Letters to you

Dear ashrangildowan,

Happy birth - DAY! (huh!)
Happy birth - DAY (huh!)

May the candles on your cake
burn like cities in your wake

May your skill with sword and axe
equal those with sheep and yaks

So another year has passed
Don't look now they're gaining fast!

Though you're turning 29 (or thereabouts)
Age to you is like fine wine

While you ate your birthday stew
We sacked a little town for you!

(Sorry you missed it! Happy birthday!)

We just returned from a very long drive from Temperate Zone 6 to Subtropical Zone 9 and back again.

Road Trip™!

Ahhh, Zone Nine, I have missed thee. The Sun. The beautiful Sun. And the Salt Water... And the Ghosts... And the tiny ocean exoskeletons (sand)!

We usually like to travel overnight, since there are fewer people around. Oddly, I can see better when it's mostly dark (with starlight and moonlight). I had always thought I was night blind, but that isn't the case. Actually, I can see fine if there are no lights at all. When it was raining, windshield wipers weren't necessary as long as there were no artificial lights shining on the rain and creating reflections. As soon as we would pass a city with halogens, though, the night blindness would set in. I was glad to find that out, since I hated being "night blind". This makes it difficult but isn't quite as obnoxious (I love the night). So.. I chose to drive between 1:00 and 3:00 am when we were far away from the city and there were fewer people on the road (thanks to rialian who drives in all conditions, any distance...).

We mainly went to visit with friends. I didn't go swimming this time (there were rip tides). It was great to see the ocean nonetheless. Of course, our camera hid the entire time until we were already on the way back, so no pictures. :( Suffice it to say that I saw the sand, sun, and salt water, which is important, in that if I do not, I start to feel a bit dead. I did bring back a few treasures from where we were staying - a few shells that look like brains, a little kaleidoscope, and a leather sculpture that needs a photograph rather than a description. Thank you for a wonderful time to everyone who put us up for the weekend!

There was some daytime driving on the way back, so I got a chance to observe some of the terrain. Suddenly I was jolted out of a reverie of admiring the passing forests when I noticed something disturbing: A forested area had been planted with the same kind of pine tree, over and over, and the trees were all in perfectly straight rows, one after the other. If they'd been healthy it would have still been bad, but not horrible. They weren't. All the lower branches were removed from every tree, so these trees looked like toothpicks with christmas tree hats. They made me feel 'captured' and the clouds in front of the moon suddenly took the form of bars in my mind. I think it was owned by a paper mill. When it ended and the normal forest took over the scenery again, it was a palpable relief (as in, absense of pain).

We got back at around 5 this morning, so I called in to work - they were very understanding, so I'm taking the day off - should have scheduled it to begin with, but I'm always afraid that if I do, what we would do is stay an extra day (and the situation would repeat itself only later).

I really do need to plan to stay away longer when I go across country...

Must have been that pre-holiday cheer and stuff...

Happy 9 months after December November birthdays
sionnachdhu, Aug 18
rialian, Aug 19
elwing2000, Aug 22
starlightforest, Aug 23
and heron61, Aug 25

Edit - and as fatherdog has pointed out, I can't count...

( happy birthday )

Friday night, went to visit fishy1 and scraun23 and make sushi. That was the first time I'd ever made sushi, and it was quite enjoyable and not difficult at all. Must find out where to get the ingredients, and how long to cook the rice and what kind of seaweed goes best, etc! We saw Nightwatch and Immortal, both bizarre but strangely fun movies.

Saturday - Decided that one flat panel is never enough, so we went to some computer sales and found a flat panel for rialian. Two Old Eye-Fries down, two to go, unfortunately not the one involved in Tuesday Night... yet.

( Sunday I murdered rose bushes... )

This weekend keyake visited the area to see people and help with the next 14-gallon batch of Catnip Damiana mead. On friday we bottled the Apple Cyzer that we had made last year. Of course we had to sample it, and had an interesting evening exploring memories with rialian and aekiy.

On Saturday we trooped to the land of faerie (otherwise known as Ellicott City) to go elfing with dancinglights, machineofdoom, podisodd, rialian, and kyrin7. First we stopped at the gateway to faerie coffee shop to eat, and then we went to a very dangerous store, wherein lurk the purveyors of sparkly things and magical boxes and peacock cloaks and faerie dolls. We bought a fine lot of magical items, some to distribute and some to keep. Then we went back to dancinglights and podisodd's house to chill for a bit, then it was back out to gather ingredients for the mead we planned to make on Sunday, then back to the house to chill for the evening. Much good conversation and energetic shifting ensued for the evening.

Some time during the weekend, some kind of unspecified evil was done. It is not yet complete, so I shall not speak of it yet. I'm looking at the results so far, and it is most glorious, as all evil worth anything should be...

Sunday, keyake and I went back to the Evil Store and picked up some more things that we had resisted the day before. Resistance was futile, we knew. The Quest was completed successfully, but not before a price was exacted to the land of faerie... keyake's boot decided to come apart just as we arrived at the destination. Thus reimbursed, the faerie store yielded up its wondrous treasures. Yes, kyrin7, I now have one more creepy doll... with WINGS. Boowahahaha!!1

We saw a dear friend for the first time in a long time - a wonderful time and a lot of rialian's mead were had by all. We sat around and chatted for ages, then went for delicious sushi. rialian introduced me to Unagi, so from now on, that's all I'll eat ever again. Well, maybe I'll eat other stuff sometimes. Then we went back home and presently other people people in the house got drowsy so Rialian, Friend, and I settled down to drinking Magic Mead (attuned with Ama Deus, Reiki, and the Helath attunement), and settled down to the Kind of Conversation You Have if You Drink That. We talked about shifting realitites as we shifted back and forth between said realities. Friend was visibly shifting form as we were talking. Sometime before that we had done some energy work on Rialian and Dear Friend scanned and identified Ancient Issue that Made Sense in the Context of Things. Sometime during the generally observed timeframe (which may or may not be entirely linear, in fact I'm fairly certain it is not) we had Spiced Aztec Hot Chocolate with Nutmeg and Cinnamon added (if you know what I mean). Yes well, yeah. And Stuff. We all wanted to do a formal energetic link but Other Drowsy People were meandering in and out of the place, so we didn't, but I believe it happened anyway on many levels. We said goodbye to Friend with sad but happy hugs and she's travelling back to her current home state now. We shall visit her next. We were planning to visit when she met up with other friends in NOLA while the original NOLA was still there. We never made it. We surely must just decide one day and go.

We had sionnachdhu and rhiannasilel staying with us for several days - they just left last night. It was great to have you over!

In other news, I finally got around to unloading my car from the October Thresholds. Good grief - I've really gotten lazy. The only reason I did it at all was that rialian had to borrow it while his car was in for its routine servicing. Otherwise the stuff would still be in there, maybe forever.

Apropos of nothing, it's a good idea to do ample stretching exercises before and after going up and down 3 flights of stairs hundreds of times... And we had the best doorstop we could ever have wished for. That, and excellent chili...