It's Better in Wyoming.

Is this not the weirdest 'help wanted' ad you've ever seen? WANTED: Nurse for bsmnt apt. Must be single & willing to be on call evenings. Please contact 742-xxxx. Maybe it's not that weird, really. But it seems freaky deaky to me. If any nurses turn up missing in the next few weeks, though, I know where I'd look first.

So on the way back from the clinic yesterday morning I passed by the shuttle stop at the university apartments. The UW physical plant guys were there, cleaning out glass because somebody had smashed out 7 or 8 of the glass panels at the shelter. It's at moments like that that I wish I were a superhero. An avenger. A regulator. I'd bust the guy who did that in the kneecaps with a tire iron. Whack! Whack! This is a more serious offense than, say, running a yellow light. Personally, I'd like to bust those people in the front headlights (whack! whack!), but this is probably just a personal preference, no great transgression in the grand scheme. Breaking out the bus stop glass, though, that's not cool in anybody's book. Why people gotta be like that? I like that Willie Nelson guy. He sings: Grandpappy told my daddy: Back in my day, son, A man had to answer for all the wicked that he'd done. Take all the rope in Texas, find a tall oak tree Round up all of them bad boy...

I really don't have much to say but feel like I should check in on the ol' blog. So maybe I'll just start and see what comes out. This weekend I went to Pueblo for a conference of writing center tutors. A girl from CSU who is a social work student working in the WC there said that when she asks students a question and they respond with, "I dunno," her follow-up question is this: "Well, if you DID know, what would you say?" At church I like the windows. We're in the old auditorium of the old junior high school, and the arched windows are blocked out with some sort of paper or fabric, only the covering has come off several of the windows, giving the whole space the feeling of being shuttered, sunlight streaming in randomly, the sense that light will find its way, that all is not dark. And that a bulldozer may arrive at any moment to begin the demolition, too. I am really hating the grading thing right now. Maybe because it forces me to know what I...

So after Princess Buttercup learns that her true love Westley has been murdered by pirates, she says to herself, "I will never love again." Lately that's sort of what I've been feeling. In talking to a friend last night, I realized that attraction, and admiration, and respect, and trust, are not love. They are the foundations of love, but feeling all of those ways about another person does not mean that you will also feel love, or develop a feeling of love, for the other person. I guess this probably seems obvious to everyone but me. But maybe not: I wonder if lots of people don't go into marriage feeling respect and trust and admiration and attraction to a partner and expect some deeper attachment to develop based on those elements. And then they disconnect when they discover that those feelings are not enough to sustain the relationship. This is very weird to me. I don't think you have to feel 'love' immediately when you meet a person (not in the lov...

so the new nick cage flick 'ghost rider' was unexceptional. a couple of quotes from the film: "You can't live in fear" -- johnny blaze (the alter ego of the ghost rider) "Anybody who's got the guts to sell his soul for love has got the power to change the world." -- the caretaker (Sam Elliot's character) deep stuff, man.

So I admit a paradox. I found it totally unnewsworthy when Anna Nicole died. No, I take that back: I didn't find it totally unnewsworthy. Just not worthy of the HOURS of playtime that it's gotten since. The paradox is, I just spent 10 minutes looking for more pictures of Britney Spear's newest look, after reading on msn that she's emerged from rehab with a shaved head. Turns out, doing an image search for 'britney bald' will turn up other shaved parts too. What a surprise. I like the photos that use a biohazard warning icon to censor the, uh, naughty parts. Amazing what counts as news these days....

Hoo-wee! It's a windy one out there today. The plan for this evening was to get together with my friends Andy and Shanda from Rawlins, drive up to Cheyenne and meet my friend George from Sidney, eat some steak at the Outback, and then watch the UW club hockey team whup on Air Force at the Tace John's Center. Now it looks like we'll all just stay put: I-80's been closed from here to Cheyenne since this morning, and the wind's not much better between here and Rawlins. And Sidney got rain followed by snow, with lots of wind, which doesn't make for great travel weather. Also, I'm not sure Air Force will make the trip up; wind gusts up to 100 mph are expected along the Front Range. I think they should shoot meat-and-potato burritos out of a canon at the Taco John's Center, where they play the hockey games. Ole! Ole, ole, ole. Ole! Ole! Liz broke her nose after she passed out after getting sick from salmonella after eating the peanut butter from Walma...

