Everybody sing along with me…

“Back in… Seattle… Again…”

Just downloading my missed email, and it’s 400+ spams. I guess the world wants me, even though it seldom seems to actually love me.

Update for those who might be concerned: I made it safely, and have been enjoying myself in Colorado.

I took some nice pix along the way, but since I’m at an internet cafe, I can’t upload them.

Notable moments along the way:

I spent a little bit of time in Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area. It’s one of those geological wonder places, and every time the road goes over an onlap, there’s a sign telling you which formation it is, what epoch it was formed within, and a pithy statement like ‘Dinosaurs lived here,’ or ‘Home to fossilized seahorses.’ Welcome home, ye fossilized seahorses! The southern end of the park is an alpine plateau, not unlike Yellowstone, but not as full of spectacle. Still a lovely place of switchback roads, lodgepole pines and aspen, with a hailstorm hovering overhead.

Later that day, I’m at Dinosaur National Monument, and I’m hiking through one of the quietest places in North America. It’s hot and dry, and the tiniest sounds of birds nesting atop 10-storey-tall boulders echo through the canyons, waking up the senses to the silences between.

More to come.

Go Dumples!

I’m about to embark on a big-ol’ road trip. Heading for Colorado and a gathering of some net.friends.

I feel so unprepared. I always feel unprepared before a trip like this, because I tie so much into what I have to accomplish before I go. Stuff that only tangentially seems like a good idea to get done before the deadline for leaving.

Like, for instance, I caught myself writing an application for a certificiation program, because the process for approval takes two weeks, and that’s how long I’ll be gone.

And also, for instance, my derelict van, which still resides at my last place of residence. I wanted to tow it here, so it could sit in this driveway instead of that one. Which is completely responsible, and a good thing to do, but somehow also terrifying to my screwed-up Asperger sensibility. (The act of picking a tow service is fundamentally daunting, right off the bat.)

So I’ve tied things like that to more mundane things like: Get an oil change, do laundry, make sure there’s someone to water the plants. This list isn’t so overwhelming, but add the idea of haggling with a tow truck driver over price, and you’ve created an overwhelming situation where none of it will get done.

It sucks being me. It really does.

But once I’m out the door, and once I get to the other side of, say, Yakima, those crappy feelings of self-loathing realize how irrelevant they’ve become, and so sulk off to hide in a dark crevice somewhere and wait for their next opportunity.

I can get to that rest area in Oregon, the one near Pendleton, in the middle of the national forest that’s on top of a ridge of mountains, and I can get in my sleeping bag in the back of the car and snooze until I’m awakened by the crows when they make enough ruckus in the morning. And I can sit up and look out the window and see the forest and the fellow-travellers, and hear the semis through the trees, barrelling by on the highway.

And it’ll all be OK.

Same rose, next day.

I swiped this idea from Robert Anton Wilson, via m759. I added the lame candy-button effects. It’s going to be the app icon for Mushy the Mush Client. I think.

Also, hi-rez versions of flower pictures I’ve posted in this ‘blog, plus some other ones, are located here.

Anole has made a movie out of my fez picture.

It’s an outrage! A scandal!

(Actually, it’s kinda funny. I just wanted people to be curious about it.)

Update:

OK, the vast majority says that A is more seductive than B. So: Assuming A is more seductive than B, would it be because:

C: Red is more seductive than white?

D: A is more suggestive, whereas B is just curled up in a blanket of itself?

---

Which is more seductive?

A:


B:

So I just found out that a cousin of mine was indicted on a pair of charges related to having killed someone.

I’d heard about the deaths, and the initial charge, but now he’s going to trial, and there are statements in the press from the victims’ families, and so on and so forth. It’s kind of disconcerting.

I can’t help but think about my extended family, and how relatively free we’ve been of this kind of news, and how lucky we’ve been in that regard. My cousin’s circumstance, that is, the story of how he came to shoot two people, isn’t far-fetched or exceptional. It’s clear to me that whatever mistakes in judgement he made within that circumstance would be very easy ones for anyone to make.

And it’s also clear to me that the deceased weren’t evil people, and that my cousin isn’t evil, either. None of them deserve to be dead right now, but two of them are.

There’s also a whole diatribe inside me about responsible gun ownership, but that’s for another day.

President Bush falls off Segway personal transportation device. Pictures taken.