Survivor Journals

Bob of If I Die Before I Wake has invited nine journallers to participate in a Cyber Survivor Adventure.

Every couple of weeks, the group will be issued a "challenge entry". The site will post a excerpt from the challenge entries, as well as the link to the complete entry found on the journaller's own journal site.

After the challenge entry is posted, the nine journallers will vote one of the writers off the site.

The "ousted" journaller will actually remain on the site, but rather than posting further challenge entries, they will act as a judge and commentator.

The first challenge entry has been issued, and can be found at the Survivor Journal website. The actual entries should be completed by
October 1, 2000.

Please take the time to visit, especially once the challenge entries are posted. There is a message board to post your thoughts/comments and also a instant poll where visitors can vote for who they would want to see kicked off the site.

The reasons behind Survivor Journals are simple.

1. To try something new.
2. Increase the interaction of the journal community.
3. The challenge.
4. Increased exposure to all journals involved.

So take a look around, explore all the journals involved.

If you would like to take part in Survivor Journals, Year Two (around Nov/Dec 2000), let Bob know!

Diet Week #12

Goal :
lose 100 lbs.

Immediate goal:
the next 10 lbs.

Lost to date:
18 lbs
this number updates
on Tuesdays --

THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME

October 5, 2000

We are home. It was a long day, but we finally arrived here at 8 p.m., missing the opportunity to go to the San Francisco Symphony by about 3 hours. Fortunately I had foreseen that this might be a problem and so had arranged for a friend to take my ticket. With that accomplished, I was free to take my time and not push it too much heading home.

I actually slept all right last night, but for some reason, all I had to do was get behind the wheel of the car and Peggy was asking me if I was OK to drive even before we got on the freeway. Maybe it was because I decided not to make a pot of coffee first and so was flying caffeine-less.

But whatever, as we approached Solvang, less than an hour up the road, I decided it might be a kewl place to stop for a coffee break. As it turned out, it was one of Peggy’s most expensive cups of coffee. Solvang is a little Danish village stuck out in the middle of nowhere and a favorite of tourist buses. It offers a little bit of everything--mostly Danish crafts, but also things from Europe, Indian art, and the usual tsatskes that you find in souvenir shops.

We started off with coffee and a bear claw at Solvang’s most popular bakery (or so the sign said ). Both were excellent. While I was finishing up my coffee, Peggy went off "for a minute" to check a store. Half an hour later she was back with some GSP stuff ("German short hair pointer") and a lead on another store which might have more of same. We traipsed down to that store, did indeed find more GSP stuff, bought that, and then made a significant dent in a store that features Indian crafts. Oh yeah--we also checked out the sale at the Izod store and Peggy took advantage of the slashed prices.

We finally got on the road again, though it was by now nearly lunchtime. But we set the CD player to cranking and cruised up the road to Lawsuit music (Peggy hadn’t heard the band before; she probably won’t again either), and then lots of John Denver which got us as far as the Harris Ranch, where we bought some steaks to bring home, and picked up some snacks for "lunch." We sat outside by a fountain and ate muffins and drank coffee. Peggy informed me she’d bought more snacks which she would dole out at appropriate intervals if she felt I was getting too sleepy.

Many miles and many potato chips later, we finally turned our wheels from I-5 onto I-80 with the next stop Davis. Kimba was very pleased to see us and Walt was in San Francisco.

as the sun sets slowly in the west,
the intrepid adventurers wend
their weary way home.

The car got unpacked, the telephone messages listened to, and then we sat on the patio reminiscing about the week and marveling that we’ve now been together for almost all waking hours for nearly 3 weeks now and we are still friends, we are still laughing, and nobody has had any short temper at all. Given that we are now at the halfway point of this trip, we figure this is a pretty positive thing.

Finally Peggy went off to bed and I turned on the computer and picked up my 70 e-mail messages and started to ease back into "normal." I promised the psychologist that I’d fax him a report tonight so he’d have it first thing in the morning--and around midnight when I went to do that, discovered I hadn’t typed it yet.

So I’m back to normal with a bang and though I intended to be in bed and sleeping soundly by now, it looks like I’ll be transcribing again for the next hour.

But at least there was good news, hearing that I haven’t been voted off Survivor Island because of my Challenge 1 entry. That was good to hear--I’d hate to have been the first to go!

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