Back from vacation. Discovering that the longer I'm on vacation, the longer it takes me to re-intigrate into the working world when I return. Alas, my brain is still on vacation in so many ways.

I took a lot of digital pictures. Even wrote some blog entries while I was away. Haven't put them up here yet, obviously. I'll get to it, I promise. You won't be spared my vacation photos. Yellowstone was wonderful. For those of you who are dying to know, 3 nights is the perfect length of time to stay at Old Faithful. More or less would have been un-perfect.

Back at the daily grind, I find that I am on my way to LA for a business trip on Saturday. I hope I'll be able to blog from there at least a little bit. I'm a dot-commer after all.

Books: Well, I had delusions of granduer about how much I could get done on my book while I was away. About three chapters got re-written. Writing partner gets to look at them tomorrow and tell me if they're any good.

Haven't heard back about the short story yet. I'm beginning to get pathalogical about checking my snail mail.

I love vacation.

I've run away from home to visit Yellowstone. When I'm not out wandering around looking at natural wonders, I'll be writing and writing and writing. At least, when I'm not sleeping. Had an uneventful flight. Now I'm leisurely making plans to prep and drive to Old Faithful tonight. I'll be bring a digital camera and posting pictures. Muahahahahaha.

Books: I wonder just how much of this thing I can get finished in ten days. I'm rewriting things - cleaning up the first draft. One of my tasks is to rewrite one of my chapters so that it doesn't put readers to sleep. It's supposed to be exciting. Right now, it's just verbose and confusing. Maybe a few hours of communing with nature will help out with that. Catching up on my sleep probably won't hurt either.

Hee. I fixed it.

Except the archives. They're broke. I'll get them later.

Well, now it looks really broken. In fact, it's less broken than you think.

Look at me, I'm all black and blue.

I just spent way too much time today re-designing this web site, and you my loyal viewers still don't have anything to see of it yet. I don't know how much more I'm going to get to work on this today, but I'll warn you.... it's going to look rather different when I'm done.

Now I need to go get some real dinner instead of the cashews I've been snacking on for the last 6 hours.

Well, most of my technical difficulties are taken care of now.

That means you have to listen to me gush about my garden.

At least right now, it looks like the garden is going to be gorgeous this year. The phlox my friend planted a few years ago are looking wonderful. Smelling up the whole yard with their lilac-ish scent. The Lilly-of-the-valley is also just starting to bloom. So those of you who know the song... Lillies-of-the-vally deck my garden walk!

It makes me happy.

The rose looks healthy and happy too.

The Japanese Wysteria.... I'm a little worried about. I keep reminding myself that it's only May, and not to rush things, but it's looking a little bit scrawny.

Oh! My holly bush has buds on it too! The one I thought I killed. (I know for sure I did kill the other one)

I can't wait to spend a whole lot of money on more plants. I've decided I love perenials best, because you don't have to put them in the ground again every year. Pay for them once and enjoy them again and again.

I sound like such a little old lady with a garden fetish.

Some of you may realize that I'm having some technical difficulties with my server. Some of you may not be affected. At any rate, I know how to fix it now, but I'm not going to do it tonight. I'll get to it tomorrow. Then it will take a few days for the changes to spread through the whole Internet. DNS is fun that way. As my friendly neighborhood admin (who really absolutely rocks) says, "Whee. This goatf*** has been brought to you by Broadview Networks."

As you can see. Some of my friends are a little creative with the language.

So anyway, I am obligated to blog about my TV viewing tonight because Sarah happened upon me. (Ok, actually, I told her that I would tape a show for her, and then my technical expertise also experienced a little glitch, and it turns out that I didn't get the right program. She came down to scold me and bring me the shows I asked her to tape for me. If we both had the money, we'd both get a Tivo and avoid this problem. This concludes the current digression.)

So Sarah walked in and found me enthralled in a Nova program about forest fires (I love Nova, but I won't digress on that tonight). I sort of forced her to sit down and watch with me by saying, "Hey look! My dad might be on TV!" But it turns out I was once again horribly wrong because Nova (who does make mistakes now and then) spent most of the episode talking to Forest Service experts.

For those of you not in the Forest Service or the Park Service of the USA, let me give you a little lesson. The Forest Service is a part of the Dept. of Agriculture. The Park Service is part of the Dept. of the Interior. (Or they were last time I looked. We've had a couple of meddlesom presidents since then.) So anyway, with that heritage comes very different philosophies about forests. To the Park Service, forests are part of a natural ecosystem that needs to be protected from the stupidity of humanity. To the Forest Service, forests are large tracts of renewable resources. They think forests should be used to meet the needs of humanity.

