It's Better in Wyoming.

I'm a big fan of the serenity prayer. But it leaves out "patience." God grant me the patience to just accept the mess I've made for a few more days until this project is over. I can't wait to get my house back. The bathroom makeover has gone remarkably well, but the mess sets me on edge. Every space in my house is doing double-duty--today I cut trim in the living room, used the kitchen island for getting paint ready, and set the new vanity sink on my bed so I could fit the new p-trap. I don't consider myself an especially tidy person, but this project has required me to be okay with a level of dirty and scattered-out-ness that is not okay for me. It's an odd realization, actually. I don't mind projects when they can be contained; but this one has spilled out into too much other time and space to be comfortable. If all goes well, though, I'll be able to start moving back into "normal" mode by the 1st. Here's one view of the mes

Earlier today, before starting in on bathroom remodeling for the day, I finished The Giant's House. Julie had loaned me her copy, which I then lost. So I got a replacement copy, and of course then promptly found the one she'd lent me. In any case, it's a book worth passing on, so now I can get her copy back to her and pass on the other copy. Win! Win! Here's a passage from the book that I like: I never felt jealous at weddings. I longed for love, yes, but I never saw that love was in greater supply at weddings than in butcher shops or department stores. The sight of a couple furtively holding hands beneath a restaurant table was more likely to remind me of the hopelessness of my life than any number of ladies dressed in giant christening gowns reciting words to become joined to a man in a rented suit. I do not like public ceremony, not graduations, not weddings, not pep rallies, nor church. Perhaps I simply do not understand trying to share one emotion (love rel

For the record, bulk quinoa should be well rinsed before cooking. Had I not had coffee with Sarah yesterday, I might have overlooked this important step and ended up with bitter Christmas Eve dinner. Instead, a masterpiece. Quinoa with sausage and kale 6-8 kale leaves, chopped 12 oz sausage (I would've preferred a local pig, but instead ended up with a tube of 50%-less-fat stuff from the supermarket) 1 cup quinoa 2 cloves garlic 2 dashes caraway 2 dashes cumin 1 dash coriander 1 dash chili powder 1 tsp. coarse ground mustard 1 splash Worcestershire sauce 2 splashes red wine 3 splashes rice vinegar Step 1. Soak and rinse the quinoa. Soak for 15 minutes or so. If you have processed stuff, you may not need to rinse it. If you've got a sieve, use it. I improvised with a plastic container and a flat spatula. Step 2. Start the sausage and garlic in a frying pan, medium heat. Step 3. After rinsing the quinoa, start it a pot. Use about twice as much water as quinoa. Simmer i

I like the idea of flash mobs. In this video, I especially like watching the reaction of the people walking through the station. In general, I think that all of us get sort of used to our lives, the expectedness of the routine, and a flash mob seems like a way to shake us out of that unthinkingness. There's something about the balance between "planned" and "spontaneous" that works differently than, say, a scheduled performance on a set of risers off in some corner of a mall or train station or street corner. Those types of performances are on the side, something apart from where we are, things that may also be beautiful and harmonious but that don't require our notice. Seems like a flash mob changes that, maybe because it's performed by people who seem like us--people who aren't separated by a velvet rope or matching candy-cane striped sweaters or whatever. I like the way, too that the group disperses randomly after the event—the sense that

An article in The Atlantic about Einstein provides this 1921 NYT headline, which ran after astronomical observations lent support to his theory of relativity: "Stars Not Where They Seemed to Be or Were Calculated to Be, but Nobody Need Worry" I love it, maybe because it manages to captures one of the lessons I've learned over the past few years.

It's sort of exciting (and relatively rare) for me to find three different frames that I like. Now the hard part is narrowing it down to one. After having asked a couple of the staff at the eye doctor's, my roommate, and Stephanie, an early leader is emerging. But I'm open to other feedback..... Option 1 Option 2 Option 3 Comments?

two years ago I brought home a wonderful poodle painting. it was a white elephant gift from the best christmas party in town. originally i'd selected an amazing large-print, noteb00k-page-sized TV remote, which was stolen from me in exchange for the poodle. i was, at first, disappointed about the forced swap (really, who prefers poodles over remote control of the television?), but over time i grew to love the painting--so much so that I couldn't stand to regift it last year--or this year, either. so instead i boxed up some randomness (owl potholders, spare change, etc.), and ended up with Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass AND "Background Music: Songs for Harmonizing" on vinyl. Yes, that's right: 45 rpm goodness. Since I don't have a record player, the albums will have to compete for wall space with the poodle. In related news: if the bathroom remodel goes well, the poodle will likely lose its noble position next to the medicine cabinet. i imagine that my

in my attempt to keep the crawlspace warm, i stopped by the plumbing shop this afternoon for advice. a couple of choices: insulate the space better, use heat tape, and/or put in a space heater. I opted for the first choice, and followed through by screwing 2" styrofoam blue board to the single-pane door into the crawlspace. according to the thermometer so far tonight, this step doesn't seem to have been all that effective. current temp in the crawlspace: 37.4 degrees. tomorrow may be space-heater shopping day. in related news, my very favorite piece of technology right now is my down comforter. most nights i choose not to turn on the electric heat in my room because the cold air acts as a nice counter to the incredibly warm envelope of downy goodness. when i finally turn off the light for the night, i smile at the genuinely enjoyable experience of falling asleep.

i find it incredibly easy to find great christmas presents. for myself. thinking of the other important people in my life is somewhat harder. yesterday i took advantage of ace's powertool sale and bought a dewalt 4 1/2" grinder. i'm counting this as a christmas present to me, even though the argument could be made that it's very quickly going to become necessary equipment. now i'm looking at the avett bros. april concert tickets, trying to decide if my bank account can stand to take another hit. i've got a birthday coming in january, i guess. hope the show doesn't sell out before my paycheck comes in... in other news, the remote thermometer reading in the crawlspace says 36.5. think i'd better check it later tonight. maybe leave the kitchen faucet on a trickle.

