture. I tore the picture out of that magazine, drooling with envy over how amazing it looked and promising myself that someday I too would have such a mantlepiece arrangement.

Funny hobby? Maybe...but as I said before its a cheap hobby, infinately satisfying and, for the most part, pretty darn unique.