Alive-o Again..and in the Garden

Well, I've coughed and honked my way through a dilly of a cold these last few days. I'm rather sick of it actually.

At least it didn't stop me from getting in the garden. I've spent hours out there this week.

A good thing too--it needed attention after almost a month of getting along on its own while I was in Italy. Everything exploded into bloom while I was gone. Remind me not to go away in the spring too often--its too pretty to miss!




The foxgloves and peonies and campanulas are in full bloom. But the red-leafed shrubbery in fromt of my kitchen window badly needs a haircut.

My favourite rose at the end of my driveway...sometimes a golden colour, sometimes almost pink, sometimes orange. A delicious smell too. I wish I knew what it was called.

Alas, the leafy green ground-cover and pink-flowered geraniums in the background of this photo are deceptively pretty and have to go. I have started a weeding/giveaway campaign to rid myself of these over-enthusiastic lovelies because they are choking other plants out. They are bishop's weed and Geranium 'Claridge Druce' respectively. I started to read up on them once I realized I was entertaining murderous thoughts about them.

I learned: Bishop's weed is a fast-growing ground-cover and lovely if you need to cover large area, but its very invasive and hard to get rid of-- it was popular in Victorian times as a border plant; according to the article I read there are plots of land abandoned a century ago where the only evidence there was once a garden are the thriving mounds of bishop's weed.

As for the geranium called 'Claridge Druce' (I was glad to find its name as I have so much of it), it is a very popular and hardy species, but if you live in the Pacific Northwest(which I do), its will go forth and multiply like a bunny. Okay, more like a weed I suppose.

It's so pretty I hate to pull it out...but my mind is made up. Mom, if you want more, bring me some pots. You can have as much as you like. Kim, Nell, anybody else?

Ah, more pictures of flowers in my garden.....

You know, while I was away I encouraged friends like Kim to come over and share my perennials.

Please! Take some! :The cry of the perennial plant gardener with too many plants.

Anyway, I came back from Rome, scanned my garden, and concluded nobody had taken me up on my offer....but they had!

My friend Kim said she came over THREE times (with helpers) to cart away plants for her newly-acquire flower garden space. Sure enough, I can spot the evidence of that in her yard.

But I missed nary a one.

The offer is still open: this week Spider Girl's Special Garden Give-Away is Japanese anenome, aka wind-flowers. They are pictured below....

I have scads of them! Scads, I tell you!

They are gorgeous, but they are not actually in bloom yet (these are from last year's crop). When they are, they will put on quite a long-blooming show. But until then they make a sea of foliage and I simply have too many for one yard.

Any takers?

Whoosh. Kablooie. Sigh.

WHOOSH.

That's the sound of the pouring rain cancelling my garage sale this morning. I can hear the weatherman's quiet mocking laughter for (firstly) believing his forecast earlier in the week that Saturday would be cool and sunny, and then for furthermore doubting him last night when he started saying that an enormous rainstorm would dump on my plans this morning. I was out in the garden late last evening and it was a gorgeous warm evening at that.

BAH! That's the sound of me cursing weathermen in general, and the fact that I'm down six dollars in garage sale advertisement fees.

Yes, and this weekend is also the time for the Denman Home & Garden Tour---those poor, poor gardeners who worked so hard to get their gardens in shape for it! I feel so bad for them!

I procrastinated on buying a ticket this time because I like to go with someone and everybody I asked was otherwise occupied this weekend. I guess that's the bright side: I'm down six dollars from the news ad, but I didn't buy the fifteen dollar tour ticket. Hmmm......that means *furrowed brow* ...er, I'm up nine bucks.

Sigh. Not enough to cheer me up because....

KABLOOIE! KABLOOIE! *honk snort cough* That's the sound of Spider Girl waking up with a horrible sore throat and cold this morning.

And what's more I had a garage sale anxiety dream last night. Yes, that's a sign of my inner mental workings.

