I was giving my sister hassle about her not keeping a journal online, you know, all freakishly like so, you know, and she quoted at me: "Not everything that happens to you is interesting." This is most certainly true. You, dear reader, are spared the details of my breakfasts, the brunt of petty daily detail in combatting the unebbing tides of unreason in my everyday work, a lot of my ephemeral ideas, deliberations on preferred pets, and pretty much anything involving my organs (you're welcome). This is all meet and right.

Still, there are times I could make you ride on my shoulder, look through my glasses, hear with me. Once in awhile I hope you can catch a glimpse of things I see, know just a touch of things I see that are worth seeing. "Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt." And really, almost everything is beautiful. The sky, hills and plains, wind, houses and places, arches, bridges, let alone trees, water, leaves. Sometimes I try to point the camera at things and snatch a bit of something for you if you can't see the beautiful whereever you are; mostly, I just know it's impossible, or beyond the camera. Pity the fool! who can't write poetry to show with words.

Traveled over the long weekend back the homestead, what I think of as the ancestral homeland, for no good reason. (The Ohio Turnpike is beautiful, too, but thinly clad, and spotty. Except for the people, who were uniformly idiots on the road.) Was surprised to have a smooth, fairly happy weekend with the family, doing the things one does on the farm - nothing much, but it keeps you moving. Managed to finally finish Violence Engine draft chapters up to 19. Sent off comments via webmail from my parents' dialup. Not ideal work environs, but hey. Entirely failed to get any work done, because I'd forgotten the draft of the one review I really wanted to finish (Kerr's Dogs and Demons), and didn't bring a book to actually read, only books to review.

There's more I'd like to say about going home, but sleep calls me. Again I must arise and battle unreason at TEH WERK. After midnight now, and though I'd tell you, reader, all about the soul of steel, and the diamond rain, and about travels ("things I've done, things yet to come"), were you here, for tonight I'm calling it quits.

Advent has begun. If I recall correctly, the season of anticipation has had as its themes for four Sundays, Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell. Let us then take up these for contemplation. I know I'll try...