Here goes a periodic wrap up of my life in the past 6 weeks or so - for those who prefer it all wrapped up in one place, instead of scattered throughout brief status updates:

- We stayed in Hemet (southern California) through the end of October - wonderful to be still for a bit, being neighbors to awesome friends in an awesome location.

- One of my father's best friends passed away. He was like an uncle to me. It is very sad.

- Due to some contracting issues with one of my companies, I have essentially cut back my role to a level that is just barely sustainable financially.. by choice. I'm now exploring new opportunities to fund my marvelous lifestyle. It's exciting, actually.

- In mid-October I flew up to San Francisco to attend 'Experts Academy' with my dear friend Sterling. The seminar was a 4-day intensive of 12+ hour days non-stop. I learned a lot of stuff that I'm still noodling over and what I might like to do with it in new career paths. It was awesome to catch up with Sterling, and have a brief visit with some of my Bay Area friends before heading back.

- I opted to take the Coast Starlight back to LA - a 12 hour train ride along the coast of California. Absolutely divine. If you ever have the opportunity - do it! Ample leg room, walk around at will, dining car, social/lounge car, electrical ports at each seat and amazing scenery. A perfect way to relax, think and catch up with oneself.

- We took our Jeep in for regular maintenance and warranty work on the transmission. In the process it was discovered our tow hitch was bent. Further investigation revealed small cracks in the frame where the hitch attached. After a lot of consulting with our trailer company, body shops and hitch specialists - we came to determine that our Jeep was towing at darn near its limit anyway, and the additional extender we needed due to the spare tire placement was putting us over capacity. In a nutshell, the frame could be fixed, but it would likely just continue to occur.

- We relocated to San Diego at the beginning of the month, in part because our nomadic friend Ben was also there. We ended up camped next to him for a week - much fun being neighbors. San Diego also gave us lots of options for frame repairs and vehicle shopping.

- We bought a new tow vehicle. Shopping at CarMax.com made the process painless and actually fun. Buying a vehicle in California made it financially painful, as they forced us to pay sales tax despite registering in South Dakota. Ouch. However, we now have a pretty red double cab 2006 Toyota Tundra with a camper shell with ample tow capacity and lots of storage space. We have significantly increased our storage room and feeling much less packed in. We are sad to let our awesome little fuel efficient diesel Jeep go tho - she towed us over 40,000 miles since we got her in May 2007.

- After San Diego we rendezvoused with Sandi Wheaton, a Route 66 roadtripping photographer that I had been helping prepare for her semi-nomadic debut.

- We and Sandi ended up photo touring around the Salton Sea for several days, along with our Hemet friend Sean. It was.. awesome! We ended up camped at the infamous Slab City where Sandi had a friend who lives there full time at 'East Jesus'. It's a post-apocolyptic pre-singularity experimental artistic habitat that is just mind blowingly cool. We had an fantastic time.

- We're now working our way eastwards towards... drum roll.. KANSAS!

- Why Kansas? We decided we wanted to spend Christmas with Chris' folks in St. Louis - so we looked around for options between now and then. We discovered that several of our full time RVing friends were going to amazon.com's distribution center in Kansas as temporary seasonal workers. We decided.. what the heck? Get paid for a month of shipping boxes (work out & meditation all in one!) and hang out with other cool full timers? We'll arrive in less than a week and see what it's all about.

All I have any urge to do right now is sew.  And my machine is in the shop.  It has something going on with the tension.  It sews four stitches, goes "deepdeepdeep" and stops.  I have to lift my foot from the pedal so that it can sew another four stitches, then lift my foot, then lift my foot, then lift my foot, then...  I actually finished a cloak that way the morning I dropped it off because I wanted to get it done before losing my machine, but it's not a fun way to get work done.

Of course, I have all kinds of things I could be doing.  For instance we are nearly out of bread.  But I don't feel like making bread.  I feel like altering a waistband on Ariel's skirt and making Theresa's nightgown and do those cloaks for the play and...  I guess I could do all the cutting out and serging, but I like to make things and get them done rather than leave projects half finished (I've met myself, half finished projects go on for years and years until I have gained so much weight the original item won't fit even if I do actually finish it).

