It's Better in Wyoming.

On the way back from the soccer tournament this morning, WPR 's Ranch Breakfast Show was playin' a song named "Euphoria." This seems a fitting theme song for the day, since our fourth-seeded team (out of five teams) managed to pull it together, win all three of our games, and take the league championship. Oh, yeah. Our second game was against the top seed, a team that beat us 12-0 (or by some equally embarrassing score; I know they scored a lot and we didn't score at all) two days ago. So to manage to pull off the upset today (4-2, I think) was pretty damn satisfying. Now I'm listening to some OCMS, then getting ready to shower up and start the next sequence of events. At 2, the Cowgirls final home game. Then down to the Depot to the evolve.revolve partay for a while. I was thinking about trying to get in a nap before the basketball game, since we got back from Railbenders around 3 this morning. That concert was a bit less than satisfying--not a bad sho...

Apparently, the bulbs I planted last fall think that it's Springtime In Laramie. I looked in the flower bed this morning and saw stiff green shoots heading out for daylight amid the dead leaves I piled on last fall. Maybe their natural instincts tell them something that I'm not quite willing to accept, but I doubt it. I'm pretty sure that on March 1st, when I pull Ralph the Squirrel down from his tree, he's gonna tell me that we've still got six weeks of winter in Laramie. That's what I'm hoping for, at least. I've hardly even scuffed the new snowshoes so far. In related news, it was in the 50s here today, but on my walk home from the Cowgirls basketball game (UW: 71; CSU: 62. Go 'pokes!) the sky was making a half-assed attempt to spit some white flakes. Not much of an effort, but at least there's hope.

In this life, there are too few days like these. Yesterday was a holiday in the best sense of the word--the type of true holy experience, shared with a multitude of other humans enjoying the joy of being alive, that brings me back to my senses. And today, more of the same. Basketball with friends, an opportunity to hear good literature out loud and without apology, drinks with friends, and unpolished music made better by forgotten lyrics and a small crowd--these are the events that fill me, simultaneously, with love and despair: love for all that makes us human and fallible; despair that so many days fail to live up to this potential.

I'm glad I didn't let myself be overruled by an overdeveloped sense of responsibility today. I probably should've stayed home and graded, but instead I rode out with Melissa and Mark and Meg to the annual Centennial poker run. In the other car were Naomi, Yao, Yugi, and Yuki, with their snowshoes. It was great. We started out at the Trading Post, then crammed nine of us into the back seat and bed of a Chevy Colorado for a ride up to the top of the Barber Lake road, and then shared the xc trail with about 400 or 500 other skiers and snowshoers. On the trail I saw Christie, who I haven't seen since my sophomore year of college, Larry O Boram, Marissa and Emily, Pat and Cara, and various other crazies. We stopped every half-mile or so to chug one of the PBRs we'd stuffed in our packs, and at the second station Melissa and I laid claim to the last two free hot dogs and two of the last free Busches. Once we caught the shuttle back down to Centennial, we filled out ...

Made a quick trip to Cheyenne tonight to have dinner with George, who stopped on his way back to Gurley from Gillette long enough for some shopping at Home Depot and an oversized meal at Sanfords. From a giant meal it was back to Laramie, in time to make the 8:25 soccer game. Another victory for Team Bittner, no thanks to me. I was mostly on the sidelines with a gut-bomb sideache. Luckily, neither Katie (who, oddly enough, also had dinner at Sanford's tonight) nor I threw up on the indoor turf. I'm not exactly sure how one would clean up vomit on the indoor turf, and I don't think I want to know how. I'm happy to leave that one a mystery. I had just enough time in the trip to get some pine 1x6s for a new woodworking project. As I look at the schedule for the next while, I'm not exactly sure when I'll have time to get started, but at least the materials are ready for me. Talking to Craig tonight after the game, I realized I've got 5,000-plus miles of t...

Today on the way back from the gym I heard on WPR an interview with Tony Furtado, who said he'd be playing Coal Creek tonight. Seems like I'd heard that this Furtado dude had played on campus sometime last year, but I couldn't remember. Then I jumped out of the truck and went inside before I had a chance to listen to any of his music and sort of forgot about it. Then, this afternoon I happened to see my friend Scott in the library and mentioned the show. On the strength of Scott's entirely positive recommendation (something like, "The guy puts on a really great show! Man, you should definitly go.") I decided to hit it up tonight. Kaijsa came along, and Melissa showed up later. We ended up fighting for a table that opened when we arrived (a fight which was peacefully settled by sharing the table with a couple of other people and Kaijsa's quick work to snag one more chair), and by the time Tony was 20 minutes into his set I'd estimate there were 10...

