Just emerged from a busy stretch, including a couple days getting ready to go out of town, three days in Cannon Beach, Oregon with my wife, and a transitional day after we returned.

I remember when I was a college kid, going out of town for a weekend involved 4 minutes of packing and about ten seconds of unpacking. Now I have things in my life arranged more carefully, and I pack more stuff. Certain books, the laptop and its charger, maybe manuscript printouts, even multiple pairs of shoes. When I was twenty, I traveled in the shoes I was wearing and that was all. Now I have shoes for running on the beach, shoes for hiking, shoes for walking around town and going out to eat.

Anyway, the trip is over and we had a great time in Cannon Beach, like always. It remains my favorite place that I can drive to in under two hours. I’ll probably assemble photos here soon.

I always think I’m going to have more time for reading and relaxing, but of course we end up being on the go a lot. We always do a lot more running, biking and walking than sitting still with a book.

Also lots of eating and drinking, which is one of the great things about the beach. Good old standby Mo’s for a crab louie and bean & shrimp salad, and clam chowder. Fultano’s for simple grub, pizza and spaghetti & meatballs. Great Mexican food at this brand new place, El Mariachi Loco. The Lumberyard for alfredo pasta with shrimp, and a steak and great big steins of frosty draft beer. The Fireside for veggie breakfast casserole, a half-older of halibut fish and chips, and this amazing gourmet mac-and-cheese with jalapenos. Please note: above recap involves food for two people. Also lots of espresso!

On the way home we went down 101 through Manzanita (and decided that’s our next beach destination — kind of a cool, more casual version of Cannon Beach) and Rockaway to Tillamook, where we toured the Tillamook Cheese Factory (which Lena said should be called the Tillamook Ice Cream Stand, since that’s where most of the zillion tourists were clustered). That’s a place worthy of a photoblog all its own.

Back home again we stopped for a family dinner to celebrate Lena’s birthday (she shares a DOB with one of my favorite insane people, H.P. Lovecraft), and yesterday I spent all day writing. I finished revisions on ‘The Long Tightrope’ (my Writers Weekend critique story), did some more work on ‘Out in the Water’ (that’s a working title, aka ‘that lake story’) and made a bunch of notes for this increasingly strange Hollow-Earth-Insane-Explorers-Find-Buddhist-Transcendence dark fantasy I’ll be drafting soon.