Oh Phooey!  And Bill's going to want to water walk.  I know I need to do it, but I really don't want to.  I'm just lazy right now and the only thing inspiring me is sewing.

I know I am probably the exception rather than the rule, but I absolutely hate being 'thanked for my service'. I find it offensive. I didn't serve for gratitude. I did a job. I understood the possible consequences of that job when I took it, and I was lucky enough not to be sent to a war zone, but if I had been I would have gone without complaint.

I know this to be true because 6 weeks prior to my set wedding date I was notified that I was being deployed in support of Bosnia. I didn't bitch. I didn't moan. I started processing for deployment and got married the next day instead of whining about the fact that I had already spent thousands of dollars on my wedding and I was going to lose all that money. As it turned out, the deployment was canceled and we had the party on the original date, but I didn't know that was going to happen, so I did what was necessary to follow the orders I had been given.

I really hate being thanked for my service. Especially by people who have never been in. I did a job. I did the job I swore to do. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Via http://www.arsenic.com/store/expressions/index.aspx
CRONE: Creative Researcher Of New Experiences!

In other news the sleeping pill is kicking in and I'm getting a bit .... giddy Heehee! Time to toddle off to bed :)

So at nearly 50 years old I appear to be starting to learn tact. Or maybe just how to deal with religious zealots who are harassing someone other than myself.

In October I was at a Science Fiction convention and this guy was giving one of the vendors (we used to call them dealers, but then that word changed to mean drug dealers, so now we call them vendors) a hard time about her stock. She's trying to get him to stop by telling him it sells and she's there to make money, and he's not about to let it go. So I stepped in and said, "You know the difference between an artist and a craftsman? An artist says, 'I will not sully my art.' A craftsman says, 'Show me the cash.'" It got a laugh and he walked off to harass someone else.

Today I was at the pool water-walking with my friend Bill. Neither Bill nor I have ever met a stranger so we struck up a conversation with a woman walking near us. She started quizzing him about the state of his immortal soul. Bill is trying to deflect the conversation and not succeeding, so I quip, "Oh he's going straight to Hell!" Laugh, laugh, laugh. Subject changed to how mean I am to Bill and joking about how evil Bill is. (Bill definitely didn't mind). Situation deflected.

Tact is not my strong point. Hell, I'd go so far as to say it is my weak point, but apparently I am learning how to step in and deflect that kind of thing without it turning into something *really* ugly.

Ok, I'm feeling better :) I brain-dumped self-sabotaging thoughts last night, fed myself comfort food (chicken & dumplings), spend a few mindless hours lost on Wikipedia, and slept. That was exactly what I needed to re-boot my brain :)

For the record: I had a GREAT time at Afterburn! It was an incredible emotional effort but well worth it :)

Yesterday's hibernation was needed after 48 hours of blinkie lights, blasting uh-uh-uh techno (from at least 5 different sources in a relatively small place), a constant parade of people, far too much alcohol, sunburn, fire, nearly seeing a guy incinerated (mishap Saturday while igniting the effigy), and camping with people who tweak my emotional response buttons.

Today I need to return a library book, clean my disaster zone of a kitchen, do massive loads of laundry, lose myself in a good book, and hopefully smooch on fragbert at least once :)

I had The Dream again last night. This is the dream which any ex-military person recognizes. You know, the one where you are back on active duty (I'm usually recalled to active duty or it turns out my retirement wasn't valid and I have to not only go back but pay back the pension they've been sending me for the past 6 years) and usually you are out of uniform in some fashion (although why the other people in your dream don't see you aren't wearing pants is beyond me).

I've been retired almost 6 effin years! It's time to stop with the trauma dreams already.

we tend to spend a LOT of time waiting in life.....I wait in traffic, wait in line at the store, wait for X000 for a program to come on or to end cos I am tired of listening to it or wait for dinner to be done.

There is a LOT of waiting.

I am in a 4-6 week waiting period right now. I took Level II for my Florida Association of Code Enforcement and Test....takes 4-6 weeks to process.

So here I wait.

Wondering if I passed or not and the wondering if I passed or not is now on my mind. I believe I passed. I am pretty confident I passed. Just would like the test results to prove it.