The Walk for Women was pretty similar to last year's event: lots of people in pink shirts, walking around in a big circle, with an annoying announcer-guy announcing stuff that was hard to hear. I liked it two years ago, when they played "Sweet Caroline" and everybody could sing along. So good, so good! This year I didn't take a t-shirt, since in the past I've just shoved the shirt to the bottom of my dresser drawer for six months and then donated it to Salvation Army. I'm definitely tough enough to wear pink, but it just isn't my color. Makes me look like a giant chewable pepto-dismal tablet. I'm not sure why we needed to walk around in big circles. Like Relay for Life or the MS 150 ride, there is apparently something about going around in a circle that symbolizes a person's solidarity with all of the other people who support or who have been affected by various diseases. Okay, whatever. Yesterday, walking around the Arena-Auditorium concour...

I don't know what the groundhog's day report was this year. I do know that yesterday felt like a winter day for a change, and most of this last week we had some of those wonderful, deceptively bright Wyoming days, the kind that fool you into thinking it'll be nice and warm and then you step out into it and, man, shivers. Somehow the coinciding of winter weather and valentine's day seems appropriate this year. After the gumbo event last night, I took a walk in the inch-or-so of fresh powder, then just sat on a bench in Washington Park for about twenty minutes, just watching the flakes come down, lit in part by the living room lights of couples sharing a lovers day together. I alone, cold, outside; they together, cozy, inside. In other years I'd see those two ways of spending the evening as opposite ends of a scale, with my own position on the less-preferable end. The winter weather this year, though, brought a clarity and a freshness to the beauty of my position...

Our team scored 1 out 5 'sportsmanship points' at tonight's intramural game. This means, essentially, that we're assholes. This rating is embarrassing, especially since we were being reffed by one of my former students and a former starter for the Cowgirls, and since our team is made up entirely (save one) of faculty members. On the bright side, we had no technicals and no fights. Sadly, that's about the only good thing that can be said about our court composure tonight.

Grammarbook.com reports Rule Number 6 of comma usage: Use a comma to separate the city from the state and after the state in a document. If you use the two-letter capitalized form of a state in a document, you do not need a comma after the state. Their example: I lived in San Francisco, California, for 20 years. But, the fact is that people just don't use that comma, the one after the state. It drives me fuggin' nuts. I dunno why. Seriously, there are bigger things to worry about. My February resolution: get over it. Since we started the resume/cover letter unit yesterday, I'm pretty damn sure I'll have plenty of opportunities to get over it in the next few weeks. Fug.

I realized tonight, as I scored two more goals for the home team, that my apparent offensive skill is just the result of not being able to hit my target. I mean, usually a goalie tries to judge where the person is going to kick the ball, and they protect that spot. Even when the player tries to fake, ultimately they must commit to a certain target. For me, though, I commit to a target that's actually about three feet from wherever I'm aiming. My soccer game may be a pretty good metaphor for life these days. I mean, I definitely haven't quite ended up where I wanted to be, or where I thought I'd be, but where I'm at ain't all that bad. In related news, I'm starting to feel that adriftness again; spring must be on the way.

Sometime during the past 30 years, the hospital where I was born was converted to an assisted living facility. This weekend, my family helped move my grandma into that facility. I forget how limited my worldview is--how little I've experienced of all the amazing little microcosmic communities that exist out there , beyond my immediate needs. Last time I had this realization was the morning after the big fire, when fire recovery specialists came to offer their services. I hadn't even known that companies existed who dealt exclusively with fire and water damage. Until it becomes necessary, it's so easy to overlook entire worlds of existence. While I feel that learning more about care services expanded my view of the world, I think grandma definitely feels that moving into assisted living is a tremendous constriction of hers. I don't really blame her.

Meggie is thinking she should start looking for a way to stay in Laramie if none of her PhD applications pan out. One of the Laramie jobs currently being advertised on the Wyoming Job Network is a position with United Parcel Service. Job title: Package Handler. Hee hee.

The only thing I like less than dealing with my checkbook is not dealing with my checkbook. I finally waded through the pile and discovered that it's not quite as bad as I expected. In another pile-up, I've got 10 pending Facebook friend requests from people I went to high school with. The thing is, I wasn't friends with them in high school, so why should I pretend to be friends with them now? I sort of feel like they're just trying to pad their friend count with the low-hanging fruit of long-lost acquaintanceships. On the other hand, maybe I'm the one who's got the wrong attitude. Maybe they're not pretending; maybe they're willing to move past the roles we played in high school, forget the adolescent stupidities of a distant past, and re-connect on some new ground. The realist in my says no, but maybe I should let the optimist win this one.

Yesterday I had a SUPER BOWL of chili. Apparently Peter's presence in AZ is a bad-luck charm for the Cards. Move back, Peter: Wyoming misses you already.