The temperature in the crawl space/root cellar/dugout basement/torture chamber underneath the house has been holding at about 37 degrees over the past two days. I'm sure the house is losing some heat through the floor, and I'm hoping that the space is sealed enough to maintain that temperature. Given that the pipes don't seem all that new, I'm guessing that the inter-relationships between pipes, heater, ground, etc. must have created a non-freezing system in the past. Perhaps I should be proactive and buy a space heater. Tomorrow: single-digit highs.

If you knew you going to die soon, would it change the way you spend the time remaining? That's the central question of "Happy People," which I watched tonight with my friend Sue, and I think the movie answers by suggesting, basically, that habits die hard. I ultimately liked the movie, but found it pretty depressing. It's nice to hope that, confronted with the end of it all, we'd make kind, wise, generous, thoughtful choices. Or maybe it just seems like there should be more people around, every day, who make those kinds of choices.

Sidelined at the soccer game, with my gimpy arm in its brace, watching our team get soundly defeated, I had forty minutes to think about what I'm not. For example, I'm not a really talented soccer player, and even with twenty years' more practice I wouldn't be good as some of the guys out there who are twenty (or thirty) years older than me now. Nobody is going to ever see me as the lynch pin of the team--the stable force who manages to keep them in the game. Nobody is ever going to recruit me to the team for my athletic prowess. I'll never have the beauty of movement, the soft touch, the graceful assist. And I'll never be recruited for my ability to cheer up the team, rally them for that last effort, make up some cheer-full cheer to make everybody smile. It's odd: finally realizing what I am good at in this life also forces me to see all of the things that I'm not good at. Part of me is pretty okay with that realization, but another part of me wi

lately, it's much easier just to love things that can't love back. i love pizza. i love the music of the avetts . i love clear nights like tonight. i love clementines in season. i love my new flask, especially filled with some high-octane warmth for the approaching cross-country ski season. i love cross-country ski season. and i love the concept of love. it's just that the application of it in situations where it might be returned (or denied) that's confusing and frustrating. ah, well. maybe 2010 will be my year.

I like tea and have been out of black tea for a while but finally got a box of Bigelow Earl Grey at the store tonight. Avetts in Boulder April 20 and 21, 2010. That's a Tuesday and Wednesday night; I'm trying to decide which makes more sense with my spring schedule. I'm really gonna have to push myself to get up in the spring. I'm set to teach at noon and 3. Without some self-control, I'll be sleeping til 10 every day. Lately I've been sleeping til 10 on my off days. Of course, I fully endorse my decision to stay up til 3 am to finish The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo over the long turkeyday weekend. The long turkeyday weekend was, all in all, a pretty good one. I had a nice, long-way-around trip through Casper and Upton, got in a short visit with my dad and Susan and my grandma, ate punkin pie, dropped flowers off at grandma's on the way out of town Friday, did some bathroom-remodel reconnaissance at Home Depot, and caught up on grading yesterday and toda

Below, a picture of the City of Laramie 2nd Annual Turkey Curling Championships winning team, Tastes Like Chicken. Oh, yeah. In related news, I just got the callback from the clinic. Turns out, there is a fracture. They say: if I can get in to Gem City tomorrow, I should do that; otherwise I should get an appointment for next Monday. Gosh, that seems like a pretty long wait time, but alright. As long as I don't fall on the ice between now and then I think I'll feel alright. In unrelated news, I want to play Super Mario. On the walk home tonight I got the music to World 1.2 in my head and was struck by overwhelming desire to jump on some mushrooms and throw fireballs. This rarely happens to me.

Today I competed on my friend Katie's turkey curling team. Our team name: Tastes Like Chickens. Our team name if it hadn't been a "family" event: Tastes Like Chicken, Bitches!. After seven loooooooong hours of pushing turkeys-on-a-platter from one end of the ice to the other, Tastes Like Chicken took home the pro-wrestlingesque championship belt home. (It has an image of a turkey getting its head cut off on it, oh yeah!) I also brought home with me a sprained elbow, sustained during a fall during the last match. At least, I hope it's only a sprain. If it's broken, I'll have to make up a story about how I broke it. No way am I gonna say, "I broke my arm when I was brooming for a turkey curling tournament." As if I wasn't a big enough dork already.

