Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:40 PM

Had a wonderful time in Arizona.

While my life may be an open blog at times, my friends and family are still entitled to their privacy. Suffice it to say: it was a wonderful wedding, the newlyweds seem well-suited to one another, and I'm delighted by the new extended family that I met.

To the right, you can see what I wore for the occasion.

The dress is by Adrianna Papell, which I paired with John Fluevog shoes. [I wore a grey dress to the rehearsal dinner, so the shoes were chosen to coordinate with both.]

I asked the stylist to put my hair into an updo, and she managed to outdo my expectations:

Challenge question:
     How many hairpins did it take to put my hair up in this manner?

I saved every one and counted them out carefully, just so I could invite you all to take a guess.

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Other than that...

With two five-hour plane trips, I read three books: The Scent of desire, Banana, and Drink

Those numbers feel low to me, but I did spend much of each flight with my nose plastered to the airplane window, trying to figure out our location.

Somebody ought to publish a contiguous map of aerial or satellite photos labelled for air travellers. The closest I've managed to find -- America from the air and Window seat -- merely show selected geographical features, which are nifty but not so helpful.

The Arizona ecology is fascinating. Among the fauna we spotted: butterflies, grasshoppers, beetles, lizards (anoles?), a couple insectivorous bats at dusk, one hummingbird, two otherwise-unidentified owls perching in palms, buzzards circling overhead, quail, ducks, some scary-smart members of the corvidae family (a local referred to them as Arizona blackbirds), and a whole lotta jackrabbits.