Water Water Everywhere

Ernesto is on his way to pay us a visit it seems. He's supposed to make landfall in the Carolinas last I heard and then scamper on up the coast. In any event, we will probably get a lot of much-needed rain, although as they say, perhaps we don't need it all at once. And it may delay my plans to drive up to the Cape this weekend. We'll see; I can smell salt in the air, which is unusual this far inland. Smells like the Cape now; only the sound of the foghorn is missing.

Here's some more ocean, from my progress on Whale Hunting. I've been enjoying stitching the water, and since it makes up a lot of the picture, I'm getting the majority of it out of the way before I take on the other details. I figure when I get thoroughly sick of stitching ocean, I can work on the blueberry bushes or the sailboat as a reward.

I took a break from stitching at lunch today to buy some vacation necessities: this new book, which once again is about a vacation gone wrong (I read a vacation-gone-wrong book on my last trip to the Cape, but the story was only middling, relying as it did on a man-eating plant for pity's sake--I hate it when a really good author (Stephen King comes to mind) relies on the supernatural to develop story when there's more than enough real-life horror to go around) and some CDs for the trip (the Beach Boys, the Doobies and a new Vivaldi recording among them).

There's lots of potential in the story of two couples, one with a child, vacationing in a cottage on Vancouver Island, watched by a local caretaker. There are professional and personal strains, and then someone goes missing... I love that it takes place on Vancouver Island, where we spent a very memorable vacation, amongst some of the most beautiful yet forbidding scenery I've ever laid eyes on. The hotel (the Wickaninnish Inn), is situated on the rocks directly on the Pacific Ocean; the waves crash against the base of the hotel, which I found disconcerting at night. For the same reason, I have never been able to figure out why people would find vacationing in huts on stilts set in the water in Fiji appealing. I find being surrounded by water frightening, personally. Anyway, on the west coast of Vancouver Island there are two kinds of signs on the beach, which say either "Don't turn your back on the ocean," or "Keep pets on a leash because of wildlife." Seems if the rogue waves don't get you, the bears and bobcats will. Of course, I couldn't wait, so I managed to forego my afternoon nap on the bus home, getting a start on the new book. I'll probably have it finished before I even leave Virginia.