SWCAMBORNE

I think the world is ready for a store that specializes in dental supplies.

• Hard to find toothpastes
• Every variety of floss
• Tooth whiteners from around the world
• 45 different kinds of electric toothbrushes
• 100 types of manual toothbrushes
• test strips
• Toothpicks
• 75 kind of mouthwash
• And lots of good advice from trained professionals

This would be a store dedicated to the idea that dental hygiene is a good thing and that brushing your teeth can be fun.

Of course it would be on-line and brick and mortar.

Our first week in Santa Fe Nurit and I drove up to Los Ojos with Missy the dog. We went up to see the weaving cooperative they have in Los Ojos and the countryside on the way. It was magnificent. We drove into town on the back road and had a beautiful view of the town from above and the local catholic shrine.

On the way up we stopped in an area that was having an art and crafts festival and saw a few of the vendors.

We also passed some spectacular scenery and took some great photos.

Before our trip to Santa Fe we heard an advertisement by the USPS (formerly the Post Office) about how you could go online and forward your mail. No muss no fuss. So we tried it and we have some good news and some bad news.

The good news is that everybody at the post office was really helpful. All of the staff were friendly and genuinely cared about our mail.

The bad news is that the system for forwarding mail is archaic, slow and failed miserably.

On about September 25 we put in a forwarding notice at our local post office. It turns out that it couldn’t be done online. We asked that the mail be forwarded to our address in Santa Fe for all of October. On the first of October Pete our local mail carrier stopped delivering to our house. It was more than a week before any of the mail started arriving in Santa Fe and a week after that before we started to get any of it. The second weeks delay was a result of our not having the key to the USPS mail delivery box at our rental house. After that we got some first class mail but not all of it and none of our magazines.

About mid October we decided to cancel the forwarding order and have our house sitter vet the mail and forward the important stuff. Every attempt we made failed. We failed at the Santa Fe Post Office and at the Pasadena Post Office. We filled out three forms and even got an acknowledgement. But the mail kept going into postal purgatory.
A few days after we got home we talked to Pete, our carrier. Yes he had two tubs of mail for us and he would bring it tomorrow. And he did.

My conclusion is that the people at the post office are very good at their jobs and they care a lot about the mail but the systems aren’t very good. The postal workers know this so they build alternative back door solutions to get the mail delivered.

My recommendation is that you get to know your carrier and be sure to communicate directly with them and don’t believe the ads.

On this day in 1940 German bombers destroyed much of Coventry, England.  Thanks to David B. for this tip.

Read the entire story on the BBC web site.

Or see lots of very good pictures here

Coventry is my mothers families ancestral home and we held our family reunion in Wolston a village five miles from there last summer.  My mother, Kathleen, was in the Home Guard during WW2.  She worked as a aimer on an anti-aircraft gun and was credited with shooting down a German bomber.  I don’t know if it was during the bombing of Coventry or at some other time.

We went to Tent Rocks one very windy day in October.

It was cold but very clear and we had a nice scramble up the canyon and through the very different formations in the area.

Missy the dog was a trooper and only had to be lifted up a few of the highest ledges.

If your in Santa Fe and you are interested in geology be sure to visit this unusual natural formation.

More photos on Flickr

To sojourn means to “live temporarily.” Which is what we did in Santa Fe in October. Santa Fe was a particularly nice place to sojourn but to sojourn anywhere is a particularly nice state to be in. A sojourn is longer than a vacation so there is not a sense of urgency to see and do everything. But it is not taking up permanent residence so there is no need to think about things like house maintenance or the neighbors.

Riestras at La Fonda

So our Santa Fe stay was successful at two levels. We discovered the joy of sojourning and we confirmed our love of Santa Fe.

To see an album of pictures from our trip on Flickr follow this link:

A diving inverse of the mass ascension at the balloon fiesta.

“mass descention”

Get a lot of divers to all go down to about 40 feet together in a confined area and shoot a lot of video. Get it in the Guiness Book of World Records

It would be a good thing for the dive operators in Southern California to organize. Lots of publicity and air sales on the day of the mass descention. Lots of fun at the dive party that evening.

I was sent this link to some NASA space shots by Edie T.  Very cool stuff definitely a good investment of our tax money.

http://www.texasjim.com/NASApix/NASA%20pix.htm

Here is the link to NASA’s site where there are lots of other images.

http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.html

“Personally I can’t wait for universal health care. From the folks who bought you FEMA, the TSA, The DMV and the IRS comes universal health care! It’s going to be fantastic to have the government in charge of our health.”

Drew Carey

Matches used to be an important give away for restaurants. They created name recognition and credibility at a low cost.

Then smoking went out of vogue and the need for matches decreased.

We have been discussing ideas for the new matches. Lillian, Rebecca, Gene B and Joel G contributed to the evolution of this idea.

We started with the question: “Why were matches such a good advertising medium?”

• Matches were useful
• Matches are cheap
• Matches are useful away from the place where they are given away.
• Matches are consumable so they have to be replaced
• A book or box of matches had room for some copy
• Matches don’t rot or change

The obvious product that meets these criteria is the ball point pen.

Interestingly hotels up and down the price spectrum give away pens but only some restaurants.  The only ones of the criteria above that pens don’t meet are usefulness and consumability.  People don’t write much and free pens would mostly end up in the junk drawer.

Another idea that was suggested was after dinner mints.  They could be about the size of the ones that Starbucks sells but only five or six of them in a matchbook size dispenser.  They seem to meet the criteria but we have never seen them used.

Other ideas suggested were beer mats, post cards, water bottles, some kind of web access code or take home spice packages.  None of them seems perfect but this is a matter of taste.  My vote is with the five mints in the matchbook.