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I want to write, but don't know what to write about. I'm too tired to sit up and use my pen and journal, so you're stuck with my stream of consciousness this time, dear reader.

This weekend I was on retreat with a few members of my new church, Bayou Blue. It was so, so good to meet a few people for real-- get to talk with them and know them a bit, actually learn their names. I got to hear some of their hurricane stories, some of their oil stories, and some of their good stories, too.

Something that hung with me all weekend was something Rev. Kris pointed out on our car ride up to Feliciana Retreat Center (which is on the border of Mississippi, but a different border than I drove in on), the juxtaposition of the large number of the people driving enormous pick up trucks for no real reason, with the disappearance of the wetlands thanks to the oil and gas industry there.

Also the juxtaposition of something called the Shrimp and Petroleum Festival that apparently just happened down south. Those things seem kind of mutually exclusive to me. I don't understand why you'd celebrate petroleum since it's destroying the wetlands and the seafood industry...

Anyway.

It was good to see the camp that I'll be spending quite a bit of time at in the next handful of weeks. It's a nice place, very peaceful with barely any phone reception, with pine trees and a lake. It's love bug season, which sounds nice, but is actually an enormous pain in the butt, as lightning bugs are mating which makes them all crazy and fly around in swarms and splatter all over the car windshield and get stuck in your hair and clothes. Obnoxious. Take your business elsewhere, fireflies.

But yes, it seems I'll be out of town a lot in the coming weeks. This week I'm spending two days down south for some talks. Pretty much every week I'll need to go south to do some of my work, and that will vary if it's for a day or few. There are a lot of people offering me places to stay when I do go, which is nice. They're even kind about my vegetarianism despite it not really lining up with the cultural norms here. I'm spending every weekend of October at a conference or retreat. Actually, I think that continues into the first weekend of November. A lot of really great, worthwhile things but a lot of time away. I am curious how that will play out on the intentional community part of the program. I am really thankful that my housemates are generally excited, encouraging and seemingly understanding about my work.

I had a good weekend and have lots of thoughts and ideas bouncing around in my brain, but as you can tell, they aren't particularly organized. I still feel the need to write some of them down.

Miscellaneous goals for this week

• Get a library card in New Orleans
• Study my new map of Louisiana (I'll explain how and why I got a free map when I am better rested)
• Learn more about the geography of Louisiana-- I plan to do this by following my Geography of New Jersey syllabus and researching accordingly, because I have no other ideas on how to stay focused and organized in my self-education
• Eat healthy. I discovered honey butter this weekend, which made me realize that even as a vegetarian, it might be really exceedingly easy to totally not watch what I eat while living in THE SOUTH.
• I would like to respectfully reneg on my previously mentioned goal of eating food that was cooked with meat, and replace it with, eating however the spirit moves me, but continuing to be a conscientious, educated eater as best I can be 
• take some pictures of my neighborhood to share!