Puppy again

And here he is at 4 weeks and 5 days old.

Puppy

I am going to get a puppy if it lives. Dawn's dog had 7 big puppies but nobody knows who the daddy is. I have mine picked out and I'm thinking of calling him Skipper or Biscuit. He's blond and surfer-looking. I hope he doesn't get something bad and die before he gets big enough for me to take. Jade took this picture of him on September 16. He was born on August 21, so he was 3 weeks and 5 days old here. He seems to be getting blonder over time. He was much darker when I first saw him (about a week after he was born).

Emily Lau with Istanpitta

This little clip lets you hear Emily Lau singing. Her voice was so beautiful. And I loved the vielle (the medieval violin) that Shula is playing. It sounds so much nicer than a modern violin. She said that's because the back is flat so it isn't as shrill.
I had dinner with Emily and Shula and Al last night, and I enjoyed talking to them so much, but I sort of feel like they think I'm retarded. Anyway, the video is not as good as they were in life.

More Geocahing with Al

So, Al had a phone with a GPS and we set off looking for the cache. It was supposed to be in an ammo box, somewhere near the ruins of an old house. We found the ruins and then Al triangulated an area with his phone so we just walked around and looked. I found it! Yay me! It was hidden pretty well, in a hole and covered with leaves and sticks. It must be all my woodsy skills that enabled me to penetrate the disguise and find the thing. Since you are supposed to leave something, and we weren't really prepared, Al left an Istanpitta card and I left a picture of Sayed :)
It was totally fun to find the cache. It had a lot of weird things in it: a little kaleidoscope, a few tiny rubber animals, a small robber statue, a couple of pens, and just random small things. But it is SO COOL to find buried treasure! I might be addicted, except I don't have a GPS cell phone.

Geocaching with Al

Al came to Atlanta because his band Istanpitta was playing at a church downtown on Sunday, so I met up with him on Saturday to hang out. We went to Sweetwater State Park to hike around and that's when Al hipped me to this wonderful thing called geocaching! It's apparently very popular - so how have I not heard of it before?!?!?! Anyway, people hide random things in weatherproof boxes in the woods and in other public places and put the coordinates online so if you have a GPS phone, you can track them down. And when you find a cache, you open it and sign the list. Some of them you can take from and some of them you are supposed to add to. I found this one!

Masked Children

These kids were re-enacting something in the town square one day last week. I always walk through the square on my way home and usually something is going on. That day there were a lot of kids in various kinds of costumes.
I had my hands full of heavy sacks of groceries so I only stopped long enough to get these 2 pictures. I kinda wish I'd gone back for more photos. There were kids dressed in what looked like pirate costumes, too. But I think they might have been Benito Juarez.
The people here sure know how to make good use of their public spaces. They never do anything this cool at home and here it's commonplace.
I wish Tuxtepec would spiff up their big band and play concerts in the bandstand :) Maybe that's asking a little too much though.

Monkeys

I saw a few articles this morning about this monkey (a crested black macaque) and some of it's buddies grabbing a dude's camera and taking pictures of themselves. The pictures are darlin' and I wanted to save this one because it's so damn cute!

Rock Stars

So, I don't have any actual photos of ME with Ruben, the lead singer of Cafe Tacuba. But I did meet him several times and hang out with him. I have been to his house many times and we even participated in a group therapy session together one afternoon (family constellations - interesting but with an evil, patriarchal perspective). I didn't know he was so bloody famous when I met him and he was actually more interested in my work in Egypt and what I knew about the revolution that I was in his work. Then I found out how bloody famous he is. Incredible.
Still, I never got up the nerve after finding out how famous he was to ask him for a photo of us. So I can't prove that he's one of my homies. However, I did manage to steal this picture of Ruben with his wife and kids picnicking with some of my friends. Is this proof enough of the exalted circles in which I roll?

Vote for Isis - Win some whiskey!

I didn't win the liquor. But I thought this was about the coolest illegal maneuver anybody could pull at a popularity contest voting booth. As you came into the Chico y Chica UNPA finale dance venue, you had to put your ticket into one of these receptacles to vote for your favorite. One of the contestants, Isis, had a crony holding this sign: After you vote for Isis, Ariadna will give you a ticket for the whiskey raffle!
Of course you must know how I voted...

