Tess recently wrote about our weekend jaunt to the "Lobster Capital of Nebraska", Nebraska City, for her family reunion. I'm going to chime in about that trip, for no reason at all.

We saw (and caught) lightning bugs. They're really strange. I didn't have my glasses, so when they were winking on and off, it was hard to focus on where they were at (one wink blurry, the other sharp). It's like when you look at something reflective, and one eye catches a shine from something else in the reflection, but the other doesn't. Apparently, you can squish the lightning bugs, and the guts glow. (I suppose there's some sort of enzyme or something which causes the bioluminescent reaction, like two binary chemicals? I'm imagining the inventor of cyalume seeing lightning bugs and coming up with his product. No glow unless you mix the two chemicals. It's safe to say that squishing the little beetles is a way to have them involuntarily mix their chemicals.) No glowbugs were harmed in the making of our vacation, by the way, and as we were leaving Sunday morning, Tess released the one (very confused to be awake in the daylight) bug she had caught the night before. All she wanted was a tiny chuckle throughout the night, I guess.

We stayed at the Leid Conference Center. It was a nice place, and an ironic place. It was built to serve "a resource for the National Arbor Day Foundation members, other conservation-related organizations, teachers, forestry professionals, and any other organization or company wishing to use a centrally located, high quality, and reasonably priced conference center". Its construction involved the most real, natural, interior hardwood I've seen since my youth in Pinetop, AZ. I'm talking cut logs on every flat surface, and everything held up by whole peeled trees. It was a Paul Bunyan wet dream. You can kinda see it in this small picture. Everything in that pic which isn't glass is wood. So I couldn't help but laugh a little (OK, a lot) when I found out that it was built for the Arbor Day Foundation, on the Arbor Day Farms. It's like PETA having a meat packing plant for its headquarters and meeting spaces.

I know this may sound improbable, but I've always wondered where Arbor Day came from. Really, I have. When I was a kid, I had this Peanuts cartoon book about holidays and Arbor day was one of them. Snoopy and Charlie Brown were planting little trees. It was the first time I'd heard of Arbor Day. You know when you hear about something that apparently everyone else has known about, but mention of which has somehow escaped you, how you get that feeling like you've been asleep too long? It was like that. Anyhow, I got to see where it was invented. And I think I know why it was invented, too. From the looks of the conference center, I can see how it's completely reasonable that the only holiday one could possibly imagine after constructing the center would be one involving the planting of new trees.

Here are some more factoids which are nearly completely useless: The guy who came up with Arbor Day (and who was probably no slouch with a saw himself) was J. Sterling Morton, of Morton salt fame. Apparently, Nebraska has a lot of salt in it's geological makeup, although it's no longer mined commercially. We got to see Morton's farm. They rebuilt it. You know when Arbor day is? Well, that depends on which state you're in. If you wanna join in, you can get 10 free trees with which to do so.

So environment aside, I had a great time meeting all of Tess's relatives. I especially liked meeting Little Ivan, who -- despite having Tourette's Syndrome -- owns and operates a worm ranch. No kidding -- I learned all about worm ranches from him (I'm not giving away the secrets, either; if you want to know what a worm ranch does, then ). He's an interesting guy, and if half the people his age had half his determination in spite of adversity, this country would be twenty times the economic powerhouse it is today. Tess's cousins (aged such that they could easily be mistaken for aunts) were extremely cool. We stayed up "late" Friday night and they were all taking time out to knock back a cocktail/beer or two. It was fun being there with them for the pregame show, getting a little one-on-one time. Earlier that day, I got a very manly and mostly-encompassing hug from Cousin Bill, an ex-Marine and a hilariously nice guy. I tried to dig into the hug and reciprocate as much as I could, and I think it was well-received. I should have him asked what aftershave he used. It was quite sexy.

I got to see Nebraskan food, which apparently exists as a condiment to gravy of various types. Nothing like a big helpin' of gravy seasoned with a little fried chicken and corn. It really hits the spot on a warm summer evening. I got to see apple trees, which I had never seen before (even though I did some field camp mapping trips in and around Willcox, AZ, where they grow quite a few apples). The ones we saw were scraggly little things, with the tallest being about 8-10 feet tall. I looked up apple trees on the web and the ones I saw were pruned shorter than normal. The apples were tiny green ones and not fit for eating. We saw corn and soybeans, too. Lots of it. I'd seen soybeans before, but not corn. I wanted to get out and walk around the rows just to see what it was like, but I never did. Maybe another day.

I also learned that on Sundays in July between the hours of noon and 5:30PM, Omaha is essentially a wasteland. If I ever have to direct a remake of Omega Man, I'm filming it in Omaha on a July weekend. Tess and I had 6 hours to kill (we hitched a ride from Nebraska City to Omaha in the morning; our flight left at night). We decided to rent a car, partially because Omaha International Airport has no lockers for personal items. Explain to me how an "international" airport can do anything but hang its head in shame when it doesn't even have basics like coin-operated storage lockers. I think it's putting on airs. Omaha is, geographically and culturally speaking, probably the farthest away one can be from anything international and still remain in the continental US. Next time I'm there, I'm looking for an international flight. I bet they don't have any (or only enough to claim the title "international").

We drove around downtown aimlessly for an hour or two amidst endless one-way streets (found the art museum and the high school, and even took a picture of the "Mutual of Omaha" building and one cool looking old house), until I hit upon an idea. I recalled seeing a lot of mention of the Cornhuskers, and I remembered that this was a college football team. I figured that Omaha, being the largest city in Nebraska, is home to this team and therefore the college for which they play. I further assumed that in spite of its predicted "Go Huskers" nature, the college might be the one place that has anything open on Sunday which might appeal to a young and hip (heh heh) married couple with a few hours to kill and a free rental car. So I fired up the GPS, found us, found the mall on the map, found the mall on the GPS, and got us properly oriented. Tess (who was driving the rental) steered us down the proper one-way road until we came to the mall. We went inside and looked around before deciding on a plan.

Omaha is actually an interesting place, and I learned a lot of about it from the cross-section of the people at the mall - at least as far as appearances and local styles are concerned. For example, I learned that, statistically speaking, if you are a male between the ages of 16 and 28 and you live in Omaha, you have a 87% chance of having a mullet and a 61% chance of wearing Lee brand jeans. If you're a female otherwise matching that demographic, you have a 47% chance of feathered hair parted in the middle or a 51% chance of having your bangs hairsprayed into a sheer wall rising up from your forehead. You also have a 74% chance of finding yourself wearing blue eyeshadow (and if so, a 24% chance of that being your only makeup). Either sex has a 67% chance of having arrived at the mall in a car with a dreamcatcher hanging from the rearview, with 97% of the cars sporting some sort of red "N" somewhere (the chances that you have a "I bleed Husker red" sticker was undetermined but observed to be high).

After sampling the mall and its inhabitants, we got some coffee, bought some books, had lunch, and headed back to the airport so we could wait for our flight to Denver. We got to Denver, got home and then prepared for the traveling the next coming weekend.

Well, that's about all I can dredge up as far as thoughts on my trip. In general, I liked everything and had a swell time. I'd go back in a heartbeat, and am looking forward to seeing Tess's relatives again.