I'm A Snowball Running

So here I am, in sunny Sunnyvale, California, right in the middle of a week-long stay at the house of toob. I wish I could say it's been pleasant, but it's been so much more than that words really fail to do it justice. It's been an amazing week already, and only promises to get cooler later on, when I go to visit San Francisco (I *have* to see the Pacific Ocean *this* time) on Friday and hopefully get to chow down on eyeballs and pancakes with kenket and her fiancee/pack-mule, gatcat. Much coffee will be had, I'm sure. :)

The more I experience, the more I'm reminded of how completely useless words can be sometimes to accurately describe what you're living through, or thinking, or doing. Sometimes, the only thing you can do is *show* someone through direct, total immersion. Here, there's no way I can tell you what it's like, you're just going to have to do it yourself. On this trip, it's occured to me that the last time I took a non-convention vacation was...hell, maybe 5 or 6 years ago. That's a startling thing: for five years, when I haven't been at work I've been in a hotel with other furries, never really venturing too far away from the area, and then only for food. What the hell? Coming out here I realize how...inadequate convention-only vacationing can be in the place of actual experience.

I'm not saying conventions suck, mind you...just...if you're saving all of your money for something like Feral or Further Confusion or AnthroCon, you might strongly consider going some place that you've always wanted to instead. Really. It's quite amazing.

Sunday was amazing for various reasons, most of which I won't go into here for all sorts of whys. :) Monday was just spent hanging out, though Toob and his roomie mut and I went out for a round or two of mini-golf. I won the first round, when Mut took his leave, and Toob and I tied on the second round. I improved six strokes on the second game, so I feel the evening was a success. :)

Erm, anyway, the sheer thrill of this whole jaunt around the country is experiencing something new; I'm really shocked to find that I've shut down my ability to adapt to new people and situations. For the past five years I've lived in the same town, for the past two I've worked the same job, and I'm saying this like it's a bad thing...but it isn't. :) Still, I know now why my wanderlust has been revved up so much for years now...the whole new experience thing just hasn't happened that often for longer than I thought.

Yesterday, we went to the Winchester Mystery House, which was insanely awesome. :) If you're not familiar with it, it's basically this 160-room mansion that Sara Winchester, widow of the president of the Winchester Rifle Co., built for 38 years before she finally died. Sara Winchester had rather occultish tendencies, and believed that the spirits of the people killed by her company's rifles would haunt her for the rest of her days unless she built a house she never completed. So there are all these false doors and stairwells, windows looking out into other parts of the house and quirks of her other obsessions (the number 13, and spiderwebs!) that have accumulated throughout the house. I can definitely see why it's regarded as one of the spookiest houses ever; but by the same token it's cool as hell. :)

We also went to see "Napoleon Dynamite" finally. It's an excellent film, really funny. :) I almost cried at the end. Yeah. I did.

Let's see, there's other stuff I want to say but I have no idea how to say it. <:) Another thing that this trip has taught me is that my aspiring vocation as a writer is much more daunting than I thought. You can't be asleep at all when you're going through your day; everything's...important. And not, at the same time. Blah, you know what I mean. :) Mut has been extraordinarily nice and polite, and I think I might have weirded him out a few times with coarse Arkansas humor. <:) I shall have to buy him a doughnut for his tolerance. :) Tonight, seafood!