Thursday was another slow day of mostly doing nothing, though I did pitch in to help Mom and Dad haul a tabletop up from the dock and then figure out how best to get it to fasten securely to our existing (too small for large family dinners) table. I ran a load of laundry, and then we left just past 4pm to run a couple errands and drive to Walker to eat dinner at the Boulders, where we met Nick who'd driven back up from the Twin Cities after some inconclusive work toward untangling his medical insurance thing. (He has set some relevant processes in motion and now has to wait for other people to get back to him. So basically phone tag, but with physical letters. *sigh*) And in the evening, after getting home, we had champagne cocktails and played multiple rounds of Hearts, because that's what we do as a nuclear family. :)

So far today I have been poking a little at a stalled story, and I think I've finally untangled all the bits where I was shoving down a misguided path and am ready to move on to new material. Unfortunately, said new material includes an action scene. I don't want to write an action scene today. Why do I do this to myself?

Also, Verizon has decided we've used up our data plan and dumped us into safe mode, which is annoying since we don't have an internet provider on the island anymore (we used to use a satellite dish aimed east-northeast toward a station on the mainland, but they either went out of business or decided the island wasn't worth the expense) and have to use our phones as mobile hotspots. What this means is that I can load text-based pages, but anything image-heavy is a no-go, to say nothing of gifs or videos. *headdesk*

Oh well, that means I have more time for reading actual books, I suppose.

Quick update before Nick and I go do more stuff:

My flight from Ithaca to Detroit went smoothly and we landed early. My flight from Detroit to MSP, on the other hand, was a mess. We left nearly an hour and a half late, first because of some mechanical trouble (indicator lights on the navigation system acting up) and then because they let on some additional passengers who'd missed other flights. Then once we finally got to MSP, we were stuck at the gate for over ten minutes because there wasn't a gate agent to work the jet bridge, and then the person who came to fill in was very bad at it and couldn't figure out which of the airplane doors to aim for. *sigh* I felt very bad for the people who had connecting flights.

But Nick picked me up, we grabbed takeout from McDonald's, and that was all right.

On Sunday we started by going to Nick's church for the 10am service, which was neat. In the afternoon, we did the following: saw Minnehaha falls and walked down Minnehaha Creek to the Mississippi and back; ate lunch at the Nook (a local burger place); visited the Minneapolis Institute of Art; visited the Walker sculpture garden (including Spoonbridge and Cherry, which apparently has become an iconic symbol of the Twin Cities?); drove past our Mom's childhood home; and then walked around a bit of Lake Nokomis and stopped to have some hard cider and watch the water since we were already in the area. Then we grabbed some food from the takeout section of Nick's grocery store and watched four episodes of Good Omens, which we enjoyed very much.

It was a good day. :D

Today we have started by taking an hour or so to catch up on our own internet stuff, after which the plan is to visit a local cidery and another one of the local lakes. We will go to Frost's for dinner, and finish the evening by watching the final two episodes of Good Omens. Also presumably lunch will happen at some point.

I'm not sure what the plan is for tomorrow morning, but from noon to 3-ish Nick has a volunteer shift at a local animal shelter, after which we will drive up to Cass Lake. I will probably spend part of that time petting and/or walking dogs, but I might borrow his car and disappear for a bit to do... I dunno, unspecified tourist things. Or possibly just another stint of catching up on my own internet stuff. We'll see how it goes.

And now I am off to catch up on my email, because there is only so much I can handle on my tiny phone screen. *wry*

On my eighth attempt to defeat this particular prompt, I think I am finally getting somewhere useful. (The trick seems to have been, somewhat counter-intuitively, to add more characters.) However, it still refuses to end in a nicely compact amount of words. I think I need to just give up and acknowledge that it's going to be a fic rather than a ficlet. *sigh*

At least this version doesn't want to be a novel, which is what attempt #2 was trying to grow into.

(I could have filled the prompt in about 100 to 150 words weeks ago. It's exactly the kind of thing that lends itself to a drabble or a three-sentence ficlet, both of which are about distilling an idea to its most concentrated form. But there's a 500-word minimum for Ladies Bingo fills, and dammit, I am going to follow the rules.)

