Halls of the Dark Muse

Yes I am back, so hide your children, is it just me or has it just gotten a little darker in here?

Well, as some may know, and as little may care, I have just spent the past couple days up in the mountains at my uncles Cabin, and it was wretchedly hot there. I had thought up there I could escape the heat but it was just as hot there as it has been here. Down in the foothills around the mountain in town it was 100+ and while it is usually always a bit warm down there, up higher where the cabin is, it usually cools off a bit, though there it was high 80's which was an improvement over the 100's it was still more then I would have excepted. While it is true I haven't been there before when it was actually officially summer, usually up by the cabin, when night falls it drops down into the mid-30's but not this time, it may have gone from high 80's to mid 80's but it pretty much stayed warm all night long.

Other then the weather it was a fairly decent trip, the primary reason I went was to visit the cemetery there, there are a lot of little old historical towns up there, that were first established back during the gold rush days, as there was a lot of mining in the mountains there, and there is little town called Columbia and I hadn't been there in ages, and never visited there cemetery before, though because it was down in the foothills of the mountain, it was primarily wide open grassy terrain with not a lot of trees or greenery and shade, so walking around it was pretty much all directly in the sun but it was call that there was this little part of the cemetery that was open to the public, but sort of sectioned off from the rest of the cemetery which was reserved just for Free Masons, because they were really big back then during the mining days, and in the town there is this old Free Masons loge that was established in the 1800's and part of it is use for a tourist attraction, and you can't go inside, but there are windows where you can look into it, and it is set up like the way it was traditionally, but then part of it, that is closed from the public, is still in current use for modern Masons.

And when I was walking around the town of Columbia I actually ran into someone I went to school with a couple of quarters ago, it freaked me out at first, because I was just looking at the artifacts, when I caught something out of the corner of my eye, and noticed there was this guy just standing there waving at me, and at first I was like what the hell, and it took me a while for it to finally register. It was like ok that person looks familiar, and it took like 5 seconds before I finally locked in on just who they were. It was "knife guy" for those that remember the story I told about my going hysterical in my story telling class, so he waved and I said hi and that was the extent of it, because it was not as if we ever really knew each other that well, or talked that much anyway.

I finished one of the four books I took with me to read, I was hoping to finish Women in Love over the weekend while I was there, but could not quite pull that one off and the other two I wasn't even close to finishing yet. I also started working on a new sketch while I was there. I have always liked the way fashion designers do their sketch work for their clothing designs, because it is this sort of minimalist style often with long sweeping lines and sharp angles, since they are not really that concerned with the actual anatomy of the figure itself, but more focused on the clothing, so I sort of took that concept and going to add some surreal elements to do it. It is going to be this modernized female version of Thoth. When it is complete I will post a picture of it.

And of course I love going into little book stores in small towns, so while I was there I popped into a couple of little bookstores, and happened upon the book Naked Lunch, and I had debated about reading it, and since I have heard about it, and it is on one of my book lists, I figured I would pick it up since it was cheap, so I got that.

I have some pictures that I took, I might post some of them, right now I haven't yet downloaded them onto the computer, a lot of them are from the cemetery.

I ate a bistro for the first time, near the foot of the mountain in about of 10-15 min drive from where the cabin is, there is this spot where there is always a restaurant of some kind of another where we usually always, it seems just about every time I go, it has changed into something different, and this time it has now become a bistro, which I thought was kind of weird in the mountains, but they are huge on wine and wine tasting up around that area. And I don't usually like French Toast, but they had this Chocolate French toast that sounded interesting and since I was in a bistro I thought I would try something different so I ordered it, and well it was a little better then regular french toast it was still not the greatest, but I am usually always picky about food, so I don't often try different things, so I thought I would be bold, and it wasn't horrible.

But there is this steak house right across from the Bistro that I like better because it is more rugged and mountainy, though I don't eat beef they have good chicken there.

So I think that about covers the gist of it.