2009 Arizona Vacation
Mar. 17th, 2009 06:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aearwenWell, I'm back... (to coin a phrase...)
I left on the 8th for a 10-day vacation visiting my brother in Scottsdale, Arizona. Both the drive over and the drive back took almost exactly 9 hours to complete (and both times include about a total of 1/2 hour for gassing up and buying drinks/munchies.) For those familiar with the California and Arizona highway systems, our route took us from home (less than a mile off the US 101) to Scottsdale (lower eastern corner) via US 10 and then local freeway loops once in the Valley of the Sun. And yes, we have to drive through Los Angeles (our route takes us right downtown, as a matter of fact.) Gods but I hate LA!!! It is a three-hour-long roller-coaster ride in the middle of the trip that I would gladly do without, but driving around it (and even then, one doesn't entirely avoid the metro area at all!) would take even longer.
Monday to Thursday, our schedule was to do shopping/sight-seeing in the late morning, early afternoon hours, and then veg out and yakk with my brother and his wife late afternoon and evening. In the middle of everything, my brother's computer's hard drive crashed and burned hard, taking all his date irretrievably with it - and so my daughter (who, for the sake of this account, I shall call "Súl" which is Elvish for "Wind" [and those who know her name will appreciate that]) and I spent most of the day Friday installing a new hard drive and rebuilding his system to the extent that we could. At least, when we left, he had a functional computer - it's up to him to figure out where he has his most recent backups stored, if anywhere.
Friday night, we attended a concert at a Phoenix church, where we heard a consort of instrumentalists from the Phoenix Symphony and two soloists from the Phoenix Chorale perform the Dialogue Cantatas by JS Bach - as well as an orchestral suite. The accoustics in the church were such that the 8 instrumentalists sounded like a small orchestra - and their performance was spectacular!
Saturday - all day - we spent at the AZ Rennaisance Faire, located between Apache Junction and Globe (about 50 miles from Scottsdale.) The shows we saw were all great - "3 Men and a Bunch of Drums" was a riot - and Súl and I are fond of it because we both once played Japanese taiko and like percussion a lot. We caught 4 comedy shows: "The Ded Bob Show" (a real wise-ass puppet which is a skeleton), "Hey Nunnie Nunnie" (a gentle poke in the ribs at religion - in mostly good taste - and of which we saw 2 shows, each slightly different), and "The Tortuga Twins" (who were outrageous and raunchy and utterly hilarious.) But the show that was the most memorable was "Cast In Bronze", which was a short concert given by an artist on a carillon (a set of tuned bells, the like of which are normally found in church/university bell towers) accompanied by background music of orchestra and percussion. Like the first time I ever heard taiko in person, the bells do more than just ring a tone, you feel them in your chest as much as your head. Both Súl and I were moved to tears - and we of course made a point to buy CD and DVD (and definitely plan to listen to him next year!!)
Sunday we spent with one of Súl's highschool friends who had moved to Tucson, who came up since we came over. We spent part of the afternoon at the Scottsdale Railway Park having fun with new-ish babies and just enjoying the pretty day.
And yesterday was, for me, a lost day. I slept - a lot - I had to rest up from all that running around over the weekend.
So there you are. My vacation in a nutshell. I get one week a year to put it all behind me - and this year, I had a blast. Now, to get back to work...
I left on the 8th for a 10-day vacation visiting my brother in Scottsdale, Arizona. Both the drive over and the drive back took almost exactly 9 hours to complete (and both times include about a total of 1/2 hour for gassing up and buying drinks/munchies.) For those familiar with the California and Arizona highway systems, our route took us from home (less than a mile off the US 101) to Scottsdale (lower eastern corner) via US 10 and then local freeway loops once in the Valley of the Sun. And yes, we have to drive through Los Angeles (our route takes us right downtown, as a matter of fact.) Gods but I hate LA!!! It is a three-hour-long roller-coaster ride in the middle of the trip that I would gladly do without, but driving around it (and even then, one doesn't entirely avoid the metro area at all!) would take even longer.
Monday to Thursday, our schedule was to do shopping/sight-seeing in the late morning, early afternoon hours, and then veg out and yakk with my brother and his wife late afternoon and evening. In the middle of everything, my brother's computer's hard drive crashed and burned hard, taking all his date irretrievably with it - and so my daughter (who, for the sake of this account, I shall call "Súl" which is Elvish for "Wind" [and those who know her name will appreciate that]) and I spent most of the day Friday installing a new hard drive and rebuilding his system to the extent that we could. At least, when we left, he had a functional computer - it's up to him to figure out where he has his most recent backups stored, if anywhere.
Friday night, we attended a concert at a Phoenix church, where we heard a consort of instrumentalists from the Phoenix Symphony and two soloists from the Phoenix Chorale perform the Dialogue Cantatas by JS Bach - as well as an orchestral suite. The accoustics in the church were such that the 8 instrumentalists sounded like a small orchestra - and their performance was spectacular!
Saturday - all day - we spent at the AZ Rennaisance Faire, located between Apache Junction and Globe (about 50 miles from Scottsdale.) The shows we saw were all great - "3 Men and a Bunch of Drums" was a riot - and Súl and I are fond of it because we both once played Japanese taiko and like percussion a lot. We caught 4 comedy shows: "The Ded Bob Show" (a real wise-ass puppet which is a skeleton), "Hey Nunnie Nunnie" (a gentle poke in the ribs at religion - in mostly good taste - and of which we saw 2 shows, each slightly different), and "The Tortuga Twins" (who were outrageous and raunchy and utterly hilarious.) But the show that was the most memorable was "Cast In Bronze", which was a short concert given by an artist on a carillon (a set of tuned bells, the like of which are normally found in church/university bell towers) accompanied by background music of orchestra and percussion. Like the first time I ever heard taiko in person, the bells do more than just ring a tone, you feel them in your chest as much as your head. Both Súl and I were moved to tears - and we of course made a point to buy CD and DVD (and definitely plan to listen to him next year!!)
Sunday we spent with one of Súl's highschool friends who had moved to Tucson, who came up since we came over. We spent part of the afternoon at the Scottsdale Railway Park having fun with new-ish babies and just enjoying the pretty day.
And yesterday was, for me, a lost day. I slept - a lot - I had to rest up from all that running around over the weekend.
So there you are. My vacation in a nutshell. I get one week a year to put it all behind me - and this year, I had a blast. Now, to get back to work...
