Thank you to everyone who gave me a warm welcome home. You are such good friends; your well wishes always make my day.
Being home again is an interesting experience, considering this has only been "home" for a little over a year now. What a feeling of "home" though. Oddly enough, knowing this place as home helped me feel more relaxed and happy visiting Los Angeles. The traffic jams did not annoy me in the least (and I drove in much traffic); the heat didn't get me down (in fact, it was cooler in LA than it was on the farm much of the time I was away); and the people did not seem so cranky after all.
Whatever LA was, whatever it had to offer, I knew I was only a visitor so I did not resist what I was experiencing and it was not bad at all. (My eyes did sting from the smog, but that is my only complaint.)
What you see in life, truly is dictated very much by what you project ... even when it doesn't seem to be so. I am much more in control of my life, my feelings, my joys or concerns, than I would have thought at times.
While I was in LA I stayed with my son at his home in Studio City, north of Ventura Blvd. I loved the feeling of that neighborhood because there were always people walking by, riding bikes, walking dogs, taking children to and from summer school. Happy, friendly people who often paused for a moment to smile, admire my son's adorably feisty English Bulldog, and say to hello. The work I was doing was very hard and stressful, but I loved the moments of decompression in his yard with the pooch seeing the happy, healthy people going by. Of course, the best decompression time were the evening times I spent just hanging out with my son.
When I returned home I found the hard drive on my computer had crashed. That was scary, but we managed to get it repaired. Now we are awaiting the arrival of two very large hard drives, one to replace this one that faltered (just to be safe) and one to use as an external hard drive for photo storage.
Between staying an extra few days in LA and coming home to a hard drive crash, I am now behind on blogging, writing emails, and coordinating the Pike's Peak Project. However, I will be emailing each of you over the next couple of days ("you" being those readers who have left comments over the past couple of weeks and have received no reply as of yet).
Meanwhile, here is an update on the Pike's Peak project:
So far, 
I have posted a page with links (where they are available) to those who will be writing "From Sea to Shining Sea" posts on July 4th. Each writer should send me the actual address of the specific post for their "From Sea to Shining Sea" post, so that others who direct people to their pages will send readers to that specific post.
The Pike's Peak page will remain a permanent page on my blog, so if you write for the project you should get some traffic over time to your blog from mine in addition to the traffic generated from other writers in the project.
I have made a logo for the project as well; if you would be so kind as to display the logo on your blog in order to direct others to the project I would appreciate it very much. I'd like to get as many states represented by this 4th of July holiday as possible. Beyond that, I would like people to continue joining in the tribute after the holiday has passed. So, spread the word if you would.
Knitting News: I will be posting two patterns later this week for very cute little scarves that would be enjoyable summer projects in preparation for winter gifts. I am in the midst of knitting a pair of socks of my own design, titled "fireflies" appropriately enough. Photos will be posted later in the week.
A note about today's photographs: they are not my work. Here are some photo credits in the order the shots appear:
- Pike's Peak Panoramic View: Chris Hutchison
- Pike's Peak with rock formations in foreground: Steve Krull
- Beautiful view from Pike's Peak: Lange Photography
- Summit at Pike's Peak: Gary Hampton