The Myth & The Majesty

1. My grandparents are now great-grandparents; cousin Kaci had a baby boy early Monday morning. Yay! Congratulations, Kaci and Jerrid! 2. Shorty is now officially of age ... which means that this weekend we can hit a winery or two. Because that is what our gene pool dictates. 3. I'm really tired of looking for a job. But as I don't have one yet, I guess I'll keep it up. 4. The final Packers preseason game is tomorrow night. Will I watch it? ... Absolutely. 5. It still boggles my mind that football has become a "thing" in my life. Egads. 6. On the other hand, the other autumnal things I'm looking forward to include new seasons of "Community" and "Dancing With The Stars" ... and the latter only because Maks is back. 7. Really, that's no more comforting than the football. Egads again. 8. Ooh, and "Doctor Who," which isn't "new" so much as "finally available to me again." 9. Wow, I'm a n...

My first day away and what do I do? Get up at 6:30 anyway. Hey, it was still sleeping in. I'm sure that says something about me. Hopefully it's something like "go-getter" as opposed to "crazy." After spending most of the afternoon thinking about how long it was until I could leave, it was oddly hard to drive away from Storm. Odd because I'll be back this weekend ... but I'm done being employed there. And the place is very, very different than when I turned up in May. I mean, every time I go back it's a little different -- but this time it's very different than when I arrived. It's odd. Now, I sit in a rather isolated (really, the fog is amazing this morning), rather quiet house by myself. After three months of nonstop people, this is absolutely fantastic. Desperately needed. And hey, it works out well for everybody -- my grandparents get a much-needed vacation and I get away for a couple days. Even better, about the time the solitud...

Folks popping over from my Facebook page have seen this already, but for everybody else ... I love these guys. Both sets, the live ones and the puppets. Yay.

... and my gypsy year continues, I find myself at something of a crossroads. From here, I'm headed to the ranch to housesit for a bit (a week? maybe?) and then probably back to Sioux Falls for an undetermined period of time. In the meantime, I have applications to finish and just enough money to get by for a bit ... while I find a job of some kind and make myself useful somehow. Okay. Less of a crossroads, more of a snow-lined path in the fog. For the moment, I can enjoy the end of my time at Storm. I have a couple hours left of my break (gotta love a split shift) and my Pepsi here at the Gaslight. Tonight, I have a cabin to myself in the middle of a semi-occupied camp. It's been a truly interesting run and I'm almost sorry to leave ... except that what happens next has the potential to be fabulous. Somehow, that makes it much easier.

In every place I've lived, I've had a "spot." The one where I always go to relax, the one that helps ease my nerves. Often my bedroom (particularly when I was sharing a house with five other women), sometimes a lesser-traveled living room or something similar. For the last fifteen years, there's been one room at Storm that has been "that spot" for me. It's the room people forget about -- on the bottom floor of the main lodge, tucked back from the game room, and rather inexplicably referred to as the fireplace room. (There's a fireplace in almost every meeting room in this camp. I have no idea why this one gets a special designation but it's been that way through at least three directors.) The furniture doesn't match, the TV is old and enormous, it's smelled the same way for basically ever, and it is easily the most comfortable spot in this building. I have a crazy history with this room -- the first time I went to camp, we slept h...

In between my job searches, You-Tube-stolen-time (I blame the Old Spice Guy vs. Fabio thing, and I can't believe I just admitted that one publicly), and that working thing I do occasionally, I've been thinking about baby gifts for a couple of expecting friends. Back in 2004 when I started going to weddings, I kind of forgot that little jingle we sang in elementary school. You know -- "First comes love, then comes marriage..." Since then, something like three-quarters of the couples whose weddings I've attended have started having kids. Not surprising, given that the madness started seven years ago and most people don't actually wait that long to start a family. In the last year, there's been a veritable baby boom. I don't know if people are just hitting "that age" or if they're suddenly feeling more secure in their jobs (hey, there weren't as many babies in '08 and '09, and I know some of those were just people feeling ski...

14 weeks at the camp. 20 pounds lighter than in May. (Woot!) About $150 that my little green card allowed me to not spend. 8 payments made, half to my car and half to my student loans. 3 Wisconsin friends I got to show around the Hills. 2 Wisconsin friends that randomly appeared on a different day. (That was crazy.) 3500 miles on my car. 30-some miles on my boat. 8 found geocaches. (Hm. I may have been slacking off on that one.) 21st birthday yet to celebrate for my "little" brother. 8  9 half-priced bagels consumed. Around 150 meals prepared for 10 to 160 people. 7 out-of-town family members visited. 4.5 concerts attended. 1 regret. (I really should have given that cowboy my phone number...) Now, to get on with the rest of the summer!

