Travel Tips

Twenty-five songs I would gladly preserve from global disaster (limiting myself to bands whose music I've never bought):

1. "Forever (Live and Die)", OMD
2. "Birds Fly (Whisper to a Scream)", Icicle Works
3. "Save My Life (There's Never Been Any Reason)", Head East
4. "Closer to Fine," Indigo Girls
5. "Barracuda," Heart
6. "Hero," Foo Fighters
7. "Epic," Faith No More
8. "The Rose," Bette Midler
9. "Personal Jesus," Depeche Mode
10. "Words," Missing Persons
11. "Standing Outside a Broken Phonebooth," Primitive Radio Gods
12. "As I Lay Me Down," Sophie B. Hawkins
13. "Everybody Wants to Rule the World," Tears for Fears
14. "Tear Down the Walls," The Firm
15. "Africa," Toto
16. "Heart and Soul," T'Pau
17. "The Living Years," Mike and the Mechanics
18. "For You," Manfred Mann
19. "Angel Eyes," Jeff Healy Band
20. "Wishes," Jon Butcher
21. "Meant to Live," Switchfoot
22. "The Reason," Hoobastank
23. "Fly Me Courageous," Drivin 'N' Cryin
24. "What a Fool Believes," Doobie Brothers
25. "Got Me Wrong," Alice in Chains

Twenty-Five of My Favorite Movies (no particular order):
1. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
2. Platoon (1986)
3. The Day of the Jackal (1975)
4. Casablanca (1943)
5. It Happened One Night (1934)
6. Twelve O'Clock High (1948)
7. Scaramouche (1952)
8. Deep Impact (1998)
9. The Apartment (1960)
10. Three Days of the Condor (1975)
11. Ordinary People (1980)
12. Breaking Away (1979)
13. Rounders (2000)
14. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
15. Superman (1978)
16. The Man from Snowy River (1982)
17. As Good As It Gets (1998)
18. Titanic (1998)
19. The Edge (1999)
20. JFK (1991)
21. St Elmo's Fire (1985)
22. Singin' in the Rain (1951)
23. Mission Impossible (1996)
24. The Professional (1997)
25. The Incredibles (2004)

Ten All-Time Favorite Songs (considered over my lifetime without duplicating bands):
1. "Baba O'Reilly," The Who (carried me through high school)
2. "I Melt With You," Modern English (reminds me of the best times during high school)
3. "Thunder Road," Bruce Springsteen (the best high school anthem ever written)
4. "Spoonman," Soundgarden (my favorite heavy rocker)
5. "Fool in the Rain," Led Zeppelin (my favorite from my all-time favorite band)
6. "There's Never Been Any Reason," Head East (I sing this all the time. . .)
7. "No One is to Blame," Howard Jones (carries me straight back to college)
8. "Everybody Wants to Rule the World," Tears for Fears (also takes me back to college)
9. "Walk This Way," Aerosmith (my second favorite band)
10. "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," The Tokens (the only listing with 35+ years of personal satisfaction)

5 Products I Dearly Love
(Some people might find this brief list silly, but I figure I'll be a pioneer -- again -- and the list itself is telling. . .)
1. Coca-Cola Classic (I don't drink Coke every day or every week, but I was furious when it briefly departed this earth in the mid-1980s)
2. Lea & Perrin Worcestershire Sauce (I can almost drink from the bottle itself with certain meals, interchangeably with my other drink)
3. Rice-a-Roni Noodles Romanoff (discontinued. . .my support group meets for this through 2011)
4. Velveeta (I use this with my homemade macaroni a lot, but I've also eaten loaves of it alone as a meal, sometimes at home, sometimes when traveling)
5. Microsoft Digital Suite & HP Image Zone (software packages that let me see thumbnails of an entire photo shoot at a glance)

VTer's I've met:
herzog63 (Scott)
kaloz (Nick)
zrim (Phil)
extremist (Patty)

Some 35-and-older VTers I'd like to use in my professional photo website gallery:

YolandaC (TJ) - great smile, beaming eyes & wonderful hair
Tina-Perth (Tina) - classic beauty in every sense
Quero (Marcia) - classic beauty in every sense
Tulin (Tulin) - a lot of punch in a little package
CoAir13 (Jen) - the best and brightest smile on VT
RoxanneCA (Roxanne) - the biggest smile on VT and voluptuous in every sense. . .
annk (Ann) - who thinks she doesn't and won't photograph well
Yaqui (Dee) - who has implicitly promised a shoot whenever she reaches this spot on the continent
Minashka (Minai) -- not yet even 30 years of age, but huge smile

In NYC this March, I quietly craved photographing two distinct groups of people: the black guys in business suits with their hair braided down to their waists, and the Asian women with their moody eyes and pouty lips (both absent classes from my website gallery). Of late I've been snapping as many elegant-fashion shots as I can before the winter rudely greets us.

