It's Better in Wyoming.

Well, our first game of the season ended in a tie. Not a bad way to start the season, especially against a team whose average age couldn't've been more than 26. But really, the problem is that I haven't made time to keep myself in championship form. I blame it in part on the weather--whatever else it's been, the weather has not been especially conducive to advanced plans for outside activity. In slightly related news, I wonder whether researchers have proven that little bits of exercise all day long (in addition to OR in place of a focused aerobic workout) help keep your metabolism up. It seems, intuitively, like that should be the way the body works. I love living close to downtown and close to campus: the mile walk down to Coal Creek is just part of a day's activity for me; I don't even count it as exercise. Many days (especially in nicer weather), I get in four or five miles, just strolling around getting the bills paid. And honestly, now that I've...

At this time of year, I don't mind when the weather drops 15 inches of snow overnight. I DO mind, however, when the weather drops 15 degrees . I like spring snowstorms when they bring heavy wet flakes and then melt off nearly as quickly as they arrived: a big day or night of snow, and then back to sunshiny 50 degrees--nothing wrong with that. But this weather today, it's just not right. Cold and windy and little sleet pellets most of the day today. Tonight was a frosty clear walk home from the library at midnite, with slick bubbles of ice frozen odd-shaped and flat-topped on the sidewalks but at least no breeze. On the bright side, though, the weather was reason to enjoy some hot cocoa yesterday and to steep a fine cup of Good Earth tonight. In other, unrelated news, I don't really like mapquest. I like maps. Or an atlas. Not just directions from A to B with no larger perspective. I realize tonight, as I'm planning for the Indiana trip, that I really don't ...

According to the forecast for Laramie on Thursday, there's about a 20 percent chance of snow. Hopefully this means that the roads will be clear when Joyce and I make our way down to DIA. On the other end, the forecast for West Lafayette is high 50s, low 60s for the weekend. Maybe I'll get lucky again and the rental car place will be out of all the Yugos and we'll be stuck with a Mustang. Yeah!

I was looking around for some new lyrics and chords. I found some ("Murder in the City" and "Follow Me"). I also found a recommendation for people who like OCMS: try Devil Make Three. So I did: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fut6zeXtyN0 Not bad!

At the grocery store today I bought a couple of things that I've never bought before: bleach and kale. At Etta's in Seattle, my tuna steak was served with kale. I'd never had the stuff before but found it pretty tasty. I decided to try to make it on my own, and I think it turned out alright. I ended up frying/steaming it: I started with a bit of olive oil, threw in about a tablespoon of minced garlic and a pinch of salt. I heated up the oil and then tossed in the kale, stirring enough to try to get things hot and coated. Then I started to worry about burning things, so I added in a half cup of delicious PBR (America's best in 1893!), covered it, and let it steam up a bit. Added some more salt, and put it on a plate alongside some red beans and rice with turkey sausage and a dinner roll broiled with olive oil, garlic, and cardamom. If one didn't know better, one might be convinced that I know my way around a kitchen. The bleach? Well, that's for laundry. ...

Wow. A lot's been going on these past few weeks. Most recently i got back from a trip to Phoenix with Kaijsa. Meggie was sposed to come along but decided she needs to start saving for a plane ticket to China. Anyway, we had the chance to visit Peter O'Dowd and tour Taliesin West and watch a spring training game and get some sun on my pale skin. Lesson: Take a credit card with you on vacation, just in case your debit card gets compromised and the bank cancels your card and you've got no extra cash. Luckily, that was the lesson Kaijsa learned on the trip, not me. Before the trip to Phoenix, Kaijsa and I presented at the national librarians' conference. I'm not a librarian, but I went along anyway. Glad I went, too: librarians are a pretty cool bunch, generally. Plus, the library industry apparently has a lot more money to throw around than my field, which meant a couple of open-bar events, dinner at a Tom Douglas restaurant, a dinner at the Space Needle, an al...

I’ve heard a lot of good music lately. A lot. Tonight’s concert was beautiful in a different kind of way. Junior-highschoolers are adorable. And so stupid. And so really beautiful, in such a different kind of way. First came the seventh graders. Like idiot lambs with crap-stained tails, waiting to be herded onto the risers, glass-eyed, then on their way off the stage bunching up at the stairs confused. Voices, all of them, trying to find wings, aiming for confidence and beauty but the girls coming in a half-pitch too low and the boys an octave too high. Some kids with arms rigid at their sides, other kids trying to stay still but dammit-just-can’t-help-but-feel-the-music. Then the eighth graders, nearly twice as big as they were as seventh graders. At least a couple of them must’ve woken up this morning and discovered they’d grown an inch overnight and now they stand there, not really sure how to manage that extra inch of bone and muscle and tendon. But all th...

Finally started on One Man's Wilderness, a book I first heard Jeff and David talk about three years ago. Interesting stuff, the diary of a guy who heads to Alaska to build a cabin and get off the grid. He says: * Learn to use an axe and respect it and you can't help but love it. Abuse one and it will wear your hands raw and open your foot like an overcooked sausage. Each blade was nursed to a perfect edge, and the keenness of its bright edge made my strokes more accurate and more deliberate. No sloppy moves with that deadly beauty! * There's no sleeping pill like a good day's work. * To look around at what you have accomplished gives a man a good feeling. Too many men work on parts of things. Doing a job to completion satisfies a man. * Wind and fire. Help you one minute and kill you the next. * I guess if you learn not to expect much you won't be disappointed too often.