I’ve been off cavorting in Egypt for a couple of weeks, well, back last Wednesday to be more accurate. The weather turned as we got to Minneapolis and my sister, who was also on the trip, was stuck here either waiting for planes or waiting at the airport until she finally got a flight out to Fargo 250 miles way. We all thought they coulda made it with a plane, but then again, we don’t fly planes. The highways were closed off and on. I’m sure she now knows the Minneapolis airport better than I do. We spent a remarkable amount of time toing and froing from the airport at rush hour as that seems to always be the time something came to a no-go. With the nearest Interstate entrance ramp twenty-five blocks away and a constant state of snow or blowing snow, moving around always took longer than anticipated. We did drag her to see Sunken Cities at the MIA, which was interesting after two weeks in Egypt at Cairo and points south of there.

I bought a big new Sony camera to take with me to Egypt and took a few pictures. I’ve gotten about five days up on Facebook. The albums are public, but my profile is private, so I’m not sure how to get people past one and into the other. My attempts using an incognito browser ain’t been a great success.

My lazy-ass photo processing process ain’t up to the level of the new camera yet, and I’m mostly trying to process pictures to jpgs, enchance them a bit, cut out the stupid, and post them. I am trying to post them in discreet groups rather than “Here’s 600 pics from Aswan” that’s my usual wont. For example, Abu Simbel – Rameses II – Inside — it’s still 600 pics from Aswan, but at least you know what you’re getting into. 😉

I was the resident self-appointed know-it-all for the group of six I was traveling with, the one that put Ramses the II in the Middle Kingdom at least once, but I think we all had a great time. Egypt was great, except for the traffic in Cairo. I could have stayed twice as long. We went Giza, Aswan, Abu Simbel, Lake Nasr, Aswan, Nile, Luxor, Cairo. I took too many pictures through the bus with the big Sony. I shoulda used my cell phone. I expected a larger number of out-of-focus pics, but I think I done good. It did seem like time’s winged charriot always hovered near in the form of “Don’t be the last one on the bus.”

A couple of people had got something while we were there, but I survived fine until I got on the plane back home, when I could feel something settling around me. I’m doing a different antibiotic and I have a small jar of codeine cough syrup to see me through. (I wanted a gallon, but I’ll take what I can get.) I denuded the house of chocolate one night and decided that “No, it does not work as well as codeine.”

I am starting to load pics on fotki, where I have a few. Link Something between me and Photoshop and fotki is flipping pictures, so keep a limber neck. Pics from the Valley of the Queens and Valley of the Kings are up on Fotki, and I’ll be adding more as time goes by, maybe even flipping the flipped ones back. With luck, this link goes to a full-screen version of the Mortuary Temple of Pharaoh Hatshepsut