We Interrupt This Memoir Newsletter to Bring You Christmas

In which we wish each and every one of you a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year.

We flew from Seattle to San Jose on Saturday morning, December 24 to spend the holidays with my partner’s family in Salinas, Aptos, and the San Jose area, with family traveling in from Texas as well.

Seattle was a mess, but the ice had melted enough the past 10 hours after the storm for us to be able to catch a 6:00 am bus for the light rail. After all the cancelled flights, SeaTac was packed. But this was the first time we flew with our 4-year-old Dachshund, Herman. He was the same as a Disneyland FastPass. We bypassed all the long lines to be checked in, cut into the front of several lines, and made it through check in and security in record time.

Other than a little bit of turbulence at the beginning of the flight, nothing of note happened other than some juicy eavesdropping of the couple getting to know each other who sat behind us. We flew in over the coastline and saw the famous configurations of San Francisco Bay (though we missed seeing the Golden Gate Bridge from the air as we flew right over it) and Half-Moon Bay and Monterey Bay before making a sharp U-turn to land in San Jose.

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The weather is much milder here, a refreshing change that allows my cheeks to feel air without the pinch of cold. We met up with a school friend of my partner’s, introducing our dogs, as we walked through the trails of UC Santa Cruz. I had never been to UCSC and didn’t really know what it was like. It wasn’t what I envisioned, but it was beautiful, in the woods, with sweeping vistas from the north point of Monterey Bay to the hills south in Monterey. From campus, the bay looks like a narrow hairpin turn of water, though it’s a wide bay.

We walked along the bike trails. We saw a large banana slug and many many mushrooms, exciting since we have joined the Puget Sound Mycological Society. Because of the dry summer and fall, there have not been many mushrooms in the PNW. They’re all hiding down here in Santa Cruz!

We head back to Seattle early Wednesday morning to resume our adventures in the PNW. Stay tuned.

Thank you for your support. I resume querying after the first of the year and appreciate your support as I seek traditional publication for my memoir, My Own Private Waste Land. Please share this newsletter with anyone you can. If you can subscribe, it costs no more than a cup of coffee per month for two posts per week. Even if you opt for the free subscription, you can help me build audience for my memoir. I appreciate whatever you can do! Thank you thank you!

Happy Holidays everyone! Enjoy your time with friends and family. Stay warm. Let me know how your holidays are going in chat. What movies are you watching? What books are you reading? What music are you listening to or games are you playing? Let me know in the comments below or on the chat app.

As for me, I’ll . . .

Just keep writing!