life in the slow lane

Brought Meite home from the film last night. Had a lame dinner out with the crew and a grad student from Nebraska. He's an army brat so I'm sure our left leaning film choice was way over the top for the poor guy. He was a good sport though and was great company, offering laughs all evening.

I'll be making four trips to the city in three days this week. That's a record I'm not anxious to repeat. No time to run and fatigue is scraping away at my sense of humour.

I got the young Aphonopelma seemanni slings transferred into reconstituted substrate as I woke up this morning. They seem to be doing really well. I hope that trend continues.

The rich growing season continues. We had a short bought of quarter sized hail on Monday, but not enough to do any damage. We haven't even had any damaging winds this year. It's odd to see the pasture so lush. The brome and june grass is really high and rich looking this year. The tomato fruit is putting on weight nicely even at this early date. I don't know that we've seen a growing season as good since the late 1980's.

I saw a pail of strawberries at Jean's yesterday that were rich with fragrance and purple forecast to the dense essence of strawberry. Fresh jars of jam stood on the counter, theft in the air. < g > I don't recall more attractive fruit ever. Dark and heavy with sunshine.

Not even any bugs to speak of this year. I keep listening for that shoe to drop.

Adri is back home by now I'd think. It was a quick peck on the cheek and a flustered rush to meet her boarding demands. What a wild year it was. I'm grateful it's over and going by the policy to never take a drink that leaves me thirsty, we won't be doing that again. One of the most unrewarding exchanges of human contact I can even imagine, much less experience. Distrust, egocentricity, and any number of other twists of psychological oddities were alive and kicking through the last nine months of life with Adri. She was a study in extremes.

We've had ourselves reflected back to us keenly, which hasn't been a bad thing and is all we've come away with. We know ourselves much better, but Adri we know only what we could observed. She came closed and left having engaged as little as possible and invested nothing at all.

I'll be most grateful for the laundry being done in the washing machine instead of the shower. < g >

In the last couple of weeks she managed to read a real book, as opposed to romantic comics and other drivel. I missed her commentary on it in front of the audience at the grad ceremony, but PU said it tugged at her heart strings. She'd got hooked into Holes by Louis Sachar and was up very late with the dictionary slogging through the most difficult bit of language she had bitten off to date. She had of course not read anything of substance ever, so this little story was had a profound effect by the sounds of her presentation at school the other day. I'm sorry I missed it as it was the only sign of life in all the time she was here. She spoke so little that even to the end I rarely caught what she voiced the first time. How sad, to think she would have been that insulated to keep her own company so contentedly.

Fortunately, we have many other examples of visitors investing in other more entertaining ways with life here. Otherwise I'd have been deeply shaken that we've gone down a very dark road. Granted there are some that are repulsed by a free thinking life style, but generally they avoid us.

I stopped to see a childhood friend yesterday again. He's an engineer of merit and a boat load of fun to talk shop with. I've been playing assistant to his steep learning curve as he ramps up the chip making capacity of his little machine shop. It's taken him several years to allow himself to ask questions instead of pounding away on his own, but now he's in full swing and the service feels good. After so many years without a context, fraternity or community, the friends I have are good ones and I'm so grateful to have something to offer.

Now it's time to re route a chain on an old clock and begin another one before my lunch date shows up without confirmation. I so love my PDA! It's the memory I never had!