Here, There, Missoula MT

69.

2012-01-24T20:05:00.001-07:00

Dear Sandra,

I heard the song your boyfriend wrote for you and even though you and I don't know each other I feel compelled to reach out. I'm worried about you. Your boyfriend's admonitions are signs of a controlling and paranoid personality. If a man answers your phone when he calls, he will break up with you - no room for explanation, no give or take. He offers no reasonable evidence that you're cheating on him, and he refuses to consider the possibility that the man answering your phone might be your father, or a telephone repairman.

You don't need that kind of emotional manipulation in your life - the paranoia, suspicion, jealousy, controlling behavior, the threats. Yes the song is catchy - I'm sure you've stayed up late dancing to it - but don't let the rock and roll blind you to what it actually is. The whole song is a threat! He even has to bring up all the money he's spending to call you. Let me be frank, Sandra: you need to break up with Bobby. He's a bully.

Look, I don't know you at all, and for all I know you're not two-timing Bobby - you probably aren't, he's obviously a paranoid jerk - but if you are, you need to break up with the other guy as well. I can understand why you'd seek shelter from Bobby Darin the control freak, but to go directly to a guy who thinks he needs to be the one to answer someone else's phone when it rings - why? He sounds just as controlling as Bobby!

Honey, dump them both, and spend some time alone. Start a journal. Go on a trip. Maybe look into counseling. You don't need a man bossing you around, calling you all the time, answering your phone. Take some time for yourself and become the strong, independent woman that I know you can be. Take care of yourself!

Kelsi

p.s. Just so you know, Bobby's selling records of this song all over the place, even Bonners Ferry, so complete strangers are privy to these problems in your personal life.

68. Likely the last post of 2011

2011-12-27T16:02:00.001-07:00

As ever (lately), I'm totally uninterested in recording anything of note. Which is not to say that I'm totally uninterested in myself (of course) or in writing or in anything - I am. Let's just say I'm on a bit of a hiatus. This hiatus extends to all my other journals (of which there are very many).

It's not that I feel stymied - I just feel like I'm waiting for a bit.

In sum: back to my desk job full time starting today, not teaching anymore, not doing my radio show - all of which means I get an hour for lunch for the first time ever. An entire hour. I believe this is yet another step on the road to adulthood, but what in the world do you do for an hour? Read a book? Take a nap?

My running has gone way down this month but my ankle still hurts. Nothing to do about it, though, because I start running again this week - this is the start of the new running season, an x-ray-free running season I hope (but we'll see about that).

I would like to do another large bicycle ride next year, and I'm interested in running an ultra (but am still uninterested in the marathon). I'd like to retire but realize that is likely unfeasible at this time. I think I might need to travel again, and I do have plane tickets to California in February but that will probably only make it worse.

I got an accordion, I have houseplants again, I'm thinking about buying decaf coffee beans so I can drink coffee in the evenings.

I haven't gotten a cat but I did get trapped under one last week so I don't owe any of you any money at all.

Other than that, I'm not in the mood for reflecting. All predictions about this year have turned out to be true (except getting a cat).

С праздником!

67. Wild Missoula Animal Outbreak

2011-11-23T10:47:00.019-07:00

My wild animal encounters have been happening too fast to allow me to provide any sort of overarching narrative (as soon as I have one thing written up, I experience another wild animal encounter) – there is no indication that they will stop – and so we turn to bullet points.

I have yet to actually see one of my rodent housemates (see previous entry). I thought I'd found their little gateway, a mouse-shaped hole (it was a hole in the shape of a mouse, it even had a tail) in my cupboard – I tacked up cardboard over it and thought I'd won, but those motherfucking mice, pooping in my motherfucking house – I found mouse poo under the suitcase in my bedroom. The sanctity of my room of repose has been violated. Mice: this means war.

That race I ran last Sunday, we were supposed to turn around at the water station, but no one knew that, including the volunteers, so everyone just kept on running. Eventually, a kilometer or two later, we figured it out and turned around, and as we're approaching the water station again there's this bald eagle sitting in a tree looking at us with disdain. You could tell that, if he could talk, he would have been saying, "Yeah, you guys were supposed to turn around up there. You are stupid." Many of us stopped to look at him because the race didn't really matter anymore.

