The Myth & The Majesty

I had a "desk day" yesterday and it led to some interesting journaling last night. I'm sharing it with you now in its original, unfiltered form. * So I'm at my desk, trying to work, and my concentration just isn't there. Too much in my head, see, and too little time available to cope with it all. I'm trying to wrap up my summer prep, trying to find a new laptop, trying to figure out just how I'll finance the damn thing -- I'm tired because I was out too late last night, but I couldn't,  wouldn't leave when the company was so good, and even if I'm paying for it now I'm pretty sure it was worth it. Then I'm distracted again, considering the week ahead and wondering if I can find an extra-delicious sugar cookie recipe to make use of my new astronaut cookie cutter. Maybe I'll even share them. But the list is long and I'm not making much progress. I add to the list of things to do while simultaneous adding to the distrac

Maiden lady librarians who give piano lessons are a specialty of mine ... I'll back her into a corner and breathe on her glasses. - Harold Hill, "The Music Man" It was over twenty years ago -- the very beginning of sixth grade, to be more precise. We were at my sister's basketball game. Mom asked me what the score was; now I'm not sure if it was a test or if she actually wanted to know. I couldn't tell her, no matter how hard I squinted. The next day I had an eye appointment. My first pair of glasses were Harry-Potter-round and bright blue. (Some days I wonder why I was allowed to make my own decisions about such things.) They got broken repeatedly. My second pair was much more sophisticated-looking and made of some kind of super-flexible material. It took a full year before I really broke those. Junior year of high school, I made the switch to contacts after a few too many years of not being able to see well on the soccer field. (I'd given up

I don't have any plants in my house.  See, I have a hard time keeping them alive. My mother has a green thumb -- anything that turns up in her house flourishes, almost like magic. But me? I seem to have a brown thumb. If it turns up in my house, you're just being mean to a plant. I would love for that to be different. It'd be nice to have something alive around. But if I remember to water it, at some point it'll get knocked off its shelf. Or kicked. Or I'll use Windex too close to the thing. Bottom line is that I can be as attentive as necessary and it still won't work out. [I've even killed a cactus. It's awful.] The next catch? I am also allergic to furry things. It's not a debilitating allergy, but between that and the fact that I'm a perpetual renter, it's enough to prevent me from owning a cat or a dog. And while I went through a fish phase in college (at the time, it was a rite of passage), fish aren't cuddly or pa

As a follow-up to my weather and fire posts...  Conditions were just right for the second notable fire of the year. This one was a couple miles east of Hill City, on a mix of public and private land, and it started on Saturday afternoon during the height of our summer-in-April weather. [It was also confusingly named the Storm Hill Fire, or the Storm Mountain Fire before that. We received several panicked phone calls before the confusion was sorted out. But then, mistaken identity is a thing we do around here.] Here's a view on Sunday, when they'd gotten the worst of it under control and right after a hit of rain made everything extra-hazy.   192 acres total, cause yet unknown but declared "not natural." All things considered, this could have ended much differently, and for that matter much worse. It was fueled in large part by a lot of pine-beetle-damaged trees ; that hill and several surrounding ones are among some of the earliest damage

Yikes.  Go home, Mother Nature. Your mood swings are making us all crazy.  

[Maybe?] While messaging with Mia Sorella this morning, she introduced me to bullet journaling . Now, I realize it's everywhere. How had I not already heard of this? This is a rather old picture. I do not miss that coffee table at all. For the similarly uninitiated, bullet journals are an analog, entirely customizable journal-mixed-with-day-planner-mixed-with-goal-list-mixed-with-anything that is apparently quite popular. This is a distilled version of journaling, taking what could be long entries (and to-do lists, and notes) and turning them into easily written and referenced points day by day. And while there are so many examples out there of additions and extra-fancy alterations (this idea was made for Pinterest), the basics include: - Page numbers. - An index at the beginning that you add to as you go. - Some form of daily logging. - Some form of monthly planning. - A method for setting aside "collections," or specific lists or groups of things. [W

As we look toward some really awesome weather (up to 80-something by Saturday ... and then 50s and raining by Sunday because balance is important) I decided to stretch my legs and see if we had any pasque along the trails. One! I found one.  

