far too much writing, far too many photos Friday, September 29, 2006 The day's last light: España, te echo de menos. rws 6:37 PM [+] Wednesday, September 27, 2006 [continued from entry of September 24] Back at the house, Georgie discovered a container of RealLemon juice (as opposed to actual real lemon juice), noticed a recipe for lemonade on the label, began concocting a batch. G. investigated mounting a wall cupboard, quickly came to his senses, we retired to the patio instead to hang out in the spectacular September weather. Minutes later, Georgiana materialized with glasses of faux lemonade -- G., being an excellent father, actually drank some. I took a cautious sip of the glass presented to me. Tasted better than I expected, and I left it at that. (I hate lemonade. There it is -- I'm a grinch.) Sunshine. Conversation. Georgie made art with a small tub of Floam. Birds chirped. Squirrels swanned about. The minutes slipped by until I got a glance at a clock, realized I needed to get ready to hit the road. Flew upstairs, pulled on clothes suitable for attendance at a wedding (blue shirt, nice dark pants, necktie borrowed from G., pointy boots), dragged my back stuff downstairs, tossed it all into the car. A short time later found me on the Palisades Parkway heading north, crossing the Bear Mountain Bridge (the river a band of water far below, green mountains rearing up to either side of it), following a shady two-lane toward Poughkeepsie, having plenty of time to spare, taking the drive in leisurely fashion. At Cold Spring, cut across to Rt. 9, which passed under I-84 a few miles up, transforming from a pleasant road into a hellish six-lane lined with malls, gas stations, etc., traffic heavy, halting, miserable. What had been a fast, easy drive became near-endless lines of cars waiting at red light after red light. Until the site of the wedding appeared on the left and I pulled in, mumbling thanks to whomever might be listening. Locust Grove -- a beautiful spot I would never have expected to find hidden away on Route 9. Found my way to the visitors center, went inside. The main hall was being set up for a wedding dinner, nary a guest or wedding-type person in sight. Turned out I'd gotten there way early, which gave me time to return to the car, find a shady, secluded parking space, and put in some quality almost-snoozing time. When I finally roused myself later, the place was jumping. Inside, the hall lay ready. Outside, a band played jazz, people in dress-up duds milled about, beginning to lay into the just-opened bar, hoovering finger food from folks circulating with trays. I located my brother and sister-in-law, then my niece and her beau, exchanged hellos, made brief conversation, then got out my camera. The relations had never seen me with a serious implement of photographic destruction before and expressed suitable appreciation. I was told, however, to check with the event's official photographer to make sure the presence of another picture-taker wouldn't bother her. When I found my nephew (he who was to be married) he said he had yet to see the official photog. and gave me his blessing re: pic.-snapping. I went and did some. Something I noticed during the ensuing hours: I found myself on the receiving end of interested scrutiny by more than one woman in the 30's-40's age bracket. (Happened earlier, too, in front of G.'s house as we stood talking.) Was it the big camera? The pointy boots? My sparkling personality and undeniable manliness? Or simply my adorable booty? Whatever the cause, it was fun. The official photographer materialized as the bride and groom appeared for the ceremony, the main event got underway. A short, lovely ceremony illuminated by late-afternoon sunlight, the bride and groom clinched for a fairly lengthy smooch, then everyone began drifting back to the visitors center, members of the two families waylaid for photo sessions en route. My brother-- the original handyman -- had built the arbor for the ceremony, several males from our side of the event were pressed into service to take it down and pack it into vehicles. The sun had set by then, I found myself donating blood to the legions of mosquitoes that called Locust Grove home. Finally, near dark, we were allowed to go inside and join the party. I found myself at a table with my brother and sister-in-law, my niece and her guy and two guys I hadn't seen in 30 years, cousins of my sister-in-law who were raised in the town my brother and sister-in-law have lived in since going to the local college (where they met and got hitched). In fact, I saw a bunch of folks at this event I knew far too many years ago -- faces I enjoyed seeing, every blessed one of them. In each face, I could see the young person I'd known, still