Showing posts with label The Traveling Arvin-bury. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Traveling Arvin-bury. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Arizona Traveling


The view from our room at the B&B in Sedona, a lovely place called A Sunset Chateau to which we plan to return. Wonderful people, gorgeous setting, stunning gardens, magnificent rooms, and the breakfasts are the best I've ever had at a B&B. 


The porch of our room, overlooking the gardens. The Crack Crew is thinking this might be where we'll hold our next writer's retreat. We can rent a whole block of rooms and...er, write.



Cathedral Rock. If I could have hiked it, I would have. 


Tlaquepaque, a fantastic plaza of shops and restaurants in Sedona that intro'd me to fried pickles. Delicious! We could have stayed here all weekend.


Me, enjoying a drink and a meal at one of the plaza's fine establishments.


A picture from the train ride Teej and I took on the Verde Canyon Railroad. It's a four hour trip and we rode first class (my first time ever riding first class). I got plenty drunk.


A view from the Coronado National Forest.


Me, safely behind the wall. Don't trust vertigo...or running children.



Summerhaven, an adorable little ski town at the top of the mountain. Had the best sandwich there that I'm still working off. A BBQ chicken on mac and cheese on a baguette with a side of sweet potato tator tots.






Sunday, March 31, 2013

Photos From the Writers Retreat in Michigan Combined with Films Tj Should See...For No Reason At All


The Haunting (the original)



Picnic at Hanging Rock



The Innocents




Les Diaboliques




The Changeling (George C. Scott)




Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf




Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte



Photographic evidence by Abi Roux and Sjd Peterson

Sunday, September 9, 2012

The Traveling Arvin-bury Takes a Fall Trip

One should never plan a trip to the floor. Spontaneity is the key, my friends. This will set your new trip apart from any you've taken before. Just get up one day and go. Or try to. Nothing brings on error like the good ol' college try.

First, you must start out in a good mood so your false sense of infallibility can be righteously squelched. Also, for maximum confusatory status, I recommend you take the trip in the morning. A floor never looks so foreign as when you've just woken up and are hurtling toward it unimpeded by those annoying catchalls like chairs or desks. I have found that an extra long bed sheet trailing off the mattress onto the floor and curled up like a python is quite helpful in getting things started.

On your trip you will have many familiar experiences in brand new ways. Why, it'll feel as if you are tripping for the first time all over again! The dream-like confusion, the blood-chilling fear, and the humiliation. My oh my, the humiliation! If you fall in the company of others make certain you stand up quickly and act as if nothing happened. Nothing at all. It doesn't matter if you take a fall on live TV. Have the dignity and sense of self-preservation of a politician and deny it ever occurred.  You must walk away with the speed of an American tourist with Montezuma's Revenge. If you are alone when you take your trip, you must hit the ground with balled fists and cry for vengeance. Cry to heaven!

You will see many new things on your trip. You will see a chair or a table you think you know, and you will wave - you will wave frantically - but it will act as if it doesn't even know who you are. Some tables and chairs are unfortunately known for their rudeness. This is a cultural thing, having been carved into them when they were mere stools and nightstands. They are all somewhat stand-offish and rooted to their ways.

If you're lucky there will be a sense of strange slow motion to the fall, so you can experience every blabbering inner scream and cry of terror, every Holy shit! I'm falling! No, no, no, no! and every Why me, God? Why me? You may suddenly, if very briefly, find religion again. And then, very soon after, remember why you lost it in the first place after you receive absolutely no help from God's flaccid hand.

Brace yourself for impact upon arrival. Once you are there it will not seem half as intense as what you were expecting. Your head will not, in fact, fall off at the jolt and your plans for an Eva Peron style funeral in your honor will quickly be forgotten when you open your eyes again and squee silently I'm alive! Sweet Jebus, I'm alive!

Once you have seen what you want to see, once you've become acquainted with the dust bunnies under the bed and the dried piece of macaroni trumpeting your failure from under the desk, for god's sake, leave! But not without souvenirs. Be sure to pick up your bruises, and it's always polite to leave something behind. Maybe a big hole in the wall the size of your head. You want this trip to be remembered for years to come. Who knows when you'll have the opportunity to feel this humiliated again?

Oh, and be sure to give a call to your friends and family and let them know you've arrived at your surprise destination safely, and will soon be returning home. I'm positive they will be waiting for the exciting details of your trip, ready to laugh and laugh and laugh.