And I can confirm, they do have the internet. (Obscure-ish South Park reference to highlight my cool. *g*) We're getting semi-settled, so I'm posting. Finally. :D

The drive was... smoky. :) Utah was on fire, California was on fire, and Nevada was damn hot. I mean, really damn hot. As was eastern California for that matter. The temperature went up to 112 and the wind wasn't ocean breezy at all. More, open furnace. You know that scene in Chronicles of Riddick when Batman's daddy walks out into the sunshine and bursts into flame? I used a rest stop and thought the same was going to happen to me.

Which makes Las Vagas the weirdest city in the world. Because it seriously should not exist and that becomes abundantly clear when you drive out of the stone canyons of Arizona into the Nevada desert. Not even close to a piece of the world I'd pick to build a city in, and yet, there it is. All successful and growing and everything.

For a long while, California didn't seem like the best place to live either. The interior of the State is very different from the coastal areas. At least in the southern portion. (I constantly underestimate the size of California; it's huge.) Plus, there's a lot of hills/mountains. As we wanted to avoid L.A. for traffic reasons (though fire reasons seemed good as well) we pretty much zig-zagged our way up and down roads of various sizes, winding our way west. As we left the desert the famous California beauty started to show itself: golden hills, orange groves, wineries. And then suddenly, at a point we both missed, the temperature dropped 40 degrees and we were in the lower 60's.

Minutes later we finally got to the 101 and the ocean. After that it was an easy drive up to Santa Barbara. Destination reached. :)

Weirdly enough, it took us exactly one month. We left July 31st, we arrived August 31st. I like the symmetry of that. I'm fascinated to find out what happens next...

[eta: fixed a spelling error, because Nevada is sandy not sweet. *g*]

Greetings from Richfield, Utah! I feel like I've traveled I-70 west of the Rockies before, but it must have been at night because I can't believe I'd forget how stunning it is. First, the mountains don't just end. They pour down into a series of canyons, the highway clutched to the canyon walls, the Colorado river flowing below peppered with rafters and kayakers.

About 10 miles before hitting the Utah border the Colorado river dropped away, heading south while we continued into the bleak west. At one point the hills were so gray and ravaged by water and wind that it looked like a mass of sleeping elephants. And then the flesh was ripped off the earth and we got a good look at her lovely, lovely bones. I wish we were traveling with a geologist because I'd bet they'd have tons to say about what we were seeing. The rock formations were gorgeous and eerie and alien. And that's just what we saw from the highway (though we did take every "view area" offered). I can't imagine what the actual National Parks look like. Or, I can, and it must be fantastic, and some day I'm going. :D

We should arrive in Santa Barbara (our end point... as of now) tomorrow. It will be nice to be semi-settled again, I'll admit. :) I'll have to do a "what I did in Colorado post" then, because I'm too sleepy now.

On a completely different (though nicely segued *g*) note, I see my "mood pics" are gone. How will you all understand my mood if you don't have an interpretive picture starring either Rodney or John or both to translate?!?!! *sigh* The "Account inactive" is accurate though. So accurate I don't recall a password or account name or anything about my photobucket account. But... this is a project for another day. Tonight I sleep! :D

Greetings from lovely, lovely Colorado! Where every single view is pretty much breath-taking (hence my stealing from French Kiss for my subject line *g*). I'm having the best time in the whole world visiting with my two sisters. It reminds me so strongly of our childhood summers in Canada, nature and family and long laugh-filled chats around the dinner table. The other day, after putting my little niece to bed, my sister broke out some ice cream treats. Which confirms it!! Every time the adults sent us to bed it meant they were up to something fun and cool and guaranteed to give us joy. Grownups do suck. ;P

Here's an irony: I expected no internet connecting issues at my tech-loving sister's house. ( But there's no wireless! )

And now it's time for cute pet stories! Otherwise known as ( Bandit the Cat meets Fanny the Bulldog )

Next up, ( cute niece stories! :D )

Another irony: When we visited Seattle they had a record breaking sunny-streak. Here in "sunny Colorado" they're getting an unusual amount of rain. It's the greenest I've ever seen it. Frankly, I'm loving it. :)

And now to answer those Top Five Meme questions you all asked (I apologize for the delay):

( Top 5 things you would say to a specific fictional character if you could. )


( Top five things you really liked in SGA... )