Last night another in a long line of storms blew through. And me? I was sitting in the kitchen of a very, very quiet camp, watching a movie and toasting granola for breakfast this week. It was about ten-thirty as I was walking back to my cabin that the storm took out the camp's power and I was abruptly plunged into darkness unlike any I had seen all summer. Not a house light, not a floodlight, not even the light from the cross up on the rocks. Heck, even the lightning only managed to light up the clouds. I may have been lucky to not wander off the bridge and into the creek, because let's face it, that would have been a very "me" thing to do. The staff cabin is otherwise empty now Things have come full circle -- I was the first summer staffer here and I'll be the last to leave. Of course, it was during that first week here alone that the maintenance man went a little nuts and got himself fired. Hopefully these last couple of weeks are a bit less ... eventful. ...

It has been an exhausting summer. I'm the only summer staffer left. I have a lot of work to do before I go...

Hmmmmmmm.

The summer is winding down. Heck, the weather's even more reasonable. Oh, and the Perseids are hitting their peak, although a full moon may mess with you. (Recommended: early mornings.) People are leaving the camp. Staffers, that is. It's weird. And quiet. ... I don't quite know what to do with myself. It's an unexpected problem.

One of the coolest perks to working in the Hills for the summer is the VIP card. These magic little things get us into all sorts of tourist attractions for reduced prices (frequently 100% off) with the hope that we'll try a bunch of 'em out and then spread the word when people are looking for things to do. Every year toward the end of the summer, the Stormers have a day-long outing where we make full use of this card. As it happens, yesterday was that outing. (Ahem. Sorry guys. Here, let me even the score a bit.) (Yikes.) There were some of the usual stops involved -- Evans Plunge in Hot Springs, the Black Hills Playhouse in Custer State Park -- and they did not disappoint. But the new thing we did this year that was entirely new to me was the Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary. The sanctuary consists of about 13,000 acres and houses around 550 horses -- roughly 100 domesticated, the remaining being American and Spanish Mustangs. Tours take you acro...

This is what's been going on in Rapid City. It's not been a good week for the community. Everyone involved was fairly young, too. Almost entirely twenty-somethings. I can't even go near some of the nasty things that have flown in certain groups since then. Ugly, ugly stuff. Rest in peace, Ryan and Nick...

I wasn't originally going to post it ... I was writing it for my own benefit. But as sometimes happens, I had the sudden urge to share. So here we go. * Dear Jon, I got an alert on Facebook yesterday that it was your birthday and it nearly made me cry. It's been two years since I got that message from your brother, two years since I met the girls in Sauk Rapids for your wake, two years since we sat with your parents and told every funny Jon story we could remember. Two years this Sunday since then... We didn't stay in proper touch after you left Tech ... and that still hurts. Two years ago was the first time I hadn't called you on your birthday and I still have to tell myself it wouldn't have saved you. A part of me still wonders -- maybe if I had called, or if I had sent you one more email while you were deployed, or at least said hi on Facebook one more time. Another part of me knows that once you had made up your mind, it didn't matter what anyon...

Last year, Blogger launched a statcounter of their own that came standard with a blog. It was great for a few reasons -- first, for regular bloggers, it meant that we could keep track of a few things without effort. Secondly, it meant that those of us who were frustrated with third-party statcounters could give them up entirely. Third ... it was free. I like free. Anyway, it's been an interesting source of information for me, not least of all because it's proving to me daily that yes, people read this thing. I thought perhaps I could share some of that information with you. First, there's the spread by country (although only the top ten are shown): Clearly, most of my readers are in the US. Not exactly surprising. Next up is South Korea, which is also not surprising given that Mia Sorella lives there. Russia follows ... likely because I still have a few friends there. Daz was in Italy for a time and as this is an "all-time" stat, I suppose those hits are f...

Dear Habicht, Such a solemn air of silence has descended between us that I almost feel as if I am committing a sacrilege when I break it now with some inconsequential babble... What are you up to, you frozen whale, you smoked, dried, canned piece of soul...? It's been a rough couple of days -- not just for me, either. If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales. The kind of week that sends me careening off into other places looking for words of wisdom. Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction. This time, amongst many other sources (I've been reading an awful lot), that's included Albert Einstein ... who happens to be one of my heroes. Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Human beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant. Toge...

It was her first chance at escape and it was long due. The week before, she had been overwhelmed by 150 women and girls; the weekend brought what was easily the most frustrating family reunion to visit the camp yet. After a week where she essentially worked one full extra day, it was time to get out. Her original plans for a long hike weren't sounding sufficiently restful anymore. Knowing what was ahead that week, her plans changed -- and so it was that she found herself back on a familiar lake, drifting slowly as she read about Australia and daydreamed. For a Monday morning, there were a surprisingly large number of people out and about. Aside from a handful of tourists -- families on vacation, some friendly but lost bikers from Illinois -- the lake was buzzing with locals and their boats. People seemed insistent on enjoying their last few weeks of guaranteed warm weather, which was somehow understandable. A need for air conditioning and food eventually propelled her from th...