%(&$(#! Taxes.

Drove to the top of Horse Ridge again yesterday, and this time walked in the other direction.  I tried to reach the end of Dry Canyon, but the slope above the very high cliffs got a little too steep for me and started to give me the willies.  When did I become such a wuss?

Anyway, it was a very pleasant walk, and I wrote my 2000 words, and all was good.  As I was walking along, I kept seeing flat stones.  I'm not sure if they are technically 'slate' but they had that look.  When I was halfway back, I came across a natural cairn that was just stacked with these stones.  I realized I was only 50 feet from the highway.  So I started carrying the rocks up to the fence and tossing them over.  Got about 30 of them.

Then walked back to the car and drove parallel to the deposit-point and loaded up the trunk.

Came home and made a very cool path in my garden.

I hope it is legal to take rocks from public land.  Gosh, I wouldn't want to take all of them.  I mean, what would hold everything up?  The trees might sink!  The cliffs might sag!  The sand might fall into a whirlpool!

I'm thinking about doing the same thing a few more times.

I've lost 16 pounds, but I was sweating profusely yesterday, so I'm figuring 2 of those pounds are water.  Plan to keep going with my diet for another couple of weeks.  I'm hoping to continue walking for the indefinite future.

My garden could be really cool if I just paid more attention to it.  Writing took over my life, but I'm also physically lazy, and maybe not the green thumb I'd like to be.  I think 'architecturally' when I garden, and the plants are part of the architecture.  I get so much done in just a few hours of gardening, that I realize I could really create something nice if I applied myself.

But I chose writing.  Writing, writing, writing.

Meanwhile, I can procrastinate on my taxes no longer.  Have an appointment with the accountant tomorrow morning.  I laid out all the paperwork last night (even that took a couple hours!).  I'm not quite so detail obsessive on my numbers as I once was.  For instance, while I have the daily totals on the register tapes and in my notebook, I've always written them in my Dome accounting book too.  I realized I don't really need to do that.  All that matters are the totals.  So I photo-copied the totals and put that in the notebook.  Saved a couple of hours, probably.

I'm hoping I can get my 2000 words in today, despite the taxes.  I'm going to head up to Horse Ridge again, but probably not try to grab any rocks.  I was pretty exhausted last night, and I need to save up some energy for taxes.

Fucking taxes.