sounds familiar Musing on the present. Reminiscing about the past. Posturing for the future.

no shirts, no shoes, no problem

Back in California, fresh off our extended Florida hiatus. Keaton was once again outstanding on the long two-leg flight: sleeping, keeping herself entertained, or flirting with passengers and crew. She once again proved my fears unfounded. I'll be honest, I didn't really feel like leaving; things are nice in Florida, but I think a large part of that is because I don't live in Florida - and it's associated with vacation in my head. I kind of feel off the blogging wagon while there, skipping some days due to lack of desire, and then yesterday lost to travel - I'll do my best to make up for that by whipping my typing fingers back into shape over the next couple weeks. Dreading going back to work, of course, frightened of the load that will stretch out before me. Not wanting to catch up on lawn mowing, or unpack the suitcases United had to tag "heavy" due to their seam-bustingness.

I must warn you that I have nothing to offer today. However, before I close this thing prematurely - I did finally make a belated update to Keaton's gallery, adding a series of pictures from the latter half of our Florida visit. And, what's more, I managed to upload a short set of non-Keaton-focused Florida images which you can check out right here.

Deal with it, goodnight.

tropicasual

Been a week in Florida now and my thoughts of returning to work next Wednesday are slowly creeping into my head. I don't want to go back to work; wouldn't mind staying here another several weeks actually. We've been having a good time, once again doing the packed-schedule vacation that I both love and hate. Love it for the vacation part, sorta hate the scheduled slots of visitation and obligatory visits - sometimes you just want to do nothing. But, we got to see nearly all the friends and relatives we wanted to, and even had some decent down time. Whatever, I hate writing these show-and-tell bits. Let's move on.

Maybe we'll do some one-liners.

• Had a terrible dream last week, one of my coworkers told me they were considering suicide and I shrugged it off. I later walked into a room to find him shot in the head. It was a graphic scene, the kind that, upon waking, I feel a bit queasy for inventing. Woke up with a stinging feeling of guilt and sadness, like I could've prevented something awful.
• Earlier this week I talked about the lush-jungle that is Florida's natural foliage. While Kyle and I drove around last week, we wondered at the dense growth just 10ft off the side of the road. The greenery is not unlike a wall, solid and thick and double-overhead in height. You can't see one foot past the first rank of trees and vines and bush. We began imagining the landscape back before humans clear-cut to put in roads and shopping malls. What the state must've looked like to conquistadors and early settlers: An impenetrable stand of swamp and jungle and sand filled with beasties like snakes, alligators, and mosquitoes. Baking in the humid heat of summer, the place must've seemed a green-choked Hell.
• Friday my old, old, old friend Kyle and I took a "nostalgia roadtrip" around our old central Florida stomping grounds. As an aside to the trip, we decided to stop at one of the many flea markets that spring up around the bigger highways. The market we chose is one of the larger ones, comprised of one long central row and several fingers jutting from it both east and west - all of them filled with shops on either side and down the center. Walking the aisles, I couldn't help but think about how similar the place looked to a "night market" in Taipei or Shanghai. Random cellphone accoutrement's piled high, cheap toys and tools with Chinese characters on the packaging. Many of the vendors at these cheap-goods booths appear to be native Taiwanese folks, unloading vanfuls more of junk.
• Been getting buckets of comment spam on my Coppermine image gallery lately, and I have no obvious recourse aside from disabling anonymous commenting altogether (which, in my opinion, has a detrimental effect on commenting in general). I did see a catchpa plugin for an older version of Coppermine, but haven't invested any time in seeing if I can adapt it or if an updated version exists. Stupid comment spam; right now I'm just deleting them as they come.

That's enough for today, first Monday I've missed a gallery update for Keaton in a long while. Look for something tomorrow. Goodnight.