Goin' Campin'
This weekend Rob and I are going camping in the mountains. I'm really looking forward to it.
About a year ago we camping out up there and had a great time. Later in the summer we tried again and got rained out. But on that earlier trip one night, a while after it got dark, Rob pointed out a glow coming through the trees, and he asked me what that was (being sarcastic). I said, "A baseball stadium." Being used to living in the city, my first assumption was that the glow was coming from some man-made structure. But D'oh! I spaced out on the fact that we were in the middle of the freakin' woods. It was the moonrise. It was very nice to be outside at night and be able to sit and watch the moon as it rose, instead of being indoors, and looking or going outside, and noting, "Oh, the moon's out."
We wanted to go back to that same campground, but at first we weren't sure if it would be open. A hurricane went through there last fall, and at one point there was eight feet of water in the visitors' center. But planning this trip, I checked, and I couldn't find anything saying the campground was closed.
So keep your fingers crossed for us.

Arcadia Revoked
When Rob and I went to Virginia last month we swung through Lynchburg and visited a farm where a friend of mine is the caretaker/handyman. The house is a big brick pile from the late 1850's. It's owned by some hoity DC lawyer who rarely comes to check up on things. My friend had a pretty sweet deal - well, except for the solitude and the dearth of Pall Mall unfiltered kings in the area. But it was a really cool place. We rode out through some of the pastures on an old Range Rover, checked out the old barn, which was full of deer tracks, and saw a beaver dam.
But then . . .
I spoke to the dude last night. He said that the lawyer has been uncommunicative recently, not returning phone calls, and the lawyer hasn't paid him for the month of May yet. Last Friday they finally spoke. Turns out the lawyer got hit with some huge IRS bill and now has no money to continue to fix up the house or pay my friend. If things don't get worked out soon, very soon, my friend will have to move back to North Carolina and get a regular nine-to-five.
I'm sure I'm not as bummed out as my friend is but I was quite saddened to hear this news. I thought it was awesome that someone could do something like that, quit their soulless job, move to some forgotten backwater, and work on fixing up an old house. I wouldn't mind doing something like that . . . except of course I'd prefer to actually own the house myself.