Life announcements

After due consideration, I'm dropping out of spn_j2_bigbang. What with all the rest of the writing I have to do over the next few weeks (papers, exams, sample columns for a newspaper position I'm applying for), I just don't have the time to do my story justice or to work productively with a beta reader.

Which is not to say I won't complete and post my story eventually; it'll probably just take another month or so. I love the idea of bigbang. It just turned out to be the wrong timing for me this year. I hope it turned out to be the right timing for a bunch of other people because I'm selfish like that.

I went out to the lake today to talk to some fishermen for my ethnography and ended up being adopted by Rufus, Larry, Willy, and Mark, who insisted that I get a fishing license so I could join them on future trips and extracted a promise of lasagna for some undetermined future Sunday morning. The five of us fished (well, they fished and I watched) for about five hours before wandering over to the May Day celebration in a nearby pavilion and eating the hippies' bratwurst. It was excellent. I have a sunburn across my nose and the tops of my cheeks that's going to hurt like hell tomorrow.

The Boy will be back tomorrow from a trip with his father. I'm looking forward to seeing him and trading stories, since I'm sure his vacation was amazing and there's been a lot of work!drama in his absence.

Life is beautiful right now, and is looking to get more so as the winter cascades into spring: eighty-degree blue sky days and frat boys emerging noisily from their hibernation like cicadas seeking the sun.

ETA: I bought a cactus! I forgot about that. He's tiny and adorable. His name is Hjörleif, and I'll have pictures up as soon as my camera's batteries recharge.