Birthday!

Happy Birthday to me! And to GirlZoot!

Long long long day, but happy!

We got up early to catch the balloon festival first day lift off. Mom and I are traveling with her church group, SOAR - Seniors on a Rampage. We have some very lively seniors (Mom being one of course). I got to come along because Mom's such a good convincer.

Anyway, we got up early and drove around the balloon festival three times. None of the guards or traffic directors got us through to where we needed to be. We ended up seeing most of the lift off from the bus windows. When we finally got onto Festival Grounds, Mom and I made a beeline for the field, trying to find the registration for our balloon ride (tomorrow morning).

We found a big red truck with a white trailer and a sign I recognized, Rainbow Ryders - the folks we bought our tickets from. We talked to a nice woman with a deep southern twang and she directed us to Bill. Bill, it turned out, was the pilot of the balloon still in the white trailer. He had not taken off today.

Bill was kind enough to direct us to the registration tent. Mom talked to Bill about getting into the festival grounds earlier so we wouldn't miss our flight tomorrow. He said we could ride with him, they left at 4:45 am from the Rio Rancho Best Western, which happened to be where we were staying, too. We got his room number and went back to the registration tent to get more info.

We spent probably three hours at the festival, bought some pins, and generally had a great time. The bus (the trip was a bus tour) took us back to the hotel, where we changed our clothes to go to Santa Fe.

We only had about 2 hours in Santa Fe, because we wanted to get back to Albuquerque for the Balloon Glow and fireworks (on my birthday!). Mom and I spent some time in the little rock shop I loved last year. Nothing really called to me so we left empty handed. Well, not entirely empty handed, we got three tiny vial necklaces designed to put small minerals in. We bought three, because we were going to make Bunny, our fearless leader, a bottle of the Chimayo sacred earth to hang around her neck as a thank you for taking care of us on the trip. The other two were for us. Mom also got two tiny glass bottles with cork stoppers to hold the remaining earth.

We stopped at the French bakery connected to La Fonda and bought a piece of Quiche Lorraine for me and two small desserts for later. I got a strawberry shortcake cake with heavy whipped cream. Mom was better and got a little fruit tart with kiwi, raspberry, and blueberry on top of a light custard. She also got a steak salad at the cafe on the far side of the plaza, the one that's been in business for over 100 years.

I bought, after much delight in shopping all the various stands, a silver feather from a Navajo artist selling at the Palace of the Governors. It is almost two inches long with deep grooves and feels both heavy and light when I wear it. I bought it in part because we are going to fly tomorrow. The wind had picked up quite a bit and many of the artists were packing up to leave. The leaves skittered across the paving stones and crunched underfoot. I always love the crunching of leaves.

After sitting for several minutes and taking pictures and watching the people go by in the plaza, we headed back to where the bus would pick us up. We stopped in the rock shop and mom bought me a pendant I had been looking at earlier. It is a goddess figure with her arms up holding a round cabochon of amethyst.

Cyclone Power

This is going to be a quick post. We're getting ready to leave for New Mexico for the Albuquerque Balloon Festival tomorrow morning.

Mom is an avid Kohl's shopper. I get a lot of my clothes there, and there's always the umpteen times a year they give special discounts, including the coveted 30% off everything in the store. It's a lottery system, most people get the standard 15%, some get an exciting 20%, but only a few get that height of discount, the 30% off.

Well, of course, just before we were due to leave for vacation, Mom got the 30% off sticker on her Kohl's ad in the mail. And we'd been waiting for it. I've been wanting a Dyson Animal vacuum, and Mom's been cautioning me to wait for the 30% off. Twice I've wanted to buy one, but she keeps telling me to wait. When I got in the car and the ad was on the seat, I picked it up and peeled back the sticker. It was Dyson time! And of course, the sale would be over by the time we got back.

When we got down to the store, I was calculating how I would pay on Mom's Kohl's card and chatting amiably away about how nice it would be to have a Dyson, etc. When we finally got the top of the line Dyson 17 in the cart, Mom pulled out her trusty calculator. She came up with a figure, which was pretty good, considering how much they are in the first place and she smiled. "That's only $5 more than I paid for the one in the basement."

What? Which one in the basement? She had her own Dyson, which was how I knew I wanted one of my own. I raised an eyebrow and looked at her. "Which one in the basement?"

"Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas!" she replied, grinning. "I got the lower model on 15% off when it was on sale back in April.

April! She's definitely a mom; she can keep a secret for six months or more. I can't hardly keep a secret for more than a couple of weeks (which is why I do my shopping after NaNoWriMo so I don't have to worry about blurting it out by mistake).

Well, I have to wait till we're back from vacation to use it, but yay! It'll be great! Clean carpets. Won't the kitties be surprised!

Ok, so it wasn't as quick as I thought. Oh well!