the start of motion

Taking some final photographs before this bouquet dies. Love the blue explosion. Photographed with Nikon D300, 60mm micro lens.

Marcus and I have been very busy getting our house in order before some dear friends arrive from Australia tomorrow to spend a few days with us.  Bless them.  They're arriving from Sydney, where it's winter, to Houston, where it's over 100 degrees.  We're going to have so much fun with them, assuming they don't melt.

Immediately after they leave, our little family is headed to New York City for a quick vacation and a wedding (Alex is going to be a flower girl at this wedding.  She's been practicing.)  New York should be fun:  Marcus, while well-traveled, has never been to NYC, and Alex has been enthralled with the idea of New York ever since a couple of years ago when I brought home a pencil for her from a NYC work trip, the top of which had a miniature Empire State Building with a miniature King Kong clinging on for dear life.  This fascination with New York was only intensified this weekend when I downloaded The Wiz for her to watch.  I fear she now believes that New York is a city where giant monkeys and talented dancing scarecrows roam the streets.

The New York trip is the first of several trips I have slated coming up:  after New York, I head to Chicago for BlogHer '09 (will I see you there?), where I'm looking forward to participating in the Community Keynote.  Then after Chicago, there are a few other cities I'm planning on visiting, both for speaking opportunities and book photo ops -- assuming that I can pull them all off.  More as plans become more concrete.

I'm already starting to feel just a bit overwhelmed with all this upcoming travel, for a variety of reasons, but if I can manage to take all of these trips, it's going to be very exciting, as well.  So to get in into travel mode (which for me, takes a certain focused mindset), I thought perhaps I'd do a quick poll:

What's your favourite place you've ever visited, and what did you love to do there?

Song:  Run-around by Blues Traveler