( ...and the top five you would have seriously changed/done differently in SGA. )


( YOUR top five Top Gear moments! :-D )


( top five moments reading fic and going guh! How is that hot? I didn't know that was hot. )


( Top Five things you can DO to fictional character (different characters please but otherwise yes, you can interpret it as broadly as you like ;) )


( Top five favorite minor SGA characters. )

Rolled out of Kentucky this morning -- almost literally. We ate and ate and ate! :D A lot of it was garden goodness (I keep telling myself *g*), but last night my mother-in-law whipped up a chocolate cake, topped with ice-cream, whipped cream, and home made chocolate sauce. So... not all garden goodness. ;) But all of it delicious and that's the important bit. :D

Drove through the boot-heel of Missouri, then across the State via I-70 from St. Louis to Kansas City. Lots of billboards and traffic (especially trucks) and beautiful, beautiful farmland tucked within the various hills and valleys. Also, lots of memories because we've driven this route a lot. I remembered deciding our wedding colors during another boot-heel drive. My husband remembered hitting black ice on I-70 just before the bridge over the Missouri river, taking his foot of the gas and hoping for the best.

We navigated the mouse-maze that is the Kansas City highway system. I remembered taking it at speed one late, late night because I figured the 45mph speed limits were for traffic reasons. So, so wrong. My friend slept through the whole thing, fortunately. (Friend: "I had this weird dream that I was a fighter pilot." Me: "That is weird." *blinks innocently*)

And then we were in Kansas. I-70 opened up, the billboards disappeared. The hills started rolling more and more gradually and the trees thinned. Eventually crop land became grazing land and we reached Salina (rhymes with vagina -- which I've giggled over for years; because I'm twelve).

Tomorrow I expect to leave hills and green behind and hit the brown and flat of Western Kansas, Eastern Colorado. There's a stark beauty to this part of the country I must admit. And then I get to see my sisters and my niece! ♥

(I'm working on my top five meme, fyi. Thinking about it during the drive has been most fun, so thanks to all of you who've asked. *g*)

It's a good thing we're hitting Colorado after Kentucky. We've been gorging on ribs, and barbecue, and fried chicken, and baked beans, and fresh-from-the-garden corn and tomatoes and peaches. Okay those last three (maybe four? or does the bacon negate the goodness of the beans?) items are pretty darn healthy, but... I've been eating a lot of pork. ;) I figure we'll do a bunch of hiking in Colorado though, so it should all even out in the end. (At least, that's what I've been telling myself.)

It's funny, because when we were living here I got so sick and tired of the many, many smoked and fried options. Especially as that was mainly all there was on offer. But I think there's a massive difference between living in a place and visiting it. Since we're just passing through, and since we're pretty much sticking to areas of the country that offer things not smoked or fried, this is a lovely treat. (I am not sick of fresh produce, of course. The whole point of Summer is to gorge on garden goodies as far as I'm concerned. It's what makes the heat bearable. *g*)

But this visit has made it pretty clear that the country is a place for us to visit rather than live. I'm not knocking the country. It really is beautiful. But it's just not the place for me. It doesn't have the things I'm interested in on a day to day basis, and the things it does have, I'm not all that interested in. Ditto the husband (thank goodness; that would have created some unwanted stress).


On a slightly different topic, I feel like I've been doing fly-by postings so I'm going to grab the opportunity to write something a bit more in depth.

We had a really good time in Tampa. We also discovered that our cat has no street sense at all. Or as my husband put it, ( She's a dolt )

On the way up to Kentucky we passed through Nashville, Tennessee and stopped at the ( Neely's Barbecue restaurant )

Oh! And we watched "Julie & Julia" last night. I very much enjoyed it and now have this bizarre desire to ( debone a duck )

Oh, the relaxing, relaxing life of the country. We've been pretty much eating and sleeping and... Nope, just eating and sleeping. :D This is the best place in the world to visit. Beautiful and quiet and beyond peaceful.

