Odysseys, strange and otherwise

I went golfing with my dad today and got a sunburn. There's also wildfires in the mountains around Vegas, so by the end of the round there was ash floating down around us out of the sky. The sunlight casts orange shadows. It really is an eerie feeling. Still, I enjoyed the day with my dad. I shot a 121. Not too good on the scorecard, but it felt good to get out there and spend time with Dad. Dad actually asked about me writing a novel, which is weird cause I hadn't really mentioned anything about a novel lately.

Jeff asked about the novel idea -- it's still a father looking for a son, but in this case it's the son who's lost -- that's why I called it a reverse odyssey. The war kind of comes to both of them at the same time, but I haven't worked all that out yet. Plus I haven't really written any of it. It's just floating around in my head a bit.

I would love to travel to the East. It may actually give me some settings for my novel idea, but I need money and time to do it. Korea and Japan still seem foreign, and they're probably the two most westernized countries in Asia. I'd also like to visit the Phillipines and some South Pacific islands. Someday I ought to just do it.

I liked Jeff's paradoxes in his comments. We do get to know people we know a little better if they are honest in their blogs. It does provide even a sense of community for people who share interests and common friends. Still, there's the measure of anonymity and impersonality in web exchanges -- people who hide themselves behind masks or pretend to be people they're not. Heck, I even wonder who people like JH and Protasius are on Jeff's blog. So far, I've figured out that Protasius is in Korea but is not Korean. That's about it. So much for my close-reading skills.

Oh, and in other news, I did find an interesting news source in Vegas! It's (surprise, surprise) Las Vegas Weekly. They had a good article on a plan to "revitalize" the neighborhood around UNLV, modeled on the area around ASU. It sounds like a good idea in some ways, but the article was cautious, and (displaying the author's opinion and a slight bias) argued that the planners ought to take into consideration what the change would do to the people who currently live in the neighborhood, who most likely would not be able to afford rent if rents really started to go up. Here's a link to it: "The Future of Midtown?".

I actually know the author of the article -- very smart guy, used to do entertainment news for the Sun when I was an intern there. No wonder it's good.

A couple more invites are going out today. Type to you more later!