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In other news, I have a tentative schedule for my summer vacation -- namely, the middle two weeks of June. The idea is to be at the cabin for roughly a week, but also to spend two or three days in the Twin Cities with Nick at either the front or back end of the trip. That is both because of general yay siblings!!! stuff (getting to hang out without sharing a roof with our parents) and because Nick is still campaigning for me to move to Minnesota.

I am starting to lean more toward saying yes to that idea, honestly. I mean, I love Ithaca! Ithaca is ridiculous and great and has been my home for... literally more than half my life, now? Wow, yeah, nineteen years and I'm thirty-seven. I love my apartment and I've gotten pretty attached to my little garden patch and stuff. And it is flat-out wonderful to live just a few blocks from a waterfall.

But while I love the city and the region, and I am attached to my congregation, I never did manage to make solid meatspace friendships here, and I miss living near people I can just casually go watch a movie with, or take a nature walk, or try out a new restaurant for dinner. And my whole family does have extensive ties to and history with Minnesota.

...

I dunno, it's still very much up in the air and I'm not about to cancel my lease and drive halfway across the country with no warning. But it's starting to feel like something I really could do in 2020 instead of a castle-in-the-sky dream.

Today's to-dos:

-breakfast, lunch, and dinner at appropriate times; clean up afterwards

-make initial post in weekly child psych discussion forum once Prof. S opens it ETA: Prof S. did not open the forum :(

-read paper for child psych annotation project, maybe start outlining/writing response ETA: wrote and submitted the whole thing \o/

-outline essay on "The Yellow Wallpaper," maybe bang out horrible sketchy rough draft. thesis is something about use of gothic horror/supernatural elements and their interaction with the more realistic psychological horror, blah blah thing. (intro something like: I first encountered this story in a collection of ghost stories, and there are reasons for its inclusion in that genre) ETA: outline achieved, intro and plot summary paragraphs roughed out, other paragraphs left as bullet points for now

-check if anyone else has posted in this week's English discussion forum; if so, respond to them ETA: nobody else has posted yet :(

-laundry: wash, dry, put away ETA: and then do it all over again after hiking, because ticks. UGH TICKS

-make packing list and start packing

-check in and print boarding passes

-dye my hair purple! :DDD (with extensive help from Vicky) ETA: alas, Vicky had a minor life crisis (lost her laptop on her flight home from Florida) and understandably did not have time to buy hair dye. we'll try again at Thanksgiving or Christmas, probably

-read another chapter of We Have Not a Government ETA: finished the whole book! \o/

-do a bit of fic writing

-short hike?

-short swim? ETA: decided against it in the end

-afternoon nap?

...

And that is more than enough for one day! So I will go get started on breakfast and my chapter reading. :)

I keep forgetting to post about my vacation. Well, let's try making up for lost time!

Thursday: Airplane trips beginning far too early in the morning, which meant I arrived in Bemidji around 12:15pm, CDT. Mom and Dad met me at the airport, we drove back to Cass Lake and made a tiny grocery-shopping stop, and headed over to the island. The wind was very high, so we stayed in and grilled steak for dinner.

Friday: Wind continued high through the morning, but began to die down in the afternoon. Cinnamon toast and hardboiled egg slices for breakfast; everyone picked their own fruit. We took a hike down the south shore to the picnic ground (stopping for a conversation with Dave Martin), and came back by way of the south portage and the southeastern shore of Lake Windigo. In the evening, we headed to the mainland and drove to Akeley to eat at the Brauhaus -- a restaurant we'd been to a few times previously which now has new owners and a new cook. It was all right, but not something we really need to make that long a trip for. I drove the boat both ways.

Saturday: Rain. Rain all day. Pancakes and sausage for breakfast; choice of fruit. Mom ran a load of laundry, and I spent most of my time doing coursework despite a frequently laggy and glitchy internet connection. Chicken a la king for dinner.