(Maybe too peaceful? I swear, putting words together for this post seems near impossible. *g*) But I do have internet and hopefully I can put a better post together later. You know, after I rest up a bit. ;P

Or the outskirts thereof. ;)

Bad news first: The hotel doesn't get Syfy (which I personally pronounce Cee-Fee, because zomg that was a stupid name change) so I'm missing Joe Flanigan on "Warehouse 13". :( Which sucks doubly because during the drive through the southern part of Alabama there were tons of Army helicopters stuck up on posts. (By tons I mean 3.) Which of course made me think of John Sheppard (never a bad thing). And then I was sad because SGA isn't on tv anymore. :(

Good news second: When leaving a rest stop we noticed this weird thwapping sound coming from our roof. Which was odd, because the cargo holder never made that sound before. So we assumed a bug. (Not incredibly bright, because damn that would have been a big bug.) The sound stopped pretty quickly so we shrugged it off. But then my husband noticed papers flying off the back of our car, so he pulled over immediately and I checked the cargo holder and made sure the back of the car wasn't open. And as I circled the car I discovered WE'D LEFT OUR PORTFOLIO ON THE ROOF!!!

We'd been driving down the highway at at least 80mph and it managed to wedge itself against the roof racks. Our list of what's in all our boxes (our 60+ boxes) was in there as well as a bunch of phone numbers. Thank goodness the box list was saved. \o/ The phone numbers (and old directions) were the papers that blew away, but that's okay because we have the numbers in electronic form.

We should reach the in-laws tomorrow. Here's hoping we'll have internet access!

Finally done with the packing portion of this saga. \o/ And boy did we cut it to the wire!

The realtor's office closed at 5:30 (and believe me we needed that extra half hour). At 5:35 I was on the cell phone as we drove through Miami rush hour traffic begging them to stay open because we were going to be there any moment. Thank goodness they agreed. (Honestly, I doubt we were the only desperate renters, what with it being the end of the month, summer, and right around the University of Miami; the office people probably draw straws on who's going to hold the office open. *g*)

Previous to that my husband was slinging stuff into the car, or into the trash, while I desperately packed and/or stuffed things into grocery bags (we'd long run out of trash bags). Our poor cat, already freaked by the whirlwind occurring around her, decided she did not want to get into her carrier. So we had to chase her through the apartment and forcibly grab her. She was not pleased.

But we got the keys turned in, celebrated with a couple of triple chocolate cupcakes from Buttercream (best cupcakes ever! if you're ever in Miami and find yourselves on Sunset Drive? go, eat, fall in deep cupcake love), and hit the road. The cat protested heavily in the beginning, but we stopped at a rest stop along Alligator Alley and rearranged our stuff and she was happier after that.

We arrived in Tampa around 11pm (fortunately our friends are night-owls) and pretty much collapsed. Not having anything pressing to do is lovely. :) I'm still exhausted, but I'm definitely less stressed.

Packing sucks! We are still doing the last of the packing today! TEN DAYS LATER!! I am proud of the fact that we've only had one serious breakdown: I cried, the husband went into "hulk smash!" mode, though manfully kept himself from smashing anything -- then we rented another storage unit and everything got better.

That's the hell of moving. You always have more stuff than you think you do. I mean, we've packed over 60 boxes. And that's just boxes. ::sigh:: But it should be over today. (Well, it has to be over today. We have to be out of the apartment by 5pm.)

I'm writing this on the fly because once we pack up the modems I have no idea when next I'll have internet access. We're heading to Tampa to stay with friends for the weekend. (Should be fun; they're the sort of people that make you laugh until you pee.) Then it's off to the in-laws in the depths of rural Kentucky. They have internet, wireless even, but the chances of my mother-in-law knowing her log-on code is fairly slim.

I'm not sure how long we're going to stay there. Then it's off to Colorado (which will be a two day journey, I think) so there'll be a hotel stop. That's the next time I'm pretty sure I'll be on the internet again.

But I want to record this adventure (I keep reminding myself: this is an adventure! Just like a Nancy Drew mystery!! *g*) so I'm going to post whenever I get the chance. [insert witty end remark here...]

The packing has begun in earnest! We've gotten a storage area, got a call in for someone to move the piano, and bought (and filled) our first set of boxes. Yay, us!

I made a monumental decision: I'm packing up all my Stargate:Atlantis DVDs. :( It's just... we're going to be busy these next several days, then we're going to be on the road, then we're going to be living with my dad for a little (hopefully!) while. There's not going to be time for me to watch any episodes. Certainly there's not going to be time for me to do the intense watching I do for an episode review.

