Friends, Novels, and Nephews

It has been a week since I launched this blog of mine, and you've hardly heard a thing about my life. I've spent some time unpacking, though I didn't do it fast, and I've also spent some time with friends and kin.

Last Friday, I saw Jesse, a good friend from high school, along with his new girlfriend Amber. We hung out and talked, then went to our town's annual Heritage Festival, where I saw a great many people from my high school robotics team. (The team runs a large tent at the festival. Apparently, you can celebrate Heritage by celebrating competitions of robotic brawn and ingenuity.) Fortunately, despite leaving the team, I am still welcome among them.

I have also been spending bits of time with a variety of other friends, trying to catch up before I go off to college. College is a fairly short drive along city streets, but strangely enough, the college world and the home-town world stay fairly separate, especially socially. I actually showed Jesse where my dorm was in person on Friday, so maybe he'll visit me this time around. :-)

I've spent a fair amount of time continuing work with my friend Leif on a novel we are co-writing about a land called Ondar. Novel-writing is challenging, and co-writing also presents its own unique challenges, but we are making some progress. That progress involves rewriting the beginning of the book, not inventing the brave adventures of the heroes in their travels, but it is amazingly valuable nonetheless.

In more mundane news, I have found that unlike on-campus construction, my home is not an injury-free zone. I managed to jam my toe fairly badly on my way out the bedroom door. I was just about to put my shoes on. A
mysterious "7" showed up on the toe afterwards, perhaps in memory of my daring and courage. (After all, how many people would dare to walk out of their bedroom without wearing shoes?) I'd be curious if anyone has any better dramatic meanings to assign to the number "7" as applied to my toe. :-)

I had to limp about the rest of the day, but ironically, I was quite restless. After stubbing my toe, I took a walk around several blocks of my neighborhood and also visited Walmart to get floss heads. I limped the whole time, but I felt like I wouldn't have a clear mind if I didn't do it. After I had lunch, though, I did the more sensible thing; I sat down at my laptop with ice on my toe and started researching the making of blogs. You are familiar with the result.

Today, perhaps in honor of the one-week anniversary of my toe, I climbed a little way up the tree in my backyard, and made a cut in my wrist. This cut was not from the bark itself, but from my Medic Alert bracelet. The cut itself wasn't bad, but it seems to have gotten infected, so it still hurts, as does the toe.

Yesterday, I got to go to the eye doctor. My vision is improving slightly, but not so much I really need to replace my 5-year-old glasses. :-) A little later, I went to visit my nephew, who was being babysat by my mother. He was shy at first, but we made friends, and played with his blocks together. He finds it very entertaining if I lift a box full of blocks while making growly construction equipment noises, move it over to the side, and dump all the blocks out. At first, I think he quite enjoyed the noises, but seeing things fall to the ground proved a somewhat more enduring source of pleasure. I would hold an empty Kleenex box and prompt him to put blocks in it. Putting blocks in things is still hard for him, but he gave a valiant and largely successful effort when it came to playing construction equipment.