sunday status

I can't believe this thing is creeping up on me so quickly! I have to download maps and print directions, and I have to start coming up with a packing list. And I've barely made it halfway through The Whirlwind of War, because stupid work keeps me so damn busy this month, the bastards.

But I'm determined to make it to EMS or REI sometime this week for my lantern. And this weekend, I received two gifts to help me on my way. Poppy, of course, bought me some scary pepper spray covered in instructions and warning notices, and while it scares me to death to carry a such a thing on my person, I'll do it for safety and I'll do it for Poppy too. And then last night a very thoughtful friend gave me some waterproof matches he'd picked up for me. I can't tell you how tickled I was to receive them. (Thanks.)

Now off to work so I can go home and read the rest of the day away. It's amazing what personal feelings I'm developing for old dead men like U.S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman. I love when I feel an affection for an historical figure, because they were all just people, afterall, not myths or legends. They didn't have scripts to follow and they didn't know how everything would come out in the end. They were just people doing the things they knew they ought to do, sometimes getting distressed and sometimes making mistakes, and they loved their wives and they fought among themselves and sometimes they lost their tempers and sometimes they cried and sometimes they were afraid, both of what the world put before them, and of what they found inside themselves. And I love them for it. I really, really do.