speaking the truth

fosveny has been away since Sunday, and I'm dealing much better with it than usual -- I've been sleeping fine, eating fine, proceeding like usual through the daym even getting a fair amount written.

I'm honestly not sure how I feel about that.

I did have some weird/lonely moments Tuesday night, but they went away fairly quickly after I took a walk. I keep forgetting how much I enjoy walking after dark. I only went up to the store and back, but it really cheered me up. Also, made my legs hurt A Lot.

--

Wednesday, though, I realised I was gonna have to get out of the house for a while. I got moving much later than I'd wanted to, but by eleven I was in the car and heading north. I stopped at the Snake and Animal Farm on the way up, because I've been wanting to go for years. Kind of a small family-owned zoo and pretty much everything there could want more room, but I got to pet a deer, and how often do you get to do that? Also, they have a wolf and a bear who were raised together and are apparently best friends. I'll grant that wolf language and dog language aren't the same and it's the latter I know, but from everything I saw that wolf wanted me to scratch his ears in the worst way.

Further north, and I decided to go to Bushkill Falls, another place I've never been. They have a nice little orienteering program which I declined to participate in, but might try some other time -- for this visit, I stuck to the trails. What with the legs hurting A Lot I figured that would be wise.

Which is, of course, why I opted for the Two Mile Long For Serious Hikers Only Lots Of Rocks Trail -- Takes 2-2 1/2 Hours.

In which I discovered that while I am The Hell Out Of Shape, I am less The Hell Out Of Shape than I'd thought I was. Yeah, I had to stop plenty of times to breathe, but I was going up stairs about a foot high and a foot and a half deep. When I got to the end, an hour and a half later, I hurt less than I had the night before after walking to the store and back. Clearly I have to keep up with the walking.

I took a bunch of pictures which I will post at the usual Some Point. Also, I left my camera behind -- fortunately after having gotten to the top of the long staircase, or I'd've been very upset. A kind honest gentleman returned it to me and I carried on, only having had to double back on about a half mile of flat trail.

I was pretty tired at the end of it and also fairly thirsty. By the time I stopped for a bottle of water I was sure my legs would have stiffed up, but they hadn't. Score for getting back into shape some.

Home about five, and I took a bit of a nap, because I'd bought a ticket to see Serenity at nine-thirty and I wasn't sure I could make it through otherwise. I'll talk more about Serenity later, in a spoiler-protected post, but...wow. Man. And, wow.

Took me quite a while to get to sleep after that one.

--

Which resulted in me getting moving a lot later than I wanted to, yesterday. I wanted to be on the road at ten but managed eleven-thirty. It was a mostly pleasant and quiet ride -- I ran into little traffic and had no trouble following the directions. About half of it was non-highway, but I wasn't in any hurry and it didn't bother me a bit. I could have wished for more familiar musinc in the van; I'm not sure where my old favorite tapes went. But riding in silence didn't bug me nearly as much as usual, and I turned the radio off deliberately for the ride over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. No pictures of that, more's the pity; it was almost dark when I went over. But I was bad, and stopped briefly at one of the Emergency Only stops for a decidedly non-emergency five minutes looking out over the bay.

After a brief call to fosveny to determine which hotel he was in (I had directions, but had managed to forget that part) I got there just fine. It's good to be with him again. We had dinner at a steakhouse, after which I passed the hell out and slept for roughly thirteen hours.

Edit: Woke up last night from a dream, and stumbled into the bathroom with the hotel-supplied little notepad and pen to srite it down. DOn't know if it'll turn into a story, but it's got the potential.

Friday was...busy.

( Saturday, journaling during class )

( post-lunch, another class )

As with my trip to the Keys, I wrote a lot in a paper journal, and I'm going to transcribe it here, bit by bit...

( Longmont, Colorado - Wednesday, July 20 )

Nota bene: they weren't oil wells, they were water wells. They _looked_ like oil wells...

And it turns out it was the motion sickness; it was gone by the next day.

And the last day we were down there. I miss it...I always do.

( early afternoon, Big Pine Key )

( later afternoon, stuck on the highway )

( getting close to seven, Ft. Lauderdale Airport )

We managed to miss the turbulence, and got back on the ground fine. Got slightly lost in Philly when we had to get off of the Surekill but not for long. Yay for the zoo trip - helped us get re-oriented and back on the highway.

Pictures? Nope. Haven't unloaded the ones on the camera, and forgot to take it to Landsknecht. Might drag it out a bit today if I'm feeling up to it...

The plates still aren't here, and I'm getting annoyed.

Yeah, that was Cape Hatteras.

Still no actual cheeseburgers. Though I think Lewis had one for lunch today, actually.

( Thursday, around one, waiting for the shuttle )

( afternoon, Duval Street )

Nota bene: Bruce is one of Lewis's co-workers and the guy he's working with this trip. Nice guy, short-haired and pretty conservative in a lot of ways, but reads fantasy novels. Go figure.

Mom doesn't know Karen's coming up, so (yeah, this'll happen) if you talk to her, don't mention it.

We didn't manage to get out to see Karen that night, either.

Except for the lack of an actual cheeseburger.

( Tuesday, in the Philadelphia Airport )

( 3:30, somewhere over Virginia )

( 5:30, Tampa Airport )

( 7ish, over the water )