Well very sadly, the time has come to bid adieu to Shangri-La. Yes, this weekend is the official closing of what has been my second home for a lot of years now. So I'll more than likely be offline for a couple of days. I'm not sure what the situation with the internets is going to be up yonder, but I figure that I'll be out of the loops. I still owe some folks some emails, so bear with me. I'll get caught up when I get back!

But while I'm gone, this here is an open thread... post any questions, funny videos, jokes, rants or whatever you'd like... this space is yours while I'm away.


So as I hit the road, I'll leave ya'll with these questions...

For Hillary Clinton Supporters: If Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee, would you vote for him?

For Barack Obama Supporters: If Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee, would you vote for her?

Be good kids. I'll catch ya later!

Well, much to my disappointment, I am home. It was a wonderful weekend filled with a lot of laughs and a lot of great conversation. I really had missed being up there these last several months. Last night, the forecast was calling for snow down at the 2,000 foot level and Shangri-La sits at about 2,400 feet, so I was entirely hopeful. Spending a few more days snowed in at one of my favorite places on the planet sounded good to me. And if it hadn't been so bloody cold, I may have run outside and performed a naked snow dance to enhance our chances for some of the white stuff. But yeah... that probably wouldn't have been good for anybody and so I refrained. We got some rain, a ton of high winds, temperatures that would freeze your nipples off, but alas, no snow. Apparently though, the gods decided to mock my desire to remain at Shangri-La for at least another day. There is another set of little mountains across the valley from Shangri-La, no more than 5 miles or so. Yeah, they got snow. And it stuck too. The tops of the mountains were dusted with the snow all friggin' day long. Dammit.

Last night was spent playing board games with the offspring of my friend. Board and card games are one of the main activities up at Shangri-La... loafing comprises a majority of the rest. We played until roughly 430 or so this morning. It was a lot of fun, but getting to bed around 5ish and then waking up a little after 10 was a wee bit rough. But hey, it's fun. I just wish I'd had another day to play!

This trip up was a little bittersweet, I have to say. My friend is going to be moving up to the Bay Area within the next month or two. So this was probably my last weekend up at that particular branch of Shangri-La. I am really going to miss it. Part of the appeal is that I love the drive up there and the drive back. I love heading up there and coming out of Oxnard on the 101 and making that run along the coast. It's always gorgeous, looking out and seeing the vast expanse of ocean and the Channel Islands out in the distance. Coming back, I love coming around this one particular turn on the 154 and seeing the city of Santa Barbara and the ocean beyond it well below me. It's just an amazingly beautiful sight. I love being able to crank up the music and just sit inside of my head for a couple of hours, away from everything and everybody. Just sort of letting all of my cares, my stress and my worries get lost for a while. And of course I love Shangri-La itself. It's nestled up in those mountains and while there are people around, they aren't right on top of you. I can step out of the back door and go walking through the woods, feeling like I'm completely alone.

But of course, the biggest appeal of Shangri-La is the people that inhabit it. My friend is one of my oldest and one of my dearest friends. I've basically watched her kids grow up. I met my friend when her youngest daughter was about 11 and she's now set to turn 19. Her son I've known since he was 14 and he's about to be 22 and the oldest daughter is going to be 25 later this year. It's totally cliche, but this all seems to have happened in the blink of an eye. And I can honestly say that my friend is truly one of the most amazing people I've ever met in my life. She's been my single greatest teacher and I really don't believe that my life would be the same without her. It's because of her friendship, mentorship and guidance that I've charted the course in my life that I have. She is always willing to give me the straight scoop, always willing to help me up when I'm down and always willing to kick me in the ass when I'm being a tool. She basically doesn't sugarcoat anything whether I'm right or wrong. Some people probably believe that she's got some undue influence over me, but that's not the case at all. She challenges me to excel, to push myself, to always do better, to believe in myself and above all, think for myself. She's a genuinely rare person and I'm incredibly thankful that she's a part of my life.

