Marie Javins's Blog, page 3

Solo Camping

Here’s how the whole tent thing works for me when I’m traveling solo. It's a lot like when I used to travel with Turbo, just he liked doing the work part, which sure made it easier on me.

Tastes Like Chicken

My Lyft driver was from Bangkok, and he told me several complicated stories about camping with spirits, the correct way to get a fortune told, and how snakes taste like chicken. 

Unfortunately, he had the window open while we were driving on the highway, so I missed the specifics.

Packing Up

Tonight I dug out my camping gear and checked out my Death Valley site for this weekend. 

I have to stop at REI to buy gas for my little tiny stove when I get off the plane in Vegas because you can't carry that stuff around airports. 

I surveyed my crap and thought, cool, I've got this, and then I realized...where does one get matches? When was the last time I owned matches?

Alas, No Superbloom

A few months ago, hoping for a superbloom year, I booked a Death Valley campsite for this coming weekend.

No superbloom this year, unfortunately. I think I'll go anyway, assuming my tent is intact when I put it up in my living room and check it out.

My last trip to Death Valley was in...I don't remember! I was on a bicycle and camping trip. But I remember afterwards, I drove to Marina Del Rey ahead of boarding the plane, where I met friends and we went to Aunt Kizzy's Back Porch.

Must have been the late nineties. Maybe.

Edited to add: It was March, 1999.

I'd Buy That

I suppose this will become condos. How much to live in the bell tower?

Baby Mat

I made another baby mat for a colleague’s new baby. This colleague is a yeti-ist. A Bigfoot fan. The bears are just for California.

A Realization

As I contemplate the paths not taken in my life, and follow through scenarios where if I'd only done X, the Y would have been different, it occurs to me that...the multiverse is real and it lives in my brain.

Can't I Just Go Play Today?

As sadness and tragedy accumulate with the passing of years, the best we can hope for sometimes is ambivalence. But more often than not, great sadness coexists with optimism. Potential is so elusive—always slipping away when overwhelmed by the mundane, the routine. What is vision except for that which no one has time to resolve? 

Brought to you by the eternal struggle between the creative and the obligation.

Sunday in Pasadena

Mock Daylight Savings all you want, you philistines. I got out of the house early enough to actually do something today.

Upcoming Holiday

I'm thinking about making this year's vacation a trip to Vanuatu around Memorial Day. I was just reading about the main city when I stumbled over a mention of a local comic book! I got excited and found a reference to the creator in French...and that is where I learned he died in 2020.

Office de Tourisme du Vanuatu
November 16, 2020 (courtesy translation software)

"It is with sadness that we learned over the weekend of the sudden death of Guy Deroin, visual artist/writer/designer/ni-Vanuatu painter 🖌

Better known as 'Guigui', he is the author of the only comic strip in the country 'Mino', available in French. His dream was to create an amusement park for adults and children, with the theme of the cultures of Vanuatu 🇻🇺

Exactly 11 years ago, he allowed Vanuatu to win a world record recorded by Guinness, in the category "How many people can write a story in 24 hours" 🏆

Guy Deroin drew 35 images illustrating the adventures of two children and a giant turtle as they travel the 85 tropical islands of the Vanuatu archipelago 🏝

838 children participated in writing the story based on his drawings, each contributing a sentence 🖊

In 10 hours, school children and a handful of adults broke the previous record (set by 797 Austrians) 👏"