I dreamed that I slept in late on my garage sale day and when I woke up I heard irate voices outside wondering where I was. I leapt out of bed and ran out on my balcony, and there were all these people in my yard carrying various posessions of mine around in their arms that were NOT part of the garage sale. I tried to call down to them but my voice was so hoarse I couldn't talk (that part of the dream was prophetic anyhow).

I ran out willy-nilly in my pajamas and decided to sell the stuff anyway they were holding to them anyways, just to placate the crowd. In the dream I made pots of money, but it wasn't a very fun time.

Happy

I'm so happy about something I've just heard today.

And I'm just bursting to tell the news, but I guess I have to wait until the person (people) involved shares the news first.

Yes, I'm in a state of happy frustration.....

So instead of telling you what's up, I'm going to post this picture of a bride and groom I saw in Rome. I think it tells a story, but I'll never truly know what it is.

They were young, elegant, obviously very much in love, and smooching in front of a panini, pizza & gelato stand.

Why were they getting their wedding photography done here? Did they own the stand? Was this the stand where they shared a slice of pizza on their first date? Did they have an insatial craving for gelato as soon as they spoke their vows?

I don't know.

But it begs the question...do the people I'm so happy for today have a craving for gelato too?

Isabella's Garden

In the north of Italy, floating like a jewel in Lago Maggiore, there is an island called Isola Bella.

Long ago it was a barren, rocky place, but in the mid seventeenth century, a Borromean count decided to make it into a place of beauty, dedicating the island to his wife, the Countess Isabella.

An enormous amount of soil was brought in, an airy summer palace was built, and a many-tiered garden of baroque splendour was created.

It may be a little over the top... I mean, you have to appreciate a certain amount of rococo statuary...but it's truly one of the most beautiful places I know.

I was so happy to be able to visit this island for a second time.

Now I must leave off writing this post and go out into my own garden for a spot of weeding. Heh, my own garden is not quite as baroque and manicured, I can assure you.

Bite Your Hand Off

Let's all line up and see if the ancient grumpy pagan face will bite our hands off!

Yes, I admit it, it was my idea.

One afternoon in Rome, I dragged my friends to see the Bocca della Verita, the Mouth of Truth, which hangs in the portico of a small church, Santa Maria in Cosmedin.

The legend, dating back to medieval times at least, tells us that the Bocca della Verita will bite the hands off of anyone who dares to tell a lie while putting their hand in the gaping stone mouth.

Imagine having something like that in a courtroom! Depending on how superstitious you are, it seems this might work at least as well as swearing on a stack of bibles.

Alas, the old tales also tell how the Mouth of Truth was discovered to be somewhat unreliable--some bonafide fib-tellers managed to keep all their limbs intact after all...as long as they worded things carefully:

It is said that the rich wife of a Roman noble was accused of adultery.

The woman denied the accusations, but her husband wanted to put her to the test by making her hand inside the stone mouth. Knowing perfectly well that she was lying, the woman used a very clever strategy.

In front of a group of curious bystanders who had gathered around the Mouth of Truth, the man who was actually her lover embraced her and kissed her. She pretended that she didn't know him and accused him of being a madman and the crowd chased him away.


When she put her hand into the mouth, the woman declared that she had never kissed any other man apart from her husband and the poor madman who had just kissed her. In this way she was certain that she hadn't lied and her hand was saved...

The Bocca is very old, dating back to 100 BC or so, and nobody seems to know its true origins. Some say it is merely a sinister-looking drain cover, or perhaps part of an old Roman fountain, but other archealogical evidence suggests that it is more likely that it came from a pagan temple, perhaps representing Oceanus, the god of the sea. One wonders what it is doing on the grounds of a Christian church... (hmmm..although it does funnel in people to see the remains of St. Valentine rather effectively as you have to pass through the church to exit...)

