I forgot about procrastinated on posting a link here to the photos from my trip, most of which I uploaded several days after returning home, despite my plans to post pictures every day during the vacation. There just wasn't time for that in the midst of all the hustle and bustle of my travels.

During the trip, I got to spend a lot of time with my parents and brother, some other relatives, and a bunch of friends. Among other activities, I visited my alma mater, went on a couple of bike rides, attended a house concert in my parents' living room, had a birthday, and went to a spa. It was a wonderful trip, but very busy, and I was glad to come home and relax.

Since returning, I've been mostly working on a novel, entertaining a visiting friend, and thinking about rearranging furniture. There's been some knitting and a bike ride in there as well.

Next weekend I'm going on a writing retreat, and in four weeks I'll be back in Massachusetts again briefly for my brother's wedding.

I'm traveling in New England. Right now I'm in Rhode Island. Tonight I'll be in Massachusetts. Next week, New Hampshire and Connecticut. You can follow along by checking out my Flickr set for the trip.

I uploaded some photos from my last days at Yahoo! to a Flickr set. Here's how the collaborative farewell story turned out:

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Lisa -- as sweet as a candy! She asked for a little time and whiskey to fuel her literary ambitions. Interestingly, she smoked cigars too, and put out the cigars in her hand (cuz she's a hardass). Following that, she decided alas that indeed ALL is the fodder of inspiration... but what is the mother, she asked? There's no time for bad puns, though, so she left the robot parade and decided to work undercover for "the man." With one sock black and one sock white, she set off into the singularity, grew feathers, and became a rooster.

I love how it really captures my essence!

Okay, it's been a month since I left the corporate world, so it's well past time for me to crawl out from under my rock and report back. I'm happy to say that I have had no regrets, no yearnings for cubicleland, and no dreams of work past a couple of early nightmares about trying to pack up an endlessly full desk. The world outside is a nice place.

I haven't finished the Great American Novel yet, but I've been working on it. This past month, I returned to the novel I started in November. I've written two new chapters and have made a lot of progress on determining exactly where the story is heading. I'm not in full writing mode yet, because I gave myself some time to take it easy and take care of other things, so I haven't been spending as much daily time writing as I intend to eventually. But my days have been packed:

* We had a couple rounds of out-of-state visitors at home, so I got to be the tour guide. There were enough breaks in the rain that we were able to enjoy day trips to various parts of the area.

* There's nothing like cleaning to produce a satisfying sense of accomplishment and household goodwill. Add podcasts of interesting NPR programs to scrubbing bathrooms or folding laundry, and you've got yourself some good, clean fun.

* I hadn't been on a bicycle in 20 years, but that didn't stop me from going out and buying a bike. It turns out to be true about how you never forget. So far I've been on a 10-mile ride, tooled around the neighborhood a bit, and waited for the rain to stop.



* I've become somewhat obsessed with knitting. I used to spend much of my evening time writing, and now that I do that during the day, I have all this new free time during which I can watch television and knit. I completed a scarf that I started and abandoned many years ago, and I made my first hat.





* I'm starting to use my Flickr account. So far it's mostly knitting photos, but I'll probably start branching out soon. Please connect to me if you're a Flickr user, so I can get the visuals of what you're up to.

It was kind of damp and dirty under that rock. I'll try to stay out here and be more visible now, and actually post to this blog once a week or so.