This week, Monday morning, I dropped my car off at the shop and walked to campus, and as soon as I set foot on campus suddenly there is this cacophony of crowing and all these crows are freaking out, swooping around and shouting, and then a fox runs around Jesse Hall! A motherfucking fox! Running around the corner! And it stops and turns around and runs away again, and all the crows swoop and shout after it. A fox being hounded by a murder of crows! I've never really seen a fox up close before and definitely never seen one in town. It looked just like a fox does in cartoons. It was beautiful, really, and I loved it. I don't know where it went or where it came from. I don't know why the crows cared so much.

That evening, I was walking back to the car shop through the university neighborhood. It was pretty dark. I walked by some house and then this line of five raccoons walks by me! Five! All in a line! They were all adults. They stopped and looked at me and they weren't scary or freakish like the raccoons in California were, these are nice wild healthy critters going about their business, and perhaps they were up to no good but they were not rapscallions.

Yesterday morning I walked across the California Street footbridge and saw some tracks in the snow on the bank – feline – quite large. Quite large feline tracks! I thought at first that they were probably bobcat, but those are only a couple inches square, and these were larger. Cougar! Cougar tracks! And there were two sets of them – do cougars travel in pairs? This is two blocks from my house. (I have been informed that 'mountain lion' is the preferred term in Montana. Sorry, I'm from Idaho.)

Last night while walking home along the river trail I heard all this flapping and splashing in the water. It was getting pretty dark but I could see that there were ducks about, so I thought it was just a duck flapping around. But it kept on going, on and on, and I saw that the duck was spinning in a circle, so I thought maybe it had whirling disease or was being attacked by an underwater alligator, but it turned out to be two ducks. Two ducks having a duck fight! They were fighting each other with their duck wings and their duck beaks! They were spinning around and around and fighting and floating down the river for like ten minutes. They'd stop every couple minutes to take a break but then they'd start again. No, they were not mating. It was very weird and mean. Then they swam upstream to the middle of the river and I lost them. Probably, today, there is a dead duck body floating around downstream on its way to the ocean.

tl;dr I SAW COUGAR TRACKS TWO BLOCKS FROM MY HOUSE.

Do cougars hunt mice?

66. Apartment of horror

2011-11-15T10:55:00.001-07:00

I moved to this apartment in June and things were super. In the summer, when it was quite hot outside and even hotter inside, I had the luxury of cable television, and in the evenings I would sweat in my chair by the window through which the sunset shone and watch Jersey Shore or Keeping Up With The Kardashians or movies about abduction on Lifetime. Halcyon days, really, which I will always think of with affection and longing.

Then in August the people downstairs moved out and no one moved in (except [SPOILER ALERT] mice!!! [see below]) and, while I no longer had free internet or television, I had the yard to myself and no downstairs neighbors to be mindful of. And so I started hosting barbecues and disco parties and staying up until the wee morning hours, playing loud music, stomping around and shouting, getting into fights etc. Also I was entrusted with a lawnmower and got to mow the lawn, which I quite enjoy.

Everything was fine! And then...!

First I found out that my toilet pipe is leaking downstairs. This is gross. Even if it's not leaking on me (which would be grosser).

Some guy named Nate is going to come over and rip up my bathroom later this week. It will take two days. He will balance my toilet on plywood in between days, so I can still use the bathroom. I look forward to this new life adventure.

But also! A few days ago I found mouse poo! On my large chair! I bought some mouse traps. (I haven't forgotten the trauma of last summer so I got the kind of trap where you don't have to see their dead spindly little mouse tails or the fur of their dead little mouse heads. These traps keep you quite removed from the gore of mammalian death.)

I innocently but fervently believed that I had been visited by only one mouse - a scout mouse who'd been sent by his mouse clan to find a warm place for them to live for the winter. His mission and his life were halted while I was out running a race on Sunday. But then unfortunately I found two more mouse turds. On my TABLE. So I bought more traps and now have three set for those bastards. I sleep very well at night.

