A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam by Karen Armstrong

Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

This was easily the most difficult poem for all of us to write. We were to creat an illogical world. I don't think any of us created a world that was illogical enough. At any rate. Here's my attempt.

Someday I'll be big enough

"I can't hold this thing up forever," Dad says,
already losing his grip on the moon,
his fingers digging deeper into the dust,
searching for a hold.

"I almost have it," the boy says.
"There it is." The boy grasps a purple plastic case.
The makeup inside rattles,
causing clouds to gather and a thunderstorm to begin to form,
rumbling around his waist.

"What were you doing with your sister's makeup anyway?" the father asks,
gently putting the moon back in place.
He claps his hands and
wipes them on his pants.
The dust falls, filling in a small lake.

"Someday I'll be big enough to touch the moon."
The boy clutches the box to his chest,
hops on a passing cloud and calls,
"Sissy! I found it."
As he rides the cloud
he smells the rain coming,
the smell of clean and dirty mixed together
makes him grin.

His sister appears tiptoeing
along a ridge of mountains.
Her little feet crush aspen and pine,
and send boulders crashing down the slopes.
She snatches a handful of the broken trees and
pops them into her mouth.
The taste of pine and squirrel,
bluebird and spiders,
and a hundred other natural things
tickle her tongue.

"Sorry I lost it," he says.
His sister stops, grins,
takes the box from her brother,
and playfully knocks him off his cloud.

Well, our first week back has been a real kicker. Every time I come back from a trip to Europe, I want to turn around and go straight back. Vacation is such a fun way of life, especially when someone is figuring out all of the details for you. I love seeing places that are older, with a lot more history, heritage, and greenery. I kept feeling on Monday like I should be getting back onto our tour bus to go see more parts of the world. And I kept feeling like so many of the things I do here seem so boring or like a waste of time. Trips like these always make me re-think my priorities and ways of life. I'm still figuring out what things I might want to change. For one, I think I have too many blogs on my reader. It was really great to step away from the internet for a spell. I don't want to rid myself of it completely, but maybe I just don't really need to know about which movies might have scripts being written, or which celebrity wore something ugly, or what so-and-so thought of the most recent episode of The Office.

Monday I ran around doing errands. I went back to exchange some pounds for dollars, which was sad, because the recent bank dealings did not benefit us at all. That's why we actually spent the majority of our money while we were there. I went grocery shopping to stock up on things. I uploaded the last couple days of highlights to Facebook. Did some laundry. I knew it would take too much time to re-cap the trip at work, so I went to the track at five to catch up with Amy and Ruth. So much happened while we were gone, the highlight being that one of our office girls prematurely had her baby. I was so upset that I couldn't be there to visit her in the hospital, but glad that the seven-week-early delivery went well. Tuesday, I did more laundry and worked more on photos, went to the post office to pick up all of our mail, etc., then went off to see Antony and the Johnsons at the Walt Disney Concert Hall with Brendan, which was really nice. I finally went back to work on Wednesday (Ric went straight back on Monday), where I was sure they had pulled a prank on me while I was gone, since I'm always part of the office pranks. Sure enough, when I got there, my office was completely empty, and all of my things had been moved to a tiny student worker cubicle. Cute! Funny thing is that I totally could have worked there with no complaints. Ric and I have spent the last few days trying to catch up with laundry, finances, mail, and more.

This weekend I wanted to have some fun but get some things accomplished. On Friday night, we went out with the Agadonis and their friend Ian to see Appaloosa. On Saturday, I worked on finances and dishes, made a long preparation-time Welsh stew, then went to see The Nightmare Before Christmas at the El Capitan with my sister (sorry folks, it was only playing for 6 days this year, and I didn't have enough time to coordinate an outing). Sunday, we went to church and started something new - we went to regular service, then to an actual Sunday School class, or I think they call those Adult Bible Communities (ABCs) at church. It's for newly married couples. I'm hesitant to get involved but know it's something I should do. I'm really uneasy, especially since my history at this church is long, and there aren't always pleasant memories, and seeing some of these people bring up the past for me. We'll see how it goes. We visited with Liz and Emily, then went to get some gas and lunch at Pick Up Stix, and then home to relax for a bit. Time got away from me for a while there, but I finally started getting productive in the late afternoon, playing for an hour or so on the piano, then painting trim around the upstairs hallway and kitchen for a couple of hours while listening to The Island of Dr. Moreau. Ric and I watched The Simpsons and last week's House together, then called it a night.

