I want a vacation

Up until a few years ago, a group of friends and I made regular spring trips to New York. Not all together, but usually overlapping so we could get together for drinks or dinner or lunch or coffee. Some of us ran (walked, in my case, with an occasional spurt of jogging) in the More Magazine half-marathon in Central Park. One spring the race was scheduled for a weekend in late April that ended up being coolish warm, perfect for a run, and sunny, perfect for the baby green leaves on trees and the tulips and the daffodils. It was absolutely gorgeous.

We haven't made this spring trip in a few years, but I have a door-hanger from Anthropologie to remind me of the fun a weekend in the big city can be: "I'm in New York. Come back later."

I have been wanting a "me" vacation for a while, and New York seems like as good a place as any. I would love to just wander, poke in and out of shops and museums, stop for coffee, wander through Central Park, visit the Union Square farmers market and explore the parts of the city that I don't know.

In my 30s, I interviewed with The Wall Street Journal and had a pretty good shot at a job there. Carl didn't want to live in New York and I've always regretted I didn't push harder for us to try it. We were young enough then and probably could have gotten over the cost of living shock. Now, not so much.

Anyway, teeny weeny spring vacation: Walking the dogs tonight, we wandered along a street with no sidewalks. Lilacs in full flowers hung over part of the asphalt. Twist of course found something underneath to investigate while Holli waited patiently. I waited, too, and stuck my nose deep into some of those lovely blooms, breathing in their perfume.

Lilacs, a cool spring evening, me, and the greyhounds. Pretty short vacation, but it'll do for now.

Welcome back!

Well. I have been busy catching up to "la vie quotiedienne" while frenzying myself at work writing a main piece and sidebar for the paper's Sunday Magazine section about my trip to India. I wrote it, then rewrote it and somehow felt I was not capturing the essence of my adventure as well as I did here. After a last rewrite, I think it turned out well, but the process was exhausting. (Update: Published articles on May 2. Got good feedback and only a couple negative emails. Had a voicemail from a woman who called from India  to thank my for  capturing her country so well. Wow. Thank you! And I wish you had left a phone number or email). But only an OK job. I wrote what I saw, with benefit of tour book prep work, not good background.

Here is the link

Should I have the opportunity for such a trip again, (and I plan to) I would work harder at my photography. Kim and I talked about this a bit while I was there. Digital cameras make it almost too easy; you don't have to pay as much attention to lighting, framing, composition. Just snap, review and if you've got it wrong, delete and try again. About my old Canon SLR, which began acting up on the trip Mom and I took to Paris in 2006: I miss the solid chunk kind of sound it made when the shutter button is pressed. I could feel it, so solid and firm, like the sound of a door in a well-made car slamming shut. The sound of every tiny part fitting together solidly.

I still have the Canon. Carl bought it for me years ago as a present and I have enjoyed using it, if not lugging it around, for all that time. I took it to a repair shop on the North Side after the Paris trip and, at first, it appeared that the only remedy needed was new batteries. It worked fine after that for a while, but then the shutter button again began to refuse to engage.

I hate the thought of giving it up, but I will take it back for one more shot at repairs. It's a dying technology (no doubt to be resurrected in 20 years, just like vinyl records and turntables are being resurrected today) but I grew up with it, loved it, and for a while took some pretty good photographs with it. In the pantheon of great gifts, it has a nice high place.

I had thought I would miss so much of spring by being gone at the end of March and the beginning of April, but there were still daffodils to greet me when I came home and pretty tulips that came up a week later. The lilacs are in their full, fragrant glory, but I am going to have them taken down this year. They are in a prominent place in front of the house and, while they are lovely now, for the rest of the year they will look raggedy, with mildewy leaves and not much structural presence. For as many tear sheets in notebooks that I have, depicting beautiful, serene gardens, I haven't matched that look on my own property. I fall victim to instant enthusiasm in plants, buying shrubs and flowers that are beautiful, but that I have no place for. So my garden, such as it is, is a hodge-podge.

Am trying to change that this year. Fewer flowers, green shrubs for screens. We will buy an umbrella for our now exposed patio, the porch covering it having been removed in February. The garden redo will be a summer-long process, of course. I shall look at it this way: Excellent cardio opportunity!