alive, now an active part of the adult attending this event. A strange feeling, that, but seriously enjoyable. I like people. I like hearing about the course that old friends' lives have taken, I like being able to spend some time with them after a long time away. Call me simple, but there it is. Dinner. Chat. The wedding toast. The bride and groom out on the floor doing the first dance. The one and only marriage ceremony I've taken part in -- feeling like several lifetimes ago now -- took place in the living room of my ex-in-laws' home. A small, intimate affair -- brief, without all the pomp, without the rituals. It was a sweet, congenial passage, and just right for us at that time. Something about watching my only nephew going through the big, stylized version, almost the polar opposite of the version I experienced, got me watching it with a strange sense of -- not detachment exactly, because plenty of emotions coursed through my system. An odd, vivid sense of it all being a bit foreign. Maybe in part because I don't really know a whole lot about my nephew these days -- about any of my brothers' clan. (My brother drifted away over the last fifteen or so years, especially during the last two or three, and with him the rest of his family.) And in part because the ceremony does feel a little foreign. All that ritualized stuff. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) And all around me at the table, all those faces from years past. It felt good to be there, sharing the event with them. Strange, but all right. A long drive lay ahead, and at 9:30, shortly after the ceremonial first dance had morphed into r&b tunes, the dance floor heaving with guests in motion, I started pulling myself together, saying so-longs. Found my nephew to give him a hug, he insisted we sit down and talk for five minutes. We sat, we talked, him clearly a little high on the event, me a little tired, ready to hit the road, but enjoying him. And then I was out the door to the parking lot, my brother along to see me off. A few minutes later I was out on Route 9, then following traffic east through Poughkeepsie to the Taconic Parkway. Dark, no street lights, little traffic. Just me, heading north along miles of winding blacktop and the occasional small town. By the time I'd crossed into Vermont, passing through Bennington and on toward Rutland, few cars were about, most towns and villages were dark. In Rutland, I stopped at an all-night convenience store/gas station. Filled up the car, parked at the store's far end, got out and walked about, getting some air. Wandered off out of view, along one side of the store -- when I came back into view, the single on-duty employee had come out of the store for a smoke, said a startled hello. Seemed suspicious of my having been off around the corner of the store like that, moved directly in front of my car and leaned against something, watching me rummaging around in the rear of my Subaru for a bottle of water until another car pulled in and she had to return to the register inside. Later, driving along Along Rt. 100, the narrow, winding two-lane crowded by woods, a fox burst out of the brush on one side, shooting across the asphalt in front of my vehicle, disappearing into the trees on the other side. Still later, when I'd finally made it to I-89, what would normally be a high-speed part of the journey, I found a road enveloped in fog, visibility close to zero, making it feel like one more two-lane. Pulled into the garage here at 2:30, nearly five hours after leaving my brother in the parking lot at Locust Grove. Left everything in the car, went upstairs, pulled off clothes, went directly to bed. Woke up four hours later as daylight gathered outside, found myself back in Vermont. Back in Vermont. For now. España, te echo de menos. rws 7:47 PM [+] Monday, September 25, 2006 Past peak -- Montpelier, Vermont España, te echo de menos. rws 9:55 PM [+] Sunday, September 24, 2006 [continued from previous entry] A nice dinner. The girls seemed to decide they liked having me there, once their food had been shoveled down, they came and went from the table, leaving me, G. and M. to talk about whatever we wanted to talk about (me hoovering down rice & beans the entire time). Which wound up centering on my first cross-country trip, immediately post-college, me making the trip when I wound up passing three weeks with G. and his parents in their house on a lake in southern California. Evenings were spent in L.A. tossing down Mexican chow and vat-sized glasses of margaritas, days were spent hanging about house/lake or running around L.A. being tourists. At night I slept in the guest cabin, in a room lined with packed bookshelves, staying up to all hours reading books that caught my attention (the only one I remember: a volume of letters from Groucho Marx to his daughter -- hard to put down, packed with laugh lines). G.'s father -- now deceased -- was, essentially, Disney records. Turns out the company's going to honor him in a ceremony sometime soon, G. will be flying out to attend. When I stop and think about it, it's amazing how many parents of friends took me in and put up with me in earlier years. Sometimes for a night or two, sometimes for weeks – displays of kindness and generosity that went leagues beyond the call of duty. Rain continued to fall. G. had to go to a meeting at an out-of-business theater he and a group of people were attempting to resuscitate, I grabbed my laptop and followed, figuring I'd find a café with wi-fi to sit and do some electronic scribbling. Wound up at a Starbucks where it turned out they charged big money for wireless access. I didn't feel like handing over a pile of shekels for an hour of online time, so I sat and simply wrote as wave after wave of local teenagers poured into the place and back out into the night, the air smelling of rain and coffee. G.'s meeting took place a couple of blocks away in the theater, a short stumble down the main drag. We'd arranged to meet out in front -- when the time came, I packed up my laptop, made the short trip, found no sign of G. at the rendezvous point. A tug at the theater's doors showed one of them to be open, I went inside to see what was what. What I found: the meeting still in process, G. and a bunch of other folks up on the stage talking away, deep into a lot of theater world hot air. I pulled out something to read, waited a while. When it became apparent they might go on well into the night, I took off, made the hike back to the house where M. and the girls seemed surprised to see someone other than the fourth member of the family walk in the front door. Then not so surprised to hear that the meeting seemed nowhere near wrapping up for the night, G. being a master shmoozer who can go on for hours in a meeting-type sitch. He eventually returned, household life wound down for the evening, I retired to my room, turned on the TV for a while, turned it off, switched to a book, eventually turned off the light and passed out, the sound of the crowd at a nearby Friday night football game coming and going, like the faint sounds of waves on a beach. Woke up with first light, could feel I wouldn't be returning to sleep, gave up, got out my laptop. G. appeared not long after, sleeping in apparently not something that happens often in that household. His footsteps came up the stairs, went into the other third-floor room, where the home's computer lives. I follwed him in there, we got blabbing, time passed. G. had to take one of the girls to a violin lesson, they dressed, ate, disappeared. M. and the other girl were going to drive out to a birthday party out on Long Island. I waited till they'd gone (thank-you's and good-bye's flying in the minutes leading up to their departure) and the bathroom was finally free. Showered, etc. G. returned, we went out to breakfast, making the trip on foot, Georgiana talking nonstop, providing a hyper-detailed rundown of a story she loved. We found the breakfast joint, claimed a table, a big, beautiful black woman took our orders. Georgiana requested a big plate of blueberry pancakes with whipped cream. It arrived, she ate a few paltry bites, left the rest. G. and I ordered 'Mexican omelets,' mine seemed to get better with each bite, until I found myself eating it faster and faster, getting happier by the minute. (In general, if someone cooks for me, I'm predisposed to bliss -- if the chow is at all decent, I experience a kind of joy that is positively indecent.) Post-breakfast glut: a wander along the street, me dragging G. and Georgiana briefly into a café where I inhaled an espresso so quickly G. appeared alarmed. A stop into the town library, a great little place (with a room full of computers free to use, and wi-fi access for those with a laptop, also free of charge) -- the kind of institution I'd be all over were I a town resident. A stop into a wildly garish shop dealing almost entirely in Halloween and Christmas stuff -- G. practically had to drag Georgiana into it, then practically had to drag her out of it when his interest quickly waned. A stop into a thrift shop where every single article of clothing was on sale for 25 cents (me picking up a necktie emblazoned with teeny soccer players, to be given to a friend -- a gift I suspect the recipient will both love and hate). [continued in entry of September 27] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Autumn rainbow, northern Vermont: España, te echo de menos. rws 7:46 PM [+] Thursday, September 21, 2006 