Up this week: I still need to put away a lot of laundry. Tonight I'm going to go see our friend's preemie at the NICU, tomorrow's shopping night, Wednesday's movie night with the Aagadonis, Thursday is Ghostbusters on the Fox, and I might be going to Disneyland to see the Halloween decor on Friday. If I can squeeze it in, I really want to catch Journey to the Center of the Earth at the cheap theater.

I'll start things off with the easiest day to recap, especially since all of my photos are on the camera, at home. The first day of our trip involved a lot of travel, albeit easy travel. The only bad thing about seeing the world is that it takes so long to get there. My sister laughed when I told her our flight length, since she's used to visiting her boyfriend in Japan, but to a guy with a short attention span and a girl with an easily-sore body, it was long to us. That being said, things went faster than I thought they would.

We packed up our things, the cat, and the cat's things, and drove over to Ric's parents' house on Thursday afternoon, picking up some drive-thru food on the way. I always think it's funny when we're in the drive thru with a cat in the car. Pip was a little scared, probably because the last time we took him anywhere, it was the vet, and we all know he doesn't like the vet. We let him out at the in-laws' place and said our goodbyes, transferred our luggage to the FIL's car, and all of us took off for LAX and got there in good time.

I always talk to Amy about how much I love changes in technology and how they make our lives easier, especially when it involves less face-to-face action with service people. I love etickets. I had a printed barcode that I scanned, we confirmed our info, and we even scanned our passports. We dropped off our checked luggage without having to scan it, went through the shortest LAX scanning line I've ever seen for our carry-ons without getting stopped for anything, and made our way to our gate with waaay too much time to spare. I listened to the Immortal Beloved soundtrack while reading some of Atlas Shrugged, then switched gears when a funny little situation involving a lawyer sitting near us and an older lady who wanted to pay him to use his laptop to find herself a flight from London to Rome. That kept me entertained until it was time to board.

We were flying American for the first time. I have to say I wasn't very impressed in almost every aspect. The security and airport information given to us was above average, but for everything else, it seemed to be lacking. We had very small leg space, only one bathroom for each side of the plane, some pretty scary food (which meant I gave all rolls and plain items to Ric) that left both of us hungry, and the entertainment selection was slim. In fact, unlike other flights where users can choose movies on-demand, we had to wait until the next start time of each selection. It wasn't a long wait, but it was annoying. I watched Baby Mama and August Rush, as well as a couple of episodes of The Office, which weren't new. I think if JetBlue can offer its passengers live television, then all others should follow suit. The really annoying thing was that first class and business had about five times the amount of choice in movies. We were only left with only a few movies in each genre. I'm not going to pay several hundred more dollars just for a few movies. If they're available to one class, they should be available to all. Anyway, after a bunch of watching, I just went to sleep. We left at 6pm our time and landed at 12:25 the next afternoon in London, after about 10.5 hours. It was a short distance to baggage, and we went quickly through an almost deserted passport station and didn't have to do any customs.

When we came out to the gate, our travel representative wasn't there. We waited around for about 15 minutes and finally found her, and she showed us to the area where we would wait for our shuttle. About 25 minutes later, we took off from Heathrow in a minivan towards London. We drove past a lot of industrial areas, then some trees, and into the city. We dropped off other passengers in Chelsea, so we were able to see where the stadium was there, then drove through Kensington and Camden, and made it to Islington, where our hotel was. We checked in and made it to our room, where we couldn't figure out how to turn on the lights for a few minutes. As it turns out, all of the hotels over there have you check your room card into a slot for the electricity to be activated. If you take out the key, everything turns off. I liked this feature, because it ensured we never lost our keys.

We received a letter from our touring company that told us our wake up call would be at 5:15am. What the? I thought this was supposed to be a vacation! Haha. We had to make a big mental shift for the trip, since most of our wakeup calls were 1-2 hours earlier than I usually get up for work. Since we were tired (Ric doesn't sleep well on planes, and every time he shifted around on the plane, he woke me up), we decided to get food and call it a night. We probably had dinner around five in the evening, at the hotel pub, which was made up to look more like a regular pub inside. We both had fish and chips, and I think they were the best ones we had on the whole trip.

We headed up to our room to get ready for the next day. I probably spent a good while shifting things back and forth between my suitcase and carry-on, since I would have to bring the carry-on onto the bus with me and didn't want it to be too heavy. After a good shower (wow, the water pressure in all our hotels was so great!), I got ready and went to sleep. Ric and I probably woke up ten times throughout the night, thinking it was time to get up, especially since we went to bed so early.