If you've ever seen the movie Roman Holiday , you will probably remember the scene when Gregory Peck's character pretends his hand has just been bitten off by the Mouth of Truth. Audrey Hepburn's startled scream was apparently not acting. His little prank was not part of the script. :)

Well, the Mouth of Truth didn't seem particularly hungry the day we visited (not a nibble on me), but despite its good mood my friend Tai wasn't taking any chances.

"I'm not putting my hand in there !" she announced, shaking her head and grinning .

And she didn't. Put her hand in the Mouth, that is.

But she did put her hand up its Nose.

I Was Tagged, You See

While I was away in Italy, Hope and Dagoth tagged me. It's nice to come home from vacation and find out you're IT. :)

The meme? To list 5 reasons why I blog about the things I blog on my blog. Here goes:

1. I'm a photo-taking fiend. Even when I'm not in total-tourist-spinning-around-in-circles mode, my camera is never far from my hands. My blog gives me an excellent place to show off all my pictures that would never otherwise see the light of day--sadly, there's only so many people in daily life you can show the photos of your cat/garden/bellydance party after all.

Imagine my happiness at this excuse to post some pictures from Venice, for instance.

Venice made me think fantastical thoughts. Venice made me want to try on masks. It made me long to don an elaborate costume and attend a fancy-dress ball.

I settled for borrowing Tai's headscarf and sunglasses and pretending I was Audrey Hepburn.

2. I love to write. I've written since I was a child--half-finished stories, dream journals, some truly dreadful but somehow still amusing poetry (I was a big fan of the rhyming couplet), trip diaries, whole binders of notes composed to friends in math class. I have shelves full of notebooks that contain all sorts of dribs and drabs that will no doubt be useful when I'm famous for something and write my memoirs of eighth grade.

Blogging is a continuation of those notebooks. A little of this, a little of that. My blog is never terribly focused, and that's quite alright with me.

3. I love for people to read what I write. The wonderful thing about blogging is that there is the potential that anyone and everyone in the world to read what I'm writing. There's a vast random audience of people from Canada to Timbuktu that might be reading this. Not that there are more than a handful of people that actually see any given post, but I love the potential that my words are out there in the world.

4. I like to feel connected to people. I'm somebody who likes to strike up conversations with total strangers. If I meet you in a grocery store line-up and you have an interesting tattoo, I'll most likely ask you about it. If I don't, I'll be kicking myself later.

There are so many great people out there in the world, and there's no way that I can meet you all in person. How frustrating! But through blogging, I can interact with people outside my own little world--people with different beliefs and cultures and hobbies and music and senses of humour. And sometimes people who are the same. That's nice too.

The point is, if I didn't post this and that on my blog, then I'd never have known about them. And, what's more! they would have never known about me! Ah, can't let THAT happen!

5. I blog about the things I do because it helps me stay in touch. What a way to sustain friendships when you live far away from one another! Plays I've seen, songs in my head, the news story that flabbergasted me: I have to let them know. And it works both ways, of course.

I love reading about the little things my friends are thinking about or doing or even the last crazy thing they found on YouTube. I love the minutiae of their lives because I'm rather fond of them, and besides I'm often one of the main characters.

And it helps me keep in touch with people like my brother. I found out he rolled his truck through his blog. I found out he was a fencing enthusiast. I found out he's into geo-caching. I love seeing pictures of his garden online. (I already knew he collected toasters though...)

Back From Italy...

I'm back from Italy!

I'd love to go on about it, but alas my inner clock is all screwed up and nine o'clock feels like my new bed-time until the jet lag wears off.

So I leave you with two photos from my trip to symbolize my drifting mental state at the moment: sleepy poppies in a lane in Siena, and a picture taken from the plane of a wee Italian island floating in the Mediterranean crowned with a little cloud.

Hello from Stresa, Italy

Well, here we are in Stresa, a beautifully posh little town in Italy's Lake District. We are only a block or so from the shore of Lago Maggiore under sunny skies.

