Raven’s Range
Blather around a virtual range

Over the last week I have been to Kansas, virtually speaking. Data entry is surprisingly fun and great for escapism. Most of it can be done on complete autopilot, but every so often a landmark slings itself off the page and hits me in the face and I spend a moment or two on a smiling fantasy about actually going there.

Because who, indeed, would not love to stand at the geodetic center of the USA, or to visit Home on the Range Ranch (assuming it isn’t fenced off with razor wire, that is)? Or for that matter visit Due West, which happens to be in South Carolina, or the town of North, which is also in South Carolina?

I finally made a bit of time to log a few of my own snarfs, too.

This has been a bit of an odd week, really. Don and I are preparing to leave Lodi but haven’t a firm place to go to yet. But we have several options all of which are somewhere between $300 and $400 cheaper than here, even if you figure that we have to get satellite internet. We just both agree that it’s time to go.

We figure that if we leave here we’ll empty our second storage shed faster, or maybe even consolidate both of them into one humongoid shed that is still cheaper than two big sheds, because we’ll be forced into doing more in shorter stretches of time. We’ve done almost bog all in the five months we’ve been here, after all, so we’ll probably manage to move mountains if we only have a week.

I will miss Amber and her family, and the Sanctuary, a lot. Wherever we end up, I will really have to start over from scratch with no ready made community or friends nearby. I may even miss Lodi. I really like the people here at the campground, BUT I don’t like living on concrete slabs right next to a freeway.

This was a great place to come and collapse and recover, but we’ve had a taste of what we really like on our monthly road trips and that’s more in keeping with what we need to be happy.

The prospect of upping and moving makes me want to hide in a corner to gibber a bit and maybe, if I try real hard, dribble. But then I realize it won’t be as bad as moving from Sunnyvale to here because there are no large appliances to haul or Siamese cats to rescue. I realize that many of my feelings of panic about re-relocating have to do with the trauma associated with that last move. (And no, I don’t think “trauma” is an overstatement.)

Besides, I still have most of my checklists and do a mean mail forwarding order.

In other news, at the Sanctuary today they did their annual pledge drive which made me feel sad because I figured I wouldn’t be around long enough to make that kind of commitment…I was just starting to feel part of the community. On the other hand, the way they handled it was to stage a hilarious skit of some celebrity chef (Agassi? Wasn’t that a tennis player?) followed by a celebratory lunch and jazz music. I chatted to the player of what turned out to be a vibraphone and got a quick guided tour of the instrument, which was beyond neat.

This church does two things brilliantly and in copious amounts: food and music.

Afterwards I had a quick run down to Lodi where I wandered around looking through the 700+ stands full of handcrafted goodies, food and girls dressed up as Snow White until I started to get sunburned and went home again where everybody with noses thanked me for taking a shower.

The annoying glitch with my gears seems to have cut it out, which makes me very pleased. Maybe it’s because we repaired the bike’s seat (using duct tape, but it still looks better than it did).

So now to the rest of the week…I had really fun snarfari with AmberLee on Tuesday, followed by a great talk about Eastern Seaboard towns such as Boston (one day). I spent a lot of time on data entry and site improvements including a rather impromptu but slightly inspired revamp of the Markeroni member page which I think increases its usability for newbies in particular. We’ll see if they agree.

Other highlights included seeing baby killdeer (OMG so CUTE), crossing a task off the to-do list that had been on it for about a year, and the #1 Markeroon at Markeroni making me laugh out loud with his characterization of the Markeroni pastime obsession. My replacement battery came, so now I have two; I ordered tires after once again my tire deflated because obviously I had nothing better to do. I refused to pay $45+ for a swimsuit and started putting together the motorcycle carnival. It will go live on Wednesday.

Oh, and please come look at my hummingbird. I’m sort of proud to have been so lucky with this shot.

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