Nina Lewis

Archive for September, 2009

Our last night in Colorado, we stayed in Estes Park.  Lovely area!  There was a herd of 15 bull elk on the golf course.  The course had fences protecting the putting greens from the delicate hooves of the elk.  But what about the rest of the course?  Were the hoof prints just considered natural hazards — and heaven help the golfer whose ball strayed down into a hoof hole?

We stayed in an interesting motel which shall remain nameless.  In the picture below, notice the room’s data/business center with the overhead lighting, the kitchenette, and the personal armoire.   My favorite was the ergonomic chair.  (Click on the picture to see a larger view.)

The bathroom was just as modern as the business center.  (Sorry, but I didn’t get a picture of it.)  If you were daydreaming as you stepped out of the shower, you could land in the toilet if you weren’t careful.

The base of the vanity consisted of a 2″ X 2″ board covered in white Formica flecked with gold swirls (a pattern similar to the one my parents selected when they built their house in 1956) and a whitewashed peg board.

There were  a whopping 3 inches of counter space on the right side of the sink and a whopping 10 inches on the left side.  Plenty of room for my blow dryer, curling iron, hair brush, comb, hand mirror, make-up remover, facial cleanser, moisturizer, make up, tooth brush, and toothpaste.  Craig had to go elsewhere for his beauty routine.

The TV rested on a metal stand.  A dark-brown metal stand.  A low, dark-brown, metal stand.  A low, dark-brown, metal stand that was so low that you couldn’t watch TV if you were laying down on the bed.

There was a ‘lounge’ chair in the room — a chair consisting of fabric stretched across wood.  A picnic bench in the park is more cozy and comfortable than this chair!

The room reminded me of a motel we stayed in once in Montana where the nicest thing about that place was that it had 2-ply toilet paper.  While not quite the same level of elegance, this place did have really nice sink faucet fixtures.

However, my all-time favorite was the sign on the door.  The essence of all the legal-ese was that if we procured food or accommodations with intent of fraud, we could be sentenced up to life imprisonment at the state penitentiary.  Really a quite endearing welcome-and-stay-a-long-time-and-come-back-to-visit-soon message for customers.  I wonder what my sentence would be for a crime more serious than food fraud. . .

From Estes Park, we drove to the Rocky Mountain National Park.  It had snowed recently.

Here are some pictures of the summit where the growing season lasts from 6-12 weeks, snow is on the ground for 8 months out of the year, and winds could get up to 150 miles per hour.  It’s a place where I’d be sure to retire . . .

Today, Craig and I rode the narrow gauge steam engine train from Durango, Colorado, to Silverton.  What a grand adventure!!  Here are a few pictures.  I didn’t get any where we were on a narrow cliff hundreds of feet above the floor of the canyon.  I just couldn’t look out the window to take a picture.  Craig took some great ones, though.  When we get back home and he downloads them from his camera, I’ll get a copy and post them here.

The train:

The car we rode in:

How close we were to the canyon wall at times:

Train depot benches in the train museum:

My favorite car in the museum — a caboose:

Thirty-six years of marriage.  I can’t believe it!  I remember when I was first married, one of my sisters-in-law had been married for 5 years.  That seem like such a LONG time.  I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be married that long.

And, now, I have surpassed that about 7 times over.  And it’s all because I married such a wonderful man!

Five years ago, I heard a forum speech about thinking.  The speaker shared synonyms for the word think.  Ratiocinate, cerebrate, mentate, and lucubrate were some of the words I liked.  It was a good speech.

Over the years, I have been interested in thinking and how to improve my thinking.  So it is totallly understandable that when I saw the book How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci I was intrigued.  I wanted that book.  I wanted to read that book.  Finally, I bought it and read it.  And, here’s what I think about it.

First, I learned a few things about da Vinci that I didn’t know:  he was beautiful (intriguing that he wasn’t considered handsome), that he was athletic, and that he enjoyed riding horses.  I never took a humanities class in college (back in the Mesozoic era, it wasn’t a requirement) so I didn’t know that he was born out of wedlock, that his father was a prosperous accountant, and that his mother was a peasant.  I didn’t know that illegitimate children at that time were not allowed to follow their father’s career footsteps and that was why he was apprenticed to a sculptor. It’s nice to have more information in my brain about this very famous and influential man.  Finally.

After studying da Vinci’s myriad notebooks, Gelb (the author) concluded that there were 7 areas that da Vinci excelled in.  Gelb suggested that if we improved ourselves in these areas, our thinking would improve. Sounds good to me.

Those seven areas are: curiosity; testing knowledge through experienced (or learning from our mistakes); refinement of our senses; willingness to embrace ambiguity; whole brain thinking (having a balance between art and science); cultivating grace; ambidexterity, fitness, and poise; and systems thinking.

So what’s my take away from reading the book?

• Develop a desire to learn about a wider range of things.  Not be so narrowly focused.
• Embrace my mistakes as wonderful learning opportunities (instead of horridly embarrassing or painful experiences).
• Work on poise.
• Use mind mapping.

This statement was at the beginning of a chapter:  “Your brain is much better than you think.”  (Someone, please tell that to my children.  Please!!)  This quote gives me hope.

Was it worth the money I spent on the book?  Would I recommend it to others?  I think not.