After having a very productive morning, my day fell to bits when I realized that next week is SIS's student break and people will be taking trips. Not wanting to be left out, I decided to sneak a little peek at Google Maps. Y'know...just to see. I can't wait for the day that Google Maps becomes available as a satisfyingly enormous digibook that you can barely lift up on to your lap on frigid evenings somewhere snowy, and plan out trips to microscopic little locales that look suitably distant from anywhere that might feature high-speed internet. Over tea and toast. The tea and toast is important to fend off the frigid & snowy part. I guess what I'm really getting at is that I'd like my maps to be in book that is as big to me now as the Time Atlas was to me when I was five. Gigantic! You had to lean forward just to reach the corner of the page, and then turning them was roughly equivalent to shifting tectonic plates. Huge, heavy, beautifully printed pages, with what looked to be every single nameable spot on the planet listed out in absurdly (wonderfully) tiny print. Lisokwene Congo? Why of course! It's right next to Boliama and Wamba! These villages probably don't even feature people, yet there they are; reassuringly real (and oddly accessible) thanks to a magical combination of GPS and ink. I'm too mobile to own a Times Atlas at the moment (specifically, The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World, 12th edition, to anyone who missed my birthday) and, to be honest, having one of those really would suffice, but still...just imagine .... A GOOGLE ATLAS. * sigh *

Comments

Nate
Oh stop whining. There's always facebook for the embarrassing halloween photos.

MBL
I would like to note the glaring lack of pictures of you in a turban in your halloween album. This needs to be remedied. Soon.

Nate
Maura: I'm certainly more embarrassed to have never heard 'If', and am now trying very hard to put a few sections of it to memory to make up for lost time. Carla: Swimming in maps. I like the sound of that. Oh yes... B: Me? Distracting? I would never....

Becca
RE: THE PUZZLE! Are you trying to make me fail at both work and school? On the other hand, I too forget the answer...and I guess there is nothing wrong with a healthy distraction :)

Carla
When I was small I also spent a tremendous amount of time with my dads Times Atlas. There was a plastic magnifying glass in the volume and I spent hours sliding it over the huge book. I remember lying in it. Like I could swim in the great oceans. I am in awe that we have such a similar memory. Possibly why I was fixated on Egypt, until my parents quieted my begging to go by threatening sending me alone... at 8.

maura
Your photos of Siena are a great study break! I am still try to decide if I'm more surprised that you hadn't heard of "If" or that Iron & Wine cover from Garden State until this year. I think If is winning. :-)

Kait
sigh..I wish I was there..about to take a ten day vacation

Nate
Heroin? Oh I think that might be a tad dramatic. Besides, Heroin would be debilitating, whereas this is _enabling_ . Like giving Ben (or Jerry) a cow. Y'know?

I went to Russia with you
I think you should go to Lisokwene. Lovely during the winter months, I hear.

m.
Y'know, I feel as though this might be offering a particularly high-grade heroin to an addict.