Today we cruised out to three gorgeous little Borromean islands to see two palaces, a bird sanctuary (where I got to pet a white peacock), and amazing botanical gardens with plants from all over the world.

Tomorrow we are taking a train to the Cinque Terre, which are a chain of five clifftop villages hanging out over the Mediterranean and staying in that area for three nights.

This last while we have been staying in Venice---don't let anybody ever tell you it isn't worth going there. We stayed on a tiny street and woke up to the bells of San Pantalon every morning. We could look out our window and actually see the bells rocking back and forth in the tower. Good alarm clock.

Anyway, hopefully I'll make a few more posts in the next two weeks but the days are full.

Well, except for the time relaxing on terraces with Peronis and limoncello. :)

In Roma!

Hello everybody!

This is a quick blog post from an internet cafe on our street in Rome, Italy. It is a short post because I am in Rome and there is a lot to do!

Today we walked through the Forum, saw the Colosseum, ate gelato, drank from baroque fountains, and saw priceless works of art in the Palazzo Barberini.

And tomorrow we are all off to Ostia Antica!

I am taking lots of pictures''you will see them when I get back!

Ah....Italy!

In Which Spider Girl Packs Her Bags and Stampedes Some Buffalo

Two more days till we leave for Italy.

My little red suitcase, Ricardo, is nearly packed. Italian phrasebooks and other bits of travel paraphanelia litter the coffee table.

This last week or so has been a mish-mash of work (both jobs), going-away parties for co-workers, forays into old bookshops for reading material on the plane, gardening, visiting friends, and trying out new and exciting brunch menus with Tai.

Tai, one of my intrepid travelling companions, has actually been staying at my house since Friday. For her, the vacation has already begun. Well, at least, I'm hopeful that staying at my place can be regarded as a holiday of sorts. I dunno...apparently I clank around in the morning rather a lot.

Today, we decided to spend the last of the weekend before we leave being a Tourists in Our Own Town, which is decidedly much less expensive than trotting off to Europe.

We spent today's rainy afternoon travelling down random rural roads lined with daffodils and sheep and trees in blossom.

There was also mysterious cabalistic signs to a "Fortress" out there on a dead-end road in the boonies, which led to a discussion about naming one's house. I asked for suggestions to name my own house and my witty friend suggested calling it "Bob". The Villa Bob. No, it really doesn't have the ring to it I'm looking for. I'm open to suggestions.

We also came upon some smaller stone cousins to the Easter Island giant heads. My, travelling in my own town is certainly broadening! :)

AND we saw seven deer and one rock shaped like a deer. Does that count?

AND, we saw a herd of stampeding buffalo.

They weren't stampeding, really, until I got quite close to their fence though. Very impressive, what with the thundering hooves and snorting and all. They were running in the other direction from me, by the way. Apparently buffalo don't care for my sort, although later on Tai and I met some cows that pratically begged for their photos to be taken....

Pictured in this post are the handful of buffalo that were cool with me.

All in all, a good day for local tourism.....

Tomorrow I work a half day, and then I come home and run around madly doing last minute things (and when I say run around madly I AM alotting some time for a good read in a bubble bath), and then the next day the three of us head down to Nanaimo to go over to Vancouver on the sea-plane (I'm going to like that!), and then to the main airport for the flight to Rome via Amsterdam.

Right. I'm tired. I'm rambling. I'm getting this random-train-of-thought vibe as I write tonight.

Buona sera to you all!

Musings on Lists and Roman Apartment Pics

Well, it's happened. I am now in full List-Making Mode .

It's now less than two weeks until I'm off to Italy along with Jeff and Tai and Pol.

So I'm making Lists. It's what I do before I travel.

Lists of what clothes to pack:polka dot blouse, sandals, my lucky travelling dress...

Lists of things I need to do before I go: give mom house key, break it gently to mom that she'll need to take care of my stick bugs as well as my cats, request holiday pay, clean out fridge, breathe deeply...

