I had the best time out west, bumming around Jackson Hole with one of my closest friends and her family, then checking out the rockin' SXSW festival in Austin with Stinger and my family! The new camera came in very handy, as I got fairly trigger-happy.

In Wyoming, we took a sleigh ride up a mountain, ate fabulous nouveau cowboy cuisine, snowmobiled into Yellowstone to see Old Faithful in the snow, and drank wine by the slopes while watching all the snowboarders fall down. It was awesome! If there's anything more fun that watching other people work hard, I don't know what it is. Since Stinger wasn't there to make me ski, I reveled in observing the travails of others. Petty, but true. We saw some gorgeous vistas, for example:We actually did manage to write some, since this was at least nominally a writing retreat. Not as much as I needed to, though, so I'm glad to be home, in my own office, where my two dogs are keeping me company as I go through the mountain of stuff that accumulated in my absense. More on Austin tomorrow!

Posted by Louisa Edwards at 1:51 PM