What's in a Name?

When I was a kid, I had some friends who called me Sue Sips or Sips or, sometimes, Sip. I had a lot of nicknames growing up, but this one (and its variations) was one of the least offensive of them, so I hung onto it. My Twitter name is even @suesips. Such a strange name, Sipple. When I was in college, I took a linguistics class where we had to trace the etymology of our names by looking them up in the Oxford English Dictionary. It turns out that Sipple means to drink a lot slowly. That's right. My entire last name is in the OED. Anyway, this month, I've managed to run across three images on Facebook that perfectly capture my nickname and my name's definition. I might have to change my Facebook profile picture to one of these.









And just in case all these wine references make me feel as if I've sippled too much, the antidote might be at this coffee shop in San Antonio.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Paint Or Pass Out

At the end of March, we celebrated my friend's birthday at a place called Paint by the Glass. Karen wanted to do something different to celebrate her 49th birthday, so our Girl's Night Out had us painting canvases and drinking wine. That's right: the whole point of this place is to get you painting AND drinking. I love this idea! I'm no artist, so I was pretty sure that I'd leave feeling more drunk than artistic, but I ended up with a painting that looked pretty much like what it was: a bunch of flowers. Of course, they make it easy for you.

When we got there, we found that they'd already drawn a rough outline of the flowers on our canvases. After we got our wine and settled in, one of the instructors taught us how to mix paints to get the colors we wanted. Then, step by step, she took us through the process of painting. We stopped at one point to let the paint dry before proceeding, and they trotted out lots of snacks: meatballs, cheeses, veggies, brownies. We had more wine, wandered around to see what the other ladies were painting, and then settled in to finish our masterpieces. It was a fun night, and while I think my painting is pretty darned ugly, but my artistic ineptitude didn't spoil the fun. Here we are: Birthday girl Karen is on the left in the front row. She's the smiling redhead with the lovely green and orange painting! Happy birthday, friend!



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

A Book is Born

I have a number of new things to report for March and April: too many to fit in one blog post. Today, I'll just mention one new thing that happened in March. The day I left for spring break in Sedona, at about four o'clock I'n the afternoon when nobody much was on campus, I walked to my mailbox at school, and there it was: the book!



I felt a big rush of excitement, ran to my office, and called my co-editor, Robin. No answer. I grabbed the book and ran to the third floor looking for my friend, Angie. Not in. I ran down the hall to Eric's office. Nope. Nobody home. The place was a freaking ghost town the day before spring break. I walked back to my office, past closed office door after closed office door, and that's when I ran into my colleague, Matt. Matt is a very nice guy, but not somebody who knows me well, so I suspect he was a little startled when I ran towards him enthusiastically and thrust a book in his face ordering him to LOOK! His reaction was perfect! He gushed and congratulated me. That was just the little celebration I needed. Of course, I went to my office and sent a few emails, took photos of the book and myself with the book, and then I got in a plane and flew to Arizona. The book and all the work I did with Robin and our contributors was really one of the best new things of my campaign.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Airport Vortex

I'm still not sure I understand the whole vortex thing in Sedona. I defer to the Internet for this brief explanation: "There are several energy centers, or vortexes of subtle energy, located in the Sedona area. (In Sedona, the energy centers are referred to as vortexes rather than vortices.) The energy from these vortexes saturates the whole area in and around Sedona, and can be noticed in a subtle but general way anywhere around town. If you actually go to one of the vortex sites, which is where the energy is strongest, it can be a very uplifting experience. The energy you take in at one of these energy centers can stay with you and affect you positively for days afterwards." Okay. Understand?

Cindy and I visited three of the four main vortexes--some purported to emit a masculine energy that makes the visitor more confident and direct, some are said to emit feminine energy that makes a person more compassionate and understanding, and some that help you achieve balance between the two. We ventured out to the Airport Mesa vortex, named for its proximity to...you guessed it: the airport. Nights are wonderfully dark in Sedona due to their desire to curb light pollution by using lights that don't emit too much light and that seem to direct it downward. The Airport Mesa area is dark! We wound our way up a very black road and found our way into an even darker parking lot. Our first goal was to check out the view of the city from an overlook we'd heard about. It was lovely: stars twinkling and what city lights there were twinkling, too. It was also really creepy because it was just black out. Clearly, our masculine energy had not been tweaked yet!

We stumbled back to the car to head back to the hotel, and we passed a very small parking lot that we'd passed driving up, but now, in the dark of night, there were big buses there and lots of people. It was a curious sight on this dark, lonely stretch of road. Cindy, always curious but typically cautious around strangers on dark and unfamiliar roads looked at the buses and said, "Did you see that? We have to turn around." So turn around I did. We drove by the lot again, and this time, there were men helping a woman on crutches out of the bus. I drove by, saying something like, "what are they doing, having some kind of vortex healing ceremony?"and Cindy said, " NO! Don't drive by! We need to pull in to see what's going on." I was a little surprised by her interest after she'd been so afraid of the dark a few minutes earlier, but I turned around at the top of the hill and pulled into the lot. "Open the window and ask them what they're doing," Cindy said. "No way! You do it," I shot back. At least my fear was consistent.

I looked up at the huge and very dark rock formation in front of us, and the sight was like something out of a scary movie. A long line of figures was snaking up and around the rock, each of them carrying a flashlight or lantern. The rock was hard to see by the dim light they produced, but even I could tell that climbing it by flashlight in the pitch blackness of a Sedona night was ridiculously stupid. That was when I noticed the woman on crutches standing in the parking lot. At least they hadn't hauled her up the rock, I thought. Before I knew it, Cindy was out the car door asking some guy who I could not see, "What's going on?" Her tone made her sound part cop, part nosy neighbor--and it made me laugh hard. I couldn't hear the guy's response, but it was fast. She was back in the car quickly. He'd been cagey with her, not saying what the group was up to, but we had an idea. The rock area around that parking lot is supposed to be where the vortex energy is strongest, so we think they were on some perilous vortex hike in the dark.

I have to say that I never felt the vortex energy, but I do know one thing. In the short drive from the top of the Airport Mesa to the bottom, Cindy went from being afraid of the dark to being a person who pulls over to the side of the road on a pitch black night and demands that total strangers tell her what kind of craziness they're up to. Now that's some strong masculine vortex energy!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad