when in texas...

All good ideas arrive by chance.
- Max Ernst

Texas, you say? Indeed. I arrived in Texas this past Saturday with my cousin and her husband (or as I like to say, my cousin-in-law), and we've been having a great time. Some relaxing, some exercising, some sightseeing, some more relaxing, and a lot of spending time with family. It's been a nice breather from my usual hectic schedule, but even here I find I've been preoccupied with ideas and things I have to write and do and say and train for and work on and write about yet again. But whatever, I'm a writer, I do a lot of thinking and a lot of writing, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

So to summarize, since Switzerland, June has been really busy.

Alex and I participated in our first Genesis Adventures Racing Camp on Saturday, June 7 to prepare for the actual race in August. We went to Wawayanda State Park in NJ, and it was quite the experience. I ended up with a very strange tan - the kind you get when you're out on a lake and in a forest for an entire day. You know, the band where your socks stopped and around your shoulders to clearly demarcate your sleeveless shirt. We kayaked, mountain biked, hiked, and tried desperately to learn how to use a compass. I think Alex did a better job of it than I did, as I was left glaring at my compass and turning in circles while standing in place.

Then there was Soraya's graduation and the many festivities surrounding it. Of course, no surprise there, she left with more awards than I can count, including the coveted gold cords that honor the top graduating students. Was I proud? You bet. Am I left asking how it is that my little sister is suddenly on her way to high school, the very same one that I went to, when it feels like just yesterday she was a little kid waiting for me to come home from school so we could play? Oh yeah. Ah well, such is life. We'll both still always be kids at heart =)

Moving on to the massive amounts of pictures and video I have taken in the past month alone, plus Switzerland, I have a lot - and I mean a lot - to comb through and finally present to everyone. I have, though, managed to do a good deal of printing out of pictures and have showed a lot to the family already. For Father's Day, I gave my dad a small album of only a sampling of the thousands of pictures we took in Switzerland. That same day, we all gave Soraya a scrapbook commemorating her graduation and years in school.

Still, though, a lot more pictures are yet to be printed out, properly sorted, and displayed for all, not to mention the new ones from Texas.

Then there was the Don Quixote course I finished. My paper was entitled "Donkeys, Madmen, and Literature: The Art of Transformation in The Golden Ass and Don Quixote" - which got me a nice A in the class. Or as Yaya would say - I beasted on it.

I've been reading Fablehaven: Rise of the Evening Star. By my count, I should have been done with it weeks ago, but due to Spanish knights and sheer exhaustion, I'm still plodding along. My critique so far - still an amazing series. Truly awesome. Excellent isn't even the word. It's so good, it still makes me angry =P

So far in Texas, we've been swimming, gone hiking, been mountain biking, visited the Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center, participated in our first Bikram Yoga class at Bikram Yoga Grapevine (also where some Dallas Cowboys are known to go in the off season, as well as where I walked by a very large NY Jet player) went to the Fort Worth Stockyards where we spent an afternoon with Texas longhorn cattle (where I was so tempted to do my John Wayne impression), visited The Sixth Floor/JFK Museum in Dallas (where outside we saw many intelligent people dodging traffic to get a picture of the X that marks the spot of the shooting), went to Hurricane Harbor, cheered at two baseball games (the Fort Worth Cats and the Texas Rangers), and even bought a house...well, kind of. It was this huge house on sale for about a $1 million, but when we saw the dimensions and realized that on Long Island a house that size could be about $6 million, if not more, we knew it was nothing short of a steal. So in a way, we bought it, and as soon as we get close to one million, we'll move right in.

And that's it really. If you've been wondering where I've been, the answer is pretty much everywhere, always doing something. As for writing, that, too, like my reading has been plodding along, but I am officially dubbing July the month to get most of my book written and completed. It's a major goal, I know, especially considering that I'm also dubbing July the month in which to launch VM.

A lot to do, but we'll get it done.

We always do =)