More Road Tripping to Come

Spring is really springing here in Seattle, and I’m enjoying it so much. The garden keeps popping up new flowers, and I can go outside so much more. It’s great.

I’m also driving down to California tomorrow to visit my family and meet my cousin’s new baby for the first time. I’m very excited, and I’ve been getting ready for this trip for a few days. One part of my preparations involved making delicious pasta salad to take with me for lunch on the road, because I had a craving and it seemed like a good idea. Another part involved cleansing my very uncooperative dogs. I didn’t budget my time well, which is why this is extremely late, but now I have to go to sleep so I can drive safely, so I’m just gonna solidly half-ass this post and then pass out.

Here are some flowers.

Pink forget-me-nots

Pink forget-me-nots

White blossoms on my mystery tree

Road Trip and a Stop at the Herloom Festival

I’m visiting my family in California, and was lucky enough to be around just in time to hit up the big heirloom festival with a friend. I met some rare sheep and some intensely fancy chickens, and ate yummy foods. It was a good day.

Writing days this past week: 1

I Went on a Surprise Trip

I went on an impromptu road trip to Vancouver Island this past week with my Grandmother and my aunt. I’ll probably talk about some of the details of that trip, and how it happened, another time. Here are some pictures that I took along the way.

We went to Butchart gardens. It was absolutely stunning.

The view from above Kye Bay. Definitely not taken when I got lost and ended up in the wrong place.

Interesting beach flowers and wild bees

Barnacles on all the rocks

Live sand dollars are fuzzy.

Mysterious stone circle with seaweed garnish

Little green crabbo

Apparently, it’s seaweed season.

This little guy tried to hide under my boot. Not the most brilliant choice, but he’s cute.

Sky over Kye Bay

We went on a carriage ride. Our horse had a crush on one of his coworkers, and he got very excited when she walked by.

Leaving Victoria on the ferry. I got very seasick.

Writing days this past week: 1

I’m Visiting the Warm Southern Lands

I’ve been driving for about two days straight and just got to my dad’s place this evening. After some recuperative tea and chatter with my siblings, I realized that I had forgotten to write the post. Then, I kept chattering, and remembered again and forgot again many times. It is now about 3am, because this is what I do to myself.

Here are some highlights from Friday’s drive. Sadly, I have no pictures of the minor snowstorm I drove through around Mt. Shasta, but it was exciting.

Almost a New Year

The stretch between Christmas and New Year’s Eve is odd. It’s too short to settle back into normalcy and too long for the holiday feelings to stay fresh. I’m writing this post on a break as I drive home from Christmas with my family, and it’s been a nice quiet trip. I love road tripping by myself (well, myself and the pups) because I can take the time to really enjoy the scenery and go for little walks in new places. I especially like having that alone time around this time of year, because it’s a convenient pausing point to consider where I am now, where I was last year, and where I’m trying to get.

I’ve decided that I’m going to start posting the days I’ve worked each week at the bottom of my blog posts. Knowing that people actually might notice if I skip a blog post has helped me stay on track, and I feel like I have a handle on regular posting now. It’s not big deal, but the little boost of self awareness will hopefully help me keep from letting too many non-working days slip by when I get sad, hazy, and generally frazzled. Blog posts won’t count toward the number of writing days, just work on my fiction. I’m aiming for five days a week, since I do still have to write posts and do other types of work. I’m not gonna get down on myself if I fall behind, but I need to develop my self-discipline, and that seems like a solid goal for this year. 

That’s as close as I’m coming to a New Year’s resolution this time around. 2017 has been a thing. I’d say I’m glad to see it go, but who knows what the next year is going to bring. It’s daunting, but new life always springs up from destruction and decay.

Writing days this past week: 0 (A bit of an embarrassing start, but I’m glad to have spent this time focusing on my family and friends.)

Christmas in Silicon Valley Land

I drove down to my dad’s place over the last couple days, and I’m enjoying being back home where everything is super weird, but in a familiar way. I spent today being mildly sick with a cold and doing some last minute Christmas shopping with my sister and the dogs, because doing things in advance is for suckers. All the best gifts are bought at the last second, really. 

They replaced my old fish store with a candy and soda shop, which is just super surreal in a number of ways. 

All that used to be fish tanks and reptiles, and I have serious questions about how sanitary they could have actually gotten the place, but it’s kinda quirky and fun. The dogs seemed to like it.

The giant tree outside city hall in mountain view has been made almost aggressively festive.

We wandered around and had tea because Castro street is always fun, although the awesome used bookstore is also gone now, which is a bummer. 

I look alert, but it’s all a ruse. The cold is making my head stuffing swell and soon it’s gonna come out my ears.

Tea and endless inane chatter with my siblings is the only cure.

The end. 

I’ve Been Basically Useless All Week

So, that’s fun. I made this nifty banner, though. I’m fairly proud of those roses and I plan to put them everywhere. The castle kinda looks like a birthday cake to me, although my sister pointed out that maybe I’m looking at it wrong – maybe birthday cakes just look like castles.

I’ve had the most intense urge to play Minecraft the past few days, because my brain is just refusing to kick into gear. I know that that way lies literal mountains and caverns of wasted time, but it’s so tempting. This is the reason I haven’t installed it on my semi-new laptop yet. It would be so very bad. (But so good.)

Building games are totally my favorite, which is weird because I was never that into legos. Playing with physical toys seemed like a lot of effort to very lethargic young me. I did like Age of Empires, though. That shit was the best. I would herd all the deer and boar into pens and get annoyed if my clueless peasants ever shot them for food. Their lives were a sacrifice I was willing to make in order to build a tiny menagerie in the middle of a frozen wasteland with actual hordes of enemies on all sides. I graduated from this to ZooTycoon, which was also an excellent building game. Strangely, I never got into The Sims. They could’ve hooked me if they’d had more Thompson’s gazelles and velociraptors, I think.

I’d like to think all this means I was a creative kid, but I think it mostly means I liked to play god. In fact, now that I think about it, I also loved that game where you play an actual god with a giant monster pet that occasionally stomps your hapless villagers to death.

I dunno. Clearly writing is the career for me, since it is the ultimate license to build anything I can imagine and control all the little characters. Maybe my stories just need more popcorn kiosks and escaped lions.

Oh, I’ll be visiting my family next week, so that’ll be fun. I actually tend to get decent work done on trips, too, so that’s something to look forward to. There’s not much else to do for hours and hours but think, so I always get good ideas on the road. Who knows, maybe next week’s blog post will be on time and have actual content of some sort.