As this posts, I'm sitting in the football stadium at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon watching my nephew's playoff game. Hopefully it's not raining and the game is going well.
(ETA - We Won)
Early this last week we had an unusual for us episode of heavy late-morning fog. I looked down on it from my 19th floor windows. Rebecca/Supergirl got photos from a different perspective.
Yesterday while my camera downloaded photos onto my computer for my post, my gaze wandered to the view out the windows. Right then Mount Rainier floated on a bed of fog while the low sun lit the snow patches on its peak and the varied patterns of cloud strata above cast different depths of shadows on themselves.
I reached for my camera. And I promptly came to the limit of the cable connecting it to my laptop.
With effort, I waited patiently for technology to run its course while my light changed subtly. I have seen, and sometimes missed, better skies for photographing. But I hadn't posted a sky photo for a while and I like them and think I take pretty good ones.
Obviously, the moment did not completely pass before the equipment finished the task I'd given it.
Thursday I ran into an enlarged version of this issue as my husband made some large updates and downloads and then backed up my laptop. He hadn't finished by the time I returned from an appointment. I wandered aimlessly around the living room for a few minutes. Every time I thought of something to do, it involved my computer. Check the stock markets, read some blogs, see what's on TV that night - none of these or other tasks/amusements could happen right then.
Finally I settled down with Twyla's book for a bit, then watched a TV show I'd recorded. The computer finished before I did. E-mail got checked and the world hadn't ended while I wasn't looking.
But I realized as I read Twyla on setting up routines to free your mind, that really I'd come up against an interruption of one of my routines. I get home from some task, I make tea, I do a couple things on my computer. Maybe I only have a few minutes or maybe I spend a while; either way, it's one of the routines that frame my day. Not having access to it disrupted my pattern.
Goodness knows, I have plenty of other things to occupy me. I may try to emphasize some of those things more and break this pattern myself. I'd like to get in more reading of books not just the computer, now that I have time to read something again. Not all routine frees your mind or is useful. Most doesn't and some isn't.
Still on the road. Here are photos I took from the ferry last Saturday - or maybe the one before.
