Aftermath, going home (for a week or two)

Can't wait to hear more, Osso. Welcome back!

Hi, K, glad to see you too.

I've enough commentary stored up to keep this thread perking even if I were only talking to myself on it - what a thick few weeks. Plus I took a zillion probably bad photos in my self appointed Now I Will Learn To Use This Camera mode, all the time only looking up the whats and wherefores in the camera guidebook as they occurred to me. Thus I don't yet know how to download or play with the photos yet - it'll be a while. Even if they don't turn out, I'll have the visual memory of camera aiming, eh?

It's a canon G3 that I bought in Eureka, played with once, and went back to my old SLR Nikon.

On the commentary part, some of what I experienced affects all of us, or is apt to, and feedback including critical would be welcome. I'll have to see as I'll be balancing what to say or not re other people and me (that's more in this last week, though a little with the somewhat estranged cousin of the first part of the trip).

Good to see you've landed back in Abq. I'm interested, in part, to hear what you think about the title of your thread now. Where is home for you now?

We are looking forward to it, Osso.

Oh, home is a malleable word.
My home is Venice. I have walked the whole area over and over and over and up to Santa Monica and through the Marina which is to the south from 1974 to 1999 and beyond, thousands of walks or jogs. Our house (perhaps I've photos of the remod by others, plus with the new scanner I can scan old photos..) there was the heart place. My ex told me the house just sold again (#3 including my sale) a few months ago, my baby house. Trust me, I don't want to know for how much money. It was a simple 'teens beach cottage, california bungalow circa 1913 (various ages turned up over time).

I'm still comfortable walking Venice, still know neighbors, besides knowing the streets and homes. This will change, natch.

But - I have homelike feelings about many places, varying with time and attachment.

I feel a strong connection to Rome in my heart and mind, weird as that is given my advanced antipathy to my former religion. I think Rome stands for all the travel I never did, all the sights I could have gone to and learned to see, all the people who have, through history, been through so much.

Albuquerque is also home, that is, this is most immediate. The breadth of home-ness is cut short by my personal access changes, so I don't whip about town as I would have not all that long ago. People are pretty friendly, I'm feeling more comfortable as a non southwesterner (I've gathered southern california is some island place that doesn't count for being west or south), and I have dear pals here.

Further on a limb, I'll say home is where I am, given a bit of time, usually - it has to do with me.

Continuing -

the emotion is with Venice. It was where I matured as an adult, had fun, worked the soil, studied my brains out, was long content - part of that was a good marriage for a fair amount of time. I don't have to possess the place, just still feel the tie. Again, I suppose this may change, but it hasn't yet.

On the houses - a friend and I photo'd every house on the walk streets at a time when the neighborhood was just turning from small houses to some architectural efforts with gatherings of fences. Between us, hundreds of photos.
I tell ya, I know the cracks in sidewalks.

I need to come back to this thread
and post photos.

In the meantime, I keep getting promotional rightwing stuff from these cousins. I exclaimed against being sent all that, and get dribbles more. The lastest was about bats and Pelosi. Whatever my take on Pelosi, don't give me bat photos as a come on.

I know the answer to this post - that I must talk with them directly.
We are all set in our ways, but I usually don't mock.

We look forward to seeing YOUR photos, not of bats or Pelosi.

Many years ago, the husband used to be a johnbircher. I got where my cousin, his wife, came from, we are family, and his background - not that I am not patriotic, but ideas diverge over time.

I don't want to lose these people as at a primal level we love each other.

On the other hand, we all know I am no pussycat.

OK, John, that will cheer me up to work on how to download, and so on.

Nag me if I quail on figuring how to download.

So, I just reread all this. I decipher that my plan was to elaborate on the first week and detail the next week with photos, but I was slow to get into reading about how to download. Then one sunny day not long ago, I saw that I don't have Iphoto anymore. I assume I lost it in my computer crash (when, maybe even before the trip - I haven't loaded photos from the digital camera and haven't taken any more with the old nikon, thus didn't notice I'd lost Iphoto.)

Now I have to call the mac fixit place, as they should have picked that up (I presume) when they put in the new hard drive. I hope it doesn't cost real money to get again. I've have scanned photos and posted them on a2k, but since the scanner was the new toy, I'd been distracted re the CA photos.

Oy vey. But, I'll resolve this somehow.

Still Venice, the place most me.
I add this to put the thread as a place to remind me.
Venice is a larger place than it is taken as. The Oxford Triangle and the Marina Peninsula are also part of Venice, no matter what the post office allows per realtor names. I didn't live in either of those, but venice is more complicated than its fame.