Living the Good Life.

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Spent this Saturday on a day trip up and around the Olympic Peninsula and to the Pacific Coast. US101 is a beautiful drive through almost all of trip, except Forks, which was a nasty, muddy dump of a town. Ruby Beach is unbelievable-check the pictures. Ate at a nice, nice restaurant in Port Angeles with the generic name of Bella Italia. Port Angeles is full of weird, anti-social people with less social skills than people in Wyoming, if you can imagine. Great service at the restaurant, though. I had bleu cheese and fig ravioli with roasted chicken, chanterelles, and corn.
Politics has kept me interested a little bit lately. I'm so so happy to be out of the south, because now I don't have to hear the racist, social conservative banter at work about how much the world is doomed because of Obama. I still get to see it occasionally on Facebook, where someone on my wife's list recently posted: 'I took my last vacation today before Obama takes everything away.' But the distance makes it funny. I think what this election has said is that the "real america" that Palin talks about is still there. But the unpatriotic america that they heap scorn upon, the liberal, rational, progressive, America, has finally edged them out. Maybe now we get to be the real America for a change. I would love to see an election in my lifetime that looked like Libertarians vs. Democrats vs. Green Party, where the Democrats are the centrists, and the spectre of social conservatism can stop embarrassing us on the international scale that it does now.
I never realized what a societal parasite the belief that "the world is nearing the end times" could be. When you don't believe that one simple idea, you can get so much done. Suddenly, problems are there to be solved, not observed as signs that the end times were nearing. Eliminating that one concept from public discourse makes ecologically sound policies possible. It makes long term planning in government possible- and popular. I saw a sign up yesterday announcing an event planned for 2036- that would have been seen as an assault on religion in a lot of the country. It's so refreshing to meet so many people that don't reach for that stale idea just the instant they see something bad in their city.
My "new" life is keeping me busy. There's a new fruit to try at the roadside stand every other day- persimmons and apples and grapes so big my hands feel small just eating them, so much to learn about IT and teaching, etc. Although the learning has really slowed down lately in tech.
I'm continuing my hiatus from music for a while longer while I save for an MPC. I'm just not feeling the drive now that there is so little struggle in my life. Life is so easy when you have enough money to stop worrying, and you don't have that "surrounded by maniacs" feeling.