The Duke City

Albuquerque has been nicknamed "Duke City" because one of the old Spanish governors named the city "Albuquerque" after a Spanish Duke.

Kim and I just returned from a trip to Duke City to visit our son, Ryan and his wife, Amy. They moved out there a couple of months ago to help some college theater friends renovate and open a theater. Not the movie type, but a live theater with all it takes to put on a play to entertain the people of Albuquerque. We thought it was quite a risky undertaking at first, but having seen their building and heard about all of their plans, I'm excited too. I can't wait to return to see the finished product. For the before pictures, click on my Flickr link from this page.

While Ryan and Amy went to work to earn a living, Kim and I took a look around the dry, hot land outside of the main city. The mountains are filled with ancient markings of people that inhabited Albuquerque long before any Duke ever lived. We walked around ancient petroglyphs in Boca Negra Canyon. That's where I am in the picture posted here. We took several pictures of the drawings as we thought about the people that once lived there and etched their bit of history on the boulders so we could find them today.

While driving back to Texas, we came to Malpais Valley where lava once spewed out of volcanic vents in the earth thousands of years ago. The black oozing stretched over 17 miles. It was most evident that the flowing of hot sticky lava onto a valley floor would forever showcase this bit of history for all to see and learn. I thought this was an extraordinary piece of earth to view.

New Mexico certainly has a lot to teach us about our country's history. Home one day to repack, we will journey to places that will teach us about a different time more closely related to our own. Friday we leave to see New York, Connecticut, and a bit of Massachusetts.

Check back next week when I hope to blog about the last excursion of our summer vacation.

Wireless Internet

This summer has afforded me the opportunity for much travel. I went to Michigan for two weeks and did not take my laptop. I tried to use my sons' dial up service on his computer, but had much better success when he and I took his laptop to a coffee shop with wireless internet service. Then, Kim came up during week two of my visit with his laptop, we could visit the local coffee shop and check email through "wireless internet".

For the past 3 days I have been visiting my cousin who lives in Ft. Worth. Her fairly new neighborhood does not have cable and they do not have wireless internet, so they only have the dial up internet service. While I had my laptop with me, I could not log onto their system because I did not have a phone number at my access. However, while trying to figure out the system, I noticed that I had an internet connection and it was not from my cousin's connection. I was picking up on someone's wireless internet in the neighborhood. Wow! Remarkable! I began to whisper, "I have a connection on your Neighbor A's wireless internet." I was afraid that the internet cops were listening in and I'd be caught. Actually, there were two wireless connections in the neighborhood. Neighbor B was a bit smarter and had a blocker with a password. So, no connection with him. Neighbor A became my secret friend with whom I "shared" his connection. I was most appreciative of his generosity.

At the present I am sitting in the Midland Community Theater backstage area where they have...you guessed it...wireless internet. I had resigned myself to just sitting in the lobby of this theater while Kim attended a board meeting of the Texas Non-profit Theater group of which we are members. I came in armed with my laptop and a book to read in case access to wireless was not available. Upon arriving in the building, I was summoned to the board meeting room by Kim where there were refreshments. After I settled in my chair preparing to either type a story using my laptop or read my book, Kim asked if this school had a wireless connection. A person said they did and kindly escorted me to this (very cold, brrr!!) room where I am happily typing this post and checking email.

I just love this connection to my world of internet friends and websites. It is a miracle that, with my technical ignorance, I am previledged to access this cyberworld almost anywhere.

So, who do I thank for this technilogical gift? Bill Gates? I don't know. But for now I want to thank my husband, Kim, for introducing me to computers and the WWW and also to my dear brother in law for passing this exceptional Apple laptop on to me. This is the best toy with which I have ever had to play and work.

Changes for the Martins

Let's see, I have started this entry around 4 times now. The general topic being, "Change". I just have a hard time deciding what part of that "Change" I should write about. There is so much going on these days, that I find writing about it just as overwhelming as the change itself.

I guess the biggest change will come in about a month when our oldest son, Jason and his family will move from Michigan to live in Texas. We are so excited about having them nearer to us. When they drove away from Abilene, TX back in 2002, they were expecting their first child, Aidan, who was born in February, 2003. Then, in April, 2005, another child, this time a girl named Regan, was born. So, our excitment is not only that we get to see our son and daughter-in-law more often, we get to see our grandchildren more often too.

Another change is that our youngest son, Ryan, and his wife, Amy have moved away from Baytown to Albequerque, NM. They have joined college friends to launch a new live theater. They are also looking for a place to live and have gotten side jobs as any actor at some point must do to survive. This is probably the best time for them to try something like this because they do not have children and no real ties to another job at the time. I wish them the best, but I miss having them here.

Our middle son, Kyle, and Amanda, his wife, are staying in Baytown at least for now. I'm glad they are here and close enough to visit every now and then. They are having a good time just being together, traveling and enjoying their friends.

One last change for the Martins involves my husband, Kim. He will be working in Baytown for the first time in about 25 years. After working in sales driving in and out of Houston everyday for the last 25 years, he went back to the classroom last year as a theater arts teacher. That was in Aldine and he still had that drive everyday. This year all of that driving will change when he begins his job in Goose Creek ISD as a junior school theater arts teacher. We are very pleased with this change for Kim.

So many changes with more to come. I'm gong to be ready though. I want to look at these changes as learning opportunities to better myself. God has blessed my family this far. I look forward to the blessings He will bring to our family in the way of changes in the future.

Gee Whiz, I'm Losing It

Every so often my mind just decides to jumble up all the numbers and letters I have used to create usernames and passwords. I hate it when I log in to this dashboard to blog and I have to retype my username and password. Thinking I remembered it this morning I logged in. Only an error came up and said it wasn't the correct password. Assuming the username was correct, I typed another one of my passwords I commonly use. That didn't work either. Hmmm! What is going on? Where is my blog? So I go in to change the password. Well unknowingly, I actually created another account and of course there are no posts on this new account. It wasn't until I read the messageboard full of questions that I realized what I had done. Apparently, I'm not the only blogger to lose their blog. Anyway, sure enough I had set up another account and when I finally recovered my original password, it was my username that was actually wrong. I had switched the username and the password. Duh! So now it is all safe and sound on a stickie note. Well... at least I believe I typed the right thing. Who knows?

But if this ever happens to you, don't panic. Just click on the link that says, "forgot your username too?", even if you don't think that you did. Because then you'll get a screen that shows all the usernames that you have. That was when I saw two usernames and I just clicked the circle with the one I knew to be correct. They then sent my password to my email and I was able to retrieve my blog and posts.

Happy blogging. :-)