I absolute love the technologies available to the average household. With our 4-year-old we've made home movies since she was five days old. These are now on DVD. Same with my trips. I cover my travels in three ways (while traveling): audio recording, still photos and motion pictures (VHS-c). The audio records notes for later conversion into written text, a personal account of the trip. I used to use a clipart CD to add "suitable" pictures when printing these accounts -- now I print my own photos directly into the text in razor-sharp laser quality. My analog cassette recordings are converted using my boombox into MP3 files up to 32MB in size (digital recorders at present do not hold the capacities of my 110-minute cassettes). The print-film pictures used to be painstakingly scanned before being tucked into albums (now the digital camera does roughly the same thing for me). The analog movies are burned onto DVD (I know there are digital recorders out there but I worry about newer replacing technologies). As you can see I'm playing with my color printer for CD and DVD labels.

I am such a huge fan of how much can be stored on a computer CD for so little a price. Everything I've ever written will fit onto one CD. All the notes for my longest trips (MP3 files) will fit onto one CD. A single laser disk has almost the storage capacity of my first computer's hard drive. The one problem with all this is that technologies change so quickly, I just hope that the choices I've made today will be usable without conversion down the road, or that the files I presently have will translate simply onto new media, getting more data and files onto one chip or disk at even greater savings to my wallet.

I like to use the Internet to research and buy out-of-print books. After reading Macaulay's "History of England" (an Internet purchase of an out-of-print turn-of-the-century set from A. L. Burt Publishers that has "From Father to Charles, Xmas 1910" inscribed on each front cover), I bought Henry Hallam's "Constitutional History of England" online, a $25 3-volume set printed in 1861 (with perhaps the original owner's name penciled on the inside cover). These are my oldest books to date.

On days when my wife and I are home together, I do the cooking and the dishes. My wife is very religious about doing the laundry (new loads every day, which requires constant folding. . .a chore I can't stand). My wife essentially cooks one meal (by this I mean something that requires preparation and tending, rather than something you merely stick in the oven). . .I cook a variety of things but I don't like to spend all evening over the stove, so I try to confine myself to a single hour or less. She doesn't set the table beforehand (I do that, regardless of who's cooking) and then I clean up the dishes (regardless of who's cooking).

On an ideal day, I will get 7 hours of hard sleep and then launch into my day. For her, 12 hours of hard sleep is perfect.

For me, a quick shower is five minutes long. For her, a quick shower takes 40 minutes. A long, soothing shower for me takes about 7 minutes. A soothing shower/bath for her is 1.5 to 2 hours.

For me when I'm running late, I scramble as if the house is on fire. When she's running late (which is often), she smoothly goes through the paces as if time is no factor. Thanks to her (dear lady!), we were even 20 minutes late to our own baby shower some years ago. . .her family is bad in this way. . . I firmly believe they would all be late to their own funerals. . .

For me, a good week involves having hours to play with my daughter, getting some reading done, having a photography shoot, and getting the bills paid. For her, a good week involves playing with our daughter, visiting extensively with her mother in person and her siblings over the phone, buying new outfits, and getting the laundry done.

My wife has bad allergies, has trouble breathing a lot, has trouble hearing (from blocked tubes) and is violently addicted to "Lost" and "Survivor." In the past 15 years I have only religiously watched "L.A. Law" (followed to the end), "ER" (followed until it became a soap opera), and "NYPD Blue" (followed to the end). When I am watching TV and violence erupts, my wife suggests changing channels so our young daughter doesn't see. I say "okay" without argument. When the tables are turned, she angrily marches off to the other room to continue watching (which is fine) but she doesn't think to change channels herself when violence, bad language or adult situations occur. She plays the television loud so she can hear, which sends me off to other rooms so I can concentrate on something other than the program.

When my daughter doesn't want me to join her I read where I can. The last ten books I've read are (most recent first):

"All the Centurions," (2004) by Robert Leuci, ex-NYPD police office, the Prince of the City
"The Guns of August," (1961) by Barbara Tuchman
"Cosa Nostra," (2004) by John Dickie
"Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center," (2004) by Daniel Okrent
"Treachery," by Bill Gertz (2004), on illegal arms proliferation by our allies
"Generation Kill," by Evan Wright (2004), on the Second Gulf War
"The Stilwell Papers," by General Joseph Stilwell, Burma-China theater commander in WWII
"A Charge to Keep," by George W. Bush (1999), current U.S. President
"With Kennedy," by Pierre Salinger (1966), JFK's press secretary
"Memoirs of the Pentagon Papers," by Daniel Ellsberg (2001), a CIA analyst

Favorite song I can't get enough of: "In the Meantime," by Spacehog
Favorite dish I can't get enough of: chicken milano (w/Italian green beans and spicy diced tomatoes) with a side dish of tortellini with spinach
Favorite image filters: soft glow, charcoal sketch and watercolor
Favorite states: Wyoming, Colorado, Alaska, Virginia, Montana and New York
Favorite sound: my daughter laughing