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slow but fast I returned home for a few hours after spending six lazy days away from everything that one might consider important. Work certainly falls into this category. While I was away I seemed to do things in excess. First of all I ate far more than I should have while on my vacation. Instead of having just one big meal a day, I had three of them. My grandma always wants to make sure that I eat enough while I am there and I don't put up much of a fight. I was spoiled, but that isn't always such a bad thing. My other vice besides glutton was sleeping longer than I have all year. Each day I was there, I probably got double the amount of sleep that I usually do. In fact after making the four and a half hour drive there after work, I collapsed on the livingroom floor and didn't wake up until fourteen hours later. My having been awake for over twenty-four hours once again might have had something to do with my inability to stay awake. Actually I woke after just eight hours of sleep, but it was two-thirty in the morning, so I just rolled over and went back to sleep. Not once did I see the news over the past week, the outside world was not going intrude that way. My television viewing was limited to just a few hours while I was gone, and that was fine with me. Instead I just sat on the pier down by the lake and stared at the water. The sun and clouds would cast their shadows of light and dark as the wind blew across the surface. I imagined that if I sat long enough something was bound to happen and something did once in a while. On one day a bald eagle dove down, snagged a fish from the water then returned to its perch to eat its meal. It didnít seem to bother him that he was being watched. Then two days later a pair of loons bobbed here and there in my line of vision. This is what I watched instead of the flickering electronic screen. Then there was the night when the sky was clear and at last I had a chance to do some stargazing. All the other nights had been cloudy and I wanted to get at least one look before I left for home. I stepped out in the darkness and waited for my eyes to adjust. It was an unfamiliar darkness to me completely devoid of any artificial light. The only light that I had was from the stars and the small flashlight in my hand that I kept turned off. In my other hand was a pair of binoculars to bring the world above into better focus. The Milky Way arched across the eastern part of the sky with the summer triangle near the center. Some of the names of the brighter stars came to me. There was Vega and Deneb. Then in the north there was Polaris and Arcturus. Constellation names were easier to remember than the individual star names. It was a world that I once knew better and wish that I had more time to see at home. When I wasn't outside just watching the world around me, I was inside reading and getting lost in different worlds. Morvern Callar sliding in and out of the rave scene kept me occupied as she taught me Scottish slang. Now if I could only use the phrase, mortal as a newt, sometime and not sound like an idiot it would be a miracle. Then again I have no way of knowing if the author just made that up.
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