Lists of things I want to see: Ostia Antica, Rialto Bridge, Cappucin Crypt (again! you can never see too many chandeliers made from bones), Isola Pescatori, the preserved head of St. Catherine in Siena, the view from the hiking trails between the villages of the Cinque Terre, the Borgese gallery in Rome....

I like making lists. When I was a child I can remember my father making lists too (gardening lists, lists of what was in the freezer, lists of stock market trends--he had all sorts of little notebooks around). I would tease him about his Super Powers of Organization, but even then I thought it was kind of a neat idea.

Last night I was re-reading one of my travel journals. It was from my first international trip ever, back in 1999 when my friend Tai and I back-packed around the British Isles. Our budget was so small that I recorded the cost of every ticket and postcard purchased in a little list at the back of a notebook. Also the cost of every meal. Looking back I see we subsisted mostly on tuna fish sandwiches and Cadbury's Whispa-mint chocolate bars. Mmmmm....backpacker's cuisine.

Don't worry, my travel budget has gotten more expansive (er, expensive too) and when I'm in Italy I'm planning on eating fabulous food...and not writing down the prices. It's just better if I remember the flavours and not the debt this time, trust me.

Speaking of spending money in Italy, these are pictures of the apartment we'll be renting in Rome for the last week of holiday.

Really central location, 1200 sq, feet, 3 bedrooms, kitchen, 2 bathrooms, washing machine.

It's up lots of stairs mind you, but it'll still be much less expensive than renting a hotel room for that length of time.

What do you think?

*singing* All We Want to Do is Eat your Brains....

Okay, it's a catchy folk-style ballad about zombies. And it's been in my head for about a week.

I mean, how can you resist a chorus like *singing* :

All we want to do is eat your brains!

We're not unreasonable....I mean, no one's going to eat your eyes...

Okay, not for everybody I suppose, but I was laughing my head off. Here's Jonathan Coulton, performing "Re: your Brains". Enjoy!

Vincent in Brixton

I love it when I go to see a play with no expectations and come home after the performance with a deeply satisfied feeling that I've just seen a genuinely brilliant piece of theatre.


Before this evening I knew little about the play called Vincent in Brixton other than it was about a young Vincent Van Gogh during an influential period in his life when he lived for a time in a boarding-house in London.

It may or may not be historically accurate, ( the program admits no one really knows what transpired between the inhabitants of 87 Hackford Rd, London, SW9) but the play's author, Nicholas C. Wright has said that in writing the script he was influenced by "an intriguing six month gap in Vincent's surviviing letters, and by the well-known tendency of young men writing home to be less than frank about their formative experiences."

It certainly was a performance which drew me in and engaged me completely. The actors were brilliant, especially the two leads (Aidan Maxted as an intense and socially awkward but endearingly eccentric Vincent, and Caroline Alexander as the widowed land-lady, Ursula Loyer).

To my surprise it was not a play about art--in 1874 Vincent had not yet begun to paint--instead it was a play about people : unlikely love, frustrated talents, self doubts and the ability to house in your heart both great joy and black depression at one and the same time..

Do you ever wonder about what the lives of famous people are like when you strip away what they are known for and examine the rest of their life? I recommend seeing Vincent in Brixton for a glimpse of that.

Thank-you to my mom for taking me out for another evening of brilliant theatre! I loved our seats, two rows from the front--close enough to the stage to feel like you're sitting in the same room as the people onstage. And most importantly in a play containing such raw emotion, to be close enough to see the facial expressions on the actors' faces.

By the way, I really do admire Vincent's art ( he signed his paintings as Vincent and I never can pronounce Van Gogh in the proper Dutch fashion). The Musee D'Orsay has some very fine pieces of his that I was privileged to see during my visit to Paris, and I was absolutely thrilled to eat lunch at the little restaurant in Arles that is so famous for its depiction in the painting of the Night Terrace Cafe.

