Vacated

Having vacated for the past three weeks, I am all better now. Or mostly better.

Some of the good news I came back to:

Dawn's "Foreign Affairs" subscription's new issue came, with an article on lessons learned from history as to what to do about the Somali shipping lanes problems.

How happy, how incredibly grateful, what a lifetime dream come true, were the editors of Foreign Affairs, that they finally had a perfectly good reason for running an article on pirates?

Apropos of which, I found a $1 (adjustable) pirate hat at Michael's, and gave it to Valen. No one could vogue it better.

More soon.

Sunset

Made it to Tucson yesterday. Arrived 8pm-ish amidst the most amazing multihued sunset ever in history. As a morning guy, I'm into Daw--er, dawn, and I tend to get depressed by late afternoon and even sometimes sunsets. But this was amazing. Dawn said it was God smiling on our venture here, and I'll take that interpretation.

Right now my niece is reading Calvin and Hobbes, my nephew just got in, my sister-in-law (and -in-grace, as it happens) is out counseling, my brother-in-law is gainfully employed, my daughter is reading Jane Austen next to my niece, my mother-in-law is taking a nap after her flight here this morning, the housemate guy is fixing lunch for his two kids and sick wife, and I--I have no responsibilities. Feels almost like a vacation.

See Ya Sooner

The fam is going away for a bit, and I may or may not blog during the next three weeks. But I hope to have stories about Olympic National Park, Puget Sound, Monterey Peninsula, and other lovely places, plus some fab people, for the three of us soon.