brothers and sisters

My brother is an artist who makes works out of data. He has been recording his latitude and longitude every hour on the hour for the past decade and has created several artworks based on this information. He’s also plotted the approximate location of every member of our immediately family, plus his wife, my husband, and now our children, for the past 10 years as well, and created works from them too (one is pictured).

So every January he asks me where we’ve been the previous year. I just tallied it all up for him.

I took 13 overnight trips this year:
6 with the whole family
3 with one child
3 with friends
1 with my husband
1 alone

That’s 45 nights away and 34 airplane flight segments, but only 4 hotel stays. Five were business trips, but all of those also included good friends and good food so I feel guilty even calling them business trips (not guilty enough not to submit a T&E, though. Somebody had to pay for the Internet access at the W).

I went to New York four times, Chicago three times, and my husband’s hometown three times. I went to two places I’d never been before (Atlanta and Minneapolis). I went to two places I’ve lived before (New York and my parents’ town).

And I also learned there’s a whole world out there left to see. Miles to go in ’08 (or at least San Francisco). See you there … or somewhere.

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Be sad because you’re not going where my sister is going this weekend: To the annual meeting of the International Society of Arboriculture.

First of all, it’s in Honolulu. Better yet, it’s the scene of the International Tree-Climbing Championship. She’ll get to see the head-to-head secured footlock race, the aerial rescue competition (during which, she tells me, participants can earn extra style points by shouting encouraging words to their imperiled dummies–”I’m coming for you, buddy! Hang on!”), the work climb, and more.

Oh, and my brother? He’s in the Italian Alps right now. But I’m not so jealous of him because he’s seeing everything from the seat of his bike (and through the flaps of a tent). That’s not really how I roll.

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