the deep moans round with many voices

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. :)