Love

A Glorious Trip–Glitches and All

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One of the few glimpses of the hot air balloon fiesta that we glimpsed!

My husband and I went on a trip this past weekend to Albuquerque NM to see visit the Hot Air Balloon Fiesta. Here’s what went wrong in the first 18 hours or so:

1. We realized that we’d hit a stretch along I-25 in northern New Mexico where there weren’t any gas stations, and our little Honda FIT has only a 10-gallon gas tank. We’d been watching for a gas station but hadn’t seen any for some time. Suddenly we realized that the gas gauge was telling us we were in trouble. Where was the nearest gas station? Turned out it was 21 miles back the way we’d come. How had we missed it? Did we really need

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I Happily Track Down a Literary Memory.

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Helen Hooven Santmyer, paused in writing and looking at the viewerPhoto credit: Charles Steinbrunner/Dayton Newspapers, IncYou may remember that I was reminded of a short story by Eudora Welty while on a hike during Jim’s and my trip to Ouray CO last month.  This is the type of thing that happens to me as a person who has spent her whole life reading: at any time some snatch of words, some character, some situation, will come floating into my mind and I’ll have a hard time not tracking it down.  Now that everything is digitized, I always think that I should be able to find the source with a click of the mouse.  (I also get obsessed and sidetracked by snippets of other types of material, mostly music and movies.  It’s a wonder I ever get anything practical done!  It’s fair to say that I’ve wasted hours of my life on such pursuits.)

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