The Sunset Samurai

Hurricane Erin is sending some nicer weather our way, and this week we've had close to three inches of rain. I think we're officially out of a drought state at this point. We keep having little blobs of storms form and pass over.

Fox and I were discussing a camping trip all the way out to the Keys, which I've never had a chance to visit. We're still thinking of that but as a slightly easier, shorter trip, we're also looking at going the other way across the state and visiting Venice. As part of that we can actually go camp out in one of the state parks which is known for having dark skies - and I shouldn't have to tell y'all why dark skies are so awesome and important. Venice is known for having a shark tooth beach where you can just scoop up sand and it's filled with shark teeth. Fox says his little brother had a Mason jar full of them when they were kids, which he'd picked up on a family trip out there. So those sound like interesting adventures, and I could easily see a two or three day trip with the camper.

We started watching Severance, so we're a little late to the waffle party. It's hitting Fox more than it is me, because he's been a corporate cube-dweller, so he's very familiar with life in a structured, controlling environment. Most of my work experience has been government, which is its own kind of weirdness. Especially in state and local offices, which can be like the love child of Kafka and Faulkner. There's always one office staffed by a lone guy or gal with a serious caffeine addiction and no outside life, and heaven help the county if they happen to die.

Ugh, I need to go lift, do my Japanese study, and I haven't gotten any writing or art done.

I saw some "think piece" recently bemoaning the fact that people are starting to celebrate Halloween early, and why does fall have to creep into summer? The author was whining about how it's still August, it's still summer, I want my summer fun, waahhhhh. Look, people like me are doing "Summerween" and pulling out fall decorations because summer is the worst season, hands down. The only reason anyone likes summer is that the American public school system has conditioned us to equate summer with fun and freedom. I'm looking forward to going outside without my flesh vaporizing because the sun is 200 feet from my front door.

I get cabin fever in summer. I have to get my workouts done early in the morning and retreat home before the heat gets really bad. It feels like I "never" go outside.

Anyway, I haven't had much going on here to write about, aside from just training, keeping house, petting cats, and just existing. I've finally felt like doing creative things again and so picked up some of my fiction and started drawing again. I tried posting some fiction to Pillowfort but I don't seem to be getting traction there. So one of my projects is a longhand story-game that I'm building using various solo RPG tools. That's been fun because I know I don't have to make it make sense for a reading audience, so I can just go with whatever comes up in the game, and it's already yielded a mysterious Spanish-colonial plantation, an old wise woman who may or may not be a human, and a lady who makes dorodango. I have no idea how all this is going to weave together but the fun is in finding out.

I also found I own a copy of Trokia! which may lend itself well to my St. Felix stories, since it's both very weird and very light on rules. They have their own multiverse but I'm sure I can adapt it to mine.

My birthday is tomorrow. :D

I don't have much of anything else planned for the fall. We didn't manage to snag runDisney spots during Wine & Dine, so we're taking the opportunity to have a lower-stress trip in September to enjoy the Food and Wine Festival. We also can't go to Marathon Weekend because of an all hands on deck thing at Fox's work, so my race calendar is sparse. Which is actually cool, because I'm running a 10k in October to make time for Gate River Run, then I'll just be training for that 15k. I don't have to try to shoehorn speed or hill workouts into a schedule that's mostly dedicated to making it through a marathon.The 10k is being held on the old Army base in Green Cove Springs where the military museum is now, and the course goes through some interesting areas. They still have some old bunkers and things like that.