I started in on the bathroom remodel project today. I'm not sure how it's gonna turn out, but I'm optimistic. Today I scraped paint and pulled up a couple different layers of old flooring. Then learned from the tile store that I coulda just left the flooring down. All that work on the floor basically gets me about a quarter inch closer to flush with the hardwood floors--not worth the effort, really. But I'm interested to see if any problems emerge now that I'm back down to the basics in a couple of areas. Here's about where things stand after six hours of work today:

i'm happy that the eye doctor manages to provide such good correction for my bad eyes. the process of getting my eyes dilated lets me experience what it would be like to see but not well enough to read. i don't like the feeling. i envy those people who can see the very bottom line of the chart. in my next life, i'd like to be far-sighted. that's definitely not a trait that describes the life i currently lead.

this weekend: fatty patty. instead of a patty, onions, and cheese between two pieces of toast, it's a patty, onions, and cheese between two grilled cheese sandwiches. so delicious. even more delicious when eaten with good friends. 0-3, 3-on-3. paul, chris, joe, and i didn't bring home the 3-on-3 tournament trophy on saturday, but we had good fun. as with soccer, it's great to play competitive games with people who love playing but not so much that they become aggressive a-holes. twenty bucks. my winning silent-auction bid for four courtside cowgirls tickets. yesssss. stanley. i've been wanting a flask, and the sight of a stanley brand flask, with their recognizable green finish, was reason enough for me to now look forward to all kinds of 8 oz. opportunities in the chilly weather. down. i've said it before, but a down vest is an amazing piece of technology, quite warm enough for my walk down to coal creek this morning to finish my grading and for my walk th

Kale with raisins and caraway One bunch of kale A teaspoon of caraway seeds A dash of cardamom One snack box of raisins Garlic Salt A quarter cup of water Put in a pot and cook it down. Then eat it up.

The fall indoor soccer league starts at 9:25. Well, that's the start time for our team's game--we drew the late slot tonight. Having not played soccer since the outdoor league ended in July, I'm not sure how ready I am to kick it for a solid forty minutes. I predict some soreness tomorrow. I think I'll skip out on Thursday's game and focus on trying to be recovered enough by Saturday to be mobile for the city 3-on-3 basketball tournament. In other news, the flight deals were too good to pass up. Looks like a trip to Phoenix is now part of my Christmas break plan.

For such a relatively low-key weekend, it's been great. Friday night, the Cowgirls were victorious in their second home exhibition game. They're showing some promise. CSU-Pueblo Thunderwolves' defense was a bit quicker than Adams State's girls were on Monday, so the Cowgirls got some good practic in. They still have to figure out a workable offense against the zone, but it looks like they've got the potential for some good team chemistry. Saturday night the Cowgirls volleyball team also won, against Air Force. But before that, I spent the day on a new storage solution, for hats and gloves and bike helmet and such, to go in the entry. I had been just sort of stacking all of this stuff on top of the coat hooks. But now I've got these not-quite-Sundance-catalog-worthy cubbies: (Total price, about 16 bucks, including that ultra fancy boot tub underneath, which came from Kmart at the low-low price of $4.99.) Also on Saturday afternoon I spent some time in the ya

I'm looking forward to the end of my 'gluten-free' test period. I'll be happy to binge on wheat-filled donuts and barley-rich PBRs and rye-liciousness. Cinnamon rolls and pancakes and chicken-cherry sandwiches. Kit-Kat bars. Spaghetti. In the meantime, though, I've appreciated the creativity that going gluten-free has required for these past few months. I won't claim that my green-chili pizza tonight was as good as the Beartree's version is, but I did alright. Here's my ultra fancy recipe. Gluten-free green-chili chicken pizza 1 Uncle Bob's Redmill GF pizza crust mix (plus: 2 eggs, 2 Tbsp olive oil, water, and the included yeast packet) 1 chicken breast 1-2 Tbsp olive oil 1 can corn 1 can green chilis 1 can navy beans spices (cumin, chili powder, garlic salt, or whatever) 1 can tomato sauce 1 can sliced black olives cheese, and lots of it (say 2-3 cups, ish) -------------------------- Prepare the crust according to Uncle Bob's instructions

Amos Hooley (my Amish alter-ego) says: Happy Halloween!

i finally made it to the new indian place in town. it was delicious, and the waitstaff was fabulous. not many people were there, which i hope is just due to the winter storm that blew in earlier this afternoon. katie said i-80 closed behind her on the way back from cheyenne, and the weatherman says we may get 20 inches in the next two days. this is expected weather: i remember trying to dye a giant snowball orange with kool-aid powder, trying to turn it into a giant jack-o-lantern. it didn't turn out all that well. turns out, the papadums served before the meal (indian restaurants' equivalent of chips and salsa) have no wheat in them. this was great news, since i was starving. even greater news was the waitstaff's willingness to bring us basket after basket of them. i intended to make vegetarian gluten-free pizza tomorrow night, but with weather like this, i think chili seems a bit more appropriate. i predict that i will be at happy jack on saturday morning, with som

my favorite lyrics, today. from ' in the curve ': my '63 Ford is a bull-- she's four thousand pounds at least. but metal surrenders when oak trees meet fenders and engines go through the front seat. the avetts play atlanta on my birthday. a plane ticket to georgia would make a nice present to myself. or, they're also playing columbia, mo, in march. maybe beth would let me sleep on her couch. google maps says that's just a 13-hour drive, and i've been in the mood for a road trip.

talking to my friend melissa on the way back from chili and music jam at sue's tonight, i said something out loud that i hadn't quite articulated fully in my head yet. i said, 'in a relationship, you can only be responsible for one person's emotions.' i meant, you can't be responsible for how the other person feels--only how you feel. and you also can't help not feeling what the other person feels--you only got what you got. i'm not saying that you shouldn't care about other people's feeling--that's not it at all. and i'm not saying that you should intentionally play loose with other people's heads, either. it's just that the idea of compromise doesn't always cut it: sometimes there's no middle ground, and it's a mistake to pretend that in-between is possible. relationships, in general, are about feeling connected--but they're also about understanding the disconnections. sometimes i think that's the h

I hope I wasn't too generous with the cold-season fertilizer that I spread on the yard tonight. On the bright side, I can hardly make the front lawn worse....

