Nostalgia is a powerful sensation. I woke up at 7:00 this morning in a strange bed. That’s not the nostalgia part, you silly reader you. My hour-long morning jaunt around the quiet golf resort provided me with waves upon waves of homesickness.

So where’s home, you ask? Good question. I grew up in the wilds of central Washington state. I couldn’t point to a particular town or location and say, “Here is what I think of when I say ‘home’,” but there is a collection of places that figure strongly in my memories of youth.

Somewhere on the other side of the Columbia river from here is the Lewis River campgrounds. At one point our family was involved in taking care of those grounds, and I have surpringly fond memories of the place. There’s also the Samish Island (really a peninsula) campgrounds. Apparently I spent a lot of quality time at church camping activities. Who knew?

The resort at which the retreat was held reminded me partly of Lewis River and partly of the Cascade foothills we frequented often when we lived near Brewster, WA. Everywhere you looked there were pine trees, cedar trees, hills and rocks and underbrush. I don’t miss my childhood, but I miss those places. I’m probably not smart or wise enough to resolve this apparent conundrum. Ah well.

The retreat ended after lunch, so Gary and I took off for the office. I wanted to get the Qualitap issue resolved at long last, and thankfully a fresh CD-ROM was waiting in my mail slot. With that completed and instructions emailed out to the relevant parties, I feel relatively safe in entering my vacation week.

I am home now. There are rugrats galore, two of which are even mine. Wendi and Bernie leave tomorrow morning. I’ll be babysitting one rugrat on weekdays, and then just Alex and Erica on the weekend. (Having them at home isn’t really babysitting. They’re not babies anymore.) I’ll probably check my work email occasionally, if only to prune the metric ton of spam I get every day. Other than that, I have no plans. I’m tied to the house for a week, so I should just try to make the best of it.