His life story is ultimately a tragic one (ending in poverty and mental illness) and his work rarely sold during his life (even with the support of his brother Theo who was an art dealer). And yet, knowing how important his works are considered nowadays, it should give hope to all those artists out there living under-appreciated in their own times. But why must artists traditionally suffer so much? Why do they usually have to die before their paintings are suddenly worth a million bucks? It's just not fair.

And why does an actor as talented as Mr. Maxted in Vincent in Brixton still have to hold down a day job?

Web

A spider may not be everybody's idea of a beautiful creature, but they are artists in their own way.

This web hung below a cherry tree, welcoming people to my home last fall as they turned into the driveway (well, if they looked closely and the morning dew was just right). :)

Some folks wait to see the first robin; I'm waiting for the first spider webs of Spring to soon appear.

Owning Real Estate on the Moon

This is an excerpt from a recent BBC news article that made me wonder why I'm not busy selling someone a bridge on Betelgeuse 5:

From his office in Nevada, entrepreneur Dennis Hope has spawned a multi-million-dollar property business selling plots of lunar real estate at $20 (£10) an acre.

Mr Hope exploited a loophole in the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty and he has been claiming ownership of the Earth's Moon - and seven planets and their moons - for more than 20 years.

These are "truly unowned lands", he says. "We're doing exactly what our forefathers did when they came to the New World from the European continent."

Hope says he has so far sold more than 400 million acres (1.6 million sq km), leaving a further eight billion acres still up for grabs.

Buyers include Hollywood stars, large corporations - including the Hilton and Marriot hotel chains - and even former US presidents Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. George W Bush is also said to be a stake holder.

Mr Hope claims to be selling 1,500 lunar properties a day. He allocates land by simply closing his eyes and pointing to a map of the Moon.

No government has yet recognised the lunar sales as legally binding"It's not very scientific but it's kinda fun," he says. It is fun that has already made him $9m (£4.5m).



Well, I simply don't know whether to be more flabbergasted at this guy's arrogance or amused at his powers of entrepreneurship. A little from Column A and a little from Column B I think....

The article goes on to say that no actual world government recognizes his claim as legally binding, so if you go ahead and buy an acre on the Moon (and usually I'd say that twenty dollars for that amount of real estate is a smart buy even if it's uniformally grey and EVEN if the commute to the summer cottage IS rather laborious what with the cost of rocketship fuel and all nowadays )--- just know that you won't be able to claim the mineral rights to your little patch of moon dust. Apparently the US government (among others) has plans regarding that. Big plans.

It reminds me of that sticker I've seen around down on some redneck-around-town's bumper: EARTH FIRST: WE'LL LOG THE OTHER PLANETS LATER.

I was just at a party the other night where one of the topics tossed about between the cutest teensy little bottles of fruit liqueur was whether or not the Americans really landed on the moon or whether it was all a big hoax to uh, I dunno, annoy the Russians during the Cold War era.

Some of my dearest friends have a charming conspiracy-theory streak a mile wide. They said they had seen/heard/read on the internet some fairly compelling evidence that seemed to back their suspicions. I've read some things too---about suspicious identical rocks in photographs and about flags rippling in the breeze of a place with no wind and of mysterious accidents happening to people who could have leaked to the media. It all seemed rather compelling under the warm influence of German Sour Apple-flavoured alcohol.

Then again I've also heard and read plenty of scientific material which neatly rebuts all the hoax evidence. Deep down, I'm pretty sure the Russians wouldn't have let the Americans get away with claiming all the thunder if it wasn't so. Spider Girl is thinking the moon landing was two parts marvellous technological accomplishment and one part expensive testosterone-fuelled Cold War-inspired ego trip.

What do YOU think? Any NASA employees out there for comment? (Hey, would you get a discount on moon properties if you worked for NASA, ya think?) Any conspiracy theorists out there?