fidel castro, abe lincoln, or ted kaczynski? or a literary figure, like walt whitman or ernest hemingway? i think brahms, marx, or darwin brahms will require a two-year commitment. maybe i could do castro this year and guevara next year. viva la revolucion!

for the record, a down comforter is another reason to look forward to cooler weather. i've had mine out for a while, but it's been these past few days that really make me appreciate it.

apparently BMG music club shut its doors sometime this summer. Alas, no more 12 for 1 cd specials. Alas, no more random Michael Bolton cds turning up in my mailbox. Alas, the end of the lick-em-and-stick-em pictures of albums and such. Is there a digital equivalent to BMG? iTunes and Amazon don't seem to be quite the same--there none of that "what a deal" feeling, really, no sense of "more is SO MUCH LESS!" awesomeness. Scanning through the list of the top 100 sellers during BMG's six-decade run (current through 2002), I think I only had a half-dozen of these discs. (And probably two or three of them came from BMG) . But since Britney's Pears and Janet Jackson seem to be disproportionately represented here, I'm not sure I feel bad about not being an average BMGer. But still, it's sad news, the end of an era, yet another nail in the coffin of the cd. This all reminds me: I need to find somebody who will lend me a tape player that records to

I realized last night, and confirmed tonight, that stew makes for a good gathering. The most successful dinner party I've organized was a relatively spur-of-the-moment stew gathering, and at Kaijsa's tonight was another proof that stew makes for easy conversation. I think it's something about the informality of stew--nobody gets uptight about whether their side dish is going to be "fancy" enough for the event, nobody feels compelled to wear their nice dress, nobody wonders if it will be rude to just show up and eat stew and leave to go back to the project they've got to work on--that makes it work so well. I think there's also something about the heartiness of the meal, too: root vegetables help keep us grounded, help keep the conversation down to earth, help us realize that ultimately we're just nothing more than dirt, too. Tonight's stew was partially a "clearing out the fridge" event--Kaijsa and I both making an effort to clean our

I don't know what kind of certification I'd need to have in order to feel worthy of the company I had last night, sitting in the teepee at Addie's birthday event, listening to Greg and John and Chris play "Navajo Rug" and "Mountain Dew" and eating strawberries dipped in Molly's hand-whipped bourbon cream and feeding sticks into the fire on a full-moon night, eating some of Addie's Malian peanut sauce with rice and tomatoes, smelling the dutch-oven cobbler that Mo and Lee had put together. And listening to Laura's story about small-town stupidity, which began this way: "Last summer I had this job pressing flowers in newspaper, and we were using old copies of the Saratoga Sun , and there was this letter to the editor...." You can imagine where the story might go from there, but I like that it starts from pressed flowers.

I wish that cheese were healthy.

I dream of Bosler when I close my eyes: On the drive up to Newcastle via Esterbrook, I passed through Bosler, the near-ghost-town just 20 miles north of Laramie. I forget how melancholy the place is, with its boarded-up brick schoolhouse and warped-board-faced buildings along the highway and the sense of being long ago forgotten but somehow not quite dead. Jalan Crossland's song about the town seems mean-spirited for managing to catch so well the dark humor of a dying place: I picture you holding your Harlequin novel Gettin’ baked like a pot pie in the afternoon sun While I fix the fan belt that goes to the engine Of the ’69 Pinto that don’t ever run And I dream of a trailer in Bosler, Wyoming With tires on the roof, dear, and you by my side And we could watch Flintstones and draw unemployment As I dream of Bosler when I close my eyes (photo from wyomingtourism.org)

I was saying to Tawnya on Monday that my friendships have never felt more natural than they do lately. I think that's true--I'm more okay with the range and depth and variety of my friendships than I've even been, and also less worried about what I wish they wer e . (In related news, Melissa T gets back to town tomorrow, from the cross-country bike journey, and I could feel regretful that I wasn't more supportive of her along the way, but instead I'm just gonna be happy that she's back.) I am a bit disappointed, though, that the yearly Oktoberfest trip looks like it's gonna be a bust this year, and I feel sort of let down, despite the fact that it's nobody's fault that the trip doesn't make sense this time around. Maybe I'll crash a wedding instead.

Yesterday I headed north out of Laramie, then took the dirt roads towards Laramie Peak. Up over the hill at Esterbrook, and then to Douglas before beating Hiway 59 towards Wright and then heading east to the Nucular City. Damn, what a lot of nice country. The last two hours of the drive were made in the dark, but the route between Rock River and Douglas is a way I've never been before. I feel a bit of shame, somehow, that I've never seen this piece of Wyoming before. I don't think it's my job to know every road from here to there, but I do count it as a duty to more fully appreciate Wyoming. Yesterday was a chance to re-encounter the vastness of this landscape and to realize how much impact that openness has on my spirit. It's a good type of insignificance.

Well, tomorrow I'll send off mortgage payment number trey. That only leaves about 357. Holey moley. In unrelated news (or perhaps slightly related news, now that I think about it), Sue and I went to "The Informant" tonight. I think I can recommend it. I'm still trying to decide if I liked it, actually. When I watched the trailer the other night, I was worried that maybe it had showed me all I really needed to see. The trailer made the movie out to be pretty much just a slapstick comedy, but in fact it turned out to be a different (and more enjoyable) type of humor. Even the weird anachronistic 1970s font and the melodramatic music added a depth to the film for me.