Now to keep myself occupied and busy between now/then and be productive :)

I worked up a plan for Afterburn. It's just me so I wanted, and needed, to travel fairly light. I've been wanting to camp by myself just to see if I can for awhile. This time worked out perfectly as it's also my birthday.

However...

My plan is a bit amiss, and I'm worried about my punt. I decided to take tent, 2 chairs, and my 2 little folding camp tables. One of the tables is designed to hold a camp stove. That's it for big gear. A dish tub, funnel & collapsible water container - there's my grey water device. Sparse clothing in a duffle bag. Cookware, lights, tp, first aid kit all in a plastic tub. Cold stuff in the cooler, dry goods in a milk crate. Easy peazy.

Except the little folding camp tables have disappeared. I have torn this house upside down looking for them. Nearly ruined a good pair work pants crawling around under stuff. I've gone through all 3 closets. Searched both porches high and low. Spent time on my belly crawling looking under stuff.. no tables.

I'm at a loss as to how to handle the camp stove. I have a wooden folding tv-dinner type table. Maybe use a silpat mat under the stove to keep from burning? I guess I could stop by Dick's Sporting Goods to see if they have a folding stove stand. They make such things. Hell, I could even detour to Bass Pro Outlet if Dick's is no good.

I'm afraid I'm trying to talk myself out of going. I know I'm adaptable and handle this. Can't I???

Roughly this time tomorrow I hope to be packing up the car, then stretching out for a little nap before heading out. Woot!

This afternoon I experienced one of my mini-series dreams which seem to go on forever and cover different topics. This one covered everything from Craigslist, old classmate, a rainy parking lot, doll shoes and interstate ramps covered in debris. It ended with...

My Mom, myself and Sandra, a girl I went to high school with, getting on a subway in Little Rock, Arkansas. For the record, Little Rock does not have a subway. These subway cars were flat like mattresses with the option of using a seatbelt. It rocketed out of the station and zoomed along at a quick pace, at one seeming to zip into traffic only to dip down into a tunnel. Think 'The Knight Bus' from Harry Potter. It emerged from the tunnel to start loop-de-loop like a roller coaster, splashing through water at one point. Nobody fell or got hurt, just screamed some.

We end up in a 'station'. We gather our things and realize we are really really high up in a building. And the only way down from this station is two flights of stairs - verrrrry narrow twisting turning stairs. One set is on the outside, and one set is inside. And not normal stairs, but very close to the wall and unevenly spaced. The doorways are just openings with a straight drop down.

Other people are not hesitating, just trotting down the stairs. I take one look and get vertigo. Badly.

The rest of the dream is me trying to get the nerve to go down the stairs. We watch people go up & down, some falling to their death, others trotting along like nothing.

I gradually woke up but felt the tremors in my knees and stomach for some time. I was afraid to even crawl off the bed. The mattress & box spring sitting on the floor was just too high for me.

Very weird!

Fortified by an excellent dinner and cheesy 80's movie (Cat People) with the made of win fragbert, I face Monday feeling pretty darn chipper. I have a list but plan to ease through it without stress or anxiety. After all it is my one work-free day off.

Library to return books and pick up last two of Dresden File seriesAlas, they only had the next Dresden book available but I did pick up the new Sookie Stackhouse book in hardback. Since it's new it is a '7 day' book I need to read it this week. Oh darn :P

Browse Nature's MarketWoohoo found Dark Auburn Henna! but forgot gloves so will need to go back out for those later today

Dick's Sporting Goods for new raised air mattressNo raised mattresses with non-electric pumps. How weird is that? I did buy some new Crocs in a ballet flat/skimmer style. My feet are very happy now.

Joann Fabrics for lightweight iron-on interfacing & black seam tapePlus some funky patterned fabric precut into strips for ruffles on my skull bloomers

Grocery store for roasted chicken goodness... and ice cream :P

Home to clean my superfund site of a kitchen

laundry for the week

casually start packing for AfterBurn

Review camp gear & make sure I have tent poles

Maybe cut out black skull bloomers

try not to read the next Dresden book all in one sitting But it is ok if I do that with the new Sookie book LOL