Taping "Creative Living with Sheryl Borden"

Last week, Rocketman and I flew to Portales, NM for some tapings on "Creative Living with Sheryl Borden." We had to fly from Minneapolis to Memphis, then Memphis to Lubbock, TX. There we rented a car to drive the 1 1/2 -2 hours to Portales, NM.

The flight from Minneapolis to Memphis was fine except for the end. The pilot told us that we had experienced a heck of a tailwind and we were a half hour early. But he was arriving with too much fuel causing too much weight so he was putting down the landing gear and we were going to fly around for a half hour burning fuel.

Now Rocketman has flown over 2 million miles in his career (hence the name Rocketman) and he had never heard this before. So we flew around in large circles for 35 minutes and landed. We only had 35 minutes before our next flight would take off so it was a mad dash in the Memphis terminal to catch our connection. As we ran we were tortured by the smell of Memphis barbecue and if you haven't ever had Memphis barbecue, I highly recommend it.

We made our connection which was a much smaller commuter plane. The overheads were so small that carry on luggage had to be checked at the gate. That flight turned into a continuous ride on a roller coaster with the plane jerking left and right and up and down. It was so bad that the flight attendants had to return to their seats.

We made it to Lubbock and got our rental car for the road trip. It was so windy that our car was also swerving on the highway as we made our way to Portales. I saw my first tumbleweed thanks to the wind.


I wanted so authentic Mexican food since we were in New Mexico so when we came upon this restaurant, I told Rocketman to stop! It was about 5:00pm and nobody was in the place but the employees. We took our seats and it was like deja vu, we were transported back to South Korea.

The two waitresses were fighting over which one would have to serve us. I watched the whole thing letting Rocketman know what was going on. He wanted to leave but I wasn't going to let language get in our way of a good meal. I never did that in South Korea and I wasn't going to do that back in the States.

Finally, one of the waitresses came over with some homemade salsa and chips along with menus. The menus were picture menus but also with English and Spanish. We made our choices and off she went.

Then the door opened and 15 guys walked in from two mini vans. We couldn't believe they all fit. They all spoke Spanish and that's when I knew we picked a great place to eat.


Rocketman ordered the enchilada dinner.

I ordered two chicken tacos. The food was over the moon delicious. So much so that we stopped on our return to Lubbock.

The show taped at a local studio on a college campus. I was done in just over an hour from start to finish including setting up each segment. I did one polymer clay and two maedeup segments.

We were staying the night in Lubbock so we left the studio and made our way back to Lubbock.

Once we arrived in Lubbock and checked into the hotel, we had the afternoon to bum around. I had heard that Lubbock was the birthplace of Buddy Holly and they had a museum so I wanted to check it out.

The museum was $5.00 a person and no pictures. They even had surveillance cameras watching your every move. I thought that was ridiculous since even Graceland lets you take pictures. We first saw Buddy's bedroom. His mom had never changed it when he left and married. She died in the 90's with the bedroom still intact from the 50's. The family donated it to the museum.

We also saw lots of things of Buddy's like report cards, toys he had played with when he was young and of course, a lot about his days with the Crickets. They even had the glasses he was wearing when the plane crashed. His whole career had lasted only 18 months and he died at 21.

Lubbock is also the home to Texas A & M so we stopped at a bookstore so I could get a sweatshirt. I asked the cashier for a recommendation dinner and she was happy to tell us where to go. It turned out to be the perfect choice as you can see from Rocketman's expression.

Here is a studio shot. It was all college kids that did the taping except for the director.

Sheryl was the sweetest thing. She was a little late because she didn't know that she had to drop off her pumpkin pies that morning for the Thanksgiving dinner at her church. She apologized and it was too cute.

We saw lots of cotton. I had never seen cotton before.

I tried to pick some but there are prickers on the branches. I couldn't imagine people picking cotton by hand like the old days. I did end up finding some on the highway and yes, I am going to craft with it. I was thinking it would make a cute Santa beard.

As we drove, we noticed this huge house sitting in the middle of nowhere.

So we had to stop and take a picture.

This is the front gate. I wonder who lives there.

We had a blast and Sheryl invited me back for more shows. The flights back thankfully were quite boring. I managed to get most of my sock done.