Memories of Yellowstone

JWise Photo of the Day

Cattail from Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

It turns out a particular temperature and humidity awakens cattails to open up in an explosion of fluff. Today, it hit those perfect conditions. We’d had this cattail on a bookshelf since our second visit to Yellowstone a couple of years ago with Jutta, and seeing it was dried out and maintaining the state of looking like a regular old cattail, we never considered that this could happen. When it does finally send off its dormant seeds in waiting, the ensuing mess nearly creates panic to get it out of where it is because the fluff floats around effortlessly on its trek to go everywhere.

Navaratri – Garba

JWise Photo of the Day

Part of the celebration of the Hindu Festival of Navaratri is this Gujarati dance called Garba

This was the first year we attended a Garba celebrating the Hindu festival of Navaratri. Garba is a Gujarati dance held in the first part of the evening, while Dandiya, which involves dancing with two bamboo or wooden sticks that are clicked together with the sticks of the person in front of you, is held later in the evening. During a break in the five-hour dance, a small meal and chai are served. Live music accompanies the dance held at a local high school gym each October.

Sonal Patel at Garba

We’d been invited to the festivities by Sonal Patel (on the left), who we’d recently met after she took over a local Indian grocery store called Indo Euro that we’d been shopping at for the past couple of years.

Home

JWise Photo of the Day

At home in Scottsdale, Arizona

We are considering putting our place up for sale. With all the traveling we’ve been doing and the money we could save without HOA fees and a mortgage, we would have more disposable income for getting out on life’s greater adventures.

At home in Scottsdale, Arizona

While it’s nice to have the extra space and spread out our junk so we are not so cluttered, it turns out that we spend most of our time in our small shared office and the bedroom. We rarely use the kitchen; the second bedroom is closed off with the A/C vent shut to save on electricity. We have a two-car garage, a dining room we’ve used half a dozen times, and a living room we’ve visited when others come by.

At home in Scottsdale, Arizona

While having spaces open that can accept decorations like our terrifically colorful placemats is fun, they end up collecting dust and require more of our time to be spent cleaning. Since this conversation began this summer and is continuing now, I think it’s only a matter of days or weeks until we put it on the market.

Murphy the Cat

Murphy doesn’t seem to have an opinion one way or the other as to whether we move, though I can be assured that on moving day, she’ll freak out and, for the following days, will be crying enough to let us know how much she misses her old familiar haunt.