I said to my landlords that I might borrow a cat but they laughed off the suggestion. I would press the issue further and insist on getting myself a cat but I'm not sure what I'd do with my cat when I go to Hawaii (or Austin, I could go to Austin).

Because a fine lady can never have too many blogs, I've started another. This one is on Wordpress and is very attractive. It has a purpose. I'll tell you about it later.

Sorry about all the adverbs?

65. News of the day

2011-10-26T17:00:00.000-06:00

Big news, Missoula!

Before that, though, let me explain some things to you.

First, I am excited to announce that I have gotten a subscription to the newspaper, just like a real adult. Just like a real adult, I've commissioned some poor little boy to bring a newspaper to my house in the very early morning hours, every day. Just like a real adult, I quickly flip through the pages of each newspaper a day or two late. Mostly I'm excited about the cryptogram - I conquer that thing every day except Sundays, when it doesn't run. But my reason for telling you about my newspaper subscription is to establish the fact that I've got my finger on the pulse, okay? I know all about what's happening around town now.

Second, because I got me one of them fancy smart phones and do all my business upon it, I got me a blogger app so that I can type entries on my fancy phone wherever the sam hell I am and have the words change to random other lexical items that share two letters in common with the words I meant. It will make for fun, fast, informative reading and may stave off dementia.

Third, while not rescinding my threat to leave this town for good at any g.d. time I feel like, I have decided to go home for the weekend to rest. This is neither here nor there and does not pertain to the news of the day.

So, the big news: wintertime hath cometh! WHHHHYYYYYY. I've lost my winter coats and/or forgotten what they look like. I was going to walk to work today but didn't, thankfully - I wouldn't have made it alive. Instead I drove my auto and had to scrape the windows.

I live very near to an officially sanctioned graffiti park (which means I am privy to all that's going on with the kids these days) and some hooligans found a load of snow somewhere and scattered it around on the ground the other day. The snow melted a bit but froze overnight. I walked by yesterday morning, paying attention only to my fancy phone, and nearly slipped on the frozen melted snow. I did not report the hazard to the authorities but could have if I had a 911 app for my phone.

Take care while walking and driving.

64.

2011-10-25T21:42:00.001-06:00

I've been going through my old journals. On August 19, 2004, I wrote: Do they play golf in the snow? If not, I'm going to invent it and call it snolf.

I used to be really smart.

63. Weather

2011-10-20T17:00:00.017-06:00

I guess my favorite insult-du-jour (that's French for 'insult of the day') is 'jerk'. For a while it was 'jackalope', and then it was 'jerkalope' - you can see the evolution. I also use it as a generic noun of description. If I call something a jerk, you can't be quite sure if I'm using it as an insult or as a generic noun. If such a situation arises - e.g. if I call you a jerk - please ask for clarification.

Days in Missoula lately have proceeded thusly: fog, sun, nighttime. It's been pretty interesting. I rode my bike to campus yesterday morning just for fun, just for old times' sake, and got covered in mist. Some of the mist was from my breath, but most was from the fog.

My last radio show, after almost five years, was in August. I went to the station and saw a couple shifts that I could fill this weekend, but I realized I have absolutely no inclination to play music over the air right now. What in the world would I even play? I thought maybe drinking some yerba mate would help me, but I've done that a few days in a row now and ain't nothing changed at all.

Missoula, I moved back to you five years ago. We've been good to each other - I've been good to you, or tried to be (I pick up garbage when I see it, occasionally), and you've been good to me (although you can be very difficult at times). (I can be difficult too - I'm not laying all the blame on you - I do acknowledge my own culpability.) But... I wonder if this situation has outlived its usefulness. Don't flip out - I'm just thinking about it. (I've been thinking about it for five years, though.) But do know that I am thinking about it.

Periodically I get this overwhelming feeling of wanderlust, difficult to ignore. Right now I'm feeling the urge to go to Hawaii for a few weeks - find a room to rent for a month, take a suitcase and a few books, and then move back home and open a bakery (which will fail miserably after a few days because I have neither business acumen nor common sense). Probably I will do neither, but I might do something.