Sunday: Rain in the morning, which let up shortly after noon. Random leftovers on toasted English muffins for breakfast; choice of fruit. (Dad and I had steak; mom had macaroni and cheese because she's weird like that.) We took a hike to the east portage and then home along the east shore of Windigo and up through the woods. Both before and after the hike, I plowed through more coursework. We had champagne cocktails around 5:30pm, notionally in honor of Father's Day, and then chili con carne and cornbread for dinner an hour or two later. After dinner we began a puzzle, but knocked off without finishing around 11:30pm.

Monday: Chilly overnight, turning to a gorgeous morning. Softboiled eggs, sausage, and cinnamon-raisin toast for breakfast; choice of fruit. We finished the puzzle by noon. Yay us! Dad attempted to demonstrate how to operate the shore station motor with a battery-powered drill in case of power outages, but we couldn't get the trick to work right though apparently my cousin Brian pulled it off last summer. (Our current theory is that you need to turn the motor key in addition to running the drill.) Dad and I carried Aunt Jan's kayak down to the dock and moved some rocks to mitigate an inconvenient splash pattern. Mom and Dad took a hike to the south portage and home inland while I took a nap. We're doing more laundry.

I believe the plan for tonight's dinner is BLTs.

It's been a good vacation so far. :)

Stuff done recently-ish:

1. Applied for a federal direct subsidized student loan. I think, if all goes well, that I can get an associate degree by the end of 2018, which means I will not be ruinously in debt and should be able to pay the damn thing back early. *crosses fingers*

2. Put a hold on my mail over Christmas.

3. Harvested four peppers and cooked two batches of veggie sidedish. Also cooked a batch of Laddie's hotdish.

4. Began the process of figuring out when the Stewardship Committee will have our meetings for the 2018 pledge drive.

5. Paid bills.

6. Figured out when I need to call my doctor to get a renewal of my Celexa prescription. (I have not yet figured out if there's a way to do this online, which would be my preference. But I can suck it up for a phone call -- or, more likely, a couple days of phone tag -- if necessary.)

7. Made a packing list and a to-do list for my Christmas trip to NJ.

And various and sundry other things, but those are probably the most immediately relevant.

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In other news, Vicky plans to move to Minnesota (greater Twin Cities area) sometime in early 2018. She may not stay -- this is an experiment to see if she can live there year-round rather than just visit sporadically -- but if she does, I may join her in 2019. Tax preparation is a fairly portable job, and by then I should have my trained monkey paper (aka associate degree), which would make hunting for non-seasonal jobs a bit easier. And living together would definitely save us both money, so.

I guess we'll see what happens!

The thing about the island -- and this is both good and bad -- is that it's very easy to lose track of time because the rhythm of the days is very different from the normal workweek.

Anyway, on Sunday I don't think I did anything in particular, aside from finally finishing the edits and extensions to "Second Chances." No, wait -- Dad, Mom, and I collectively walked down to the east portage and then I peeled off to come home via the woods while they continued on to the south portage and walked home from there.

On Monday, we had pancakes and sausage for breakfast. Mom has also been feeding me clementines, which is nice; they are just about exactly the right size for the amount of fruit I want in the morning. I went down to the dock to get some reading done -- still working through Religion in the Japanese Experience: Sources and Interpretations -- after which I took a nap. Then I took the big hedge-clippers and did some trail maintenance along the east portage loop trail I'd walked the day before. It still needs a LOT of work, but it's slightly less dire so I feel I got something accomplished. And I got home in time for us to have steak (grilled out in the back yard) for dinner, so that was nice.

I also wrote and posted another installment of "Edmund and Ginny Go to Harfang," because why not.

Today we had soft-boiled eggs for breakfast, accompanied by the leftover apple-bran muffins from Friday. Then we walked all the way around Lake Windigo (the lake in the center of Star Island). That is a fairly decent walk, though we stopped several times to admire various views, and also to chat with two of our neighbors up at the north portage. (The portages are all from Cass Lake in to Lake Windigo, in case that was not obvious. The north portage is suitable for anything; it is very short, wide, and sandy. The east portage is suitable for canoes. And the south portage is not really a portage -- it is just a regular woodland trail -- though I suppose you could carry a canoe along it in a pinch.) The trail needs a bunch of clipping, though, and a few places really will need to be rerouted over the next few years because they are in danger of collapsing right into the lake.

