Antique Vanity Lights | Nagle Warren Mansion

Radiator | Nagle Warren Mansion

Charming Victorian | Nagle Warren Mansion

It's fussy and lacey and stiff and when done right, oh so charming. You'd never catch me living in Victorian decor, but I can appreciate the period when it's well done. The Nagle Warren Mansion Bed & Breakfast in Cheyenne, Wyoming is well done. Jim, the owner, was very methodical about the remodel and the details are incredible.

My first memory of the mansion was my visit last year when Jim picked me up at the airport, ran an errand on the way back to the mansion, and then gave me a tour of the grounds before taking my bags to my room. There was something so personal and small town about it. Charming.

When you make your reservations, they work with you to accommodate your diet at breakfast, there are fluffy robes and slippers waiting for you, along with a hand-written card from your housekeeper, and the bath products are yummy imports from England. In other words, the service is wonderful.

My favorite detail has to be the original doors, locks, and skeleton keys.

On the Road Again | Cheyenne, Wyoming

I've been home from Wyoming about three weeks now, my Flickr is finally updated, and I'll start a posting stream with photos from the trip. It was a business trip, but I had half a day to wander about Cheyenne on my own and, well, it was plenty of time.

I mean to say that it's a teenytiny town, not that it is an uninteresting town. In fact, I appreciate Wyoming in a whole new way this time around (for the same reasons I now appreciate the Arizona desert, actually). When I was there last year, sans camera, I wasn't digging it at all. It's amazing, the perspective you gain when you see art in minutia and details in the mundane.

On that note...on with the posts.

Ramblings from the Route | Drop in the ocean

I love The Onion. I love the dry wit and biting sarcasm and satire. I love that last week they posted a story that gets right to the heart of my frustrations about trying to live more eco-consciously.

So I set a goal last year to ride public transportation to work once a week. How's that workin out? Not so hot. I've had bus days. I had one just last week, in fact. I've enjoyed my bus days. I can, however, count those bus days on two hands and perhaps one toe. I can blame my schedule. I can say I needed to quickly get multiple places in a short amount of time and that necessitates a car. I can wine about how hot/cold it is (ironic complaint, re: my initial motivations for public transport), even though I *have* done it in the rain and snow and heat. Regardless of all these excuses, it's not good enough. I have friends who ride the bus all day every day and I know it can be done. In the meantime, I just keep spouting off that if Salt Lake were a true urban environment, more dense, better routes, blahblahblah.

On that note...The Onion: "I'm doing my inconsequential part for the environment..."

By using mass transit or riding my bike whenever possible, I may not be able to influence greenhouse-gas emissions standards or reduce mass global addiction to fossil fuels one iota. [...] Restricting my household energy use to non-peak hours does not make me capable of reversing temperature changes in the gulf stream that even now have begun to throw the world's climate out of equilibrium. The question, however, is not "What can't I do?" but rather, "What can I do?"The answer: next to nothing. (read more)