on the road with a sock monkey

It's hard to believe how quickly we traveled so far from home. I'm passing a day on a university campus with plans to meet up at day's end. I'm keeping the details of the universities out of my blog, because that's not really my story. I will try to share some of the impressions and experiences of the trip in general. At the moment, it's surreal, all the imagining: will this be the place? what would it be like to visit here? How can it feel so ordinary to be in a strange city at a strange university just sitting here eating a salad, watching students walk by, posting my blog?

Fiona and I have agreed that Cameron the sock monkey will be our traveling companion. Cameron was crafted by Carol, one of the amazing craft-making members at the seniors' recreation centre where I work. Carol estimates she has made 50 sock monkeys by now. Cameron is mine. My plan is to introduce Cameron to people as we go, ask if I can take a photograph and post it to my blog. In New York, we're going to find out if anyone will believe that the heart on Cameron's sweater is representative of the Canadian flag, and that on February 1, 2011, Canada will change its flag from a maple leaf to a heart.

Fiona has taken some of the photos, and I haven't had time to switch them from her sd card into my computer, so these are just a few of the photos. We introduced the monkey to our seatmate on the plane from Seattle to Denver, a nice young man, recently graduated from Michigan State University. That's Matt in the photo, holding Cameron on the plane. Cameron is wishing Matt a good visit with his Mom and Dad who live near Boulder, and also wishing him success in his career in animation for computer games.

Cameron also helped Fiona practise her monologues, and sat with me for a while, to reassure me that driving a rental car around the midwest in January wouldn't really be all that bad. So far, he's been right.

We are have a good time here, managing to get where we need to go and do what we need to do. First round of auditions will be finished Sunday afternoon, after which we'll fly to New York for a few days of fun before one more audition then home.

question: would you like to be photographed with Cameron?

mompoet - taking it all in and sending some of it back out