![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
We decided to go out to Williams Creek last night, but didn't have a phone number to coordinate meeting Bruce and Diane there, which didn't stop us from going. It struck me, as we drove up the dusty road, that I could count the number of times I'd been up this road over the past several years on the fingers of one hand (or worst case, not run over too much onto the fingers of the second hand).
And I began to wonder "What was it, exactly, that we had moved up here for?"
I knew approximately where our destination was, but was not prepared for what we actually found. Yes, the "Indian Head Lodge," will sell you bait, and a license, and a few essentials, but on weekends, the "chuck house" also hosts an all-you-can-eat dinner featuring brisket, beef ribs, various fixins, and some pretty delicious pies for dessert. Bruce and Diane were already there (and almost finished), so Galina and I took our paper plates out onto the deck, where we made the acquaintance of an oil industry consultant from Houston and his wife.
On the way home, both Galina and I were particularly struck by the scene as we came over a hill in what I've come to call "West Pagosa": it looked as if all the real estate had been built over, with buildings of various pastel shades simply jammed together - shoehorned, if you will - into a space too small for them.
Frankly, I was not surprised, as I had been beginning to notice another annoying aspect to life in Pagosa: the traffic. It's getting to the point where you might come to a stop and sit for a couple of minutes while waiting for a break in the traffic coming out of the shopping center, particularly in the mornings and late afternoons. And it's getting to the point where you might come to a stop and sit for 30 seconds or more while waiting for a break in the traffic heading east on 160 in the mornings.
Yesterday, it sort of became formally apparent to me: the magic of the place had been plowed under. Moving to Houston at least puts me in proximity to a few good book stores.
* * * I must've eaten too much at the lodge, as I awoke at 3:30 am or so with indigestion. (I checked my BP to make fairly sure it was indigestion and not something worse.) This is kind of unusual for me, as when I am so afflicted, the first symptoms generally make themselves apparent as I'm drifting off into the arms of Morpheus.
At around 4:15, I decided I'd go sit outside on the porch, bundle myself up in a blanket (it's cold in the high desert at night!), and fire up my laptop's ancient "Distant Suns" application and get a little better acquainted with the sky. It was not as easy as it sounds, since I need glasses to see the sky (and don't to see the screen) and the screen was too bright for the purpose at hand, even at the lowest brightness level and despite the fact that the screen was largely black.
On the other hand, I did get fairly eyeball-familiar with the constellations Perseus, Triangulum, and Aries, and watched Venus rise above the far-distant mountains, although it took me a while to get used to where everything was on the celestial sphere as compared to my laptop's screen.
* * * I don't know what it is about my desktop: there are some days where it will BSOD me once, after a hard day of operation. Today, the machine took the opportunity to crash at almost every opportunity, forcing me into an ancient mode of work known as "save after every 100 keystrokes or so." I warm-booted after each such incident, and after about the fifth such crash, the network interface stopped working, but I kept at it.
By the time I turned off my desktop, I managed to make the checkpoint for my original "day 2" schedule, plus about 400 words, which is not as good as yesterday's "day 1 plus 1250 words" mark, but I do not plan to lose any sleep over it. While it would have been just dandy to have finished the entire job this weekend (November Foxtrot Whiskey, if you get my drift), the name of the game is "getting to the end without going crazy."
Indeed, I'm sort of hoping there'll be no sorts of work offers over the next few days of the kind you simply can't refuse, as I can see that I'm going to have to devote some serious time to packing before we leave next weekend.
Cheers...
And I began to wonder "What was it, exactly, that we had moved up here for?"
I knew approximately where our destination was, but was not prepared for what we actually found. Yes, the "Indian Head Lodge," will sell you bait, and a license, and a few essentials, but on weekends, the "chuck house" also hosts an all-you-can-eat dinner featuring brisket, beef ribs, various fixins, and some pretty delicious pies for dessert. Bruce and Diane were already there (and almost finished), so Galina and I took our paper plates out onto the deck, where we made the acquaintance of an oil industry consultant from Houston and his wife.
On the way home, both Galina and I were particularly struck by the scene as we came over a hill in what I've come to call "West Pagosa": it looked as if all the real estate had been built over, with buildings of various pastel shades simply jammed together - shoehorned, if you will - into a space too small for them.
Frankly, I was not surprised, as I had been beginning to notice another annoying aspect to life in Pagosa: the traffic. It's getting to the point where you might come to a stop and sit for a couple of minutes while waiting for a break in the traffic coming out of the shopping center, particularly in the mornings and late afternoons. And it's getting to the point where you might come to a stop and sit for 30 seconds or more while waiting for a break in the traffic heading east on 160 in the mornings.
Yesterday, it sort of became formally apparent to me: the magic of the place had been plowed under. Moving to Houston at least puts me in proximity to a few good book stores.
At around 4:15, I decided I'd go sit outside on the porch, bundle myself up in a blanket (it's cold in the high desert at night!), and fire up my laptop's ancient "Distant Suns" application and get a little better acquainted with the sky. It was not as easy as it sounds, since I need glasses to see the sky (and don't to see the screen) and the screen was too bright for the purpose at hand, even at the lowest brightness level and despite the fact that the screen was largely black.
On the other hand, I did get fairly eyeball-familiar with the constellations Perseus, Triangulum, and Aries, and watched Venus rise above the far-distant mountains, although it took me a while to get used to where everything was on the celestial sphere as compared to my laptop's screen.
By the time I turned off my desktop, I managed to make the checkpoint for my original "day 2" schedule, plus about 400 words, which is not as good as yesterday's "day 1 plus 1250 words" mark, but I do not plan to lose any sleep over it. While it would have been just dandy to have finished the entire job this weekend (November Foxtrot Whiskey, if you get my drift), the name of the game is "getting to the end without going crazy."
Indeed, I'm sort of hoping there'll be no sorts of work offers over the next few days of the kind you simply can't refuse, as I can see that I'm going to have to devote some serious time to packing before we leave next weekend.
Cheers...
