5 posts tagged “the traveler”
This post could be titled “Good Son/Bad Son”. Good Son because I drove to Houston and back twice so my Mom could spend Thanksgiving with me. Bad Son because I’m totally about to make fun of her.
“Black Friday” was originally so named because of the heavy traffic on that day, although most contemporary uses of the term refer instead to it as the beginning of the period in which retailers are in the black (i.e., turning a profit)
On that very day I was taking my Mom downtown to do touristy stuff (like see the Alamo, tour the Riverwalk, all the things I don’t do now that I live here), and one of the best places to park is the mall parking garage downtown.
I mentioned this and immediately retorted, “Ooh, wait. We can’t park there, it’s Black Friday. Going to be a madhouse at the mall.” (Luckily, nobody seems to like that mall so it was quite empty with plenty of parking.)
My mom, confused look on her face, says, “What does that mean?”
“Black Friday, ya know.” I respond, thinking she would understand the term by me simply repeating it. Why doesn’t that ever seem to work?
Pause, looking sheepish, almost whispering. “… is that when all the Black people come out?”
I laughed for a good minute before replying, “Yes Mom, that’s the one day they come out of their houses, but if they see their shadow they go back indoors for another 6 weeks.”
“Oh shut up,” was her only response. I <3 my Mom. XD
I’ve been quite the shutter bug since I finally got around to buying myself a digital camera again after I lost the last one in California. I try to find any opportunity to take photos now just to fulfill the secret desire to be a decent photographer.
I switched from Flickr to Picasa Web Albums a few months back (which I recommend everyone do, they offer 2gb of photo space and unlimited albums without the 200-picture restriction Flickr has), and I’ve gotten quite the collection built up.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here’s five thousand of my recent words:
Brackenridge Park is right across the street from my apartments, and I finally remembered to take my camera with me on a few trips to the park. This was from a rose bush right outside one of the main entrances. The light was just right in that part of the day that it made the whole picture glow.
I’m off to Houston for the next four days to help spend my friend and sometimes-very-rarely-contributing editor Smokin’s 30th birthday!
No Flashback Friday this week, but normal schedule will resume next Monday.
Have a great week, and a great weekend!
I wanted to do something special for my thirtieth birthday this year, which is no small feat in itself as my luck with planning birthday parties has always gone awry in some fashion.
It was also that much more difficult that I now have two cities that I call home: the current home of San Antonio, and my home town of Houston. It appears that I may also be turning Austin into my “weekend home” as of lately, but that’s a whole other story.
Despite all odds against us–and that includes some of the worst weather in Texas in the past twenty years–fate and good fortune were to shine upon us that day.
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I finally decided to update my deviantArt gallery a little with some of the nicer photos I took from last years trip around the country.
Here’s a few samples of what I added:
Sunset in Nevada by ~onefryshort on deviantART
And:
The Salt Flats in Utah by ~onefryshort on deviantART
And of course:
Mr. Haggis Goes to Washington by ~onefryshort on deviantART
Click on any to navigate to the full size version of the photo, or click here to visit my deviantArt gallery.
