It's Better in Wyoming.

--I think it's about time for new running shoes. I've been playing basketball in them the past few weeks and I'm out of cushion. --It snowed about 4 inches here last night. For the record. --Looks like I'll be rooming with Kaijsa next year. We looked at some places this weekend and found a cool three bedroom house just a couple blocks further away than where I am now. It's quite a bit more expensive than where I am now, but it's a nice place, and I'll still be able to put some decent money away while I figure out whether I'm gonna stay in Laramie or take on something new. Plus, the place is huge (three bedrooms plus a den and a sun room), and it has a garage, which means space for a motorcycle and for woodworking projects. It oughtta be big enough that we don't get on each other's nerves.

Yesterday I threw on some shorts and dragged my bike out of the basement and filled the tires and went out for a ride on the greenbelt path. It was a bit chilly and windy, but it felt like spring. Then, last night, we got a skiff of new snow, just enough to remind me that it's still winter in Wyoming. And by Saturday the high is supposed to be 52. Springtime in Laramie! I'm excited for some new life. The Easter Bunny (me) brought me some new gardening tools, and I'm hoping to get over to the Cheyenne botanical gardens to see if I can talk them out of some composting worms once the weather is a bit more predictable. Springtime in Laramie!

My apologies to the driver of the Subaru on the cloverleaf interchange at Highway 34 and I-25 on Friday. I don't know what happened to me on my way to Greeley. It was a pretty good trip until I almost missed the off-ramp waiting for the Subaru and another guy behind him to merge into my lane so I could get my exit. I slowed down; they slowed down. So I gassed it and cut the guy off, skidded around the curve, lost traction there for a second, then got it straightened out for the last stretch of the trip to my sister's for Greeley. In related news, the rest of my visit to Greeley was great. I've got such a nice family. The Easter bunny brought me some new garden tools. The weather was mostly nice. I got to watch Revenge of the Sith. And eat ham and play UNO. And see signs of spring, which are mostly absent in Laramie. Overall, a great trip, except for those few seconds of stupidity.

Hooker hips put more glide in your stride. That's what I learned last night at Brett's birthday party. Today I tested the claim and can confirm that it has some merit. Cass told me about the technique; she had learned it from an instructor at the skiing class she and Brett took this spring. It's funny that somebody can say to you at a party, "Hooker hips really helped me get better on the trails," and without much more discussion you can get up the next morning and put the technique to the test. It's less funny that I can spend several class periods talking to students about the need to establish a context for their writing and wake up this morning to read a bunch of drafts that seem to indicate that I've been speaking German or piglatin or Mesopotamian during class time lately. There must be some equivalent to hooker hips that will make everything fall into place for them. I just have a hard time, lately, of talking to people in their own language.

What goes around, comes around. Walking back from town the other night, I realized that it's great to be able to return the generosity of others. It makes me understand how hard it is to be social when there's no money to reciprocate; lately I've felt like I have been able to afford to keep up. Maybe it's not the best way to spend money (I could be donating to the 'save the tree octopus' charity, after all), but it's nice to feel like buying a round for the group, without having to keep track of who's 'turn' it is, is manageable. I think it's part of a bigger change, a shift away from 'what's in it for me' mentality to a better understanding of the ways that we all depend on and support our network of friends. I hope that's what it means. In other, unrelated, news: Lars and the Real Girl was a good, good show. One of the best in recent memory. A show bitter and sweet and sharp and well crafted. A good quote: "You

St. Patty's Day is a festive celebration. People look pretty good in green, overall, I think. Even those five or six individuals who came jogging through the Library Bar in green aprons. Just green aprons. Well, and shoes. Rebekah and I went out for reubens, then I caught up with Kaijsa and Peter and Cass and Tawnya and Gena at the Library for more green beer, and then I watched Mr. Woodcock. It was surprisingly better than I'd expected. Infinity times better than 10000 BC, for sure.

If you were thinking about seeing 10000 B.C., skip it. No, really. It's so bad that it's not even remarkably bad. It's so bad that it's not even funny. Well, except the part about the arrival of the prophesied hunter: "You speak to the spear-tooth?" And the dude with the nasty long fingernails covered in gold foil. That's it--those are really, really the only two parts of the movie that are memorably bad--the rest is just like low-grade headache: not really troublesome, hardly worth your awareness, just sort of present. No throbbing, stabbing aching pains, weird vertigo-ness--nothing to make you think of it later at all. But not enjoyable or worthwhile, either. A blight on your day. Looking forward, though, I think spring break has promise. Drinks tonight, maybe some dancing or bowling, skiing in the morning, and an opportunity to catch up some school work. An invitation to see the bluegrass band Long Road Home in Cheyenne tomorrow night, which

I like it when people share their musical tastes with me. I like a lot of stuff, but I have a tendency to fall into ruts, the old standbys. It's nice to be pushed beyond those boundaries, to hear a fresh voice or note. Where'd you hide the body? Where'd you stash the loot? Keep your hands where I can see 'em So I don't have to shoot. Hearing some of this music also makes me wish a for a dance floor--it's got the right beat for a two-step. Well I wisht I was in Austin in a chilly parlor bar drinking mad dog margaritas and not carin 'where you are But here I sit in Dublin, just rolling cigarettes and holding back and choking back the shakes with every breath So forgive me all my anger, and forgive me all my faults There's no need to forgive me for thinking what I thought I loved you from the get-go, and I'll love you till you die I loved you on the Spanish steps the day you said good-bye. Achingly good stuff.