Dancers

Little Dancers.
In the main plaza in Tuxtepec there is a stage. And a bandstand. But the stage is where they mount public productions on the weekends. They have a lot of events: music, fashion shows, speeches, and traditional dance. I was coming home one day and passed this group of kids. They were a little shakey in their performance. Like kids do, they stood around some and stared at each other when they got lost. But they were all right. I figure they'll improve and end up being quite good at it.

Firulaiza

I found my next dog. Or she found me. Her name is Firulaiza, a word that in Spanish in Mexico means Stray. It sounds like Fertilizer to me, so I'm trying to figure out what to call her. I think I'll just call her Liza.
She lives at Mariana's house right now in Tepoztlan, but I will get her in July and make her into a Gringa. If she survives that long. She walks in the street some.
She reminds me a lot of Sunny.
I loved her at first sight.

Giza with Sayed

We went to Giza to the pyramids!!!! It was Sayed's first trip there but it was my 4th so I felt like an expert :) But we did go into the burial chamber of the Khafra pyramid - something I had never dared to do before. We wanted to go into the Khufu pyramid but they ran out of tickets while we were waiting in line.
But the BEST part about this trip to the pyramids was that we had out marriage papers and I got to pay the EGYPTIAN price to get in. It rocked my world. 5EGP instead of 60EGP.

More pictures of Sayed

Sayed had never really been to Cairo. Well, he did go once, 15 years ago. He hadn't been back since. But when he came with me he quickly became an expert. He had the metro system memorized after the first ride and now he advises people in his village about how to get to places in Cairo :)
Here we are on one of the bridges over the Nile. At a restaurant on a rooftop at the King Hotel in Dokki, and here is Sayed in our cheap but pretty hotel with a view of the museum behind the square.

I'm such a slacker

I can't believe I haven't updated this in FOREVER! I spent this past summer in Egypt, working at the Museum and hanging with Sayed. I took him to Alexandria where he walked in the sea for the first time ever in his life and he ate seafood for the first time ever. We couldn't stay in the same hotel room because the marriage papers we got in Aswan at the lawyer's office weren't legal. But it was so cool showing him Alexandria! We went to the library there :)

Funnies

My friend Laura did this and it totally cracks me up. I love the Thoth character.

Talkin to Sayed

So how sweet is this, Sayed goes into Aswan to use the internet cafes to talk to me. This morning he surprised me because I thought he would wait till Friday. It was really cool to have morning coffee with him. He's really the best. And I'm not biased at all, no.
In other news I will not be able to drink green beer for St. Patrick's Day because of thesis work. I have not been posting because of thesis work. I have not been doing anything because of thesis work. Why, again, did I put myself through this?!?!?! I don't know. But I must get back to work.

Valentine's Day picture 2010

Me and Sayed at the High Dam at Aswan. Nice.
Technically this picture was taken on about the 2nd of January 2010. But I'm using it for my Valetines Day picture. Because Sayed is my sweetheart.

My man Sayed

I know this is out of chronological order and all, but I was just feeling happy about my sweet-heart and wanted to post his picture. Probably it's all the romance associated with Hathor :)
This is my felucca captain, Sayed, who has my heart with him in Aswan.

Dendara set 3

Nut on the ceiling.
Pronounced Noot like toot, not "nut" like Tut.
She is the sky goddess, sister of Geb the earth god.Born from air and moisture (daughter of Shu the air god and Tefnut the moister goddess).
The sky goddess was all over the ceilings of this place. Beautiful.
But it was very hard to get a picture of it because it is very big and you can't get further away than the floor. My camera doesn't have a wide-angle setting, so I could only get one section of Nut's body at a time.
I walked to the roof before my little group and when I got there I was the only one there so I walked through a rope barrier and tried to climb up onto the very top. But of course a guard saw me and yelled at me so I had to come back down.
But I made him take cool pictures of me on the roof. And he didn't even get me with my eyes closed. Maybe I should've traded AJ for him?
I could have stayed here all day I think.
I added the paranormal label to these pictures because there is something really divine about this place.