This morning (well, early this afternoon, really, but the French toast with pear/apple compote that NovySan made for breakfast took some time), I had a decision to make.

The response was unanimous.

So, while NovySan wrestled with JavaScript inside, I wrested with NaNoWriMo outside. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I knitted. And when that got frustrating (one of these days, I swear, I will figure out how to pick up dropped stitches without leaving visible tracks on the fabric), I went back to writing. It took awhile, but I added several inches to Novy’s Doctor Who scarf (and fortunately for me, he doesn’t mind my mistakes – I keep telling him he’s always going to know which end of this scarf I started on, because I’m going to be a much better knitter by the time I’m done than I was when I began. Hell, I already am!), and more than 3,000 words to my NaNo project. Not bad for a lazy Saturday.

Tags: Back Yard, Lemon Tree, Los Angeles, That Would Be Novy's Doctor Who Scarf There

Friday night, NovySan and I went to Agra for dinnner. On the way, we saw a man in a frock coat crossing the street with a bag of Pollo Loco.

“I wish people dressed like that when it isn’t Halloween,” I said.

Saturday, we met Slackmistress and Be the Boy for lunch at Baby Blues before Randi and Mike’s pumpkin carving party. I spotted a couple in a Volkswagen van, with a surfboard and sun-creased faces. “That’s not a Halloween costume,” I said. NovySan agreed. “They may have bought that van new,” he said.

Today, I drove to Woodland Hills for something work related (and ate two cookies and an evil little chocolate brownie, dammit), and stopped by Joe’s on the way home for pizza and hummus and a few other things. On the sidewalk outside, I saw a tall, slender woman in her 70s, swathed chin-to-ankles in black velvet and topped off by a white beret (cashmere, at a guess, or angora maybe – her scowl suggested I’d do better not to ask). “What a fabulous costume!” I thought, and then I realized – it’s November 3. If she’s going to a Halloween party, she’s three days late.

Only one thing could possibly have made this encounter any better, and I found it inside. A plump, pretty girl in her early 20s, wearing hotpants and fishnets, with fuzzy white legwarmers to match the old lady’s beret and bits of neon fluff in her long, dark hair, buying liquor and cookies without a trace of self-consciousness.

I don’t think they were together. But, damn, I hope I’m wrong.

Tags: Holidays, Los Angeles, Sometimes I Love LA

I couldn’t wait to leave my hometown.

It took me years to do it. Twice, I left and came back. Once, I planned to leave it for an even smaller town.

I was clearly insane.

When I moved to the Bay Area, though, I knew that I’d escaped. I’d visit, yes, but I’d never move back home.

Wyoming, as I’ve said more than once, is a lovely place to be from.

There are things that I miss, though. Lilacs. Oh, how I miss the lilacs in the Spring. (And never mind that Spring may not come until June – the lilacs are worth the wait.) The old brick buildings downtown. People who stop to help if your car breaks down. (Seriously – eight years of driving an old Bug in LA, and only a few times has anyone stopped. Once in Santa Monica, when I was trying to push my car up the California Incline; once just a few blocks from my house; and twice in Topanga. The time I ran out of gas on the 101? The Highway Patrolman who pushed my car into the breakdown lane didn’t even bother to ask if I had a cell phone before he disappeared.)

And when I’m stressed, I want to go home.

This morning, Sara, who camped across the street from us our first year at Burning Man, tweeted that she and Frinetik had “Just passed happy jack road and is stopping to look at the floating head of lincoln.”

“Hey,” I told her, “You just went through my hometown!”

And then I went to look at the Prexy’s Pasture webcam, on the University of Wyoming campus.

That statue in the middle is by the same sculptor who carved Lincoln's head.

And surprised myself by bursting into tears.

Today, I just want to go home.

Tags: I Get Homesick Sometimes, Laramie, Los Angeles, Not Really a Burning Man Post But Kind Of, Oh Whine, Prexy's Pasture, Wyoming