It's Thursday, the weekend looms. The last few days have whipped by, I find myself still thinking about last weekend, spent in the Hudson Valley visiting friends, family. The short recap: spent Friday night in Nyack at the home of my best buddy and his clan. Hadn't seen them in three years, a long time considering their daughters are five and eight-years-old. Passed the night in a small, comfy room on the third floor of their funky old home. Woke at dawn, the room's walls streaked with red from an intense sunrise, early a.m. light streaming through curtainless windows. Drove up to Poughkeepsie later in the day for my nephew's wedding. Encountered folks there I hadn't seen in 30 years, some -- individuals who, like me, had been excessively young during my time in that part of the world -- looking very different (though I could still see their youthful version actively alive in the present version), others looking grayer, nothing more. All of them a pleasure to see, including my brother's family, essentially the only remaining family I have in this life. (Not exactly true, that -- relatives of both my parents are out there, but we have little connection, are not in touch.) Began the return drive home shortly after 9:30 p.m., mostly following two-lanes north along New York's eastern edge, into Vermont, through Bennington and Rutland, passing through small towns, villages, the roads generally empty, most houses dark. Pulled into the garage here at 2:30 a.m., went directly to bed, leaving all my stuff in the car. Woke up four or five hours later with part of an old Randy Newman song going through my head: Last night I had a dream, you were in it and I was in it with you. And everyone that you know and everyone that I know was in my dream. I saw a vampire. I saw a ghost. And everybody scared me but you scared me the most. In the dream I had last night, in the dream I had last night, in my dream. Hmmmm. The long recap: Early Friday morning, as the September sun began creeping slowly into view, I dragged my sleepy carcass out from under the covers, pulled on clothes, packed the car, headed into town. A brief stop for caffeine, a longer stop at the gym, then I pointed the car toward the interstate and began the long drive south. Overcast skies thinned as I put distance between me and Montpelier, by the time I skirted White River Junction, sunlight had broken through, feeling very nice. I hadn't done a long drive since June and don't find the idea of getting into the car for hours at a time hugely appealing, having done far too many long hauls in earlier years. This day, though, the miles passed easily. Before I knew it, I was by Brattleboro and into Massachusetts, traffic growing steadily heavier as the road extended south, a trend that intensified in Springfield, maxing out in Hartford. There is nothing like navigating highways crowded with aggressive, whacked-out drivers to make the point of how relatively civilized Vermont roads are. (Passed in Mass.: The French King Bridge The Bridge of Flowers) During all this, for some reason, my bladder slipped into high production mode, necessitating hourly stops to dump the ballast. Why? Got me. The source of all that liquid was a mystery. I only knew I had to deal with it, hoping things would calm down sometime soon. (They did.) New York State, me changing from 84 to 684, then to the Saw Mill Parkway, a green roller coaster of a road, the drivers generally kinder, gentler. And then onto the Thruway and across the Tappan Zee Bridge, the only stop-and-go traffic of the trip, a huge percentage of the vehicles around me enormous, hulking SUV's. (What gives with all the rolling fortresses? Not to mention all the accidents-waiting-to-happen busy blabbing into cellphones as they drive.) And then Nyack. The sunshine had disappeared back between Springfield and Hartford, the skies growing progressively darker, rain beginning along the Sawmill. By the time I pulled up in front of my friends' home, drizzle had become heavy showers. The house lay dark, empty -- no one answered my plaintive knock, I retreated to the car. Ten, fifteen minutes later a vehicle pulled into the driveway, my buddy's wife, M., got out, ran into the house, followed a minute later by the older of their two daughters. The younger daughter emerged from their car as I got out of mine, we ran up onto the porch together. The last time she'd seen me: 3+ years ago, when she was a two-year-old. She had no memory of me, retreated to the safety of her mother's arms (understandable given that it must felt like a stranger had just invaded her home). M. began making dinner, the girls swept in and out of the kitchen, conversation going in all directions. The house had seen plenty of changes since the last time I'd been there, close to three and a half years earlier. At times I wandered out of the kitchen to inspect the first floor's living areas, absorbing the differences. For instance, a piano had appeared in one room. A wall that had once featured a print by Calder had become a small photo gallery -- friends, family, places G. & M. have been. The TV had disappeared, in its place was G.