back from algarrobo

Spent the past five days at Algarrobo, staying with Katty's mom, Blanche, who lives here half the year and in northwestern PA half the year. It was wonderful, I did nothing productive except call Grandpa and Marinell to talk a little about plans for when they come down (in less than a week!) and email Katy and April my final itinerary. I talked to Rosie on her birthday, which was nice. It sounds like she's having fun back at school, and that's good to hear; she was worried about the transition and coming back together with all her friends. I lay on the beach, went kayaking, took a long walk with Vale along the beach all the way to Mirasol, the next town to the north, watched stupid TV, finished The Woman at the Washington Zoo, by Marjorie Williams, which I generally really liked. She was a very insightful and observant writer, and I enjoyed reading her pieces, especially the ones about feminism and her cancer, because those are two subjects I am interested in but don't know enough about. But the footnotes by her husband, who edited the book, drove me insane. I'm sorry, I know she just died and that this is his labor of love for her, but I wanted to tear out every cutesy little comment about his own involvement in her stories, or what had happened since then (which were so scattered and informal as to seem random--sometimes there, sometimes not, as if he hadn't been paying attention to a lot of the news and only put a comment in when he had to look up what had happened himself and then assumed no one else had been paying attention, either), or snide remark about some politician or other. I also made it up to the start of WWII in A Treatise on Poetry, Dad's Christmas gift to me, which is Czeslaw Milosz's long poem about Poland and particularly Polish poetry in the first half of the 20th century. It's beautiful and makes me wish I spoke Polish and also that I knew a lot more about Polish history.

In other news, Boston Legal is on at 10 p.m. on Friday nights. HOLLAAAAA!!!!!

Anyhow I'm going to start looking at Costa Rica and Peru activities and lodging now, so time to stop this post. Hope everyone who's reading this is well. Bye for now!