Regardless of our future, Missoula, I will say that this summer was quite lovely despite its late start and my slow half marathon, and I will look back on it with fondness, as I will all the summers I've spent here (even though I have a very hard time living without a lake).

Maybe I wouldn't like Hawaii, because now that I think about it I don't really like the ocean, and mountainless horizons freak me out... Maybe New Mexico? I don't know.

Please send job prospects to me regarding the following: garbage picker-upper, editor, mower of vast lawns, philanthropist, tastetester (I don't like: spicy foods, brownies), person who works with paper (I enjoy cutting paper into shapes, writing onto paper, etc.), doughnut shop, furniture maker. Also I am a retired housekeeper and would consider re-entering the field (for an offer lucrative enough to support my habits).

62. Urban fowl, adulthood

2011-09-27T11:42:00.001-06:00

Due to recent insurmountable technological and temporal persecution, I have been unable to update this blog for months and months - a dire hardship, I know, for fans addicted to the hot Missoula gossip I normally impart on a regular basis. Please, however, remain calm for a while longer, because I am totally thinking about doing two things: 1. getting the internet (my downstairs neighbors took the internet with them when they moved, leaving me high and dry), and 2. getting me one of them fancy smart phones. Then I will always be online! Even while I'm in bed!

You've been wondering about how I'm liking my new neighborhood and I can tell you this: I do. Except one of my neighbors is a rooster, even though roosters aren't allowed to live in the city. Maybe he thinks he won't get found out because he doesn't say "cockadoodledoo" - instead he says, every morning when it's just starting to get light, "I'm an asshole!" over and over and over. At least he's an honest rooster, I guess, but despite his nonstandard dialect he's still an illegal. I am not normally murderous but one of these mornings I might become so.

I hope you are having a good year. The journey I started in 2003 is, like, you know...

61. Weather, running

2011-07-19T21:18:00.001-06:00

Missoula MT — Normally an arid wasteland of roasted dust and tumbleweeds and fiery wind, Missoula has been unusually wet this year. A winter full of snow and ice, a spring full of rain, now a summer full of runoff and rains and just the right amount of humidity. It smells good in the mornings, the air feels good, my hair is all frizzy. You'd almost think there was a lake somewhere around here, but don't be fooled. There isn't. Despite all the rain, Missoula remains as lakeless as it's been these past 12,000 years, and living here in the summer leading a dry and barren life remains the abomination it always has been.

Well. Perhaps I neglected to tell you that I was going to be doing the race last weekend (the half, not the full). Perhaps I've neglected to tell you other things as well. We will get to that later. First, the race.

This year I was in the portaloo when the race started and there wasn't much I could do about it. Thus went this entire running season for me.

The race went fine. I got all teary-eyed numerous times, because of someone's shirt, because of the guy playing the piano, because of this and that. It was an emotional day.

A white rabbit ran across the road in front of me as I rode my bike past the Silver Dollar Bar at 5 a.m. A good sign? No, turned out to be a neutral sign.

I ran/walked and had my slowest half marathon since that race last fall when I got lost three times in the woods. My ankle made its presence known but was fine. Can't wait for next year!

Other things I have neglected to tell you: I have moved to the Westside (I'm not hip enough for the Hip Strip), I've been housesitting again on the Northside (site of Mouse Havoc 2010), I've been stricken with yet another professional opportunity in the field I actually went to school for (goodbye, leisure time), I didn't get sick all spring!

Now I'm all into biking and I've even bought those little shorts with the padding in the butt. This blog will likely become exclusively a biking blog.

Nota bene: I was in the portaloo when the race started not because I was spending a long time in there (please! I am a fine lady!) but because I had neglected to arrive at a fashionable time and had then spent 10 minutes waiting tragically in the wrong stupid line for the porta-potty before I abandoned that for a better line, by which time there was only a minute to go. Next year I will get up when my stupid alarm goes off.