&M.'s small chanting altar. (They're Buddhists.) The kitchen had been redone since my last visit, I ogled new, impressively high-tech appliances. I never use ice cubes, found myself using the front-display icemaker over and over. Cubes. Crushed ice. Filtered water. Damn. G. got home from work to general jubilation. Still looked like the guy I've known for far too many years. Dinner followed -- pork, corn on the cob (brought from Vermont), and some pretty tasty rice & beans. The first rice & beans I'd had in a while, good enough to get me remembering similar mounds of rice/beans eaten in other places, in particular the stupendous, dirt cheap fare served at a little latino joint on Canal Street in Manhattan, a place I went to as often as I could the last time I lived in N.Y.C. (far too many years ago now -- long enough ago that I was married, so far the one and only time I've found myself in a matrimonial state in this life o' mine). [continued in next entry] España, te echo de menos. rws 6:29 PM [+] Wednesday, September 20, 2006 Images from a weekend spent in the Hudson Valley, a trip featuring friends, family and numerous moments of high-grade entertainment. Order: Disorder: España, te echo de menos. rws 7:48 PM [+] Wednesday, September 13, 2006 Yesterday turned out to be -- despite dire warnings of killing frosts by the nutbags in the local weather biz -- much like the day before: early-morning fog with temperatures in the mid- to upper-30's, sunshine gradually burning through to produce a classic, summery September day. The kind of day that leaves one feeling pretty stinkin' good, no matter what kind of drama or silliness may be happening in your life. Migration has been in full swing these last couple of weeks: Groups of birds appearing on the lawn for a pit stop, picking through the grass for a snack (bugs, bugs and more bugs), then disappearing south. The sound of Canada geese passing overhead. And monarch butterflies. In front of this house, a large field of extends off down the hill, now liberally frosted with the yellow of yarrow in bloom. Off to one side is a large, circular space of grass (affectionately called the UFO Landing Pad), a spot with a fine view of the valley. Yesterday afternoon turned out to be so beautiful that it kept sucking me out of the house, pulling me away from things to be done to sit or walk, soaking up sunshine, and at one point, just before the sun began sinking out of view, I found myself down drifting down along that field. Just walking, breathing, gazing around, late afternoon sunlight pouring over everything. And at some point I noticed a few monarchs hanging off yarrow blossoms. Hanging at various angles as they fed, then fluttering off to different plants. Big orange and black butterflies, lots of them. I stood and watched, and as I looked around it gradually dawned on me: there were monarch butterflies everywhere, all over the field -- a concentration of butterflies like I'd never seen before, anywhere. And the more I peered around, the more I saw -- far, far more than I could count. An amazing sight. Long shadows began to creep across the field as the sun dipped behind trees, now and then a monarch would lift off and begin fluttering away -- heading south, gaining altitude as it went, finally disappearing over treetops, gilded with late-day sunlight. Those images -- countless butterflies in a field of yellow, monarchs flying off into the afternoon's waning light -- stayed with me all night long. The weather's not looking so promising today. If things warm up at all, I'll bring a camera down the hillside and see if the scene repeats itself. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This morning, far too early: España, te echo de menos. rws 7:40 AM [+] Monday, September 11, 2006 Frost hit some parts of this area last night, something that the local weather types had been warning of. A warning that got me to move all potted outdoor plants into the garage and throw covers over tomato plants, etc. Just in case. The wee hours brought thick fog, which moderated the cold a bit -- when I peeked out the dining room window this morning around eight, the temperature hovered in the mid- to upper 30's, then began moving nicely upward as fog dissipated, the sun lifting into blue September sky. I pulled covers off plants, did an accelerated version of the morning shower/shave