Rainforest Writer's Retreat

I'm currently in Quinalt, in the heart of the Washington Peninsula, attending the 2008 Rainforest Writer's Retreat. I have no idea how productive this is going to be for me, although I did write 3,300 words or so after dinner, so I suppose that's a good sign.

The drive was nice. Beautiful terrain. Predictably, the "service engine soon" light came on, but there was no noticeably strange behavior from the car. Both Patrick and Jay Lake are here, as is Susan Matthews. On the one hand, it's intimidating being in such rarified company, but on the other it's nice to be just left alone to write.

I have weirdly intermittent Internet access. Sometimes, the light steadies, and sometimes it just stops working. It's steady now, so off this goes.

Random thoughts while driving to Quinalt...

I wonder if I should look up one of those $39 on-line glasses places and have them make me a driving-only pair of glasses with dark lenses. That would be sweet.

Bought a new trashcan. The old one had gotten kinda gross. The traffic was absolutely perfect, nothing slowed me down as I drove down to Olympia.

Y'know, there's this old Penthouse cartoon, a famous one most guys my age might recall, that shows a doctor's office and on the examination table is a young man. The young man's right arm and shoulder are heavily overdeveloped, and the doctor says, "No, Jimmy, there's really nothing wrong with masturbating fifty times a day, but maybe you should think about switching arms now and then." I thought about that in context with the Fleshlight. I finally saw one of those things at Babeland, and they are heavy. Even using them once a day would result in a heavy workout. You could pretty much tell a Fleshlight user by the asymmetrical development of his biceps. And then there's the elevated risk of repetitive stress injury.

I stopped at a little town called Elma to get gas, and while I was there I picked out a corn dog and unsweetened iced tea. There was a little Asian woman behind the counter nad she said, "You have interesting pants-- oh! It's a skirt." "Nah, lass," I said in my best brogue, "'Tis a kilt!" My best brogue is awful.

I passed by a church called "The Apostolic Wells of Living Water!" Sounds vaguely Cthulhoid, doesn't it?

I'm driving through Aberdeen and as I'm driving along the main drag I'm having a flashback-- one block over is a pizza place and there's a Defender. Man, it would be sweet to find that and play it again. Nah, must keep driving.

Day one impressions, morning

Ugh. Sleeping here a the Quinalt Resort is not a luxury experience. First of all, writer's row is made up of "cabins," each of which is a mid-level hotel room shoved into its own little outhouse-sized building. Isolated, but hardly special. They all have gas-fired fireplaces, which do not work well for warming the room if it's below 40°F, which it was last night. There aren't enough blankets, and this is a "rustic resort"; there's no room service at midnight to ask for more.

Worse, the fireplace is the only source of heat. As someone who sleeps primarily in the dark, this constant, flickering light, bright enough to read by, was annoying. I also disabled the battery-powered clock as it ticks only sometimes, and not reliably.

I had a totally cyberpunk experience this morning. Here's exactly how my thought processes went as I was getting ready for a shower: "Can't read the news, there's no internet service in the cabins. Don't have a radio. Wait, there's a TV. I wonder if they have one of those low-bandwidth news aggregators, what are they called? Oh yeah, networks!"

I've been a geek way, way too long.

Still, it was gorgeous this morning. Although cloudy and overcast, the view is spectacular. During breakfast, I saw an eagle fly by with a huge fish in its talons. It was so big the eagle lost altitude, started dragging the fish on the lake, and eventually dropped it. I did not whip out the camera fast enough, sadly.

Hillary Breaks Hilzoy.

Hilzoy is shrill:

Obsidian Wings: Crossing The Threshold: However, let's assume, for the sake of argument, that Hillary Rodham Clinton actually believes that Barack Obama cannot "cross the commander-in-chief threshold." One of the most important jobs a President has is to defend the country. If she thinks that Barack Obama is not qualified to do that job, then she should not support him over anyone who can. Specifically, she should support McCain over Obama.

That's why I think some enterprising reporter should ask her whether she would support Barack Obama if he were nominated. If she would, then she should be asked why she would be willing to support someone she does not believe is qualified to be commander in chief.

Whatever her answer, it would tell us something we need to know: either that her doubts about Obama are so serious that she would not be willing to support the nominee of her own party, or that she would support someone she thinks is unfit to serve, or that she does not believe a word she said about Obama, and is willing to impugn a fellow Democrat's fitness to serve as President because her own interests matter more to her than her party's or the nation's.