60. Running, internet/the future

2011-06-21T22:37:00.002-06:00

Tomorrow will be 3 seconds shorter than today. I'd tell you more about what's going on here in Missoula but I have to go to bed right now, as soon as I turn off the TV. Lately I've been busy watching TV and eating hot dogs, and I'm also super into running these days, even though I can't really run. But running's all I want to do, and watch TV. So right now the Mariners are up 5 to 1 and ... oh god! The game I'm watching isn't live! What?!? The Nationals will score 5 runs in the 9th and the Mariners will lose? Why in the world am I watching this then? This is stupid.

59. Weather, walking

2011-05-09T19:49:00.000-06:00

Last night I was out on Reserve, arguably the worst place in the state - a terrible concrete sprawl of strip, nothing but cars rushing by and parking lots and terrible generic stores in buildings they don't deserve. Rain had been predicted all day - 90% chance, all day long, every hour - but the rain didn't come until the early evening, first a few splatters and then heavier and heavier. And out on Reserve, that waste of concrete and pollution, it was heavenly. It smelled like tulips. You've never smelled fresher air.

It rained all night and into the morning. This morning I walked to work in a raincoat with an umbrella. I walked through the tree-covered University neighborhood to campus, the state's official arboretum, where it smelled like worm meat. Worms, worms, nothing but worms.

58. Running, weather, math

2011-05-06T18:30:00.002-06:00

The other night while I was out run/walking in the hot summer sun I was doing math problems, as is my wont, trying to figure out my running pace - a challenge when you're run/walking (or should it be run-walking?) - and I'm embarrassed to tell you how long it took me to figure this out - the answer is so obvious now. My excuse is that, although I'm constantly doing math problems while I'm running, I'm not constantly solving math problems - meaning, I'm not very good at math while I'm running, even though I'm always thinking about it. So, if I do 29 run/walk intervals of 1:15 and :30 over 4.75 miles, what's my running pace? Like I said, the answer seems so obvious now, but I just figured it out. Wait... what?

57. structural update etc.

2011-03-28T18:24:00.002-06:00

Got out of the boot today! Walking around in a complete pair of shoes! My achilles tendon is moving for the first time in a month and a half! Tendons are weird.

But more importantly, I found $20 in a parking lot today. It's not mine - what should I do with it? I'd send it to Home Alive with a note saying "Keep on kicking ass," but they closed last year, so I'm taking suggestions. Maybe this is something I should use facebook for - thank you for your patience.

56. Weather, music, reading

2011-03-27T19:18:00.007-06:00

I'd like to provide you with an update of recent goings-on in Missoula but I don't know anything about it, except that there are some potholes on the roads and everyone is angry. I haven't been up to much lately - I've been sidelined with a broken ankle, and you can't do much of anything when you're on crutches and it's snowy and icy outside.

For almost six weeks I have been the proprietor of a spiral fracture of the fibula. I was pretty lucky - no surgery, supposed to heal okay, on crutches for less than five weeks. I'm hobbling around in a walking boot now. Being able to carry things in your hands while you walk is terribly convenient. Bipedalism is the height of evolution.

When you're on crutches everyone's pretty nice to you. Last week I made a large batch of mint oatmeal chocolate chip cookies to give to people who were particularly nice and went out of their way to help me. It's depressing when your body fails you, and doubly depressing when the weather turns against you and makes going outside scary and nearly impossible, but when someone remembers to pick you up where the bus drops you off every morning to drive you a quarter mile to the building you work in... I mean, you know... it's pretty nice. Cookies don't come close to expressing it.

(For reference, it takes about 20 minutes to go about a quarter mile on crutches on ice. After exertion such as that, the crutch operator is sweaty and tired out, a state you don't want to be in at 7:55 in the morning.)

(If you want to improve upper-body and core strength, a few weeks on crutches will certainly help you out, although I'd recommend pursuing other workout options first.)

Luckily over time I've become more mobile, and luckily the snow and ice have started to wane, and luckily I live about a block away from some record stores, and so I've acquired a few inches of new records, and so I'm thinking about making a new mixtape.

