It's Better in Wyoming.

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.