Damn! All my training is for shit! Here is a clever sign, but I can't explain why. Is this an example of irony? And if it's irony, is it dramatic irony? Or situational? Maybe verbal? Oh, the shame of being a member of Las Departamento de English and not being able to identify a smart rhetorical play when I see it! The shame!

I notice that I share the house with a good assortment of crawlies. I'm pretty okay with this; most of them have not been the spidery type, and there doesn't seem to be much of an increase in their numbers. I wonder what the cold weather will bring, though. After the fall-ish day we had today (and after a trip over the hill to visit Aspen Alley), it's apparently time already to start preparing for a new season. The leaves are turning, the wind is blowing, and night is cooling down. I just hope that the bugs won't come to me hoping for warmer quarters.

i'm headed down this long lonesome road, babe where i'm bound i can't tell but goodbye is too good a word for you, babe so i'll just bid thee farewell i ain't sayin' you treated my unkind you coulda done better but i'll be fine it's just that all of this has wasted my precious time but don't think twice, it's alright ledesma. i guess it's not a bad name. it's just not my name.

After four hours of reading freshman comp papers, I was looking forward to winding down with some McPhee tonight. No offense to my freshmen students, but I do find McPhee somewhat more satisfying and relaxing than rhetorical analyses of the same two texts, over and over. Problem is, now I'm sort of keyed up and can't get focused. I think I'm in that stage of hyperactivity right before the big crash. I rarely work a 14-hour day, but this has been one. I don't know if I failed to plan/prepare for today's schedule, but I felt all day like I was just one step ahead of the steamroller. At least I may get a solid night of hard sleep. I could go for that, even if I do miss out on another couple pages of Wyoming geology lesson. Ah, McPhee.

Quincy and Katie and John joined Adam and I for dinner tonight (quiche with kale, squash, and zucchini), around my new table. The good news is, the table seats five pretty comfortably, and should seat six equally well. The even better news is, the more I'm in this new space, the more I like it. Seven hundred square feet, by American standards, is pretty small living. Especially when sharing that space with a roommate. But the house is arranged well, and there's room for what a person needs. And, as a bonus, there's not much room to acquire unneccessary crap. I remember Lisa saying that after she and Fritz moved from a relatively big place in DC to a much smaller space that their use of the rooms was relatively unchanged. In other words, they didn't live much differently--the change was more a matter of scaling down than it was a matter of giving up necessary space. Don't get me wrong: I love a vaulted ceiling. But a vaulted ceiling (to take just one examp

Another passage from Bridge of Sighs : "He'd been expecting one kind of no and she'd given him another, a no that had some yes in it, and didn't include the humiliation he'd expected. ... How awful it must be, she thought, to ask for something you knew you'd be denied. How much courage it took to ask anyway, instead of just slinking away and adding this new refusal to the stew of countless others."

life hasn't felt all that blog-worthy lately. not that it's been boring; it's just that i haven't been reflecting on things much. tabula rosa, or whatever. anyway: trip to drop julie at dia on friday afternoon. e470 is now a no-stop tollroad: apparently they'll bill my license plate sometime in the next 3 to 6 weeks. weird. from dia, a quick stop for caffeine at the starbucks on tower, then up hiway 85 to spend the night at my sister's in greeley. i almost forgot to bring my niece the little play tent i'd gotten for her at ikea a month ago. at my sister's place was our high school friend kenda, who i haven't seen in a couple of years. the first six-pack i ever drank illegally i drank with kenda and our friends travis and chrissa, on the dock at the lake east of newcastle on a fine night in august. i also remember that i had to call kenda's dad to ask permission to take kenda to sweetheart's dance when i was a sophomore. not just a di

Last weekend, my roommate Adam's meat windfall provided a pork roast for green chili. This weekend, some of the meat that he gave to Kaijsa turned into delicious kebabs on Chad's grill. At Julie's house, there's talk of turning some of the windfall into lasagna. In related news, cheddar brats and beer brats at my sister's last night in Greeley were great, too. In case I had any doubt, I'm no vegetarian, despite my deep and abiding appreciation for Sweet Melissa's meat(less)ball subs.

I had a great conversation with Sue tonight on the way out to blues at The Bear Tree, about things in general. It's nice to get a fresh perspective on life and place and the rest of the world we live in. Especially it's nice to know that I'm not the only one who feels that deep appreciation for and belonging to Laramie while simultaneously feeling, somehow, adrift. The class I'm teaching this semester makes me realize that part of my interest in starting a PhD is that I haven't pushed myself enough these past few years. Most of the people I encounter lately don't seem to give a genuine shit about their jobs, and I hate it. We deserve better, and we owe it to ourselves to become better. In perhaps unrelated news, the lyrics on my mind tonight: Shame , boatloads of shame Day after day, more of the same Blame, please lift it off Please take it off, please make it stop.

Uncle Rich's birthday today, and my friend Paul's. Joyce had her baby this morning, Jesse Robinson Knievel. Craig Arnold's memorial service was this evening. I planted the maple in the backyard tonight. Odd how the years seem to pass so quietly, and then, suddenly, a pile up of arrivals and departures and other markers to make one take notice of the tide coming in, going out, coming in. New pebbles deposited, and others washed out to sea.

peter o'dowd on the FM dial this morning! ah, the good old days.

here's my version of a collision between shepherd's pie and thanksgiving: cube some taters--maybe five smallish ones--and put them on to boil. brown some ground turkey, with a sliced onion, chopped pecans, about a tablespoon of soy sauce, and thanksgiving spices (thyme, sage, pepper). after it's browned, tranfer it to the bottom of a greased 9" round casserole pan. the soy sauce and pecans are suggestions from julie, and they make a huge addition to the overall flavor and texture. after the taters are done, transfer some of the starch water to the turkey pan and use it to make a mushroom gravy. (or, in my case, open a can of cream of x soup.) mix the gravy into the browned turkey. mash the taters. add butter, milk, sour cream, garlic powder. cheese if you feel like it. spread a layer of cranberry sauce over the turkey and gravy. then spread the taters over that. broil the whole business until it gets a nice golden crust on the taters--about five minutes. eat! t

if i twittered, here's what I'd have to say today: zappos order on its way! somewhere btw louisville and my porch!