I haven't made a mixtape in years, but I used to, every once in a while. A few years before a few years ago I made a mix of songs about rain and water and I sent those tapes to various people in various places around the world. A few years after that I gave all the students in one of my ESL classes a CD of songs about traveling - they clapped with enthusiasm and joy at first, but when I mentioned that there were many genres of songs on the CDs, including country, they made bad faces and barfing noises. A few months after that I tried to make a mix of moon songs, but I didn't follow through with the project and a rough draft is all that remains. (It is incredible and despite its rough state will likely be bootlegged by my heirs for generations.)

I haven't made a mixtape in years now but the topic has come up a couple times in the last couple months and I think maybe I will make a new one. I'll make one for you if you want, but you should know these things: it will be on cassette tape, and the music I'm interested in these days is easy listening and hip hop. If I make you one and you throw it out the window you cannot tell me.

I have another couple weeks of restricted activity, so this will be a good project, as I've had my fill of books and movies.

2011-03-01T21:00:00.002-07:00

Wenn man eine Reise macht, hat man viel zu erzählen.

55. Reading, eeyore

2011-02-22T19:38:00.000-07:00

Due to unforeseen circumstances my winter reading project has been extended for the next 6-8 weeks. I recently renewed Tough Trip Through Paradise from the library because I like it well enough - right now the guy's off camping with a woman (her skin is copper!) but he won't touch her because he thinks he'll go to hell (he's Catholic). The alcoholic Arschloch he started out with is off with some Indians or something, telling lies and burying stuff, tickling women and drinking way too much whiskey, as far as I can tell. Kind of boring right now but I think it'll get better.

But I'm tempted to start a movie watching project and abandon the reading project. I'd be happy to read books if they read themselves for you, but they don't. Books schmooks!

I guess I'm going to be riding the bus to work for a while now - my first experience was this morning and it was terrible. I should have just spent the night at work tonight.

The weather forecast makes everything seem impossible.

54. Running, reading

2011-01-19T20:02:00.003-07:00

Last night I, along with the rest of the Missoula running community, which means the entire rest of Missoula, was at a running talk at the Wilma Theater. We, the running community of Missoula, filled up the entire place. I imagine our coach and the other honchos who head the running community, as they looked out into the assembled masses, must have been thinking, "My god, we've created a monster" - and they have, the Missoula running community has become a monster. Everyone and his mother runs. You cannot look in any direction in this town without seeing people running. People run all over the place in every kind of weather at all times of the day and night, everywhere, always. I realized at the talk last night that I've become quite disconnected from running. I'm all about the boozing and the socializing but not about the vitality and the actual running anymore. The reason is that running hurts, and the reason for that is my stinking ribs. I hope it stops hurting soon because I'd like to be bouncing and bounding happily around with everybody else instead of trudging around with a grimmace, blarg. You know? If it doesn't start getting better soon I'll retire from running forever.

I cannot, though, retire from the big race of the year because I've done it every single year (4) and I am now one of only like 106 perennials. Every year, as more of us perennials give up running or die off, that number will get smaller and smaller. I plan to run the 50th Missoula Half Marathon in the year 2056 and win my age group. Or maybe I'll do the full that year. I hope they do something special for us perennials, like maybe let us ride on a float in a parade, or maybe give us special shirts, or maybe give us a ride in the race for a few miles and drop us off two blocks from the finish line, or maybe give us 10 free beers after the race, or maybe give us free massages, or maybe do a documentary on us.

It's a dang shame that I am not a documentary filmmaker. If I were I'd be filming all these documentaries right now, they'd be very interesting. I'd interview myself in every one of my documentaries - I'd sit in a large chair, maybe by a fireplace, and I'd call myself an expert. I don't know why when I went to college I had to go major in something boring. If I could give advice to high school students I'd tell them to go to college only if they want to sit on their butts in front of some stupid computer for the rest of their lives.

Anyway, my break from running is over and so my winter reading project is officially over. I didn't end up reading nearly as many books as I imagined I would. I ran out of steam pretty quickly, actually - probably because of all those Montana books I read at the beginning. Who wants to read that much about Montana? Not me, anymore.