So it's not actually the red lights that bother me. What I really want to rant about is yellow lights. Why people gotta run em? This is something I don't understand. Is it that they're just not paying attention, so that by the time they notice they just decide to keep on cruisin? Or is it some kind of lame-o thrill-seeking thing for people who aren't really thrill seekers? Or is it selfishness? Or hurriedness? I doubt that people are really in as big a hurry as they sometimes think they are. What are they rushing to, the computer so they can email their pals on myspace? Don't get me wrong--I understand that some people have real lives and real jobs. But they're not the ones who're running the yellow lights, typically. At least not in my town. In other news: more snow! The last three mornings I've awakened to find new dustings of snow covering the ground. By midday the snow has been melting off, but today it seems to be more persistent. We...

So I was up til 1:40 last night, grading a set of papers that I should've had graded a week ago so that I could return them at 8 this morning. I had carved out chunks of time to get the grading done--on Friday, on Sunday, on Monday morning--but nothing happened. It was as if the stack of papers simply didn't exist . Or, even worse, I completely knew that the papers existed , but that fact was of no consequence to how I chose to spend my time. Or, even worse yet, I chose to spend my time in direct opposition to what I had planned to use it for--in direct defiance of myself. I'm not typically a procrastinator of this sort. Typically I work my way slowly through a project, simultaneously accomplishing pieces of it while managing to remain burdened with an awareness of how much is still left to do. But lately, it's been different. Just putting things off, off, off, until finally I'm forced to cram them into the amount of time left for them. I've got a job app...

So I picked up the new bed from the furniture store yesterday. It replaces the twin I've been sleeping on. I admit that I wanted a bigger bed because I hope I'll eventually have somebody to share it with. But last night, it felt great to have the brand new bed and the brand new sheets all to myself, to stretch out and pull my down comforter up to my chin, to feel like I was sleeping on top of the world, wrapped in a cloud. A great way to end the day, a great way to start a new day. It's good to be king.

Tonight at the coffee shop I saw a girl who was in a class I student-taught at the high school here in Laramie, back in 2002. A Shakespeare class, when she was a junior I think. I didn't talk to her, but through her conversations I picked up on the fact that she's taking off tomorrow for San Diego. Apparently for an extended amount of time; obviously she was meeting with some friends to say goodbyes. Lots of hugging going on, a sense of parting. And I thought to myself, this could possibly be the first time she's really left Laramie. She grew up here, went to college here, now she's 22 or 23 probably, and maybe is the first time she's been away from what's familiar. And I wonder how sad she'll feel to be somewhere totally new, how much she'll miss those friends and those connections and all of her known world . Maybe I'm completely wrong--maybe she's spent lots of time away. But the way she was hugging her friends tonight, she looked like a girl...

So, I rode with my sister and her husband to Newcastle this weekend. I met them in Cheyenne, left my Honda at Little America, and jumped in their pickup for the 220 mile-or-so trek to Newcastle. At the gas station in Torrington I realized I had no keys in my pocket. This led to the resulting memory of jumping into the passenger side of my car, sticking the keys in the ignition to turn on the stereo and pull out a cd, and then locking the doors. Apparently without taking the keys out of the ignition or turning the ignition back from the 'accessory' position. Which led to the resulting conclusion that probably I'd be returning to Cheyenne not only to see keys dangling from the ignition but also to eventually be re-entering a car which likely had a drained battery. In completely unrelated news: Sarah and Joel's puppy is getting huge. He slept on Joel's lap on Saturday while we were having some tea, and after he woke up Joel said, "I think he just grew another inch...