Howling Frog travels (and not much else)

By -
I feel like I've done almost nothing for the past few weeks but travel, or pack for traveling, or recover from traveling.  I've hardly had time to read, much less to blog, but I've done a bit of reading and I've missed the blogging!  Here's a quick rundown:

Early in the summer my kids and I made a sort of bucket list of things we wanted to do.  I promised faithfully that this summer, I really and truly would take them to Six Flags, a realio, trulio amusement park.  My poor children are so deprived that they've never been to anything besides the county fair (and the terrifyingly rickety rides it has).  In mid-July I realized that if I didn't take them within a week, it wouldn't happen at all...so I did it, in a super-human feat of driving endurance (three hours each way; I am a rotten long-distance driver, because I get sleepy).  We had a great time and I rode a roller coaster for the first time in years.

My brother got married!  We drove to Portland under a haze of wildfire smoke -- happily for me, my husband drove most of the way while I dozed a lot.  My entire extended family squished into a giant, but weirdly designed, AirBnB house.  The wedding was lovely and everything went great.  We also had a big picnic party to celebrate my parents' 50th wedding anniversary this year.  And Maphead, my fellow Eastern-European-history-reader, came over to say hi, which was great.

My folks, siblings, and assorted relations

Maphead and me at a Portland park

Got home and realized that I'd promised the older kid that we'd go down to Sacramento to take a look at kid's chosen college program, and if it didn't happen this week, it wouldn't happen.  So I spent four hours driving and one hour sitting in a nice air-conditioned college library while kid had a great time talking with students and instructors.  Otherwise the week is a haze of exhaustion and laundry.

Then I took the younger kid to Utah for a week!  Well, I was just a lucky passenger again; my sister-in-law always does the driving because she gets sick otherwise, and also she is a much better distance driver than I am anyway.  Our kids enjoyed a week living in a dorm and having Fun Teen Activities at a college, and I stayed with my close friend who moved away a year ago.  I can tell you from personal knowledge that the entire West is covered in smoke.  California, Nevada, Utah (and a good deal of Oregon): all suffocating under a thick blanket of smoke.  But I saw several good friends and I did some touristing and it was a great trip.

I'm partway through a lot of books...but I can't seem to finish...


I've been recovering since, and preparing for the school year.  The younger kid is at band camp every day; the older one is working and about to start college.  There is a ton to do, and then my fridge decided to start leaking water.  I think I'm looking forward to the start of work, so I can relax a bit...

Comments

  1. Ruth @ with freedom and booksAugust 11, 2018 at 8:05 AM

    Once things settle down for you, you know you will be able to look back on the great memories. Vacation is always exhausting -- summer is always exhausting -- but at least you and your kids will have the experiences to look back on.

    I was wondering if you were close to those northern fires; noCal has it a lot worse, it seems, although for awhile, we were downwind from all the smoke, even as far as Oregon, I was told. But this week we got the Holy Fire, and now we are east of the smoke, which has been absolutely terrible; we literally cannot go outside or open our windows or use our swamp coolers. But, man, those firefighters are doing such amazing work, saving properties. They are so awesome.

    Anyway, I'm looking forward to school, too. Yay! Enjoy your upcoming school year. : )

    ReplyDelete
  2. JeanAugust 11, 2018 at 11:06 AM

    Oh, I know you're right Ruth, and that Holy Fire is a scary one. I hope it's contained soon. We are getting smoke from all 3 of the big fires, and although Redding is an hour away, that counts as near neighbors in NorCal and I have several friends who live there/are from there. It's all just terrible.

    ReplyDelete
  3. MapheadAugust 13, 2018 at 6:21 AM

    Yay! We finally get to meet. It was a pleasure to meet you and your relatives. Glad you were able to enjoy my city!
    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he defeats or avoids th
Read more