I'm Baa-a-ck! I just hate it when people say that. It came from some weird movie in the late eighties that I never saw, and it confuses me. It's somehow threatening...

I came home from Oklahoma a few hours early. But it's OK, 'cause I got there a few hours early, so it evens out. I had told Mom and Dan that I would leave on Tuesday, giving them the impression that I was staying 'til the evening. Then I decided that I would leave late this evening, since I love to drive at night. But I didn't get a really good nights' sleep last night, so I was going to have to take a nap if I was going to do that. So my choices were: Take a nap, drive home late; Wait 'til Tuesday; or just come on home. I figgered that if I took a nap, I would miss time with Dan and Mom anyway, so it would be silly to do that. And I'd just talked to Karen, and I missed her terribly. So about 16:30, I took off. I got home at 20:25, making really good time. I only made one stop on the way, and I had a good tail wind. The wind blows from the south in Oklahoma 300 days a year, I think.

Karen was surprised and happy to see me. So was Lacee, a surprise that I hadn't counted on. So was Lisa, JD's ex, who was over visiting. Karen and I have invited her to live with us again for a while, for various reasons, none of which I will discuss here. We really love her a lot.

I kinda semi-journaled while I was in Enid, the following are some entries from down there:

I stayed up yesterday... or rather, I never got back to sleep. I did try several times, then about 04:30 I decided the hell with it, packed and started for Oklahoma. I found a roll of quarters (since I never made it to the bank) and I had $6.00 for the turnpike and my bank card for gas. I had a really nice trip, I love driving in the dark... I stopped several times on the turnpike in the flint hills to admire the stars. There was very little traffic and no towns for miles, and I don't get to look at the stars under those conditions very often. The moon came up about an hour before the sun, just a sliver hanging there in the eastern sky. Beautiful.

I had talked to Dan on Wednesday night, and I told them I would be there sometime in the afternoon; they were surprised to see me when I arrived at 09:30. We spent quite a bit of time just sitting around talking and enjoying each others' company.

Mom fixed lunch, and then she took a nap. Dan and I went to Wal-mart and then drove around the town reminiscing.

We spent yesterday repairing a ceiling fixture in mom's upstairs bathroom. Essentially, we removed the old pull-chain fixture and stubbed off the wire-and-post wires coming out of the ceiling (from some unfathomable location) and replaced it with a semi-surface wired switch and fixture; we couldn't fish the wire through the false ceiling (plaster-and-lathe) and we really didn't want to disturb it too much. Dan and I have both had ceilings fall in on us in this old house. Not pleasant. So we hot-glued the romex to the ceiling, and it worked out quite well.

Spent a lot of time talking to Dan about things that I've talked about in this journal. I have a lot of thinking to do... it's great to have another viewpoint on things... I think.

We went to Enid's Flea Market this morning... looked mostly at books. Dan picked up a couple, and so did I. Right now I'm reading Leaving Cheyenne by the guy that wrote Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurty. I've read most of his stuff, an excellent writer. Anyway, I picked up Of Human Bondage and One Hundred Years of Solitude. I'm looking forward to reading both of them. I'm constantly amazed at the good books that are out there that I haven't read... my education is really lacking in some areas. In some recent email correspondence, I realized that I haven't read any of the transcendentalists, even though I've known a little about them almost all of my life. So that's my next reading project. Dan, being a writer, is also a reader, and I will seek guidance from him and all of my other literate friends. Unfortunately, as I was growing up, I got stuck reading science fiction to the exclusion of everything else, and I really had no one to set me straight. That will soon be rectified.

This morning I went outside to wash the window in moms' living room. When I came back in, I noticed the cigarette odor was really bad in the house. Since Dan is an ex-smoker, and mom has never smoked, I had no one to blame but myself; I resolved to only smoke outside for the remainder of my visit here, and continue the practice when I get home. When a smoker is offended by his self-produced pollution, it's time to change something. I have been smoking a lot more since I got down here, and that will be reduced a lot by going outside to smoke. I've been getting really sick of smoking lately, anyway... it's getting close to my quit date, so it's working out all right.

I got up this morning at 04:00 again, but today I couldn't get back to sleep. I forced myself to stay awake most of the day, but I did take a fifteen-minute nap right before supper. Right now Dan and Mom are watching Dr. Quinn and I'm sitting here writing. It has been a beautiful day today, except for the wind. Sunny and cool. The trees are just starting to turn down here, and the Monarch migration is in full bloom. It was only a couple of weeks ago they were around Topeka, but I haven't seen any there since then.

We just returned from my Aunt Ene's house, my fathers' sister who lives in Ponca City. It was another beautiful day in Oklahoma. We really enjoyed visiting with Aunt Ene and Uncle Eldon; they have lots of stories to tell, and the stories are even more interesting now that most of the principles are dead... no repercussions from them dead folks! We learned a lot more family history than I think I really wanted to know.

Dan and I were talking on the way back about different input devices to replace keyboards... he had some interesting ideas on the subject.