Raven’s Range
Blather around a virtual range

Sunday, 23 March 2008 20:13

23 March 2008

Filed in Blog

Happy Easter, spring, solstice, biting ears off chocolate bunnies day, or whatever else you happen to be interested in at this time. ;)

I’m slowly easing away from the burnout, which is nice. When I get to that stage there’s really no point in railing against it; the only solution is to make like a banana slug until I feel the twinkle of creativity and energy again. I do not have a constant flow of energy, and it behooves me to remember that.

My energy comes in bursts. I’m slowly catching up on my photos of the day and comments and such. It actually feels quite uncomfortable to be behind on these, so I’ll have to try to post further ahead where possible.

I have decided to return my new Doc Martens, or rather to exchange them. I’m almost certain I got the wrong size. Rather than stand there in abject pain and try to force them to conform, I’ll try the next size up. Don, who is a greater expert than me in the matter of boots, concurs. I actually tried to return them today, but realized after a few miles that pretty much all the shops locally were closed for Easter.

I went back to my own personal Starbuck’s for the first time in a couple of weeks, and was greeted by a big smile from the one member of staff I’d learned the name of. She gave me a free coffee. One thing I learned from Saving Graces is the value–to myself and to others–of learning the names of those with whom one interacts. It’s not a cynical thing, of getting freebies because you make it personal; it’s much more about practicing basic humanity and respect.

I’ve been doing a ton of data entry, and figuring out ways to make it go faster (which it is). I joined MySpace, finally, and set up a profile for Markeroni. (Please add me if you’re a member.)

The biker media sites are easier for me–easier to find people and communicate with them. With the big sites I feel like I’m groping along in the dark. And as for Facebook, well, the politics and policies of the owners really gave me such a bad feeling that I deactivated my account. Read the Wikipedia entry if you don’t know what I mean.

It’s been a snarfalicious week, really. On Tuesday I was on snarfari with Amber, looking for markers in and around Stockton, before attending a talk about a lady who spent a bunch of time in Laos. Her talk was lovely because she was so passionate about the place and fascinated by colors and textures, like me.

On Thursday I took the bike up into Calaveras county and swooped along some neat little roads and of course found a bunch more markers. This week I actually sat down outside the rig and managed to catch up on three episodes of Raven’s Quest, so I’m starting to feel like there might be some chance of actually doing what I said and getting up to date on it. ;)

Unfortunately I picked up a nail, which made for a rather scary ride home. We patched it with Fix-a-Flat but there’s still a very slow leak, which made it impossible to get to the sanctuary today.

Other adventures for the week have included fighting off the relentless efforts of wasps to make nests on our rig, sitting outside in the sunshine under our awning which has finally stopped reeking of old plastic, watching DVDs now that we have Netflix again (Doctor Who Season 3…woo-hoo!)…and having arguments with JR who has now decided that the entire RV, anywhere he can get to, is his own personal litter box.