thing, then headed into Montpelier for caffeine, gym, errands. And during my hours in town, a day originally predicted (by those same weather types) to be chilly turned into a showcase of warm, lovely Septemberness. With a sensation of summer that's mostly been absent since mid-August. Warnings of colder temperatures and more widespread frost have been issuing from radios all day, and people around here began preparing, resigned. Late afternoon found me out picking tomatoes, accumulating two bowls' worth, all of the fruit with any real color, leaving the green buggers on the vine. As it is, I'm already practically afloat in fresh tomatoes. I may be ready for a vacation by the time I finish plowing through them all. When I pulled myself out of from under the covers this morning, the temperature in the house was a nippy 63 degrees, cool enough to get me zipping through the wake-up routine with dispatch before fleeing into town. We'll see how it feels tomorrow a.m. I'm hoping the sadists in the local weather biz are lying through their crooked teeth (not that I can point fingers when it comes to crooked teeth) about more intense overnight cold. It's mid-September. More and more trees are turning, the annual show of color slowly gains steam. Pumpkins have appeared at the local farm stand. The afternoon sun slips down behind the trees earlier and earlier, the hours of darkness slowly increase. The cold season looms, and in a part of the planet where the cold season occupies far too much of the year, that looming sometimes seems like a repeated nudging, nature's quiet, insistent reminder of the major change in lifestyle that lays ahead. In anticipation of that, yesterday morning found me flopping about up in the house crawlspace again, continuing the suffering insulation work begun the previous weekend. The kind of laff riot that would happen faster and be a whole lot more joyful if some kind, capable soul were helping me with it. (Applicants may write to volunteer their time via this page's 'ABOUT RWS/CONTACT' link.) It's looking increasingly likely that I'll be returning to Madrid in November. There are preparations to be made, and a step at a time they've begun happening. Two months from now, I should be there, getting reacquainted with a part of the world that felt like home until last autumn. As I write this, the local world has slipped from dusk to darkness. Time to pull together something resembling an evening meal. Later. rws 7:42 PM [+] Saturday, September 09, 2006 This morning (far too early): España, te echo de menos. rws 8:01 AM [+] Thursday, September 07, 2006 Backroad barber shop -- Marshfield, Vermont España, te echo de menos. rws 2:11 PM [+] Wednesday, September 06, 2006 Every once in a while, for no good reason that I can put my finger on, I surface from an otherwise lovely night of sleep, usually around 3 or 4 a.m., feeling wide awake, knowing I probably will not be returning to the blessed, delicious state of unconsciousness any time soon. Often, when so afflicted, I pull myself to my feet, stagger into the kitchen, fumble a couple of herbal sleep tablets out of a bottle, toss them down with a little fizzy water. Follwed by a brief visit to the loo to dump the night's accumulated ballast, before returning to bed to spend some quality time yawning, staring at the ceiling, scratching, and pondering my empty, pathetic generally wonderful life. Sometimes, while waiting for herbal drowsiness to kick in, I do a partial inventory of the many blessings that adorn my existence. Tonight, as odd as some might find this, I found myself appreciating sleeping alone. Not that I would mind having a warm, sweet-natured, intelligent, affectionate, semi-voluptuous female human sharing my mattress (not to mention existence), but sleeping solo means that I can (a) turn on the light when I feel like it without disturbing anyone else, (b) get up and wander off to make noise in kitchen and bathroom without waking anyone else, and (c) lay with said light on -- yawning, scratching, pondering -- without annoying a warm, sweet-natured, intelligent, affectionate, semi-voluptuous female human who might be nearby, trying to get some shuteye. Plus, I don't have to deal with the possibility that the lovely person curled up next to me might be a snorer. The female-snoring thing: it happens. I've experienced it first-hand. One woman -- a houseguest, safely ensconced in the guest quarters across the hall from my bedroom -- put on an exhibition that would have raised eyebrows in a marine corp barracks. Some women snore. It's a simple fact, despite claims to the contrary that one sometimes hears. But, having said that, I will add that I've never encountered one that came close to producing the sleep-destroying, rafter-rattling