Well, back to land ownership of the solar-system....

Here are some historical dates pertaining to the subject that I borrowed straight from Wikipedia for your elucidation. I like the one where lunar property rights come in your box of cereal.:

In 1937, A.D.Lindsay of Ocilla, Georgia claimed all “planets, islands-of-space or other matter” in the Universe as his property.

In the 1940s, people were enquiring with the US Bureau of Land Management for lunar homesteads.

In 1948, James Thomas Mangan of Chicago proclaimed himself First Representative of the Nation of Celestial Space and envisaged selling “parcels of space” to interested buyers.

In the 1950s, deeds for square inches of lunar property were offered as premiums with morning cereals.

In 1952, a Science Fiction club in Berkeley, California claimed a triangular area on the Moon with the United Nations.

In 1953, Jenaro Gajardo Vera of Chile lodged the first Latin American claim to the Moon.

In 1955, Crater Copernicus was parceled by Robert R. Coles, the CEO of the Interplanetary Development Corporation, much to the chagrin of New York State Attorney General’s office.
Japan entered the extraterrestrial real estate business in 1956.

In 1957, a Le Mars, Iowa newspaper gave its readers deeds to lunar farms.

In the 1960s, the Moon and Venus were officially annexed by several municipalities. Deer Park, Texas claimed planet Venus, while Oklahoma City and Geneva, Ohio expanded their boundaries with the Moon.

In 1969, a man in Brazil was arrested for selling lunar real estate.

In the 1970s, Barry McArdle of Berkeley criss-crossed America “selling” the Moon in the mode of the traveling medicine show performer.

In 1974, land on Mercury was "sold" by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific as a fund raising ploy.

In 1980, the American Dennis Hope starts his own business, claiming to have found a loophole in international law allowing him to claim full sovereignty of the moon. He was the first to sell lunar deeds (also on the Internet) after sending off declarations to the US, (then) Soviet and UN governments. Hope has so far made $9 million off his business, claiming to sell 1,500 lunar properties a day at $20 an acre. He allocates land to be sold by closing his eyes and randomly pointing to a map of the Moon.

In 1982, newborn Prince William and Kermit the Frog were given complimentary “Martian Land” packages, courtesy of Fiske Planetarium’s David Aguilar.

In 1997, three men in Yemen sued NASA for landing on their inheritance – planet Mars.

In 1998, Mars was claimed by the Western Federation Church and Tribe, who plan to terraform it, provided there is no indigenous life.

In 1999, The Lunar Registry was founded, like the Lunar Embassy, to sell real estate on the Moon.

In 2000, Russ Wylie founded buyuranus.com, a humoristic approach outlining the importance of “owning” Uranus.

In 2001, Orbital Development invoiced NASA for having landed a probe on asteroid Eros, and a legal battle ensues.

In 2001, Virgiliu Poplodged a tongue-in-cheek claim for the Sun with the Archimedes Institute.

In 2002, Anthony M Grasso incorporated the Lunar Federation Inc , according to Articles of Incorporation of the State of Florida, and entered the Moon and Mars Real Estate Business.

In 2003, Charles Wesley Faires claimed ownership of the three stars of Orion's Belt: Alnilam, Alnitak and Mintaka. The claim has been filed with a Knox County Courthouse, United States Library of Congress and the Kingdom of Swaziland, among other entities.

In 2005, Marina Bai , a Russian astrologer, sued NASA for having encroached upon her ‘holy of holies’ (the moon) by landing a probe on comet Tempel 1.

In 2007, Nicholas Yoho-Wikse filed official claim to Venus, and all space from its surface out to 333km from it to space vacuum, to be eternally his. He filed with the UN and the International Court of Justice (a court of planet earth states)...he pledged to share it however as it was such a large amount of space to deal with...he declared soon after the proposed motto of Venus to be "love reigns eternally" and expected all future inhabitants to live in this spirit of planet Venus..."earth had so far failed in this...may venus never be so..." A company called MoonEstates has also been selling plots on the Moon and Mars, which it purchased from Dennis Hope.

