The Shadow-gloom and Weight of the Sacred

It's been hard to find time to post these last few weeks, which is a shame because I've had a lot of blog ideas. Some of them were even good. Hopefully, they'll still be good later this summer because I don't know how much time I'll have in July to write. I'm going to try and keep blogging though. I really enjoy it.

We're not settled, but we're settling. I was told that reverse culture stress is worse than culture stress, but so far that's not been the case fore me. Not even close. There have been some frustrating times, but trying to acclimate to Vienna was one of the most challenging and frustrating things I've ever been through. I will say this, though: the process of settling is much more difficult upon returning to the States than was the process of settling in Vienna. I'll probably write more on that at another time, detailing what I mean. You might find it interesting. Probably not, but who knows?

I am reading a little bit more than what I was during the winter and spring. I am still reading Irresistible Revolution on my iPad (via the Kindle App), but I am almost finished. I plan to write a review of both the book and the experience of reading on the the Kindle App. The next eBook I buy will be with the Barnes and Noble App followed by a book on iBooks. I want to give a review the reading experience comparing the three book-reading applications. Right now I'm rereading The Sun Also Rises, a Hemingway classic. I love Hemingway; he's one of my favorite fiction writers. I was going to read To Have and Have Not--the book I brought over with me from Vienna--but I seemed to love misplaced it in the fray. Fortunately, we have all the stuff we shipped--primarily books--so I picked from one of my other Hemingway books. I'm sentimental: the first book I read when we moved to Vienna was A Farewell to Arms (one of my all-time favorite books), so I wanted to read a Hemingway book first thing upon arriving in the States. That didn't work out, but I'm enjoying The Sun Also Rises.

I think I'm going to reread books that I love rather than try and read new books. This should help me better stick to my fiction-only policy for the 2010 year. I know I won't stick to it like a Pharissee, but I do want to read primarily fiction during the remainder of the year.

We're planning a garden. I'm starting work on it tomorrow. We won't plant this year, but we're going to begin preparing the soil. I think it will be fun.

One of the big challenges of resettling in the U.S. is that everything seems to think it's like moving from Tulsa to OKC. It's not. You just don't jump off the plane and hit the road running. It's a draining, emotional process.

Bruce Springsteen is awesome. We saw him in Vienna on July 5 last year. I was thinking about that show a little earlier today. It was the best concert I've ever been to.

I really want to write fiction, but I haven't been because ThinkFree doesn't work with an iPad. I'm hoping they make the appropriate adjustments soon. The word processor for the iPad is $9.99, which isn't that expensive, but ThinkFree costs nothing and it's a really good product. My dream of dreams, of course, would be for Scrivener to work with iPad. If that never happens, I'll have to end up buying a macbook or something. Scrivener is the most compatible writing tool for my style.

Also Blogger. Blogger doesn't work well on iPad. Make an app Blogger and help me out.

That's enough random.