Seattle was great: the Space Needle, hanging out a lot with Max, some market which despite being a tourist trap built around something that is itself a publicity stunt was still sort of fun and I got a nice t-shirt there, a couple nature walks along some rocky beaches, an impressive view of Mt. Rainier only seen by sheer luck on my way out of town, and a lot more. And now I'm home. Seeing Laura, Emily and Jill from UR was also great; it took a little planning but I met up with them for dinner tonight while Emily and Jill were in the state visiting Laura for the 4th.

This post will be very abbreviated, because I'm caught in a space between sleep deprivation (it happens when you leave Seattle at 10:30 p.m. and fly east...) and a time zone change. I'm functioning on at most five hours of sleep, and that's counting a nap in the car on the way home, but in Seattle right now it's not quite 9 p.m., so exactly how tired should I be?

Getting home was especially difficult, but it's like that saying "Any landing you can walk away from is a good one" - I made it to Burlington when I expected to and I didn't have to pay anything more than I had expected to, so despite a few frantic moments and computer glitches it all worked out. Details of the story to follow when I get around to it. Also a whole lot of philosophical musings - on Friday, stopping by a used book store with Carla, a copy of Microserfs jumped out at me - a book I'd read years ago in a library and always wanted to get, but never found/got around to it - and inspired a lot of Deep Thoughts. As it turned out, being sleep-deprived was the perfect state to read it in - not only is the book about programmers at a computer game startup company in the '90s so it's the normal mindset of the characters, but it made me a tiny bit depressed/grouchy, which in turn made me cynical enough to really think about and respond to all the weird ideas in the book.