Which means I'm going to be putting the reviews on hold for at least a couple of months. I realize I kind of have already, but that was unexpected life-busying. This is a lot more deliberate. However! I very much intend to get back to it once we're semi-settled. At the very least I want to finish out season two, especially as I've only five more to go.

I shall miss my Atlantis-fix though. (Thank goodness for Hulu! And headphones. *g*)

...or, greetings from the cocoon. (Heh. I feel like I've just done a "did you miss me?" post and now here's another. *g*) But I've got some good excuses!

Excuse 1: I picked up a ton of extra shifts at work last week. Because I was gone for those two weeks in June and also, because this Sunday is my last day and I'd like to close out with a decent sized paycheck. Which leads into...

Excuse 2: We're moving at the end of the month. (That's two weeks from now. I refuse to panic.) We're shoving all our stuff in storage, strapping a cargo holder (for basic necessities, ie: cat toys (I'm not joking as much as I should be)) to the top of our car, and heading to my dad's place in California. We'll figure out what we're doing once we get there.

It should actually be a lot of fun. We're going to take our time and stop to visit friends and family along the way. So more road trip than intense cross-continent drive. But since I'm not panicking I'm doing my next favorite coping technique: cocooning. I know this because I'm reading a lot of fanfic without commenting. *slaps wrist* Also, I'm reading a lot of really old fanfic from my, "Oooh, what's this fanfic thing? Wait, are Mulder and Scully actually kissing in this one?!? *grabs with both hands*" days.

Neither of those things are fully bad (though I do prefer to comment on fics I like, because feedback is a good thing), but I'm using them as avoidance techniques which... Eh, still not a horrible thing, but not a place I really want to be right now. This is an adventure; I should pay attention.

So I'm serving notice to... well, to myself. :) It's time to wake up.

Seattle was lovely. ♥ Though I must point out that nobody (online, offline, sideline) mentioned the steep streets! Miami is flat, flat, flat, so they took us a bit by surprise. Though I will say, there was a satisfied feeling of a job well done when we made various climbs. I've concluded that stairs beats hills both in the up and the down, and I think up actually beats down just for the sake of my shins. I can't imagine it, but I saw several women take on the hills in heels (not, I should add, the extreme heels I spot regularly here in Miami, but heels none the less), to which I can only say, "wow".

I was a teeny-tiny bit disappointed in the weather. They had a near record breaking sunny streak and I'd been looking forward to a good gloom, but that seems the sort of thing it's kind of rude to complain about. ;)

We did all the touristy things, our Frommer's guide clutched firmly in hand. (By the way? Frommer's rocks.) Seattle has tons of fun touristy things to do. But the thing that affected me the most, and in a way I didn't realize I even needed, was the Science Fiction Museum. It reminded me that I'm a fan! :D A dorky media fan more than a bookish fan (though I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of authors I had read), but a fan none the less.

Science fiction has taken some serious hits this past year. Some of it, in my opinion, has been well deserved (the painful but very, very necessary "Racefail '09" discussions), and some of it has been grossly disappointing (depressing reactions to female characters). But it left me with the feeling that science fiction was a rather nasty little playground with a few shiny objects to lure in the ignorant.

Visiting a place that celebrates all the things science fiction does well, reminded me that there are in fact things science fiction does well. :D I have always, always been attracted to the shiny optimism that human beings are going to make it, that there are tons of nifty new phenomena and worlds to explore, that there's always going to be something worth striving for. That's what I've always loved about science fiction, and that's something it's still able to offer.

It's not a perfect genre, obviously. It makes plenty of mistakes, some of them rather egregious. But when it gets it right, science fiction can hit a storytelling sweet spot in me no other genre can. I'd lost sight of that and I'm grateful to Seattle's Science Fiction Museum for reminding me. Thanks, Seattle! :)

I've been thinking about this (incredibly far-reaching) topic for a while, trying to get my thoughts in some semblance of order, but it's been pretty impossible. So I'm embracing the chaos and just free writing this beastie. I'll be interested to see how it turns out! :)


( Is there a distinct style difference between women writers and men writers? )


( Are there types or styles of writing that one gender handles better than another? )


( Are there styles of writing that attract one gender over another? )

And that's enough for now. Crap conclusion, I know. But I'm not sure I've really reached a conclusion. Let the thinking continue! :D

So after picking up a couple of shifts and working, working, working, I got sick. :( Nothing dramatic, I'm pleased to say. Just the sort of thing where you have to haul a kleenex box around everywhere you go. But it was annoying and a bit exhausting.