Once again, it's looking like one of those Weeks. You know. The ones where things don't make a whole lot of sense. Stuff keeps happening. Things keep coming up. Good stuff. Bad stuff. Mediocre but in-the-way stuff. It has been a good week for news, a bad week for sleep (and taxes -- UGH), and an incredible week for talking to strangers. I've learned things, tried things, and with any luck can add another random certification to my resume. [I say "luck" because the test did not take as long as I would expect. Which is perplexing, in this case.] And while we've gotten snow, it now looks to be in the seventies by the weekend.   It's about time for another trek up Harney. A visit to the ranch. And hey, in a couple of weeks, a road trip. Spring. It's a good time.

1. That warm weather I mentioned in my fire post continued through yesterday (right up to a thunderstorm last night), meaning I spent a good chunk of yesterday afternoon working from my deck. It was lovely. 2. I find it terribly amusing that my conversations in restaurants and bars can come back to haunt me through direct marketing. Case in point: Amazon is insisting I go back and buy a book on Scientology or one of those old-school HP scientific calculators that runs on RPN. [Note: It's alarming that I'm actually considering it.] 3. It's also a little scary, since this happens because I ran a Google search on my phone, which is tied to the same account I use for ... well, everything, and since that's the case it turns up in the sidebar of other websites when I'm at work on that laptop. 4. 2016 is a weird place to live. 5. I discovered tubes of gumballs in the dollar spot at Target. My teeth may not recover. 6. The ServSafe training manual is not th

I feel like this morning is a good time to reiterate: talking to strangers can be awesome. Look, I've said it before. I'm an introvert. It's sometimes hard to tell, but after being around people a lot (for instance, this past weekend) I need space and time on my own to recharge. Textbook introversion, really. And I know full well that this summer I'll hit that wall over and over and over again. That being said, some days a good conversation with a new person gives me a buzz that I can't quite explain. Here is something peaceful to contemplate.

I grew up on the eastern half of the state, a land of wind, humidity ... and for some reason, lots of ice. My extreme weather memories seem to revolve around ice storms cancelling school in the fall and winter and thunderstorms spawning tornadoes in the spring and summer. Moving to the Hills was a break from some of that (tornadoes in particular are quite rare around these parts) but there was a trade-off. The Black Hills are adjacent to the Badlands, a small patch of desert between miniature mountains and the prairie that most people picture when you say South Dakota. Thanks to this desert -- and all the weird weather that surrounds mountain ranges -- this area of the state tends to be quite dry. Summertime humidity is often below 50% (and in particularly dry years, mostly under 20%), rain is usually fairly infrequent, and snow cover rarely lasts. The last two winters aside, that is. This year seems to be a return to what I'd call normal, and with that comes an early retur

 ... but as yesterday was Siblings' Day, I had to post something about the two yahoos I get to claim. You know them here as Shorty ... I imagine that's how he feels about his title, too  ... and Mia Sorella. I'm incredibly fortunate to say I actually enjoy hanging out with my siblings, a fact that hasn't always been true (hey, I was a teenager once, too) but is now pretty awesome. Oh my goodness, we were adorable. And Bugsy was too.   They're fun to have around.     Through our shared loves of travel, outdoors stuff of several varieties, quoting "Psych" and "Community" at the drop of a hat, and occasionally breaking into song, we've managed to keep things interesting for our parents and others for multiple decades now. Plus, you know, they both married well and I get to claim some awesome in-law-siblings, too. (That would be Jay and Miss M to you people.) Love you both, and I'll talk to you each

GUYS. Look, I know I link to xkcd a lot around here. But you really need to go start a garden . It's very important. And then you need to make sure you copy your URL so you can come back and check on it. [My tree just started swaying a little. I'm concerned it might tip over. Or it may be an Ent. Could go either way.]

So yesterday morning, my big head was on the Today Show. Yup. Thursday was ... confusing. We had all pretty much figured the sign fervor had died down. A week had passed; hits on the original Facebook post had slowed to a normal level. More importantly, the sign itself seemed to be working -- we haven't had to give anyone instructions all week, although I'm sure the snow has helped. Then I went to my great-aunt's wake. [I'm suddenly relieved that I don't have that many stories that start with funerals.] I met my parents there and afterwards we went to dinner with my grandparents. When I got back to my car, I had two missed calls and a rather surprising voicemail from the Chef Lady. "You need to call me back right away. We got a call from the Today Show and they want to talk to you..." After plenty of assurances that no, this wasn't an early April Fool's joke, I found myself making a flurry of phone calls in a restaurant parking lot,