So this past weekend my brothers and I went up north (it's Up North in my head of course) to our family's cabin, which as I may have explained before is one of several cabins at a former resort that we share with our extended family.

For Matt and Josh that meant fishing; for me it meant mostly a lot of reading. In fact I spent a good chunk of Sunday reading inside because the weather was too dreary to justify leaving the cabin. I got a lot of reading and thinking done this weekend, for lack of shinier distractions.

(The best thing I read was Tim Powers' Three Days to Never, which I found a lot easier to read than his similar secret history–style fantasy Earthquake Weather. I think he may have sacrificed some of the latter book's idea density to achieve that, but I don't remember liking Earthquake Weather this much so maybe that's OK?

I also liked Signal to Noise, a sci-fi novel — supposedly "hyperpunk" but let's just ignore that label — about codes and communication in a world with virtual reality interfaces.)

I'm not sure how I feel about the cabin. I had a lot of fun there as a kid, and I know that probably-eventually I'll be really glad I have access to something like that, but then again it's a three hour drive for some reading and a fire, and I have a yard and a couch and as of last week I even have a firepit.

(Still haven't had a fire, maybe this weekend. I have all the supplies but so far I've been having trouble coordinating my friends, the rain, the wind, and my work schedule.)

It's nice to see my relatives and stay up late drinking with them, but as a general rule we don't seem to have many shared interests to talk about when we're not at the campfire cracking jokes. It can be relaxing to be up there, but then again sometimes it's not.

Monday was my brother Matt's birthday, one of only a couple birthdays I can remember without looking it up, so on our way back from the cabin that morning we stopped at my parents' place in B-town for a celebratory fish fry.

As usual I also grabbed a bunch of stuff my parents didn't want anymore: a hammock, a potato masher, an old-school egg beater, and a man-sized semi-circular orange fabric pushpin wall. Yes that. They're planning to have a huge garage sale this weekend and donate whatever is left over, so this was last call for salvage.