So yeah, I'm a little sad that the location of Shangri-La is moving northward by a considerable distance. For years now, I've really enjoyed that little spot of seclusion, away from the world. But Shangri-La is a special place to me because of the people. And though the location may change, they won't. It will take a little doing to get up to see them and it's certainly not going to be a spontaneous, drop everything and head north kind of trip anymore, but I will get up there. And hey, while I may not have a nice drive up the coast or a beautiful mountain range to see first thing after waking up, I'm sure that the new location of Shangri-La will have it's own set of unique features and attractions and its own unique appeal. And hey, being that she'll be living in Berkeley, she'll be within spitting distance of Oakland... that will be awesome come football season! Score!!!

It was a good weekend overall. I'm getting my head back to where it needs to be. I'm doing my best to let everything go and simply focus on what I need to do. No more anger, no more resentment, no more drama... I'm simply going to concentrate on letting myself just... be. And in doing so, it should be a bit easier to put my head down and get to work doing what I need to do.

I hope that everybody has had a wonderful weekend. Happy Monday to ya'll...

EDIT: Okay oops, narcolepsy took hold of me once again and I fell asleep in the middle of posting this last night. So even though I'm posting it in the morning, I'm actually talking about last night. But you're a bright bunch, so I'm sure you'll understand. :-)

Okay, so it's not dark and stormy. But it is dark and very foggy, so when standing outside with little around you but woodland and hearing all of the nocturnal critters scampering through the underbrush, it can tend to be a little freaky if you're not used to it. And being that I'm a city boy, I'm definitely not used to it. It's creepy, but cool in a way. In fact, it was standing on that very porch, on a night very similar to this one, that one of my favorite characters was born... a vicious, beastly, tear your throat out sort of creature that the locals called "Ripper." Not the best story I've written, but it was a lot of fun. Whenever I'm up here at Shangri-La, on foggy nights such as this, when I'm out on the porch partaking of a smoke in the small hours of the night, I always imagine that I can hear him lumbering through the woods all around me. Not that I'd actually want to meet him face to face, mind you. He wasn't the most pleasant of critters.

So anyway, here I am up at Shangri-La once again. I took off from work at about noon on Friday and after meeting up with the salamet and the Hellspawn, we ventured over to the store and collected enough groceries to make a UN food drop. Ouch. After that little trip to supermarket hell, we made our way up the hill and to Shangri-La proper. salamet made some pizzas for dinner (YUM) and we made a double-layer, chocolate chunk brownie cake with chocolate pudding between the layers, chocolate death cake. Oh boy, was that tasty. Entirely bad for you, but hey, we all gotta go sometime, right? And what's the better way to go? With a belly full of chocolate or a belly full of wheat germ? I leave it for you to decide.

On Saturday, I spent part of the day doing homework, just catching up on some readings for class and stuff. Which proved difficult with the Hellspawn... well... being the Hellspawn. I haven't gotten nearly as much as I wanted to do done this weekend, but I'll be able to catch up once I get home.

salamet taught me how to use Photoshop, so I played around with it a bit yesterday, making shiny new icons and stuff. It was fun! I can make icons, but now I want to learn how to cut and paste photos and stuff. I'm not so good with this here tek-naw-logee thing. So thanks to salamet for imparting her knowledge to me!

Sadly, I'll have to go home today. *sigh* I love it up here so much. We're socked in with fog and it's pretty cold this morning, but it's wonderful anyway. But in a few hours, I'll have to pack up and head on out and back on down to reality. Tomorrow begins another week. Bleh.

Hope everybody's had a good weekend!

Sadness... another weekend at Shangri-La over and done with. And as always, it went by far too quickly. My feline friend is terribly happy to have me home though, he hasn't left me alone since I walked in the door. Co-dependent much?

I took Friday off of work and made my way up the coast, stopping in Ventura to have some lunch with maybebabies. We went to a small Thai restaurant that had really good food. The little "Main Street" area in Ventura is really very cool. It reminds me of 2nd Street here in Long Beach before the big corporate stores started killing off all of the kick-ass Mom and Pop shops. We saw a poster for a peace rally and march on the eve of the Congressional Mid-Terms. I am giving some serious thought to going up there for that. After that, we ran over to a local Toys R Us and then over to a coffee house where we sat and talked for a while. It was a really nice afternoon.

