icebluenothing

Saturday, 3:00pm:

Peace and quiet at last. I am, as my last journal entry mentioned, back in Olympia. I'm going to be writing this, and probably several other entries, and posting them when I get back.

The monitor on Cheryl's computer is still flickering and dying, and I want to use it as little as possible, thus I'm off-line for the week. I'm not bothered. It will be nice to see how well I manage without the constant stream of input.

To fill the howling void of being disconnected from the Net, I've brought some music (probably not enough); this laptop, to produce a little output for a change; and a small stack of books I've been meaning to finish. Don't know why I bothered with that last item -- Cheryl's bookshelves are lined with classics and interesting non-fiction. I used to find it all somewhat intimidating until I found out on my last trip that she hasn't read half of them. Looks like that runs in the family.

This is going to be a nice little vacation. Cheryl actually left me a little money, too, to cover gas and food, unanticipated but certainly not unwelcome.

I've been going pretty flat-out non-stop for the past several weeks -- I'm going to tell you about all of that soon, just sit tight -- and I feel happy and accomplished but also pretty burned out and sick of people. Hopefully this will make a good reboot and defrag for me.

The drive down was unspeakable. Stop-and-go traffic, I'm not kidding here, pretty much all the way from Shoreline to Olympia. Olympia itself looks much the same -- still largely under construction.

Cheryl and Bill took me out to dinner last night at a nice little restaurant on the waterfront called Tugboat Annie's. I had a jambalaya that had more meat than rice and was actually what I would consider spicy. On the way home, a fox crossed the road in front of us, strange, scraggly looking wild thing, with a rolling, loping gait like nothing else. Absolutely beautiful. I couldn't help but think of kitsune, wondered what was going to happen to my life now with that crossing my path.

And speaking of trickster spirits, this morning I finished reading Coyote Blue, by Christopher Moore. It made me both laugh and cry and I am greatly indebted to retcon's mother for finding me a copy.

It feels good to be sitting at the laptop writing. This needs to be an activity at the solid core of my life, not something I just do every now and then. I need to work on that.

This week, I believe I will; I have many more LJ entries to write, and I also hope to get a little fiction written.

This evening, at Cheryl's urging, I'm heading into town to see The Procession of the Species, which is basically a community parade celebrating biodiversity, with costumes and giant puppets of animals both real and mythical. It sounds like a very Olympia thing to do, and I'm looking forward to it.

It's not going to be anywhere near as impressive as one lone fox, though.