(I lied; there was one dramatic part. I lost my taste!! D: We went out to dinner with friends and there was a lamb-burger with goat cheese on the menu (two of my favorite things, smashed together) and I didn't bother ordering it because I couldn't taste!! I went with pasta instead. Still couldn't taste but the texture was good... DO YOU SEE THE DRAMA?? I WAS REDUCED TO TEXTURE!!)

Being not in the mood to do much that involved thinking (I feel like I've been so detached from lj) I watched a whole heck of a lot of Joe Flanigan on YouTube. (An aside: A nice thing about fanning over two completely different actors is I can fangirl according to mood. *g*) I think I've seen just about all of his (many) pilots and have decided ( 3 things )

I also watched Flanigan's appearance on "Chelsea Lately" last year. He was very charming and such and Chelsea was very Chelsea and there was a moment where she asks him about crazy scifi fans ( who believe this stuff is real )

1) This morning, the cat curled up in my lap, stretched her paw up to my collarbone, and went to sleep.

2) My husband remembered the water was probably going to be shut off (again, because they're constantly working on something around here) so he managed to get his shower and I managed to get all the water we needed for breakfast (water in the kettle and in the porridge pot) before it was gone, gone, gone. (Don't worry, I'd showered earlier. *g*)

3) Because we had no water, we went out to a lovely little French café. And honestly, the French do food right. The simplest things are just lovely. We chose to have dessert. :)

4) The water came back; there's a lovely soup simmering away in the kitchen.

It's a bit past midnight, but I haven't called it a night so I'm going to say this still counts as day 7.

1) Not waking up to an alarm clock

2) Lazing away the morning

3) Playing with our cat

4) Dinner with friends

1) The big push is over! I have two days of rest (mostly... if I don't get called in, anyway) and I'm thrilled!

2) The car crash I nearly got into this morning (before I even got out of the parking lot!) didn't happen.

3) Ooh! Vin Diesel is on the tv! (Mmmm... Vin Diesel...) "Chronicles of Riddick" which, contrary to the opinions of the rest of the universe, my husband and I adore. We like to quote the McBeth couple. "Kill the beast now while he is wounded!!" "He is not a man, he's a holy half-dead who has seen the Underverse" Hee! Fun for the whole family! (Also, Christopher Heyerdahl is in it. It's a short scene, but it's a doozy. *g*)

4) This morning? Pancakes! :D

1) Only one more day and then I can rest!

2) I can sleep in at least an hour later tomorrow!

3) Cat is sleeping on the back of the couch behind me and her little kitty snores are beyond adorable.

4) I made a pretty good "left-over surprise!" meal tonight. If I'd had some ricotta and mozzarella (oh, and more time!) it would have been amazing, but tasty makes me happy enough. :)

5) Today on my break I thought deep thinky-thoughts about... eh, too much to go into. But! It made me happy. :)

Urg... I'm so beyond exhausted right now, but Must! Post! Or the meme gods will eat me. :)

1) Woke up late for work (this isn't the "happy" part, yet *g*), but my husband fixed breakfast while I showered and then fixed my lunch while I dressed. So I was fed and prepared when I left this morning.

2) Plus! The driving gods were with me: the stop-lights smiled upon me and I chose the best lanes at the best times. Seriously, it was a thing of beauty and I actually got to work a bit early. So I had time to sit in the sun and chat with my husband on the phone before starting my day.

3) I made meatloaf for dinner tonight. I always enjoy the bit where I mix everything together with my hand. (Like mud-pies. Mud-pies you can actually eat! *g*)

4) Also? I love the part where the timer goes off and you open the oven door and get hit by that gentle wave of heat and the delicious smell of dinner.

5) Our cat is sitting right behind me on the back of the couch and when I reach up to pet her she trills. :)

1) The sudden rain storm that hit mid-afternoon. It was short (rain comes and goes so quickly here), but it was beautiful.

2) Listening to the wind blow through the palm trees on my break. It's a distinct and very cool sound.

3) I'm completely ready for bed right now. I love that feeling of having everything done and being able to totally relax. :)

4) Oh! When I walked in the door, dinner was ready and waiting and delicious! ♥