If I twittered, here's what I'd have to say tonight: three hours of weeding was pretty therapeutic, actually.

so I've made it through the first day of a new semester of teaching. i've commented to several people that i've never felt so unprepared, but i've also never been less nervous. it's the first time i've intentionally let myself be unprepared, in an effort to make myself a bit more flexible/reactive to the students' interests/abilities/pace. we'll see how it turns out. in other news, the beet salad turned out okay. it's better today, after the fridge gave the flavors a chance to do their melding thing. i think i probably should've waited for julie to show up to help me with proportions. in any case, my version went like this: slice rounds of beets and potatoes and onions. boil them together until they're soft. in the meantime, slice some smoked buffalo sausages and boil them in some beer. drain everything and throw it all in a big bowl. throw in some some cider vinegar, enough to give everything a light coating. mix. throw in some sour c

When I write a book of the alphabet, that's how the book will start. The concert tonight was great. On the down side, the Avett Bros. didn't play Shame, If it's the Beaches, Salvation Song, In the Curve, The Ballad of Love and Hate, or November Blue. On the upside, I heard a lot of their stuff I'd never heard before, including their closer (Four Thieves) and a great solo by Scott (Black, Blue), and The Traveling Song. Pre-concert dinner at The Cheeky Monk was fine, too, though I was disappointed to have such a robotic waitress.

Listed for sale on the Wyoming craigslist: an "exorcise bike." Maybe I'll buy it and donate it to the Catholic church. They could start a whole new workout club. Pedal for God and drive out the demons!

As promised, an excerpt from Bridge of Sighs: Odd, how our view of human destiny changes over the course of a lifetime. In youth we believe what the young believe, that life is all choice. We stand before a hundred doors, choose to enter one, where we're faced with hundred more and then choose again. We choose not just what we'll do, but who we'll be. Perhaps the sound of all those doors swinging shut behind us each time we select this one or that one should trouble us, but it doesn't. Nor does the fact that the doors often are identical and even lead in some cases to the exact same place. Occasionally a door is locked, but no matter, since so many others remain available. The distinct possibility that choice itself may be an illusion is something we disregard, because we're curious to know what's behind that next door, the one we hope will lead us to the very heart of the mystery. Even in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary we remain confide

When I tell people I've been building a pot rack I usually get a joke, in response, about a place for my weed. But in fact, I've finally finished the pot rack, and I've got to admit, now that it's done--after way too many trips to the hardware store trying to figure out how to get it all stuck together--I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out: The switch to a kid's bike tire was definitely the right choice--a full-size rim woulda been too big for the space. By the time I got all the hardware figured out, I suppose the project cost me about 25 bucks, maybe a bit less. Not bad, especially since I've now freed up some space where I can store the flour and rice and the beans. And the oatmeal. Somehow I've managed to acquire, over the past while, five different containers of oats. Steel-cut oats, quick oats, old fashioned oats, microwavey oats with freeze-dried apple bits and cinammon and way more sugar than I need, and some other box of oatmeal pac

I've been meaning to post an excerpt from Bridge of Sighs , but I keep forgetting to bring the book with me to a place with wifi. (This will all change next week, when I get DSL at the house, but until then I've been relying on a pretty crappy memory for this type of thing.) In any case, it'll be forthcoming, but you really shouldn't wait. You should probably head out straightaway and start the book. I've read books before, but I've never connected so strongly with the voice of the narrator before. Which is not the same as saying I like the narrator (although I think I do like him), but rather I like the way he talks to me. In other news, the past few Laramie evenings have been perfect--that sort of warm calm evening that should last forever. And, in other other news, the Avett Bros. concert is just eight days away.

I've never prayed for sweet karmic justice before. I'm not even sure you CAN pray for karmic justice--I guess the whole idea of karma is that it acts beyond the whims of individual human desires. But I gotta admit that I don't envy the bad mojo that my former landlord has just brought upon himself with the way he's decided to handle things. I'd really like to just slash his tires, but I'm going to content myself with the sweet satisfaction that the cosmos will eventually balance the register, without my impatient interference. In related news, I hate being right when it means that I have to sacrifice some of my faith in the decency of fellow humans. On the bright side, I haven't seemed to attract a whole lot of bad karma. I'll take that as a sign that, overall, I haven't been too much of an asshole lately. (Or maybe it's the other way around, but I prefer not to think about it that way....)

