the good, the bad, and the ugly

First, the good:

• I've had poems accepted at two more journals. This is exciting!


• Josh and I went camping this past weekend. It was fun for the first few hours. The rest of the camping experience goes in the next section.

The bad:

• I have what appears to be a stress fracture in my leg. X-rays were negative, but all symptoms point to a textbook case of a stress fracture. This is a huge bummer as it means I can't run for at least two months. It makes me sad.


• Like I said earlier, we went camping. It was great for the first five hours. The first problem is that my air mattress had a hole in it. I blew out my lungs blowing it up, and by the time we went to bed, it didn't have a single puff of air in it. I've slept on the ground before so it's not a huge deal, but it's not that comfortable either. Then, soon after we went to bed, the biggest thunderstorm ever descended upon us. It's like ALL the storms and rain we DIDN'T have this summer gathered together into one big violent storm. It lasted all night, pouring rain and thundering and lightning. The thing that got me was the lightning--it was right over top of us for several hours and I don't do well with lightning in the best of circumstances. With only a thin layer of tent between us and getting fried by lightning?--well, I didn't sleep a wink. To top it all off, our bedding was wet by morning, and it was still raining. So we came home early. Huge disappointment as I was really excited for camping. But not enough to sleep in wet blankets.

Now, the ugly:

• actually, nothing ugly to report


• but here's some photos of the weekend we managed to catch in spite of it all:

It looks peaceful, doesn't it? If only...

And yes, we were still in South Dakota even if it doesn't look like it here:

Can you spot the bird? He's doing a pretty good camouflage job. I think he was just a baby because he wasn't moving much.

Josh is trying to teach the little bird to fly:

That's all for now.