Okay, so I was a bit brief with that last entry. I'd written more, but I lost it somehow, and I wasn't in the mood to go back and fix it. Summer up here is usually rather dry; semi-arid, acually. And with the dryness mixed with lightning storms (you know the kind that just flash a lot without much rain?) cause fires to break out all over the state. Sometimes there can be a large number going at once. The most recent one was touched off by someone's errant cigarette butt. The fire was burning around 70 miles south of where I live in Fairbanks, and hence the smoke in the air. Not so bad this time around, and there have been times, like two summers ago, with a huge fire that caused some serious smoke issues. People were wearing those masks and there were warnings about staying too long outdoors. So, that's life in the summer in the Great White North. Now, if I could only find some time to get out and shoot. I hope to upgrade to a DSLR, but finances won't quite allow it, and I don't expect a huge windfall anytime soon. And the meditative / reflective icon is rather appropos for where my life is right now. A transition into who knows what for sure, and of course, my birthday is two days away, and sometime I just wish to be able to skip a few of those. So, yeah, reflective. Well, I tend to be that kind of person anyway, but as Dave Matthews says in "Dancing Nancies", 'dark clouds may hound me sometimes, but I'll work it out....' And to quote Chuckie (Ben Affleck) from Good Will Hunting, 'And until that days comes, gentleman, keep your ear to the grindstone.'