The new deck and railing are now officially complete. I put the finishing touches on the later this morning. Still remaining are some repairs to the siding of the sun porch. I will complete that work when Jeanine and I return from vacation. We leave this evening for 10 days in the Seattle/Vancouver area. The trip is anchored by a wedding next Sunday and we will use the opportunity to visit with friends and explore the outdoors of the great Northwest.

Kyle left this morning for NYC where he is meeting friends who will drive together to Toronto for a weekend music festival. To be young and fancy-free. Kyle completed his accounting internship in far less time than his boss expected. I like the fact that Kyle worked at full pace rather than drag out the assignment so he could earn more money. This particular internship was about the experience rather than the pay so it was a win-win outcome. Meanwhile, Jeanine returned from her writer’s retreat having done a lot of editing of her existing material but no new writing. It sounds like she had a very relaxing and enjoyable time.

Catching up at work today consumed the entire day and most of my evening leaving no time for photography. I made this image earlier in the week at the top of my 700 foot climb to the ridge over Avila Beach. I am pictured next to a cell phone tower building/graffiti canvas. Jeanine has been on a writer’s retreat in New Hampshire all week enjoying the solitude and recreational outlets of a friends lake house to work on finishing her memoir cookbook. It occurs to me as I complete this, my 5182nd post in as many days, that I have become something of a writer myself. Assuming an average of 200 words per post that makes a total of 1 million words. According to Amazon’s great Text Stats feature, the median length for all books is about 64,000 words. The figure was found through looking at a number of books’ text stats, until “Brave New World”‘s 64,531 word count landed in the exact center of all books–50% of books have fewer words and 50% of books have more words. This means that I should be reaching the end of my 16th book any day now. I think my father, the author of two books himself, would have been both impressed and amused by this statistic. I suspect it is true what they say though; even a monkey at a typewriter can produce a novel given enough time.