Last Wednesday night I headed for Nebraska, to give George a hand with the roofing project at his folks' place that he's been putting off for a few months now. I took Old Highway 30 most of the way, preferring the old route to the steady truck traffic on I-80. Along 30 east of Pine Bluffs I passed several custom combine crews making their way west and north. I don't know where they go from Nebraska, after laying low the fields there. Jon Krakauer talks about the combine crews in Into the Wild , and I wish I knew more about their migratory path. Thursday morning dawned hot and sunny, and even hotter with the sun reflecting off the corrugated metal we were pulling off the shed. By midday it was approaching one hundred degrees, so we took a long lunch and then went back out to tear off wood shingles and pull more nails. Friday I helped George for about a half day--between the two of us and his brother Charles we were able to strip the roof down to the base layer and get i

This summer's been an odd one. I'm still trying to find a rhythm or pattern to it, but no dice. Something new or changing every few weeks, no set schedule, no major events to build towards. Just a lot of small pieces to put into place. This weekend George came into town to help me put a new roof on the shed and till and seed the back yard. I'd planned in May to help him with a roofing project at his folks' place in Nebraska, but it didn't quite work out. Now it works out for me to go next Thursday and Friday. This weekend is a trip to Fort Collins on Saturday to catch up with my friend Melissa--the one who's biking across country --who will be at a BBQ on Saturday and then riding in New Belgium's Urban Assault Ride on Sunday. This reminds me to find out if I need to bring anything else to her. And I just realized that the Albany County Demolition Derby 2009 will be next Saturday at 7 pm. I missed out last year, and year-before was a muddy slow-motion

I missed the concert on Saturday. Not the Fire in the Sky concert, but instead the Lonesome Heroes at Centennial. Tickets for the Fire in the Sky concert were 20 bucks this year, which seemed like more than I wanted to spend. (And it turns out that the Fire in the Sky concert got cancelled anyway, on account of the weather. I guess the Jubilee Days folks intend to reschedule it for "later in the summer," whatever that means.) So instead, Julie, Chad and I drove out to Centennial hoping to hear the Lonesome Heroes and to see the fireworks show out there. Since I'm my father's son, I didn't do much planning in advance; we just jumped in the truck after a nice afternoon barbeque and arrived about an hour after the Lonesome Heroes had finished their show. But since we still got to stand on the Bear Tree's rooftop patio, drink PBRs, and watch the Centennial fireworks, I'm still counting the evening as a success.

Quite a while ago I wrote a post titled sore bits . It was about my long bike ride on the rails to trails project up in the Snowies. My, what a difference 7 degrees makes. After riding for the past few years on a bike seat was essentially level, I decided to tilt the seat down a bit. After the ride yesterday at Happy Jack, I'm optimistic. On the less optimistic side, I may have contracted the West Nile virus yesterday, too. I started at the Happy Jack trailhead rather than at Tie City like I usually do. I rode up Aspen and then decided to try the Haunted Forest trail, which I'd only been on once before, so my memory of the trail was spotty. Despite all the sunshine or the last few days, the Haunted Forest trail wasn't very dry. In fact, it was like a swamp, mostly. A mosquito-infested swamp, but just steep enough that I couldn't keep traction. Plus, I couldn't get my derailleur to shift down when I was first starting the ride, which meant that already by t

Kaijsa and I are splitting a small vegetable share from the Grant Family Farms this year. Since K is out of town for the next two weeks, this means that I had the box of spinach, butter lettuce, baby beets, cilantro, and dill all to myself this week. I had dill on fish. I had roasted baby beets. Julie and I made a delicious salad on Sunday. I gave some cilantro to Katie. Early this week, in an effort to use up more of the dill, I sliced some tomatoes I'd gotten from the store, then sprinkled dill and mozzarella over them, then baked them in the oven for a bit. Not bad. Still, I had loads of greens. So on Tuesday I decided to throw a couple of leftover tomato slices onto a tortilla, top that with some butter lettuce and cilantro, and over all that I added a couple of fried eggs seasoned with salt, pepper, and chili powder. I know it sounds terrible, but it was delicious. So delicious, in fact, that I had the same thing again for lunch yesterday. I think it works because, ev

Last year, my trip to the Woodchopper Jamboree was marred by a twisted, throbbing, black-n-blue ankle (hard-earned at pick-up basketball the weekend before), which affected my ability to fully appreciate the wonder of the day's events. Happily, this year, my ankle is much better, and the trip to Riverside/Encampment was fabulous. As Julie pointed out, the atmosphere is really supportive. Obviously a couple of the contestants (especially in the mixed-pair handsaw competition) were first-timers, and the crowd really cheered them on. Here are the royalty of Walden's Never Summer Rodeo taking their turn at the handsaw. The girl on the left is only 12. The girl who sang the National Anthem was only 7. The oldest competitor in the events was a guy who's been coming for 41 years. Also, the weather was fully cooperative. After days of mediocre weather, Saturday turned out sunny and warm. Shortly after arriving, we caught up with Addie Goss, and around midday we decided to

The state of Wyoming brings me this helpful suggestion in their noble efforts to make me a healthier, happier person: While watching TV or a movie with family or friends, instead of asking someone to bring you a drink or a low-fat treat, get up off the couch and get it yourself. Geez, they make it seem so easy. I guess I'll just get that beer myself. Then I'll head back to the couch for another few hours of mindless teevee. That'll keep me healthy!

