It's Better in Wyoming.

Since Maggie and I will be out of town for a week right in the middle of the holiday season, and since the past few weekends have been pretty busy, we decided against a trip to the Snowies to capture a Christmas tree in the wild.  But, since I also wanted to have something festive, I decided to assemble something that wouldfeel vaguely seasonal. Maggie is calling it her Christmas stick bundle, but I think it turned out pretty well.  It's a set of three baby cottonwood (??) trees from my backyard, from a stump that just won't die.  After the leaves came off these trees earlier this fall, I trimmed the stump back down, and these were some of the trimmings.  I drilled holes into a quarter of a pallet that I'd reclaimed from the local wood-stove store, arranged the trunks, and then decorated with white lights and some red jingle bells.  Happy holidays!

It's been a busy month.  And a busy fall, in general.  The last few weeks have been good, though, when they haven't been so busy.  At the beginning of the month, Maggie and her sister Colleen and I spent a bit of time at Curt Gowdy, wandering around in the fall colors.  Here's a picture of the Stone Pilot formation. For Thanksgiving, Maggie's parents came out from Wisconsin, and my dad and my sister's family also came into town, so we cooked up an 18-pound turkey and had a pretty relaxing time overall.  Time with my niece and nephew is always pretty fun. The past few weekends, Maggie and I have been playing pub trivia on Sundays.  This weekend her family also played along with us, and we managed a disappointing but respectable middle-of-the-pack finish.  I have a feeling next weekend will be too busy to make the trip to the Crowbar, but I'm glad to have the option. I'm also participating in movember this year, and have accumulated a disa...

Maggie and I spent a quick 38 hours in Chicago this weekend.  Unlike the other masses of people there, we weren't running a marathon.  Oddly, though, we did get to see the last "official" finisher coming in around 3ish, before the organizers started taking down the fencing along the route. We were there for Maggie's cousin's wedding, at the Loyola chapel on Lake Michigan.  I've seen more beautiful churches, but I don't know if I've seen a church in a more beautiful setting.  Here's the school's official picture: I agree: pretty fucking beautiful.  I like a church that compels you to look out instead of only looking up . We also wondered Millenneum Park and saw the Bean.  It was ridiculously amusing. And we got to ride public transportation.  I am, obviously, so not cosmopolitan that the train still feels like an amusement park ride to me.

New Avetts and Mumford albums within a few weeks of each other: in my book this is a good September.  Currently, this is one I can't stop listenin' to: Oddly (or maybe not oddly), the song I like best from Mumford is also the last on the album, a bonus track called "Where are You Now."  It's here:

It's been an eventful month, getting back to another semester and trying to stay ahead of the endless grading. I'm only one set behind now.  Well, three-quarters of a set behind. In the meantime, though, I managed to get in a motorcycle ride this past Sunday with Maggie, up to the Friendly Store for breakfast and a three(ish)-mile hike out toward the Gap Lakes in Med Bow. The day before, I facilitated a session at the fall literacy conference, two-and-a-half hours of really excellent information and discussion about the gap between high school and college writing expectations.  My brilliant idea for the relatively long session was to assemble smart people from a range of disciplines, who then said smart things about the struggles and gaps they discover in working with first- and second-year students. A few weeks ago, Maggie and I made a trip down to Ikea to find a new bed, since hers got recalled by the friend-of-a-friend who'd originally given/loaned it to her.  Ad...

Monday night, I spent the evening 3 blocks from my house, 10 rows back from the stage, being absolutely blown away by Mumford and Sons. I intended to write about the concert right away, and now I've waited too long and will fall into cliches.  But I still want to say something . For one thing,  I put some new words to the way I've already felt about live music.  Or maybe I just understand the feeling slightly better now: I want to be with people, but I want to experience live music--especially really fucking good live music-- by myself.  Individually.  Internally.  Selfishly. Not with the self-consciousness of wondering whether I should be dancing more. (Or less.)  Not with the expectation that I should acknowledge the responses of others except when I want to.  Not with any small fragment of hope that anyone else at the concert can feel the music in the same way I do.  Alone: intensely alone. On the other hand, though, here's a small e...

For me, the sign of a good weekend is a moose sighting. It's not the chance to spend a relaxing, long weekend with dad, or the free music at the Oyster Ridge Music Festival, or the amazing sky on our ride back over the Snowies, or the really fantastic visitor center at Fossil Butte, or even the tasty tasty gas-station cheddar dog. I'm lucky to be able to take so many things for granted, and lucky to find satisfaction in simple things. I will say, the music at Oyster Ridge didn't seem as interesting and fun as it's been in the past, and I missed the shandies and cribbage of my last trip there.  But all in all, it was a great weekend.  As always, my photos of the trip are random--I ended up with no pictures of the festival itself, but captured a couple other cool things. Here's Dad at the turnoff south of Saratoga, before we rode up into the clouds, on our way back to Laramie.   Against the odds, we didn't get rained on. A view of Bear Lake.  ...