Waking the Witch: final edits, printing and more printing

Thanks to my hairdresser (Dianne, at Salon Re’belle) I’m fiery red again. Other than that, I’ve spent most of the day printing Waking the Witch. I was wrong yesterday—it was _three_ copies of the entire thing plus synopsis, and nine proposals (synopsis + first three chapters). And a full copy + synopsis for me. Egads. I didn’t make it to the PO today, largely because I ran out of paper and had to go buy more, and I got stuck in Office Max, because that’s what happens when I go to office supply stores.

I’m in a much better mood today. I think part of yesterday’s problem was that I was worried that it wasn’t just an off day, but that the rest of the week would be off. Today I was fully interested in writing the new scenes on WtW, if only I’d had the time. But I didn’t, which is okay, too.

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Tonight is the last episode of “Friends”. Not nearly so traumatic as the last ep of “Buffy”, but what strikes me about “Friends” is my very first memory of it. I watched the first episode with Ken, just after we’d started dating. I remember watching at least part of it with my head in his lap. Cat, funnily enough, remembers me telling her that it was good and she should check it out. I think that’s because they said “Duh”, which wasn’t something you heard on TV a lot then, but Cat and I said it frequently. (We still have a whole routine.)

Lots of shows ending this season: “Angel”, “Friends”, and “Frasier” being the ones that we actively watch. Over the summer we’ll probably watch “CSI: Miami” reruns to see if it’s worth picking up. Otherwise, I think it’s fine that we’ll have fewer shows to watch. We have tons of movies taped, plus seasons of several shows we’ve never seen, and we’d like to pick up Netflix at some point and catch up on all the movies we’ve missed.

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I have such a strange brain. I just got off the phone with a friend, and I was telling her about my upcoming lame 20th HS reunion. I started noodling around with other things, and in the background, my subconscious percolated, and brought forth weirdness. The idea of writing a humourous essay about the reunion segued quickly into the idea of writing a story, and the first image that popped into my head was Illyria (from “Angel”) going to Fred’s reunion and decimating people who were mean to Fred. Sheez.

Although a story about—no, wait, I have to write this down for real!

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So, let’s talk about the end of the Portland trip before we leave on the next trip, shall we?

Saturday morning we rose and breakfasted and headed to the Mystery Spot, just outside of Santa Cruz proper. This was one of the few specific places that I wanted to go to on this trip (or some trip, and this one was convenient). I have to say, I went in with some skepticism (and I do hate that I’ve gained skepticism as I’ve gotten older). And definitely some of it is due to optical illusion: you walk through a “cabin” that’s slid partly down a hill towards the centre of the Spot, and since all of the walls and the ceiling and floor are skewed, of course things look and feel strange. For example, on the website linked above, go to the picture of the guy standing partway up a wall. The wall looks straight up-and-down. Well, it’s not. If you stand on that step/rung, you’re standing straight up, and the wall tilts away, towards the Spot.

But here’s the weird thing. When I climbed the steps and stood there, I was pulled towards the wall, and if I let myself go, I’d end up leaning against the tilted wall. I didn’t feel like I was perpendicular to gravity; e.g., if the wall wasn’t there and I went with the pull, I’d fall over. Kinda nifty.

So I dunno. It was fun and creepy, and I do believe there’s something weird going on there.

After the Mystery Spot, we climbed back on the bike and headed south. At some point we decided to take the 101, to save some time; plus we’ve ridden that segment of the 1 before.

Eventually we cut across the 166 and 33, just for fun and twisty bits. We had to strip down to the mesh parts of the jackets, because it got hot and hotter in the bare hills farther from the coast, but the mesh really helps.

One of the reasons we went this way was to stop in New Cuyama. Way back in the mists of our history, when I was trying to decide between Ken and Andrew (long, painful story), Ken and I went for a ride and stopped here. We got sodas or something in the market and sat on the curb. A middle-aged lady from an RV approached us, and apologised for bothering us, but, “I had to tell you—you remind me of my husband and I 40 years ago.”

I cried. Then I demanded to know how much Ken had paid her.

So we stopped at the market, and got ice cream (It’s It, because we’d forgotten to get it in San Francisco), and sat on a bench by the curb. No lady this time, but that was okay. In 30 years or so, we’ll go back and lurk until we see a likely couple…

We called Kelvin & Debbie, and Kelly & Richard, but nobody was home to go to dinner with us, so we pressed on past Santa Barbara and Ojai and Ventura, and stopped at Roma Deli in Thousand Oaks for supper. Mmmm, Roma Deli.

The final leg of the trip went swiftly, and then we were home, to happy cats and our own bed and all that.