Our New Toy, A Kindle

Staples recently sent me a bunch of store credit, a hundred and fourteen dollars in store credit to be precise.  They call it 'Staples Rewards' and I'm not exactly sure why they sent it to me, I guess we must have bought a lot of printer ink.  At first I wasn't sure what I'd do, I don't need a hundred dollars worth of spiral notebooks and push pins, but then I realized that Staples sells the Kindle.  So I spent my credit and an extra $25 to purchase my first electronic reading device.

Kindle surrounded by some of my treasures

Copyright Jeff Howick 2011

It's an incredible piece of technology, the Kindle.  It's very thin and even lighter than I thought it would be.  I quickly downloaded H. G. Wells' 'The Time Machine' (for free) and started reading it to see how it felt on my eyes.  In my opinion, reading on the Kindle is almost as nice as a real book.  I wish the background were a bit whiter, it's currently light grey, but it's clear enough that I don't notice once I start reading.  Downloading books is quick, easy and nearly all of the great classics in the public domain are available for free.

As nice as the Kindle is, we don't really need it, not yet anyway.  I get all of my books from the library, so the fact that ebooks are usually cheaper than their tree killing counterparts doesn't matter much to me.  And we don't do enough traveling to put Kindle's ability to carry thousands of books in its tiny package to real use.  But later this year my wife and I are planning to move to Japan, where English books will be much harder to find.  We bought the Kindle so that when we leave America, we won't have to sacrifice our ability to read any book we want whenever we want.  Buying a Kindle brings us one step closer to Japan, and I'm starting to realize how very close we actually are.

This Week's Bucket List Additions 2

Every week, I am inspired to try out new adventures and I've decided to keep track of new additions to my bucket list each Friday.  You can see what I added to my list last week here and this weeks additions below.

-Spend a night at an ice hotel. Difficulty rating: 7 out of 10
When I saw the British super-agent James Bond visit an ice hotel in 'Die Another Day' I knew I HAD to visit one for myself someday.  I think most kids dream of adventures in igloos and giant snow forts, I know I certainly did.  So when I realized that people really do build massive hotels out of ice, I was filled with childish excitement.  It seems that every December in Sweden they build the world's largest Ice Hotel from scratch, including a bar, a church, reception hall and enough rooms for 100 people.  It's not cheap, simple accommodations for 2 in a snow room with sleeping bags runs about $500 a night, but what a truly unique experience!  Plus there are all kinds of exciting things to do while you're there.  You can watch the northern lights from horseback, go dog sledding, watch cultural performances and even go on something called a 'moose safari'.  Moose Safari!  I'd love to visit the world's largest and first ice hotel, but there are several others I'd be just as happy to visit, including one in Japan.

Hanging out in an ice tunnel I built with my wife after a recent blizzard

copyright Jeff Howick 2011

-Try the new pretzel M&Ms.  Difficulty rating: 1 out of 10
I know I'm a little late to the bandwagon on this one, but I love it when new varieties of M&Ms are released.   A new M&M flavor is a tiny reminder that humanity is still making progress in our slow forward march toward utopia.  It's a very small step toward perfection, but it's exciting none the less.  Here are my top 3 flavors of M&Ms:  #1 Dark Chocolate.  Dark chocolate is always a superior choice to milk chocolate in my book.  #2 Mint.  Usually these come out around Christmas, so I have a lot of warm memories associated with them.  #3 Peanut Butter.  This is the first 'new' variety of M&M introduced in my lifetime, and it blew my mind.  I doubt the new pretzel M&M will make it into my top 3, but eating a new flavor of M&M is still worth a mini-celebration.

Hanging out in a previous Halloween costume

copyright Jeff Howick 2011

-Take dancing lessons with my wife.  Difficulty rating 4 out of 10
After watching 'Billy Elliot' on Broadway, I was inspired to add more dancing to my life.  So I decided to try and find a place to take dancing lessons with my wife.  Ballroom dancing would probably be fun, but I think I'd prefer something more like swing dancing or salsa dancing.  I guess we'll just see what options are available nearby.

Views From Bridges

I kinda live on an island.  I think it's technically a peninsula, but whenever I want to go somewhere I have to drive over a bridge.  Which is fine with me because I LOVE bridges, especially when I'm on foot.  Some of the best views in the world are from bridges.

View of my town in the Summer from a bridge

copyright Jeff Howick 2010

View of my town in the Winter from a bridge

copyright Jeff Howick 2010

Today when I was taking some pictures from one of our bridges, the whole world just seemed so peaceful.  It bothers me when bridges don't have pedestrian walkways.  There's a bridge we take every time we go into New York City that has a gorgeous view of the city's skyline.  But I can't take a picture because there's no sidewalk on that bridge.  At least the bridge has a pullover lane, so one of these days I'm going to fake a flat tire and take some pictures.

Some pictures from a recent trip to the Brooklyn Bridge

  

All Four Seasons in the Garden State

Before moving to New Jersey I spent nearly a decade living in the deserts of Arizona.  I went to high school in Phoenix, college in Tucson and encountered very little seasonal diversity during those times.  Arizona is a beautiful and unique place, but all the seasons feel a lot like summer. It rarely snows there and the botany mostly consists of cacti and imported palm trees.  Before I left the desert, I had vague memories of the four seasons from a childhood spent in Oklahoma and Tennessee, but I was not prepared for the strength and vibrancy of each season.  After moving to the garden state, I was completely captivated by the beauty and spectacle of the four seasons; I had to try and capture them on film (or SD card to be more accurate).  I've posted links to most of these albums before, but now that the project is finished I felt they should all be together.  Click the links below to watch my Flickr albums for each season.

