i hate to see her go, but i love to watch her leave

I desperately need to sleep; I just spent the last hour typing up 15+ pages of the first draft of my romance novel (which I've been writing by hand, per my new process), and I still have to type up the pages that I wrote today, but I need to throw in the towel.

Today was quite nice; I woke up in time to experience a quick, lovely thunderstorm that illuminated the sky very oddly before dropping 0.3" of rain in a few minutes. I spent the rest of the day alternating between hanging out with the family, doing a couple of small things for the day job, eating, painting my fingernails and toenails, spending too much time on the internet, and writing. All of those things went well (although the internet is an addiction I really need to curb -- why I feel the need to read every single section in the New York Times fashion section is beyond me); my nails are a lovely glittery pink, the family is good, and I wrote six pages -- somewhat shy of my goal to write 3000+ words/day on vacation, but it was over 1500, which was still good (and 1500 more than I had when I woke up this morning).

My parents had to go to a visitation tonight, so I volunteered to pick up pizza for dinner at Casey's (an Iowa convenience store chain that makes pizza that rivals any pizza anywhere). Ultimately, my dad had to take me into town in his huge truck to retrieve the pizza because the brief downpour this morning turned the gravel roads (many of which are v. lightly graveled due to budget issues) into pure mud, and the Sunfire could have gotten buried in some of the ruts. But, the pizza was worth the drama; I never have taco pizza in California, but this one was particularly good, as was the supreme pizza we got to go along with it. Dessert was another type of pie -- this time, chocolate meringue. My mother is a saint and made my favorite pie this afternoon, and this version was particularly winning, so we were all in heaven.

After dinner (and after several minutes of rescuing with technology before ultimately calling my brother up to sort out the three-remote situation with my parents' TV/DVD/surround sound tuner system), my parents showed me the short montage of the Moving Wall event at the Round Barn last year (they brought in a traveling version of the Vietnam Wall war memorial for a weekend, which brought in 5000 visitors in three days -- pretty impressive, considering our whole county is only 7000 people). The video was quite moving, particularly since it ended with a reading of our county's Vietnam losses -- all in all, it looks like it was a very worthwhile event.

And now, after spending a lot of time typing, I need to sleep -- tomorrow is my last full day at home, and I will need to pack and get some stuff done and spend some quality time with the family, so I should get to sleep. Goodnight!