The orientation sessions for this fall's freshmen have been taking place over the past few weeks. Yesterday and today was the session for the program I teach in, which meant a couple of one-off events for me and colleagues. Yesterday was an introduction to the learning community event, which meant Jason, Pam, and I had 45 minutes to create some kind of worthwhile activity for students. At the suggestion of our other colleagues (who weren't there to guide us), we ended up with a community-building exercise involving tarps (yes, tarps), which our colleagues assured us would take about 30 minutes. Turns out, the activity took about 10 minutes. And we had no back-up. It ended up being an almost complete waste of time, and, worse yet, I feel like it damages our credibility as organized, thoughtful teachers. Then, this morning, April had asked me to make a presentation about Summit 09 and tips for academic success to the entire group of students in the program, and their parent

I'm headed to Denver today, to drop Kaijsa at the airport for her trip back to visit family. Sometimes it can be a hassle to make the 2- to 2 1/2-hour drive down to DIA--especially in the wintertime--but generally I'm happy to keep major traffic a bit distant from Laramie. Yesterday, when I was being a hero, the phlebotomist mentioned being surprised at how much Laramie has grown over the past few years. This summer seems busier than I can remember, and in a way that feels different, somehow. I can't quite put my finger on it. In unrelated news, Team Bittner suffered an embarrassing defeat in our first game of the summer co-ed outdoor league last night. I wish I could blame my poor performance on depleted stores of oxygen after the blood drive, but I think I'm just out of shape.

A while back--mid-April, I think--I acquired six hardwood chairs, two Kik-Steps, and a library book display stand at the campus library's surplus sale. The book display table, which I snagged for $5, I decided to turn into a kitchen island. I started on the project a while ago made pretty quick progress turning the old slanted display shelves on top into a shelf midway up the legs. Then I'd gotten bogged down, trying to decided what kind of top to use. I'd thought about tile, butcher block, and solid surface. But since I'd spent so little on the table itself, I wanted to finish the whole thing on the cheap. So yesterday I ordered a sheet of zinc, which is what old Hoosier cabinets are often finished with. It cost me $39 (and woulda only been $28 if they'd had the right size in stock), and I'll figure out how to screw it to a sheet of 1" plywood when it gets here. I figure the whole thing'll cost me under a hundred bucks. Since I didn't take

Next weekend is the big Woodchopper Jamboree in Riverside/Encampment. Hopefully the agenda this year includes some camping out and maybe a weenie roast and the street dance. Wyoming small-town fightin'-and-drinkin'-and-dancin' fests: gotta love 'em. Too bad I decided not to make the trip back to NE Wyoming for this weekend's Osage Fireman's Ball. On the bright side, I did locate Brock Finn's myspace music page , which at least allows me to enjoy some of the gems that he'll be playing at the event (gems including such classics as "Church of Hank Williams" and "The Larry Bird Song" and my personal favorite, a tribute to Campbell County titled "Triple C.S."). Ah, I may need a tissue.

On the way back to Laramie from Newcastle, I finally stopped to take a picture of the Hat Creek Station. I've been meaning to stop the past few times I've been up but had managed to be in too much of a hurry or to have forgotten my camera or whatever. This time, no excuses: I love this place and entertain dreams, every so often, of rescuing it from a slow death and turning it into a roadside cafe. I don't know why I like this place so much, but I do.

"To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men. Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep. Why is it that men give so poor an account of their day if they have not been slumbering? They are not such poor calculators. If they had not been overcome with drowsiness, they would have performed something. The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?" That's a quote from Thoreau's Walden , my favorite passage, even though I usually fall far short of Thoreau's definition of "awake." Certainly I made a poor accounting of my recen

I haven't worn any rings for a while now, but apparently my left middle finger is convinced that it has a ring on it. Such a weird feeling. Sunday was a great great summer day. I met up with Sarah and Joel and the niece in Windsor for breakfast at The Egg & I, then biked about 70 minutes on the Poudre Corridor Trail, picked up some hardware for the new coat rack project, read some Harry Potter 6 and ate curried chicken sandwich in Old Town, and finally picked up a coffee on the way out of town for a beautiful rainy drive back to Laramie. I wish today were equally as fun, but at least I'm getting some work done on the syllabus redesign project. Ugh. Also in Old Town, I picked up a Ft Collins trail map, so that next time I can be a bit more strategic in picking a route. This trip led me to the dead end on the west side of Windsor, which wasn't that big a deal but still it would be nice to know where I'm goin'. The map was free and makes me want to spend mor

Julie advised dressing up my other tuna steak with some olive oil, ginger, lime juice, and sesame seeds. Except I didn't have any lime or sesame seeds. But I did have some pecans and some chili powder with lime. And some soy sauce. So I ended up with pecan crusted tuna, finished in a soy glaze. On the side: garlic potatoes and spinach with grapefruit chunks and grapefruit vinagrette (the salad courtesy of Kaijsa). And afterwards, I mashed up some of the oatmeal cookies I'd made and mixed them in with some strawberries. In other news, I find myself mostly freaked out with the prospect of moving in a month, even though the move is less than half a mile. Despite thinking that adventure and change are both good things, they also make me twitchy.

The trip to Saratoga today was pretty great. Coffee on the way out of town, springtime weather, calves in the fields, nobody in giant rush driving like an asshole. Then, a short hike in the Snowies--nothing too ambitious, just trying to get the feel for snowshoes on the steep slopes on melty snow, figuring out how to walk/run/slide/sled downhill without getting too damaged, getting some perfectly fresh mountain air in the lungs. Kaijsa took picture of me: I need a thought bubble next to my head: "I am king of hill!" Down the other side of the mountatin we came, walked around a bit at Veteran's Island in Saratoga watching the North Platte coming cold and fast down the channel. Then a quick hot soak in the springs, and lunch at Stumpy's, and a look-around in the Outhouse and the Hat Creek Station before heading back over the hill, through a perfect spring rain, to the Gem City of the High Plains. Tonight, tuna steak and peas for dinner.