I'm reading the worst book right now - I won't even tell you what the title is. It took the author 34 years to write and you can tell. In 34 years you have a lot of opportunities to sit there and say, "Hmm, what other ridiculous crap can I cram into this crapfest?" I can only imagine his thought process: "I know! I'll put in a paternity twist! And then I'll do it again! And then I'll have the grandson have an affair with his grandmother! And then I'll put in cameos by Mark Twain and Freud and Kaiserin Sissi for no reason and... who else? Oh, how about Hitler as a child! And let's give Sissi a wooden frisbee! Awesome, this book is so full of tidbits! Woowee! How about some baseball, and Buddy Holly, and psychology." The author's (or the narrator's) obsession with whipped cream is distracting and there is a whose/who's error in the book, which I'm normally willing to overlook (and perhaps it wasn't an error - perhaps the editor was making a subtle but effective argument in favor of updating orthographic standards to reflect the possessive use of the apostrophe) but in this case I am not.

The book is about time travel and unfortunately it seems that the whole thing is made up. The narrator tells us things she can't possibly know, which means she's making up a bunch of shit, which means the book can't possibly be true. I demand believability in the books I read, even if they're about time travel. You'd think that at some point over those 34 heinous years the author could have thought about using a third-person omniscient narrator instead of making the narrator a character in the story, right? Come on! This book is the reason I hate things.

Tomorrow will be two minutes and thirteen seconds longer than today. It has been foretold that the journey I started in 2003 will end in 2011, which is exciting, I hope.

53. Holidays, parties, other effluvia

2010-12-13T21:27:00.002-07:00

By last Wednesday I had already been to 75 percent of the parties I am scheduled to attend this holiday season, and good riddance to them. Holiday parties make me sweaty and drunk and I don't much like them afterwards. I don't own any holiday sweaters so I always feel dumb standing around in my non-holiday grub.

I might not write again this year because I have nothing to say, so let us take a few moments right now to reflect upon the year which has just passed us by. By that I mean let us take a few moments to reflect upon my year. It was a very difficult year, poor me. First, I was entirely and absolutely ill and homeless for the first third of the year, which really cut into my running season, and although I did run five half marathons, five 5Ks (soon to be six), and one 10K this year, I didn't PR in anything except slowness. Additionally, I've had money and work problems and only got to spend one month in Australia this year. Also, the weather was no one's friend until July and, although the summer was fantastic, it ended. And we did have a beautiful, warm, and lingering fall, but that ended too and now it's the winter. And sure, the winter's fine so far, but it's only just begun. The only good thing about 2010 (other than the summer and the races and the month in Australia and all the good times with people I love and other super and wonderful things that I won't enumerate) is that my hair is finally growing out, so that two-year nightmare is almost over, but I found a gray hair this spring. As a sign of my maturity and grace, I didn't flip the fuck out like I thought I would upon discovery of a gray hair. The gray hair inhabits my head to this day - I didn't pull it for fear of it multiplying - I'm waiting to see what will happen. I think it will probably change its mind and turn brown again.)

Despite all the challenges I experienced (one of those half marathons had FIVE MILES of uphill! which also meant five miles of downhill but by the time you got to that who even cared) I give this year two thumbs up (out of two thumbs), and the summer was the best summer since 2005. Here are the best summers in reverse chronological order: 2010, 2005, 2003, 1988, 1984, 1978.

Here are my resolutions for 2011: to have a good running season ("good" as defined by me and subject to change), and to stop being such a jerk.

Tomorrow will be 40 seconds shorter than today.

52. Weather, running on ice

2010-12-05T21:31:00.000-07:00

The day dawned clear and cold and I awoke four minutes before my alarm was to go off. I turned off the stupid alarm, went back to sleep, and didn't go to the group run. That was yesterday. Today I actually got out of bed and went for a run.

