We're all settled in to our new house, with the exception of a few errant boxes that are waiting for the carpet to be installed so we can move our dresser in, so we can unpack said boxes.

It's certainly finished enough for Carl to have a LAN party today. And yay, our cable and Internet got installed.

My job is still wonderful. I love getting paid to do things I would do for free. What other job do I know of that pays you to play with children in the pool all afternoon? I will miss it (and them) when the summer ends. The plan is to substitute teach in the fall, see how that goes, and if it works out, try for a Master's in Education.
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For the last week or so, without TV and the Net, I've been devouring books, which should help me on my 50 books in the year plan. I have finished There Are No Children Here, and am in the midst of Anne of Windy Poplars, which is the book that paralyzed me the last time I tried to read through the series.

My afternoons have consisted of sitting on my couch, looking out my picture window at cars going by and reading novels in the afternoon sunshine, or with the aid of some lamps in the evenings. It's been a fun change of pace, deeply peaceful.

Today I drove down my new favorite road, a bastion of rural life smack dab in the middle of what could be termed a city. Right behind an antique automobile, which made me wonder just how much God was trying to tell me to slow down.

Although I do miss the nightly barcrawls, I can't say that I'm not enjoying the slowed pace of domestic life. I wonder if life always goes in cycles like this, with the frenetic pace of the technological countered by the snail's pace of life without it. It's always been something I've enjoyed since my slow summers in the Southwest followed by the frenetic pace of being a social butterfly in the technological realm during the school year.

It seems as I grow up, that the retreats to the slow life are shorter and less frequent, and I am a bit disturbed by it. It seems like one should be able to extract oneself from the technology easily, but with it around, I find that I am drawn to it, like a moth to a porchlight. I daresay, though, that at least I recognize now that I occasionally need to retreat from the world. Last night, I saw a beautiful spider's web, complete with spider eating moth on our porch. It was gone this morning when I went to look for it, and I wonder if we sometimes miss the beauty in life by being in too much of a hurry to return to our fast-paced lives.

I've rambled enough, though, and now I'm going to go retreat from the den of technology (or what Carl calls "the basement") and retreat to my sanctuary upstairs. Goodnight, all :D