brand of snoring that my friend Dermot used to deal in: truly impressive world-class noise. Those old videoclips of entire buildings collapsing you occasionally see on TV? Hotels where Dermot stayed, all of them, their structures fatally weakened by Himself's spectacular wee-hour arias. I know this from nights spent sleeping under the same roof as the D-man, and from a handful of nights spent in hotel rooms with him in various spots around Europe. Nights of little sleep, despite earplugs and herbal tablets. But enough about not sleeping. It's late. (Or early.) Time to kill the light and drift off. Night-night. España, te echo de menos. rws 5:55 AM [+] Monday, September 04, 2006 It boggles my teeny brain that August has disappeared, September sneaking stealthily in, Labor Day come and nearly gone. The kind of teeny-brain boggling that leaves me staring at the calendar, blinking in confusion. It was, after all, just June. Or so it seems to my feeble gray matter. This morning: the big summer-ending third installment of the three-day weekend. Me with the whole day ahead, nothing planned except, er, nothing. Thinking about geting productive, starting to lay insulation up in the crawlspace. (In other houses, it might be an attic -- here it's a crawlspace, with maybe 30 inches of space beneath the roof's peak. Cramped, dusty, no lights or outlets. Just the place I want to pass a holiday morning.) And after a bit of thought, what do you know? Silly, virtuous me actually drags himself out of warm, comfortable bed, pulls on work clothes, girds self for pure fun. Grabbed a so-big-it's-got-to-be-a-symbol-for-manly-endowment flashlight, pulled on a dust mask. Climbed up a stepladder, popped open the crawlspace port (9" by 30"), slithered up into the darkness. What followed: pure madcap entertainment, sweat streaming down, me flopping about beneath the roof, taking measurements and scoping out the layout to get an idea of the kind of joy that awaits in the many hours of home improvement that lay ahead. After two hours of bliss, I slither back down through the port, with a pretty clear idea of the next steps that need to be taken. Go directly outside, shake off dust and old fibreglass, resolve to take the rest of the day off. Meanwhile, outside: overcast rules for the second straight day. Cool temperatures, everything damp from rain. And apart from the occasional brief break in the clouds, no sunshine. I don't know what it is, but these days the lack of sun can really impact my frame of mind. Might be from spending all that time in Madrid, where sunlight generally abounds. Or it could simply be that my tolerance, even enjoyment, for gray days has simply decreased with time. Whatever the reasons, I find myself longing for blue skies and celestial radiance. The liars in the local weather biz claim the sky will begin clearing real damn soon. that would be most excellent. And speaking of Madrid, fairly suddenly developments may mean that I'll be heading back there in a couple of months. Part of me breathes a big sigh of relief at the thought. Time will tell. I assume nothing until arrangements become concrete. In the meantime, the evening awaits. Later. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Labor Day weekend, northern Vermont: España, te echo de menos. rws 6:47 PM [+] Saturday, September 02, 2006 Cryptic sign of the day, seen in Montpelier this morning: Who is Hugh? And why is he on sale? España, te echo de menos. rws 5:32 PM [+] BLATHERINGS August 2001 September 2001 October 2001 November 2001 December 2001 January 2002 February 2002 March 2002 April 2002 May 2002 June 2002 July 2002 August 2002 September 2002 October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 December 2003 January 2004 February 2004 March 2004 April 2004 May 2004 June 2004 July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 December 2007 .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . MORE FOCUSED BLATHERINGS Personal History Travels: London '01 Pamplona Italy '03 U.K. '03 Sevilla Casablanca Stoke-on-Trent Barcelona Québec/Ottawa Boston/Lisbon/Madrid Italy '04 Montréal La Sierra Events: Madrid -- arrival 9/11 Emergency Room I Holidays 2001 Holidays 2002 Holidays 2003 Holidays 2004 Holidays 2005 A neighbor's passing Madrid -- March 11 bombings   and aftermath Emergency Room II Israeli friend/Madrid Marathon Madrid -- Royal Wedding The DELE exam Excerpts from GONE, a novel: Chapter 1 (complete) Chapter 6 (complete) Chapter 8 (excerpt) Chapter 9 (excerpt) Chapter 9 (excerpt) Screenplay excerpt: BURBANK SHRUGGED Short stories: Murphy's Wife Another Autumn Queja de Una Hermanastra   Muy Conocida .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 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