For the record, I'm a product of the Park Service. The Forest Service often makes me frown and grumble things at my friends who are trying to watch documentaries about fires and are tired of me saying "I know him," or, "I used to live there."

So anyway, my Dad worked for the Park Service during the controversial 1988 fires. Long time before that, too. He was one of the few brilliant scientists telling people not to put out forest fires every time they spring up. See, if you never let the forest burn, then it will eventually burn in spite of everything you try to do, and firefighters end up being like... well, like tornado fighters or hurricane fighters. A forest fire is a natural event, kind of like those. But cooler, because it's part of a cycle in the forest of renewal and growth.

Fire is a part of the Rocky Mountain forest. Just as much as the flowers and trees.

But anyway. For more information, try this resource from the NPS.

After Nova there was a Nature program about wildlife in the Sahara. Way cool. So I got totally enthralled in that instead of working on my book, and Sarah got sucked in too, so we sat there being entertained by elephants, ostriches and mongooses (geeses?). There was one hilarious image of a mongoose (who was, admitedly, a pet) leaning back against a field micraphone like it was own personal lounge chair.

I always get a little embarassed when people catch me watching nature and science programs. Not because I'm embarassed about having those interests. Not at all. I just think I get a little.... well, a really good nature or science program is like candy for a kid. I get all giddy and loopy and silly. Drunk on information and stuff to think about and research. So I feel like a little kid, pointing at the screen and going, "Oooh! Look!" and you know, it's just an ostritch foot or something.

Sarah was very patient with me and my outbursts of utter glee. I guess that's how you can tell who your real friends are.

Wee! I saw the Spider-man movie today. It was fun. Some of the swinging around on spider webs was awesome. I could take more of that. I'll probably see it one more time in the theater, even. We'll see.

Found some old CD's recently. The song "Would You Harbor Me?" by Sweet Honey In The Rock is awesome. Let me see if I can grab some of the lyrics here. (I didn't find the liner notes with the words.)

Would you harbor me?
Would I harbor you?
Would you harbor a Christian, a Muslim, a Jew
A heritic, convict or spy?
Would you harbor a runaway woman or child?
A poet, a prophet, a king?
Would you harbor an exile or a refugee?
A person living with AIDS?
Would you harbor a Tubman, a Garret, a Truth
A fugitive or a slave?
Would you harbor a Haitian, Korean or Czech
A lesbian or a gay?

That's about it. Just a bunch of soul-searching questions in six-part chant harmony. Now that's music.

Books: Put the short story in the mail today. Also talked with an editor who is a friend of mine. He says his interns are addicted to the slush pile (the unsolicited manuscripts that come through the mail) because they're all so darn funny. Well, maybe my little manuscript will provide some editorial interns some lafs.

Well, "Frontier House" is over. The experts decided that the young newlywed couple would have been prepared for winter. The others, not so much. Those two did have the benefit of youth. That really came through. When you spend your whole summer haying and digging post holes, it helps not to be pushing 60.

One other family failed because they worked real hard, but on the wrong things. I was shocked when I saw how little they had in terms of firewood. Pretty obvious they had no real concept of what it takes to keep a fire going day in, day out for six months.

The other family... well, the experts said they would have had enough supplies to make it through the winter - assuming they didn't kill each other in the confined space. Their relationships were falling apart. From the way the father of the family talked, if he'd really been on a homestead in Montana, I think he would have gone mountain man. He loved his daughter, so he would have showed up on their doorstep every four months or so with a fresh kill, but after he got them set up with a house and a fence he would have gone off into the wilds exploring and being a mountain man. As it is, his wife and he are separated and they're trying to figure out what to do about their marriage.

In other news, have I mentioned that Ella Fitzgerald has the perfect voice? She is the epitome of female vocal perfection. Any song she sung was gold. Must buy more.

Books: My writing partner scared me this evening. He said something that sounded to me like it undermined the entire concept of what we're working on. After the first draft of the novel is complete - it's too late for major paradigm shifts. Small ones, I can handle. Universe shifting... that scares me. Turns out I was just tired and hungry. He wasn't really saying what I thought he was saying. I think. We're on the same page now, anyway.