Fall: Persephone departs and nature mourns

Winter: Persephone, Queen of the Underworld

Spring: Persephone returns and nature rejoices

Summer:  Persephone, Goddess of Vegetation

I hope you enjoyed the change of the seasons as much as I did.  I think I'd like to focus another series on the four seasons, this time concentrating on the less glamorous phases of each season like dead, brown leaves in fall, dirty snow in winter, sweltering heat in summer.  Because I don't just want to capture beauty with my camera, ultimately what I'm looking to capture is truth. 

Some Observations About Snow

This morning I woke up to discover that it was snowing outside once more.  They were giant, fluffy flakes that drifted from the sky so calmly it felt like the world was moving in slow motion.  Snow always makes me feel calm and in some strange way connected to the past.  A lot has changed in the few thousand years humankind has lived on this blue-green dot.  Our culture has changed, the earth's animals have changed, the earth's plants have changed, even the great big ocean is always changing.  But not snow, snow is one of the few constants in this world.  Sure there are different kinds of snow, and once it lands it never just stays pristine.  But this is how snow has always been.  Since the very first person saw their very first snowflake, snow has always been cold and white and beautiful.

© Jeff Howick 2010 - taken near the beach in Sea Bright, NJ

Some things I have observed about snow:

Snow is not as easy to tunnel through as I had imagined.  Tunneling is never easy business, even when it's through snow.  If someone ever says to you, "lets go make a snow tunnel!", be prepared to get cold, wet and tired.  It's still a worthwhile experience, just don't expect it to be easy.

© Jeff Howick 2010 - Taken after a blizzard in Sea Bright, NJ

A Blog about Billy Elliot and Dancing

I'm a big fan of Broadway Musicals.  I always leave the theater inspired to live more passionately (and sometimes outlandishly) and I always leave feeling lucky to live near NYC.  Thursday night my wife and I saw 'Billy Elliot'.

my wife outside the theater for Billy Elliot

It was the kind of show that other Broadway shows all want to be.  It's replaced the former champ 'Wicked' as my new favorite Broadway Musical.  'Billy Elliot' is about a kid who grows up in a small mining town and falls in love with ballet.  Billy fights to get others to accept a boy who loves to dance ballet.  Later his whole community fights to keep his dream of going to the Royal Ballet School alive when times are tough and the whole mining town is on strike.  Like 'Wicked', 'Billy Elliot' is all about being yourself and following your dreams.

my wife dancing with Donald Duck at her brother's wedding in Disney World

Also, it's a show about dancing.....a lot.  They talk about dancing, they sing about dancing, they DANCE about dancing.  I've never been very good at shaking a leg, but watching such high-caliber, joy filled dancing has inspired me.  It has inspired me to get in touch with my inner caveman, as Billy's ballet instructor would say, and search out some dance lessons that my wife and I can take together.  It should be a fun adventure and I can't wait.

Some of my favorite lyrics from 'Billy Elliot':

"Everyone is different / It's the natural state / It's the facts, it's plain to see, / The world's grey enough without making it worse / What we need is in-div-id-ual-ity."

"What the hell is wrong with expressing yourself? / For trying to be free.

If you wanna be a dancer, dance
If you wanna be a miner, mine
If you want to dress like somebody else,
Fine, fine, fine."

"It doesn't matter if your life's a mess,

the whole process will coalesce,
just try to effervescent,
all you really have to do is shine."

"We walk proudly, and we walk strong
All together we will go as one
The ground is empty, and cold as hell
But we all go together when we go."

"Solidarity, Solidarity.  Solidarity for ever."

I'd be happy if I could live my life in a way that others might say it was like a Broadway musical; sometimes life was good, sometimes life was tough.  But through it all he sang and danced and tried his best to inspire.

This Week's Bucket List Additions 1

I'm constantly discovering new places I want to visit or thing I want to do.   I think it would be fun to keep track of new additions to my bucket list once a week here on my blog.  Maybe it will even help me have better follow through pursuing some of my goals and dreams.  So here are this week's additions:

-Fly around in a Zeppelin dressed in a suit and top hat:  Difficulty rating 6 of 10

I can't imagine why Disney World doesn't have a fleet of Zeppelins to carry people between their parks and hotels.  If you really want to focus on the journey rather than the destination, what better way to travel is there than by Airship?  Airships have the romanticism of hot air balloons, the freedom of movement of helicopters, and the luxury of cruise ships.  Unfortunately zeppelin travel is not cheap or plentiful.  But at least it is possible,   Zeppelin NT offers several flights over Europe and San Francisco.  One day I'll be soaring through the skies in style with no hurry to land.

captured from a highway in Southern California, on our way to a friend's wedding

-Visit Every Town in America: Difficulty rating 9 of 10

When I was in high school, one of my teachers told me, "a lot of people say that America is a melting-pot where other cultures come and they all blend together.  But I think it's more like a salad bowl; each piece of the salad keeps it's own flavor, but together they make something great."  I hear a lot of people talk about 'American Culture' and 'The American Dream', and usually they mean 'my culture' and 'my dreams'.  That's fine, but I think American is much less homogeneous than most people think.  I want to see all of America's diversity and hear each town's story.  America is such a huge, diverse place this goal will not be easy to accomplish.  But even if I don't finish, I think the journey will be well worth it.

captured on a trip to Scranton, setting of the American TV show 'The Office'

- Display some of my photos at a library: Difficulty rating 5 of 10
I love to take pictures, and like most people I love to share my passions with others.  I visit my local library once or twice a week and I always love seeing the new art exhibits.  We all have the ability to make the world better through something we've created whether it's art or science or a child.  One day I'll have my own exhibit in a library and share some of the beauty I've seen in this world with others.

taken on the beach in Sea Bright, NJ