Let me say, for the record, that turkeys are the stupidest animals on the face of the earth. Once you get off of Highway 154, to get to my friend's house, you have to drive down a pretty narrow 2-lane road with forest close on either side. So as I'm cruising down this road, out of nowhere, a pack of about 20 or so wild turkeys came running out of the forest and into the road. I locked up the brakes but couldn't quite stop in time. I felt it hit the front end of the car, but it must have survived the impact because I didn't see it in the road after the pack of turkeys finally got their dumb asses out of way. The weekend up at Shangri-La was as great as ever. Talked a lot about politics (of course), about writing and other life type things. Played lots of games with my friend's kids... Boggle, Trivial Pursuit, Cribbage and Poker... we taught ourselves how to play Texas Hold 'Em. Fun game, I think I'm ready to go win millions in Vegas now. It was a great weekend and as always, I was loathe to come home. But reality beckoned and so I was forced to make the trip down. *sigh*

Stopped off and had dinner with maybebabies on the way home. She's such a sport, enduring me watching the Raider game... rather, another Raider beating, as we ate. Of course, she was watching the Mets game, so maybe we were even. It was unfortunately, a brief dinner, but still very nice.

But now, it's back to reality, back to work and back to school. The weekends are always far too short.

Well, it's nearly time to leave Shangri-La and return to reality. maybebabies and I have spent a very lovely weekend up here with my nearest and dearest and her spawn. Lots of great conversation, lots of laughs, lots of good food and lots of fun games. We even managed to mix in a few hikes which was really nice. Yesterday, maybebabies, the youngest female spawn of my nearest and dearest and I trekked on down to the scary place. The other two were unimpressed with the scariness of the place, but it was as creepy as ever. The cabin was a little more dilapidated than the last time I'd seen it, the path up to the water tower was even more overgrown, huge spiderwebs were everywhere and the treehouse and the shed beneath it looked about ready to collapse and everywhere there was decay. However, strangely enough, there were well tended little garden plots in a couple of places and somebody had dug a spring to irrigate the gardens. There was also some laundry on the line and a couple of potted plants on the table. Obvious signs of life, which in my mind, when contrasted with the overall condition of everything else, made it even a little more creepy. maybebabies feels a love vibe coming off of the scary place and yes, there is certainly that, but I most definitely feel a creepy vibe around it as well. There do be spooky things hanging around that place. Of course, I can see the bogeyman in everything. After coming home from that excursion, we all cleaned up and took the boy offspring of my nearest and dearest down the hill so he could get to his Dungeons & Dragons game. We stopped at the store, picked up dinner fixins and headed back up the hill where we spent the afternoon playing games like Boggle and Scrabble, talking and just being mellow. Around dusk, we hiked up to the power lines at the top of the hill. That was pretty awesome. The shadows in the woods were uber-creepy and as it got darker, it got even creepier. It was fun and I loved it. There are more trails I want to explore and more things I want to see. Next time, there will be much more fun hiking. Right now, we're talking about hiking out to a cabin where the spirit of a dead Indian boy has been seen running around.

But as usual, time flies too fast up here. It's almost time to pack up and head home unfortunately. I have some reading assignments for class that I need to knock out before tonight and I also need to get some things for my writing group done. I'd like to have a couple of critiques done tonight, but we'll have to see. I'm still trying to find the balance between schoolwork and everything else. It's only been a week, so I'm confident that I will find it soon. I am really not looking forward to going to Chicago though. Ugh. I work Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and fly out on Friday. I'll be there until next Thursday unfortunately. But after that, it should be smooth sailing more or less. I'll get to settle into a routine between work and school and everything else.

Yeah... so ugh. I'm dreading having to leave here. I love it up here. This is my happy place. But, such is life. It's been a very excellent weekend and I've enjoyed every moment of it. It's been really nice having maybebabies up here this time. I love the fact that she likes getting out and hiking and doesn't mind getting sweaty and dirty and then coming back and playing board games. It's been a lot of fun this weekend and I'm already looking forward to our next trip up here.

But for now... reality beckons. *sigh*