Luminaria Time

December 7, 2008
Peoria, AZ

We stumbled across a fun local event this week: Luminaria at the Phoenix Desert Botanical Gardens. It's an annual event held from roughly Thanksgiving to New Years, where they close the gardens mid-afternoon to set up candles along all the pathways, and open again at dusk for several hours so people can wander around. I'm not sure what they've done in past years, but this year they inserted an installation of hundreds of pieces of Chihuly glass sculptures all over the place.

Some of the pieces were quite abstract, while others seemed like they were custom made for the setting. Since it was dark, photos were a challenge. Trying to get good pictures by lugging around a lot of stuff (like multiple flash units) and setting up the tripod just wasn't an option - unfortunately. We took a few cell phone pics but they really don't do a very good job. We may make a return trip during the day when making photos would be quite a bit easier, although obviously not as dramatic. I'll include a couple of the low-quality shots here, just in case we don't actually get back.

In other news, well, there's not much new. We started putting up Christmas (we're not PC) decorations outside and in, and we'll finish that up over the next few days. We're still trying to decide what goes where even after being here a few years. This year, we've vowed to add anything that doesn't fit here to our next Salvation Army donation. We're looking to put things in places where it's easy to deploy and easy to put things away in January, preferably without the need for a ladder. We're definitely in the mood to simplify life. If it can't go up with zip-ties, back in the box it goes.

We finally got a "dud" from NetFlix. After a string of reasonably good selections, I really goofed by adding "3:10 to Yuma" to the queue. Geri gave up after about 30 minutes and I wasn't far behind. Oh well, they can't all be winners.

On the food front, we tried a new slow-cooker recipe for braised short ribs (not a keeper, although we may try it again with a different cut of meat) and had better luck with a "Mexican Lasagna" that Geri found online. In fact, since the recipe was for 4 servings, we'll finish that off tonight. Last night, we had another winner, a simple pasta dish with radicchio and garlic, paired with a nice 1997 Barolo from the Wine Box.

Well, that's it for now...