It's Better in Wyoming.

In case you've been wondering what to do with your time this summer: This year's Woodchopper Jambore e will be held June 18-20, according to Mags at the Bear Trap. It's the 50th Anniversary of cutting wood and rodeoing and drinking and fighting. I'll be up in the Black Hills over that weekend, celebrating my grandparents' 65th wedding anniversary, so somebody should probably take my place and fill me in on all I miss. I may also miss the 2010 Fire in the Sky , too, since the future of the event is up in the air (no pun intended). According to the Jubilee Days FB page , the event has been "cancelled for an indeterminate amount of time." An article in the Boomerang , however, suggests that the City will likely take over the fireworks part of the event. I wonder if Brock Finn's already got a gig lined up for the Fourth... The website for Oyster Ridge Music Festival still looks like shit. Seriously, like shit. A hot steamy pile of it. But the lin...

Two years ago my dad and I camped up at Esterbrook, then hiked partway up the Laramie Peak trail the next day. We only hiked up to Friend Falls, about two miles up the trail, since I was still recovering from an ugly sprained ankle. This weekend, Steph and I drove from Laramie up to Rock River and then across the gravel to Friend Creek Campground (right at the trailhead to the peak trail), then attempted the summit yesterday morning. Thwarted, again. This time, it was snow drifts still across the trail, big enough and slick enough that we decided we didn't want to bother with it. If I owned some gaiters and was smart enough to bring them along, it might have been a different story, but as it was, we ate some cheese and crackers and pistachios just below Friend Falls and then headed back. Despite a relatively good forecast for the overnight, we ended up driving through an hour-plus of muddy slick roads to get up to the campground. Then sat through a pretty awesome sheet-lightnin...

Now I don't doubt that The Good Book is true What's right for me may not be right for you ... And I don't know if my soul is safe Sometimes I use curse words when I pray My god! My god and I don't need a middle man My god! My god and I don't need a middle man -- "me and god," The Avett Bros.

Unofficially, 4pm on Friday marked the beginning of "summer." That was when my last class for the semester ended. (I still have 400 pages of grading ahead, so perhaps I should wait to call "summer!" until I've gotten all the final grades in....) Officially, it doesn't feel "summery" in Laramie. It doesn't even feel all that " springery " in Laramie, to be honest. Melissa and I headed out for a hike at Vedauwoo yesterday, and we ended up just walking down the gravel road because there were still pretty good-sized patches of snow all around. The high for Friday was 38 degrees. But it also doesn't feel summery in the sense of a great lifting weight, a great sense of freedom and the open road ahead. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing--I'm still definitely looking forward to the variety of this summer's work, and the possibility of some trips and house projects. But there doesn't seem like there...

I'm sure I speak for all of KCWY13's viewers when I say, "We'll miss you, Kristen." Just when I was starting to know most of the names of the 6pm and 10pm anchors, Kristen Mosteller is apparently moving on to bigger and better things. Alas, we can only hope that B-Fitz and Walter Allen won't be next, though it does seem that they've also been strangely absent lately, too. In related news, I thought KCWY's coverage of the Bill Ayers visit was underwhelming. This AP story reports that 1,100 people endured the high security measures in order to hear Ayers speak, which seems a decent number on a snowy spring evening in our town. As Ayers pointed out, without all the publicity the crowd would have likely only been about "30 education students, and half of them probably would've been texting." Though I'm ambivalent, still, about the initial selection of Ayers as a campus speaker, I'm mostly glad for the dialogue it's created:...

This month I'm participating in another program to lower my 2011 health insurance premium. The program is about prepping for emergencies and disasters, and overall it's been a pretty crappy program, I think. I did get a little first-aid kit out of the deal, though, which came in handy when I sliced my finger chopping potatoes at the beginning of the month. Additionally, today's word of wisdom seems pretty relevant to where I'm at these days: "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced." - James Baldwin. It's funny--or maybe not funny at all--to discover that so much of what has felt like forward progress has just been a big circle--a different circle than before, but still one that has brought me back, in a lot of ways, to where I've already been. But still, some signs of hope. On the bright side, I started learning the chords to "Tear Down the House" this weekend.

Well, the Avetts were every bit as good the second time around. My sister got me tickets back in January (a pretty damn good birthday present!), and she agreed to come along with me for the concert in Boulder on Wednesday. We found our way to Pearl Street, had some good Indian food in the basement restaurant next to the theater, and then listened to a great set of Avetts, despite the fact that they didn't play 'In the Curve' or 'Salvation Song' or 'Gimmeakiss' or 'Laundry Room' or my favorite-of-late, 'Tear down the House.' On the other hand, they did play 'If it's the Beaches' and 'Murder in the City' and 'I and Love and You' and 'The Ballad of Love and Hate,' and I guess when you've got a half-dozen amazing songs on every album it's hard to play all of the good ones in one concert. Here's a grainy clip of Scott playing the first two verses of the first Avetts song I ever heard: Yeah, it w...