Week before last the Geek In-Laws What Rule took us down to southern Oregon for a week at a fishing/hunting “resort.”  It was a blast!  We met up with the Geek Husband What Rules’s aunt and cousins.  I got to take my Father-in-Law’s one man pontoon out on the lake and irritate waterfowl for hours.  The beauty of the pontoon boat is that you can see down between your feet, and watch the bottom of the lake.  You can also float it into less than 6 inches of water without getting hung up on anything.  Did I mention irritating waterfowl?

At one point I was rowing along the shore and spotted a flock of pelicans, and thought, “Hey, I bet if I row really quiet, I could get pretty close.”  Then, as I got closer and realized how big they were, I thought, “You know, while pelicans are neither poisonous, nor do they have a big stingery spines, this may not be my best idea ever.  They are awful big.”  So I rowed away, much to the pelican’s relief.

We ate fresh caught lake trout, saw Crater Lake (including WIZARD ISLAND).  No, really, that’s what it’s called.  I got some knitting done, slept in, saw an amazing sunrise straight out of a Turner painting, including rays of sunlight, golden clouds and a trout arcing out of the water as the sun crested the mountains, I shit you not.

We discovered that it is very difficult to play Dominion by lantern outside at night during a Caddis fly hatch.

I am the closest to tan I’ve been in years and have big white “V”s on my feet from living in flip-flops.

Really, I did not get as much reading done as I’d hoped, but that’s ok.  I got to paddle around a lake on a pontoon boat, annoy waterfowl and write song lyrics surrounded by the sounds of nature.

Anyway, now that I’m back to the daily grind, I’ve got to get myself back into some semblance of a writing schedule.  I have a review of Seanan McGuire’s One Salt Sea coming up, and I need to edit my podcast interview with Tamora Pierce and get that up.  Part of what’s been making it hard to blog is that one of kitties, who is at least 15 years old, is going through kidney disease.  So we’re stabbing the cat (subcutaneous fluids) every night, and she gets two syringes of meds per night:  an antibiotic, and Pepcid.  Yes, once a day I grind up a quarter of a Pepcid, dissolve it in water, suck it into a syringe, and squirt it down her grubby throat. She’s eating, sleeping on our heads, and being more active again.  She doesn’t seem to really mind the stabbings, I think the meds are more traumatic for her, actually.  So, we’ve pretty much been wrecks for the last couple of weeks, and nearly cancelled the vacation plans.  But we have friends who are cat stabbing and medicating experts who came over to help us with her while we were gone.  Thankfully.

So, I apologize for the silence, and I’ll try to catch up soon.

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