Cisco

These days, the currents of life seem to be passing me by faster than usual. Or is that slower? I'm not sure. All I know is that I've lost the ability to tell. Recently I've been looking back to the beginning of my weeks and thinking "Really? That was just monday, was it?"

I took up work as a misc office worker for DSA for roughly 4 days. That was fun. Got some files in order, managed to accomplish some feats that I thought might have required greater skills with computers than I possessed. I'll be back at work doing that again soon enough, no doubt but meanwhile greater duties come first!

At the last minute, against all the rules, I had the gaping hole in my jaw filled by a dentist and followed my parents to nantucket like the dutiful son that I am. To help with the manual labor and stuff, you know. The sort of thing a son can't get out of.

I left for Nantucket about a week ago, and I've been here about 5 days now. It's been grand. I've been kayaking, and really enjoying it. Every day until today, come to think of it. There's something wonderous about traveling in such a fragile, but mobile manner over the water. And drifting on a pond is really a different experience when you're literally drifting just a matter of inches over it. It's more interaction.

I saw seals in the ocean the other day. I've never seen seals swimming in the wild before - didn't even know there WERE seals on nantucket. But there they were, right out in the tide, so close in we could easily have been swimming with them.

When my father first spotted one, I thought it was a person. A seal head bobbing up and down looks remarkably like a persons head, and I was all getting concerned until I noticed several more heads. Then I assumed it was several people swimming together, and I was relieved, when actually it was a great number of seal swimming together. The most I counted at one time were 8, but I'm sure there were at least 10, I just couldn't count them together because they were always diving and never together.

They were so close. So incredibly close, much closer than any dolphin I've ever spotted. In fact, I don't think they could have gotten any closer without the waves smashing them on shore. I'm quite certain they were staring at us too. Actually they followed us down the shore after we lost interest in them (or lost interest in standing there staring at them in the wind), and it seemed to me that they would edge closer when they thought we weren't paying such close attention to them. It was... really quite an experience, and an entirely unexpected one.

So that's where I am now folks. Kayaking, enjoying the company of family, seal watching, and actually managing to be vaguely productive too if you can believe it. Hope everyone out there is doing so well.

Long days and pleasant nights,
allan