Back from the weekend! It was an… interesting time. The boys and I had some good times, and some bad times. I think the good times far outweighed the bad, and fun was had by all.
We arrived on Friday, and it looked like rain. So, I tried to put up a tarp. I ended up flat on my back, bruised and bloody, and mad as hell. That was when Jared open the van window (the boys were inside watching a DVD) and asked why the tent wasn’t up yet.
Not a good way to start a trip.
I finally got the tent up, without the tarp, and hoped it wouldn’t rain. The boys and I played and had supper, and then settled down with a bag of chips in front of the fire. By the time we were done, it was dark and we were all very tired. All of us slept until 9:00 AM.
Saturday dawned bright and sunny. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and the sun beat down on us pretty darn good. The boys had been wanting to do a hike, preferably one longer than their current record of 3.2 kms. I, naturally, obliged, and we were off on a 5 km jaunt over rocky knolls and brush filled valleys. In between were cold lakes and tall stands of pine and juniper, with the occasional Aspen trying to get some of the filtered sunlight. And boy was it hot. We were about 4 kms in when the thunder started. Continuous low rumbles, punctuated by sharper blasts. The sky still looked clear blue, but it didn’t take long for the clouds to show up. We had about 10 minutes of our hike left, when the clouds opened up and dumped their load on us. We were soaked to the bone in seconds, and cold. Ten minutes later, at the end of the trail, the rain stopped, the thunder moved off, and the sky was a brilliant blue. We dried off on the way back to camp, and enjoyed a day of swimming and sun tanning.
Sunday started the same way, bright and clear, and stayed that way. It took a couple of hours to clean up camp, followed by a quick swim in the lake and a 2 1/2 hour drive home. Glorious.
Changes
I plan on changing the blog from CityDesk (which, although it is working out quite nicely, is beginning to show some limitations for a blog). I’m looking at WordPress right now, and hopefully I can fit things into it nicely. I plan to keep Citydesk for the rest of the site, just not for the blog.
Reading
Soul of the Samurai (Thomas Cleary)
– If anyone can point me to an authors web site, I’d appreciate it.
Gardens of the Moon (Steven Erickson) (link 2)
Writing
Only in my head, but I worked out some scenes in there
I met Scott Lynch at KeyCon this year, and now sffworld.com has interviewed him. Scott placed 40 pages of his first novel (ever) on his website/blog for his friends to read. An editor in England read it, sent and email to Scott, and a three book deal was signed. Some people are lucky!