When we got back, I took a nap (longer than I meant to, but I suppose that makes up for staying up later on Monday night than I meant to -- Dad and I were talking about this and that, got really into our conversation, and mutually lost track of time), and then went down to the dock to finish Religion in the Japanese Experience: Sources and Interpretations. So that's two reading projects knocked off, go me!

(I have signally failed to start reading Don Quixote, though. *sigh*)

I also picked a starship design for the Amber Lotus -- the Red Cross ship in "Intervention," aka my WIP Big Bang fic -- since my artist wanted a visual reference. That was a little annoying/embarrassing, since I had actually picked a starship type a year or two back... and then forgotten to write my choice down, so I had to recreate it from scratch today. *headdesk*

Hmm. Other things, other things...

I do most of the table-clearing and dish-washing at the cabin, since I find it meditative and also I don't help much with the cooking. I have obviously been doing a bunch of that.

Mom and I have also been working through a book of crossword puzzles I bought a few years ago for use on trips (sometimes crosswords are more my speed than a book; sometimes it's the other way around) and while most of them are pretty reasonable, there was one that had straight-up terrible clues -- hopelessly non-specific, and not even any clever jokes to resolve ambiguities. We had to cheat repeatedly to get anywhere, which is annoying since we have done harder-rated crosswords with much less difficulty.

And now I think I will go to bed, since I want to get through tomorrow without collapsing for a two-hour nap. *wry*

Aunt Jan sent me and Vicky an email last month, the text of which is as follows:

Attention Writers: Loon News postcard just came. The John Mosedale creative writing prize of $50 is still on. It will be give to "the best short fiction, non-fiction, poetry or memoir" - 750 words maximum. Due March 20 if you happen to get inspired.

Also the Loon Theme is "Whimsical or realistic, painted, colored, drawn, photo or digital, anything goes because you've captured what is special about TREES. No larger than 8 1/2 x 11.

(The Loon is the combined annual newsletter and directory for the Star Island Protective League: it contains reports from the League meeting, reports from the Forest Service, photos and yearly updates from each cabin/family, creative works, obituaries, a phone directory, emergency information, an island map, and so on.)

I could maybe flip through my photo archives to see if I have any particularly good tree photos, but there is no money associated with the images.

The Mosedale writing prize, on the other hand...

I won that in 2010 for my poem Inland, Walking South. I have not been able to enter in a bunch of the intervening years (there is often an age restriction on the contest), and did not win the one time I did enter, but I think it would be fun to try again. :)

Jan says the theme only applies to visual submissions, but I figure to be on the safe side anything I submit should also be tree-related. Now I just need to figure out something to write...

Hmm.

Suggestions, anyone?

I am writing this one day after the fact, but oh well, so it goes.

My flight from Bemidji left at 12:30ish, so Mom, Dad, and I left the island at 10:45 so as to reach the airport in plenty of time. Bemidji is a very dinky airport, but their staff are very, shall we say, careful, so getting through security takes a while. I suspect this may be because they are such a dinky airport. The Ithaca airport, for all its tiny size, gets a fair amount of traffic -- it is served by THREE airlines! *gasp shock awe* -- and so their staff are a lot more practiced and efficient.

I had a three-hour layover in the Twin Cities, during which I ate lunch, did a couple crosswords, and read a chunk of The Iroquois by Dean R. Snow. (I have been on a local history kick lately.) Then, right after I boarded the plane to Detroit, the captain announced that a line of thunderstorms was moving over Detroit, which meant planes currently in the air couldn't land, which meant planes currently on the ground but intending to head for Detroit weren't allowed to take off; this is, I believe, known as a ground stop. Anyway, we sat at the gate for about 45 minutes, and ended up taking off almost exactly one hour late.

