Finished War Against the Animals yesterday on the plane. A bit purple in places, but perhaps that was appropriate for its cast of gay men living in the small New York town of Stone Hollow. The author’s heavy reliance on adjectives sometimes popped me out of the story, something I kept having a difficult time getting into since the author seemed to expect that the reader would already have some knowledge of what it is to be young and gay and to hate and fear it.

But the book made the time on the plane pass, and that’s really all that matters. We ended up in an exit row, so for the first time in my life – leg room on a plane. The downside was that the arms between the seats didn’t lift out of the way, so napping was even more out of the question than usual. Maybe it’s the noise, the shaking, the seats or the endlessly recycled air, but I’m never able to sleep on planes.

First Impressions: someone has cranked up the saturation in the colors here. And after the muck of L.A. air, it seems I can see forever. Our hosts have promised that will be dark enough after sunset that I’ll be able to see the stars. Of course, that means the cloud cover must blow back out to sea. (Can you say that when you are on an island with an average diameter of approximately 40 miles, surrounded by 2500 miles of Pacific in every direction?)