The Best and Worst Couple Dollars I Ever Spent

Sometimes you don't have to spend a lot of money to create memorable experiences.

The pictures in today's post represent the best two dollars I ever spent, and the worst three dollars I ever spent, both transactions taking place while in Zanzibar.

Yes, five dollars worth of memories....okay, I know full well that I'm ignoring the not insignificant price-tag of flying to Africa in the first place.

(Heh, it reminds me of the time my friend Emily responded to my compliment about her gorgeous dangly silver earrings. She said, "Yes, these earrings are special alright, they cost me five thousand and five dollars---five thousand for my trip to Turkey and the five dollars I paid for these earrings there".)

The Best Two Dollars: Were spent as the admission fee for the Mnarani Natural Aquarium, an educational conservation project in an enclosed tidal lagoon on Nungwi Beach to protect the local green sea turtles and hawksbill turtles from being killed for the use of their shells in souvenir products, to raise local sea turtle populations by protecting hatchlings, and to raise money for the local community through turtle tourism.

We got to feed adult sea turtles seaweed and hold baby ones! How cool is that!

The Worst Three Dollars: Getting a Black Henna design painted on my skin on Zanzibar the very next day. It was very pretty. At first. Then I had a severe allergic reaction and ended up in a hospital in London with second-degree chemical burns and blood-poisoning.

Note: Black Henna is not real plant-based henna. I learned the hard way. (If you want to see a gory picture of my arm taken three weeks after I got this done, I posted one over on my other blog. Never, ever do what I did.)

So, part of the reason I mention these things is because you can now read about them in fuller detail if you are interested at my travel blog (http://www.spidergirlontheroad.blogspot.com/).

I'm finally writing the last posts for it. I'm actually writing about my last day there--whew, finally. (I've had all the posts started in draft form with the photographs since December!)

My motivation to finish writing about this trip? Well, pretty soon that blog will have to be the new Spider Girl Goes to Italy blog and I should really finish transcribing the journal for one trip before I start the next one, right?Geez, it's taken me long enough.

I hope everyone out there had a good Easter holiday.

Bellydance Party

If you want to be invited to a lot of parties, become a bellydancer. Every time you turn around someone wearing sequins is looking for a happy excuse to get everybody together to dance.

There was a very fun hafla (bellydance party) up in Campbell River last night. Even though I've thought of myself as unofficially out of the bellydance loop (the last show I danced in was in June), I still got an invite. Somebody has to be sitting in the the audience after all I reckoned.

But, wouldn't you know it, I ended up dancing at the party after all.

Most of my old troupe (the Yalla Gypsies) were there (except for Emily who's climbing in the Himalayas) so it was bound to happen.

Yes, Chris just happened to have the music for one of our old choreographies with her.

But! (I protested) I can't even remember the tune to Santiago. But! It's been two years since I danced this piece. But! I didn't bring a costume.

None of that mattered apparently. Glasses of wine in hand, we went over the choreography:

Three-point turn this way...chest circle chest circle...spin back the other way...hip circle hip circle.....fiiiiiigure eighhhtttt.....OH! now I remember! Grapevine step...ah yes! It was all coming back.

Oh sure it was unpolished, but it was merry fun to be up dancing again. The hostess lent me a gypsy skirt and Sherry lent me a tasselled scarf and away we went.

Alas, no pictures of us dancing to share with you, but I did take these one's of the Campbell River troupe.

So Much Fun!

I don't think you can beat the fun factor of a roomful of bellydancers hamming it up to the Bangles "Walk Like an Egyptian ".

We danced, we ate, we drummed, we played with veils....I'm sure you can't help but note how the polka-dot dress I was wearing under my veil only added to the Mystery-of-the-Orient-like atmosphere I was trying to convey. :)