a place of contentment

Hello everyone. It's just past nine o'clock in the morning. My weekend camping trip was a lot of fun despite the unfortunate discovery of a forgotten set of tent poles. Said discovery meant that four of us ended up sharing a single seven-man tent. There wasn't room for our packs of personal items and clothing to be kept in the tent so we all just ended up wearing the same stuff for the durration. I didn't end up using half of what I had brought along and doubtless looked like a first-class ruffian by the time we headed home. Our air matress completely deflated during the first night so we were essentially sleeping on the ground. Nobody ended up getting a lot of unbroken sleep but we all seemed to get at least a bare minimum needed to enjoy the weekend. Things proceeded at a leisurely pace for the most part. Meals were made when people felt like making them. The days were filled with good conversation.

One thing I very much enjoyed was how well everyone just accepted that things didn't go perfectly to plan and cheerfully made the best of things as they were. There have been times when I've wondered how exceptional my ability to do this actually was. We all went there to have a good time. Despite waking up stiff after broken sleep, finding the nature trail more muddy and difficult than expected, and other things, we all damned well still enjoyed our time away from the rest of life. I came back very tired yesterday. Mark, who did the driving and a whole lot else during the trip, was even more worn out. However, even for him, you could just tell how restored and fulfilled he felt. This chance to just be himself with a group who truly appreciated him as he was recharged him in a fundamental way. There's a real kind of glorry in that. For me, I've come away with a number of things. Getting away for a while really does give one a better sense of perspective on life. I've found that a degree of resilience I feared I may have lost is still fully intact. In addition, this trip was an absolute vindication of the value I place on friends in life. Ron has some excellent friends around him who are very welcoming. It was a wonderful pleasure to be able to meet a couple of these friends who had fallen out of touch for a while. They both just clicked meatly into the group that their prior history together would have been obvious even had they not informed me of it before.

Regarding alcohol, things went along quite smoothly on that front. Nobody got drunk enough to do anything outrageous or particularly memorable. Good fun and conversation prevailed even under the onslot of drinks. I ended up coming home with a lot more beer than I thought I might. I get the sense that this was the case for pretty much all of us. Needless to say, it'll be a day or two before I actually have one of them. I'm still not quite a master martini drinker. They gave me more of a buzz than I had anticipated even aided in my calculations by my first run-in with these drinks a couple of years ago. They tasted absolutely precious and have a way of disappearing entirely too quickly. Even so, I still managed once again to avoid experiencing a hangover maintaining my lifetime of blissful ignorance concerning these. During the hight of this alcoholic buzz, I still made an impression while conversing with one of our number by using the word antithetical. He has apparently never come across that word before. I hadn't planned on using it and wasn't trying to impress anybody. It just popped out like a cork under pressure as my larger words usually do.

My digital recorder performed quite well on the trip. It made an excellent platform for listening to music or podcasts while others were sleeping or busy. It also captured many pleasant moments including Saturday night's festivities. I must have lowered the microphone attenuation level and forgotten that I had done so. Once I figured this out, the quality of what was recorded improved drastically. I've kept four files, the longest around four hours, of wonderful clear sound. They aren't going to find themselves on Blindcooltech as I had originally contemplated doing. Instead, they'll form the first entries in my new "sound memories" folder. Sighted people have their digital pictures. Why shouldn't I have my digital sound files of events? If people who participated in the trip want copies, they're certainly welcome to them.

Until friday, the rest of this week is likely to be fairly uneventful. There's my mobility lesson on wednesday, an apparently needed haircut at some point, and doubtless one or two other things to do before I leave on my trip to Chicago. A couple of women from the new dating site I've joined,
www.dating4disabled.com
may want to chat with me. That's certainly proving interesting. Most of them are fairly far away so I doubt it'll ever move beyond friendly talk but it helps to fill a social void. The pieces of writing I posted to the small blog you can keep on the site seem to be making a favorable impression. I'll have to keep rotating pieces in as you can only have four or five entries posted before your next post deletes your first. I've recovered my sense of optimism that there is indeed someone out there for me. The real trick is to find her. It's just another one of those things which I have to do what work I can and then leave the rest to God. Thanks to trips like the one I've just gone on and the one I'm looking forward to, I'm starting to truly be content with that once again. There'll doubtless be days when my frustrations get the better of me. However, as I sit writing this, I have a strong sense of having found my way back up onto a plateau of contentment and good cheer once again. My sense that things will indeed work themselves out somehow is back in full. A nifty new song I've just heard was successfully found and purchased from
www.mp3fiesta.com
It's by a group called Ballas Hough Band. They have a very exuberant sound reminding me of the Backstreet Boys in their finer moments. The song, Do It For You, has a very epic heroic quality which manages not quite to overstretch itself. Definitely worth grabbing.