Thursday again, already.

Wow, I'm tired.

A friend came up from North Carolina to take me to Floyd to pick up the yarn (remember that time that we almost got into an argument about Jesus?), and we listened to live music while we were there. Then we ventured forth to an Airbnb retreat so that I could focus on sorting through my thesis and get some overdue rest while he sorted through some issues with his construction crew. The trip south was filled with music as we traded songs via Bluetooth to the stereo -- the internet is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. We took turns choosing songs; the singing got more and more relaxed; by the time we crossed the North Carolina border, my shoes were off and I was belting out 90s folk songs as if no one was watching, his only commentary to harmonize in beautiful fashion. I got to meet his friends Kathi and Tim, who are absolutely lovely folks. I'm looking forward to having dinner with them again in the near future. It has been too long since I was on the road.

On the way back through Virginia, we passed two different surprise cemeteries, a treason carcass, and a house with lightning rods. (Remember that time we saw the hawk?) We had an early dinner and lovely conversation (remember that time that we almost got into an argument about what it means to act in love?) with my friend Robert before finally getting to Roanoke, where I slept like a baby after a good soaking in the tub. (Have I mentioned lately how much I love my tub? Absolutely adore it.)

This morning I was moving slowly -- headaches and such -- but finally got in gear enough to print out what I have assembled to date for the memoir, such as it is. It's missing quite a bit, most of which is the Rockstar Philosopher Origin Story of 2019, including head injury (my superpower is love and peace, for real -- who knew?? I'm kind of tickled). It's roughly 240 pages. I'll be spending such time as I have over the next month cutting and tweaking and writing the missing bits. There's a final piece or three that might not go in. But such is the nature of final rough drafts, and mine is due February 24th.

This afternoon I had lunch with a friend from Meeting House. We had a lovely chat and also some deeply spiritual conversation. I feel loved and heard and enriched.

The calendar is getting packed.
I haven't even added a beach trip yet.

The Day in Floyd

Communes and apples and bears, o my!

Just got back from the commune. Great stuff started coming out and I'm looking forward to going again.

There was a bear under the apple tree just past the wood shed.

recent events

The boys seem to have been out of school the past two weeks more than they have been in it. Between dental appointments and weather closings, this has been the strangest back-to-school month I think I have ever seen. On the positive side, we love our new family dentists. Dr. Mills specializes in children's dentistry, and the boys can't say enough wonderful things about her and her staff. Given that they used to lose sleep before seeing a dentist before meeting Dr. Mills, I think this is simply marvelous. Yesterday school started at the scheduled time for the first time all week. Of course, we ended up needing to take Ethan to have his hand x-rayed just to verify that Tuesday's fall wasn't any more serious than soft-tissue damage. Ethan and David went to an immediate care clinic in Salem together, and made the best of it, enjoying a late lunch at Five Guys before trucking back up the mountain to school. For his part, Ethan was a real trooper through the whole thing. David rescheduled his own appointment and does indeed have a serious sinus infection that has decided to make itself known in his lungs as well. He felt horrible this morning, and I'm keeping my ear out for pneumonia, which aside from being A Really Scary Thing to me, is also pretty serious. Between school weirdness, weather, dental and doctor appointments, David and I do somehow manage to show up to our jobs on occasion, mostly through tag team efforts¹. My job is going quite well, and I’m enjoying adding additional products to my testing responsibilities. I’ve just been ‘officially’ given my second piece of software to manage and I’m enjoying figuring out how it all fits together. It has a quite intricate interface, with multiple drop-in components, each with their own configuration, so I certainly haven’t any lack of intellectual work in front of me. And, as always with software, there is a release deadline sitting right on top of another build, so the pace isn’t anything to sneeze at, either. David has likewise seen his lab get into some serious R&D stuff, so the schedule there is tight and demanding and weird as only a biological lab would be. On this upside, they are doing some cool development stuff, and chatting about work is far from the typical ‘how was your day’ fare. We are also enjoying our time at home, weirdly scheduled though it might be. This past weekend we took yet another trip to Floyd, this time with the boys, and visited School House fabrics (which the boys tolerated), the general store (which the boys loved) and a custom woodworker’s storefront. We had dinner at the Mexican restaurant and ended up poking around in the clothes store, where I picked up a new pair of pants and a sweater than I just fell in love with. We ended up designing ever-so-many things, and it was a nice outing, all told. Sunday we had plans aplenty from which to choose: we ended up scrapping them all, staying inside and making a carrot cake. How yummy and cozy was that? The boys are looking forward to more snow, as the recent acquisition of snow-discs had them howling with glee on Thursday and Friday as they turned the driveway into a slalom course. David took the tractor and scraped the snow into banks around trees and at the end of the driveway, and I swear they would have stayed out until hypothermia set in if we hadn’t tempted them back with warm food and hot chocolate. At home we are watching netflix and library selections, with a few randomly selected episodes of Firefly just for fun. David and I watched Babel (not so great: quite dislocated and dislocating, perhaps by design) and The Devil Wears Prada (wonderful and funny). From the library the whole family watched Holes (outrageously funny and cute), The River Wild (a touching and exciting tale) and The Dangerous Lives of Alter Boys (serious and thought-provoking, despite the humor; an entry on the Must See List). Those are all on their way back, and I'm looking forward to our next installment this weekend. 1. More than ever, this month I feel as though we are the Wonder Twins, assessing the latest split-second development, declaring "Form of. . a taxi!”" and dashing out the door in our various directions.