I had a scheduled two-hour layover in Detroit (which is more like one and a half, really, since layovers are counted with reference to departure time rather than boarding time), so even after losing an hour to the weather I still had time to run and grab some dinner -- a bacon cheeseburger with grilled onions and pickles, from Fuddruckers, mmmmmm -- and make it to my assigned gate with fifteen minutes to spare. The flight into Ithaca was smooth and on time, and my suitcase (which I had voluntarily checked in the Twin Cities, since the flight was full and they didn't have enough room in the overhead compartments) was waiting for me at baggage claim.

Then I discovered my car battery was dead.

*headdesk*

Fortunately the guy staffing the parking lot ticket payment booth was just about to get off-shift, and he offered to give me a jump-start. I got my jumper cables out, he duly drove over and fastened them (and now I know how to do that myself in the hopefully unlikely event of another dead battery), and got me going again. I then spent over half an hour driving randomly around the greater Ithaca area, to make sure I got the battery recharged enough to be able to start the car again today. (I haven't checked that yet, but I need to go buy groceries this afternoon or evening, so fingers crossed!)

I think what happened is that when I parked, I turned on one of the auxiliary ceiling lights by the rear-view mirror to make sure I hadn't left anything in the car. Then I forgot to turn it off and didn't notice the light since it's pretty faint and I was parked close to a street-light. But even a small, faint light bulb will drain a car battery over the course of a week, so whoops.

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In other news, all my peppers survived my absence! Actually -- and this is the really crazy part -- I seem to have more peppers than when I left. Last week I took the bitten-off top half of the much-abused pepper my mom brought me and stuck its stem into the empty pot that used to hold a completely uprooted pepper. And I think it has grown new roots! At any rate, its leaves are all still green and healthy-looking rather than wilted and shriveled, so I'm pretty sure it's been getting water and nutrients from somewhere, and it is sitting upright in a patch of soil, so... we'll see!

I set my alarm for 8:30am, to make sure I got up and fed the dog at a reasonable time, but I ended up waking at 8am because my feet were freezing. The temperature dropped into the fifties overnight, and the wind continued to be fairly strong -- it just swung from east-northeast to east-southeast. I got up to close a bunch of windows, and figured I might as well feed the dog then. I also let her out on a leash to pee, though I didn't take her for a walk since it was raining steadily, and chilly rain is miserable, particularly in a forest.

I went back to bed and got up for real shortly after 9:30am, at which point I dressed in yesterday's clothes, put on one of Dad's cruddy cabin jackets, and took Dottie for a short loop walk. (It had stopped raining, but the forest was still dripping incessantly.) Then I showered, ate breakfast, and spent the morning online and finishing Anna Karenina. Victory is mine!

I took Dottie for a second walk around 1pm, dropping the second dock board on the northern muddy patch of the Windigo trail as we went. I split some more logs when we returned home, and then quite sensibly spent the rest of the afternoon indoors.

I like gray rainy days when I have nothing to do and nowhere to be. They make me tired, both physically and mentally, but sometimes it's nice to have an excuse to sit around and think about existential things. And the final chapters of Anna Karenina are useful in that sense, since I find a bunch of Tolstoy's themes worth arguing. I mean, yes, we are bubbles of insignificance in the vast cosmos, here for no reason whatsoever. So what? That just means life can mean whatever we want it to mean. And really, if you think people can't be kind and do good without reference to an overarching god, what does that say about you? I think reason is not selfish -- or if it is, it's just reason that hasn't thought far enough. It is better for you, not just everyone else, to establish fair and just systems, since nobody can ever be top dog all the time, and the golden rule is sort of preemptive self-defense from some perspectives, regardless of any emotional/spiritual impulse toward fairness.

(I hear that after writing Anna Karenina Tolstoy only got MORE didactic. Since I already find his particular brand of didacticism annoying, I think I should not read any of his later works.)

Anyway, Mom and Dad returned to the island around 6:45pm, and we ate dinner around 7:30pm. Dad's reunion was fine, but not as well-organized as it should have been. (The venue was slightly too small for the number of attendees, so it was difficult to move around and find people he used to know.) I don't think we have any specific plans for Monday, though Mom has said she doesn't want to leave the island. That is fine with me. :-)