Home from Tucson

I am home today from my week in Tucson. Had a great time taking a 3 day precious metal clay workshop taught by Kate McKinnon, making some new friends and spending time with some old friends. A few of us stayed on a couple of extra days, so we had a chance to see a bit more of the city and the local flora and fauna and it was all wonderful.

I don't really know where to begin to tell you of our adventures. I think that is more a function of the fact that I've been travelling all day and my brain is a little weary by now, it certainly isn't due to a lack of subject matter. But it has been a bit of a long day. You can't fly to Tucson directly from Toronto, you have to take at least two planes (and if you're really unlucky, three!) and fly through either Chicago, Phoenix, Denver or Dallas - unless your flight is cancelled like my friend Heather's was on the way down and then you can go through somewhere even more obscure, like San Francisco! When I flew down, I went by way of Chicago and coming home today, I went through Dallas.

Now that I am home, I have 363 photos to sort through and a bunch of laundry to do but other than that, no major deadlines looming and that feels pretty good. You know how it is when you are going away, there is always so much to be done to get ready and make sure everything is taken care of while you're gone. Strangely enough, now that I am back, my calendar is clear for a couple of days and there isn't really anything on my "to do" list, and that's a good thing. I can ease gently back into my regular day-to-day life.

I am very much a fan of travelling, seeing new places, meeting new people, catching up with old friends but it's true what they say, it's always nice to come home. I was realizing today that a very big part of home for me is having my cat Max with me. Boy, did I miss him this past week! He seems to have missed me too. He hasn't left my side since I got home tonight and I'm glad to have him there, purring away. As long as he doesn't find out that I slept with another cat while I was away, all will be okay.

Stay tuned for photos and stories from my adventures but in the meantime, here are a few photos from my travels today. I took these shots from the plane on the flight from Dallas to Toronto. The shot above is clouds over ... Oklahoma, I think, or possibly Indiana. But before we left Texas, we were clearly nowhere near the Bermuda Triangle but we did fly over this configuration and lived to tell the tale:


This last shot is as we were coming down into Toronto. I like the blurry effect and the way you can make a clear distinction between northbound and southbound traffic by the colour of the lights. Who knew traffic congestion could be so pretty?!