On the Road Again

I have had a great time here in SoCal, first in Escondido and then in Serra Mesa (part of San Diego). I have an online speaker event to attend starting at 10:00 PST, and then am meeting family and friends to go to a farmer's market (fresh stuff to take with me, hooray!). After that, I will be heading toward San Antonio.

I need to be there sometime Wednesday, and am hoping that I will arrive by mid-afternoon. I have the Mensa Foundation board meeting and retreat starting Thursday, and actually hope to be able to chat with a couple of people Wednesday afternoon or evening. We will see how that works out.

I am trying not to make the actual travel too onerous. It's about 1,275 miles from where I am to where I'm going in San Antonio, and I have decided to give myself 4 days to do the drive. I will front load the trip a little, with 5-6 hours of driving today and tomorrow and then more like 4-ish on Tuesday and 3 on Wednesday. At least that's the plan! It all depends on the weather, when I get started each day, when I get tired of driving or when I want to continue for a while longer. Oh, and where there are hotels along the way!

It is kind of strange after almost four weeks of just going where I want when I want to now have a fixed few days where I have to be in a certain place for a certain period of time. I automatically clicked back into 'traveling mode', at least in the way I have mostly experienced it in my life - especially about leaving after the event. My first thought was that since everyone is leaving to head home on Sunday, that I needed to leave then too. Then I remembered that I don't have to go anywhere on any particular schedule. Maybe I will stick around San Antonio for a couple of days. Maybe not. I don't have to decide now at all! It's quite refreshing to remember that.

By the way, I figured San Antonio might actually be warm when I was there but this is the forecast I see at the moment:

Wednesday High 65F Low 33F with rain

Thursday High 40F Low 28F with rain

Friday High 45F Low 26F intervals of sun and clouds

Saturday High 49F Low 31F intervals of sun and clouds

Sunday High 56F Low 30F mostly sunny!

Good thing I have a nice variety of clothes and coats with me!

I almost forgot (edit coming). I actually painted a picture this week! It's a pastel still life. Back in the fall I met a painter (watercolor & oils) when I visited his gallery in central VT. He was nice enough to let us come by even when the gallery wasn't officially open, and he was also nice enough to talk to me about painting and answer some questions and make some suggestions. At the time I was there, I (unfortunately) didn't have my phone with me. So the next day I sent him an email to thank him, and included a few photos of some of my paintings.

And then - amazingly - a day later I got back a long email in which he critiqued some of my work and made some great suggestions as to how to work on technique and continue to improve. In particular, he suggested I do some more still life paintings. I had sent him one photo that was an acrylic that showed just a single cherry. He actually called that one 'brilliant' (I'm sure he meant for a rank beginner!)

Some of you know that I have been experiencing some significant blocks in my creative efforts the last few months - this trip is actually one of the ways I am trying to move through this. The house in which I am staying has lemon trees, so a picked a couple, and this is what I ended up with. I wish I had made the lemons a little bigger, but overall I wasn't completely displeased. And at least I painted something!