Jes and Ian

When I had a miscarriage this past summer, it occurred to both Ian and me just how much we take our luxuries in life for granted. Though a saddening and difficult experience, the miscarriage provided us a chance to evaluate how we were leading our lives. With a baby on the way, I was resigned to stay at a stressful job for a full-year longer than originally planned. But all of the sudden, I didn’t have the excuse to postpone my career goals; by August, I had finally gotten a job as a psychotherapist at a community outpatient clinic and found my life brimming with unexpected potential.

Similarly, Ian and I had talked about taking a trip back to Santa Fe and the luxurious Ten Thousand Waves as something to do in a few years. Realizing that parenthood had promised to be a very significant change to our travel and financial flexibility, we took Baby Beta’s loss as a sign that we needed to do more together now, not later. As a result, this December for our Christmas present to each other, Ian and I took a road trip out to Santa Fe, NM and spent a full week creating a vacation to remember.

On the road again

I don’t know about you, but I love road trips. Although modern interstates and turnpikes have changed the on-road experience from those described by John Steinbeck and Jack Kerouac to one of almost non-stop driving and non-existent local interaction, there’s still a wonderful appeal to watching the trees, earth, sky, road signs, license plates and speed limits change as you whiz past. You also get to see those things that almost never change– Cracker Barrel anyone?

The only challenge with a road trip that takes you almost completely across the country is having to balance time, money, and actual leisurely enjoyment. I had planned a killer itinerary for the trip out there, wanting to get to Santa Fe as quickly as we possibly could. Note to self: anything more than 10 or 12 hours of driving is likely not going to happen. Our anticipated two day trip out west turned out to be about three days; but the pay-off was worth it. The time we would have spent overextending ourselves driving through New Mexico in the darkness to meet our scheduled arrival was instead traded for a day of ogling half-frosted juniper, ocotillo, and mesquite; driving over cloud-covered hills; exploring abandoned gas stations; and eating a very tasty lunch at La Cita’s. We almost got to go to a dinosaur museum also, but we had arrived on a day when they were closed. It was on this third day, when Ian changed our driving course and we stopped pushing ourselves to be at point A by time B, that we finally were able to fully enjoy our road trip properly. Again, we find that our hopes and seemingly best laid plans’ failures are actually to our greater benefit.

Bringing out the best in all of us

Upon arrival in Santa Fe we stayed at the International Youth Hostel. Quite a place. Staying in hotels is nice. You don’t have to make the bed or clean the toilets and the soap is wrapped in waxy paper. Most hostels (in the U.S.) attempt to emulate that model but this one is quite different. When you stay in a hotel there are about a hundred other people from all walks of life mere feet from you but you will never meet them. It’s a closed-off system– you stay in your room, I’ll stay in mine, see you in the elevator. At the IYH in Santa Fe, you’re forced to share a (very large, fully-equipped) kitchen and common area with all the guests. You meet people from all over the world, share stories, food, booze and become part of their memories. Ian spent the evening playing drinking games with an Aussie, a girl from France and a girl from Germany. He took on more than his 30 year old body could handle at 6,000 feet above sea level and spent a while regurgitating the fun while naked in the common bathroom. See? Memories.

As one of the shopkeepers said, “Santa Fe brings out the best in all of us”. Ian and I would argue that Ten Thousand Waves brings out the best in Santa Fe. Snowy paths speckled with evergreen trees, steamy hot Japanese-style baths during a snow fall, serene moments of beauty, stylish digs, and an excuse to run around in a bathrobe all day long: Ten Thousand Waves proved to be the oasis Ian and I had imagined for the past six months and better. We stayed in the Silver Moon for a night before the pipes froze; the apologetic staff upgraded us to Full Moon for our last night with its fireplace, full kitchen, and more Buddha chocolates. What a way to spend a vacation!

Coming home

We stopped off on our way home in Dallas to hang with my college friends Kate and Jory; though Jory had to leave town for job interviews, Ian and I hung out with Kate and their daughter Jane. I love hanging out with any kid at two years old, so I do not think I can accurately describe the visit beyond running down halls, avoiding ticklish fingers, laughing a great deal, and being well cared for by Kate. I get sappy about anything I do with kids as they are bundles of hilarity and emotion; I will spare you all the stories that only really interest me.

To be honest, I cannot remember much about the trip back. It was almost as though the entirety of our time in Santa Fe and Dallas had guaranteed that I would be happy no matter what happened on the way home. And I suppose that is exactly what a vacation is supposed to do–create immense feelings of enjoyment and contentment to spill over into our regular, drab, everyday life. With that in mind, I am going to go pretend I am sitting in a Japanese bath or a sauna and forget that I have so many holiday obligations to fill today.

There are maybe ten times a year that I really wish I had a website. Maybe I think I’ve discovered something great and I want to share it, maybe I want to rant about my ISP’s deplorable customer service, whatever – the fact is, all those times I’ve had a site. Right here at jesandian.com.

Of course, I’m very lazy

And the previous site was so tedious to update that the very thought of posting annihilated the inspiration to do so. I had to do all the XHTML markup for the new post by hand, add the prior post to an archive directory then create and update links to and fro. I updated infrequently enough that I had to re-learn the process every time. It was a retarded system that my limited understanding of web development was content with but it drove Jes and I nuts. To the point where we only updated four times in two years. The other expression-crippling limitation was the lack of photos and video support. But that’s all changed.

Go? Go where?

The erstwhile jesandian.com was hosted by Go Daddy. They were the most convenient place for me to get a domain back in 2004 and their service suited me fine. As I worked in web longer though, I realized that they weren’t the best deal in the world. For example, my 3MB jesandian.com mail account was always teetering on the brink of overflow, I begged them to up the capacity rationalizing that I’m paying for service with them whereas Google was shooting 1GB of email storage out of one of those tee shirt cannons. They robotically offered to sell me more space for some laughable $9.95/mo. Stan suggested Dreamhost to me and even gave me a promo code so I got my first year’s hosting for free one penny. The options for administrating your hosting are a million times better than Go Daddy’s were. Their savvy is right up my alley and they know how to communicate with me– Dreamhost: monthly, text-only newsletter, Go Daddy: telephone calls while I’m with clients. To get a taste of what’s what, compare their homepages: 1, 2. I’ll wait. I currently host four sites on my Dreamhost hosting plan (about $100 per year), they add on additional server space to my plan monthly and they offer free installations of content management systems for those of us who can’t wrap our heads around managing a site, but are too proud to settle for a Blogger page.

Which brings me to my apologies

Apologies to this Scott fella. Apologies to the people who think that using someone else’s work is unethical. The theme of this blog was called Barthelme, created by Scott Wallick. My original intention was to take the PHP modules inside a basic WordPress blog, re-arrange them for my own use, create a slick stylesheet and publish a unique jesandian.com. That proved to be way over my head. So instead, I chose the template that used type the way that I liked most and modified the stylesheet until I was happy. I know, it’s a cop-out. But I really can’t justify spending hours and days learning something that I don’t really ever need to know. Besides, there’s license that says that it’s okay to do what I did. Thanks, Scott.

This new site is simple, there’s no links to our web buddies, no dumbass calendar, no archive. It’s just as basic as a book about two people called Jes and Ian. Thanks for reading.