My last three days...

I'm pretty sure there's an evil succubus living under my brothers driveway.

I know this because my car, and no I'm not kidding, dies every time I drive it in there lately. Luckily, my brother can usually make it go again.

I just thought I'd warn all of you.

Is it possible to have slept less?

I swear, I haven't had more than five hours of sleep since I left home. And those five hours have usually been from dawn until, like, noon. I don't know what it is about being on the East Coast temporarily that so wholly screws up my circadian rhythms but ...well, just wow.

I'm now in Denver on my way home from three weeks with my parents. I'll be home for three days and then drive back to Salt Lake City to meet Amber and be together for an important anniversary for about five days. Then I'm going to go home, dig a big hole and not emerge until the end of August holding a degree and a certification.

Well, ok. That's not totally true. I'm going to camp. And I'm going to go to New Orleans for a conference (and a Sheryl Crow concert!!) and Amber's birthday (which is July 9) and then, really, I'm totally digging in. I'm not even kidding.

I'm going to get this homebody-hermit thing right if it kills me!

Not just yet.

I am scheduled to fly back to Utah on Saturday and, from there, drive home to Montana. I just don't think I'll make it. Usually when I'm away from home (read: my dog) this long I'm dying to get back and get things back to my routine. I've become such a homebody and it's almost difficult for me to be away from my house too long. That, my friends, is unnatural. On my trip to DC in January I was so ready to be 'done' by the time I flew out that I nearly cried in relief. When I heard from Mom that she needed someone with her for this surgery I didn't jump at the chance because I thought it would be similar.

It's not. There's not an overwhelming reason for me to stay in this area. I have a huge exam in a month that must be more focused on. I have school work that needs to be done. I have bulbs I need to plant and a yard that needs some serious attention. Instead, I'm going to stay here another week.

The sun is out. The sky is blue. At home they had snow in the last 48 hours.

Call me crazy but I'll opt for art in spring instead of gardening in winter.

As a bee.

There are many things I love about Washington DC, the arts and monuments chief among them. I find the people here to be interesting, intelligent and challenging. I adore the fact that spring has sprung here when it was not even close to doing so back home. But I do not miss the way these people drive.

Now, I'm not a shrinking violet behind the wheel. Ask Alisa! I basically forced her into a nonexistent parking spot near her favorite bakery using only my will. Or any of my friends who have spent years adjusting to the g-forces caused by the marriage of my foot to my accelerator. Driving in DC, however, seems to be more than haste, more than impatience. Everything here is based on being busy and important. So when a light turns green and you, say, take time to send the signal along your neurons to your foot to respond then the driver behind you is already laying on the horn declaring, "I'M BUSY AND IMPORTANT! MOVE IT!"

This behavior is, frankly, hilarious. It's wildly amusing for me as an outsider to return here and see how fast people drive, how they cut off even two cars just to get to their destination because 'busy' and 'important' are everything. A guy this morning kept speeding past me in his Mercedes. He was doing about 55 mph on surface streets and in residential zones. And he was sitting right in front of me at all four of the red lights we hit on the way to our destination. He hasn't learned that the Universe will not implode if you just pause for a second and consider that you're not Atlas. I felt like sharing that gem with him but I just smiled. And then I silently said a prayer of thanks for Montana and chased it with a prayer that the pace there always remains just about the same.

Ode to my brother

I'm pretty sure that if he was left alone w/ the baby too long Beth would come home to this.

Hello, Friends!

Thursday of this week I started a journey that won't be over for a total of very nearly three weeks. Generally I don't mind travel but when I'm on the road for too many hours along my brain inevitably turns to friends and then to people I've lost touch with. Am I the only one that catalogs those? I kind of run over the people in my life in the last, say, 10 years and wonder where the friendships fell off and I wonder how to rekindle them. Often there's not much I can do about the situation from distance or lack of contact information. Well, before Facebook anyway. But even with social networking sites the attempt to reconnect rings hollow and typical. I suppose that with a finite number of relationships my brain and clock are capable of handling, this is a good thing. I just can't help but missing those who have gone.

On a happier note, I've been staying with Tristin, Ben & Mason in Boise for the last three nights and, I must say, it's not a bad town! It's surely one of the areas I'm thinking about when my degree is finished and people want to hire me again.

I think I mentioned that I had a stray/foster dog traveling with me for the beginning of this trip? If not, run over to stephandboo.blogspot.bom to check out that story. Maybe that post will be more interesting and less 'I ran around too long with Mason and then was too hyper to sleep'.