Chalk is the movie I watched tonight. It's a faux documentary of the lives of high school teachers. I thought it was surprisingly good, capturing both the highs and the lows of what trying to be a good teacher feels like. It reminds me of those days, those battles to engage resistant students, the humility of having one's sense of maturity and knowledge tested by a sixteen-year-old telling you to shove it up your ass, the reward of finding a way to connect across what sometimes feels like an unbridgeable gulf. It makes me both think I could never go back to that world, and wonder how I ever could've left. The word 'ache' means something to me lately--I find myself using that word to describe a lot of the things I've been feeling. Maybe it means that I'm getting some sensation back, somewhere, that's been numb for too long. My friend Rebekah burned a cd of her music for me, and the tone matches my soul these days. A tone that manages to be mour

I'm watching that Seinfeld episode where George offers up "Seven" as a baby name and gets laughed at, and then somebody steals the name. I don't know why people laugh when I tell them that "Celery" is a perfectly beautiful girl's name. Really--it's a nice name. Maybe if you spelled it wrong--Selery, or Celrey, or Celerie--people wouldn't even associate it with stalky green vegetables. I'm not really a fan of spelling names creatively, though. I mean, maybe I'd care if I had a common name--maybe it would allow me to feel more unique. Maybe I'd want it to be spelled Jonn or Jahn or Jhon so that I didn't feel like just another john. Maybe not. I get annoyed when people can't spell Fisher right, so I don't know what I'd do if there were 13 different ways to spell my first name. Walter and Stanley are perfectly fine names, too.

This afternoon started much like yesterday: standing in a long line. I decided that my leg is too damaged for a ski trip today, so I'm taking it easy and hoping to heal it by the time the Sunday pick-up game rolls around. Hearing that the Obama rally would offer much more seating than the Slick Willy event yesterday, I decided to take my chances on another wait in the cold. Kaijsa and I started nearly twice as far back in the line (and Cass stayed home to recover from yesterday's unsuccessful foray in the cold), but the event was so much better planned that we made up that distance in virtually no time and were seated in section B, about 20 rows up. Aside from some minor shenanigans in getting seated, things went smoothly. But even before that, the weather seemed to bode well. In the place of slicing cold wind was a nearly warm sun. An auspicious breeze to blow us to our places inside. Then, the rally. It was good. Our man Obama made a joke about the Secret Service conf

So, I'm relatively apolitical, but that's been changing now for a while. And I was sort of excited about the prospect of seeing Bill Clinton stump for Hillary tonight at UW's Multipurpose Gym. Kaijsa and Cass got in line around a quarter to 4, and I caught up to them about 20 minutes later. There might've been 300 people ahead of us in line. Slowly--painfully, brutally, slowly--we made our way towards the doors. The line wound around the law school to the corner of Willett (our starting point), then down Willett all the way to 22nd. I wished for an ice-cream truck to come by so I could warm my hands on a frozen fudgesicle--it was a perfectly windy Wyoming day, clear and bright and sharp like mountain stream water. Brrr. Finally we got inside the doors: only 60 feet stood between us and entry to the big event. Then, 40 feet. Then just 20 people or so. And then the doors closed, after we'd been standing out in the fuggin' cold for an hour freezing off our

So somebody got ahold of a giant roll of newsprint paper in the last few days and wrote a giant banner to unroll at the Cowgirls game tonight--their last home game of the season. As best I can remember, it said: "Thanks Jody Dom Hannah and U-stena [our graduating senior girls]. Coach Joe and supporting staff--thanks for the memories. Best of luck." I think there were one or two more SENTENCES included on the banner. It spanned three or four sections of the arena--it was at least 75 people long, I'll say. It was cool. Really cool--especially in an age of text messaging, where people can hardly be troubled to write one complete WORD, let alone a string of coherent sentences. Then, after it was completely unrolled, it made its way all the way around the arena. Of course it started to come apart, but come on--how cool is that? Damn cool! Judgment: two thumbs up. In other, less cool news that I've been meaning to write about for several days now: Bollywood night

The title of this post may be somewhat misleading. But there are days when I feel like I've learned something about relationships and the way that other people think and how to be less of a jackass. But I'm pretty sure that if I start to feel like I know something I'll just get laid flat, blindsided by something I haven't yet figured out. I wonder how cautious one should be. I do realize that my level of disengagement might be somewhat unproductive, but I also think it's a self-preservative instinct that I'm grateful for. I just wonder how to move myself beyond that wall. Maybe it will just happen when the right person comes along.