The Ink-Pot and the Palette

The only real downside of non-car-ownership (for me) is that one's orbit contracts significantly: every now and then an urge to get out of the city strikes, and it's not easy to satisfy.

So when my good pal roseambr invited me to go with her to Montana at the end of September, I said yes, yes, and yes-indeedy. She's taking a four-day art glass course in the small and apparently picturesque town of Hamilton, and I'm going to go along and treat it as a writing retreat.

Since our lodging is seven miles outside of the town itself, and since I've actually let my driver's license lapse (whoops) and so can't use roseambr's car during the day, I'm going to rent a Brompton to take along. Hamilton being a ski-resort-y kind of place with at least one bike shop of its own, I'm hoping that a gray haired lady on a folding bike won't raise too many eyebrows.

Hamilton is a nine-hour drive from Portland, and from what I hear, late September is an excellent time to visit: pre-snow, post-summer-heat. I'm more of a Left Coaster than an American West-er, so the farthest I've ever been into the interior is western Idaho; Montana is a vast, Big Sky mystery to me.

Should be fun.

1. Coffitivity, the app I mentioned the other day that provides café sounds, is turning out to be something of a small miracle for me. On low volume, through earphones, it's like prosthetic concentration. I've been able to read! Really focus without skipping around, something I thought had been lost to me forever.

I sense that my mind is mildly but actively tuning out the pleasant babble and somehow kind of sequestering itself in a narrower space, where focused work can take place. Not only have I been able to get through boring work materials, but I'm seven chapters into Mike Carey's The Devil You Know--the actual written version. I'm very pleased about this.

2. Six days off work started this evening. A couple of them will be spent down at Lincoln City on the coast with my good pal roseambr. We always have fun at the beach.

3. An editing job has come my way. No pay--it's a swap: my time and talent in exchange for credit and referrals as I try to launch a side business. The manuscript is a health program based on some very interesting dietary restrictions. It's passionately presented by the healthcare professional who has designed it, but she's not a writer. I can see a future for myself in ghostwriting, frankly.

4. Is this pingback function on LJ new? For the first time today, I got an email notification that someone had mentioned me in a LiveJournal post. I like it! I hope DW is considering something of the same kind.

I'm testing it again right now: emeraldsedai

I practice-packed my suitcase last night and carried it up the street to my sister's house to find out how heavy it really is.

Pretty heavy.

A three week trip divided between London, Glasgow, the English countryside, and a windswept island not all that far south of the Arctic Circle--and involving trains, ferries, and planes both large and puddle-jumper--presents some packing challenges, and I just can't figure out how to do it with an overnight bag.

So, much though I wanted to prove my one-bag travel mettle and be all breeze-in and breeze-out, it seems I'll have to check a suitcase, and wait for it at baggage claim--several times.

On the plus side, it will be kind of nice not to have the contents of my suitcase scrutinized in a crowded security line, banging against my shins as I shuffle up and down the packed aisles of airliners, and weighing me down through the miles of airport that invariably separate where you land from where you get ground transportation.

Anyway, it's only three days till I leave on the first real trip I've taken in five years, and mostly all I care about is that my passport and debit card are in working order. Which (*checks*) they are.

NEWS FLASH: Going back to work after almost three full and glorious weeks of relaxing vacation is...underwhelming, to say the least.

I'm rested, I'll say that much. Just before I left, I learned that I'm to be the last domino in a domino effect of task reassignments that will result in my taking over "Norm"'s job, while passing nothing on to anyone else, so yesterday, when my boss shifted one of my little projects off my plate, I was kind of relieved. Even though it was the project I was most interested in.

So now "Norm" is all gung-ho to get me trained. I have a funny feeling there will be some more Norm posts in my future.

Meanwhile, we have the glory days of early fall to enjoy here in Stumptown: Days (like today) of glorious cool sunshine and wild, cloud-sculpture skies, interspersed with monsoon rains, the threat of which keeps a lot of fair-weather bike commuters out of my way, ha-ha! And your little dog, too.

I knew I'd need some down time once the fun and excitement of kis and Mr Kis's visit was over, so I booked an extra week of vacation--five completely blank days on my calendar.

After a couple of nights of super-excessive sleeping and a couple of days of restorative do-nothing puttering-about-the-house, a strange thing happened: I started writing and couldn't stop.

People who write fast and fluently will probably not think much of this: to my writingest friends, a free day equals a day of actual writing, as far as I can tell--I can't think how else they get so much written. To me it usually equals a day of hair-pulling. I start, I stop, I check my email, I struggle over a sentence or a plot point till I can't struggle no more, then I take a break, and repeat the process, and that's why Restraint will be two years old in October.

But yesterday! Wow. I sat down at 11:00 a.m. and basically stood up at 11:00 p.m., and the only thing I can remember doing all day is writing. I finished chapter 38 and sent it off to my still-traveling beta, and without a pause, I opened a new document and started chapter 39.

I wish I could bottle whatever it was that made that happen.

lamentables just posted her five reasons to be cheerful, and it cheered me up no end, so I thought I'd do the same.

( Five reasons I'm feeling pretty cheerful today )

High in the Siskiyous as night falls, evergreen forest rising high up steep hills that block the fading sky on either side, thick, wild, untouched. My ears pop when I yawn.

roseambr, in a red sweater, is reading by a bright little lamp set into the seat back behind her. My computer is plugged in behind me. Our little compartment--just room enough for us to put our feet up on the edge of each other's seat--is like two facing armchairs in a glass-sided box, rolling and swaying quietly up into the mountains.

We shared a dinner table with a brother and sister heading home to San Bernardino County. They had steaks, I had salmon, roseambr had lasagna. Nobody had the game hen.

Dinner was pretty much cooked freight. Good company, though. Striking up dinner conversation with strangers on a train is pretty easy--you can spend an hour just agreeing that train travel is better than air travel, and we did.

We just came through a tunnel into a high vista at the top of the pass. Pitch-black trees against a dark-gray sky, and not a light out there anywhere. Not a highway, not a power line, not a billboard, not a road sign, not a headlight.

It was incredibly peaceful, and then Andrew our Sleeper Car Attendant came over the PA system:

"I have some not very good news. Low vacuum due to our high altitude has made it so that the toilets in car 1130 won't flush. Passengers in car 1130 will have to use the toilets in one of the other cars until we get down out of the mountains, around 1:00 in the morning."

Did I mention that roseambr and I are in car 1130?

*caps water bottle*

Union Station, Portland:

I keep catching myself humming "Ridin' that train, high on cocaine" as I wander around Union Station. I should probably find another train song.

Sample train station dialog:

Me: Where do I wait for the southbound train?"

Railroad person: Where ya goin'?

Me: Santa Barbara.

RP: Oh, nice!

Me: I know, huh?

RP: Coach or sleeper?

Me: Sleeper!

RP: Well then, you get to wait in the Metropolitan Lounge.

Me: Really? Cool. Do I need to show my ticket? Because my friend who's getting on in Vancouver has my ticket.

RP: No, Robert can look you up on the computer. Just tell him your name.

We walk into the Metropolitan Lounge: carpet, old-fashioned windows looking out at the platform, chairs with padding, flower arrangements, our own restrooms, a mini-bar, smell of coffee, a TV playing a football game.

RP: Here we have some nice complimentary juice and bottled water, and there's some fresh coffee for you.

Me: Wow.