I hadn't run by myself for ages and ages. It was super. Just putting on all my running gear made me happy - it seemed like a long time since I'd run at all, even though it had only been about a week. Perhaps it had been two. It was 16 degrees outside and windier than a son-of-a-gun, the Hellgate wind ablowing. Only the crazies were out. All was beiced/Alles war Eis bedeckt, especially the river trail they just paved to make it easier to clear in the winter. (The part they didn't pave was not icy.) I had on my new spikes made of diamonds so I didn't slip at all. I don't have a windbreaker for running so I was wearing a raincoat, the inside of which became a drippy steam room.

I admit I was taken aback by the arrival of the winter, even though August was five months ago now. Missoula is like a giant ice cream freezer these days. But pretty. The hills are large and white. Everyone is friendly and merry. The days will start getting longer in just about two weeks.

I am now reading:

Tough Trip Through Paradise by Andrew Garcia. This is like a combination of The Big Sky and The Road to Virginia City. So far, the guy's riding around in the woods with a drunkard, some horse thieves, and 104 stolen horses. I don't know what will happen.
Selected Works by Richard Hugo. I come to this collection of poems with deeply ingrained biases against both fishes and poetry, and unfortunately these poems are full of fishes. Also I've always thought Richard Hugo's name was very pompous. I am sorry for that but that's the way it's always been. I will probably be reading this book for the next decade. I'm sorry.

Things have been fine. Multitudinous personages have loaned me books that I'll probably never read. I'll probably start running again for real next month.

51. Books read since last we met

2010-11-15T20:12:00.005-07:00

Winter reading project going well. Here's what I've been reading:

Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. I went out to Barnes and Noble a couple times in order to read this book without buying it. I made it halfway through and decided I wanted to own the book and nearly bought it but then decided to ask for it for Christmas. I will finish it later. I was surprised by how good the book is - the last running/magazine-to-book book I read was crap.
The Road to Virginia City: The Diary of James Knox Polk Miller ed. by Andrew Rolle. Unfortunately for writers of fiction, there is nothing more interesting than non-fiction. Unfortunately for writers of non-fiction (including my own eventual biographer, the poor bastard), there is nothing more interesting than first-person narratives. This book is the most interesting book ever. The kid was 19, an orphan, worked for his uncle in Clyde, New York, and one day took $3,500 and ran away to the West. On August 20, 1864, he wrote, "After supper Brown and myself rode to town. En route Brown, while performing an Equestrian feat, was thrown from his horse, severely damaged." A+++ best book ever!

(Here I was interrupted slightly by an attempt to read a book containing the sentence, "Tom stood quietly by, regarding me with the eyes of someone falling down a hill made of powdered limestone." Is that supposed to mean something? The book remains unread and likely will remain so into perpetuity.)

Mountain Medicine (Original Title: The Big It and Other Stories) by A.B. Guthrie. Well. This is a collection of short stories, which is all fine and dandy until you get to the one about a dog and a mean, mean man. There's nothing to be had from this except sadness. What is the point? I am done with the West for a while.
The Help by Kathryn Stockett. DONE with the West so we're down in Jackson, Miss. This book is on the MSU Summer Reading list so it's not a deviation from the plan, don't you think that. Stayed up late reading it the first night I had it, a good sign.

I may or may not have joined a book club of ladies, which means that in the coming weeks I may or may not read a book by that Krakauer fellow, and a graphic novel. Also I've found that godawful Benjamin Franklin beast but I'm not going to read it. This reading project is supposed to be fun, not Benjamin Franklin.

This is my favorite short story. Read this while listening to this.

50. Weather, running

2010-10-16T21:17:00.013-06:00

Some announcements:

First, don't send me any more text messages. A while back I said you should, but I’ve changed my mind. The text memory in my phone is almost full. Deleting the texts I've received is inadvisable; without a complete record of my life my biographer will probably make up a bunch of stupid shit.

(I need a new phone, partly because of this storage capacity issue, and partly because the glass cover on my phone has cracked. When I discovered the crack, my feelings were hurt really bad, kicking off a week of unprecedented bad mood and histrionics.)

Second, I'm too busy reading to respond to any text messages anyway.

(I found out that probably the glass on my phone had cracked from being left in a hot car and not because I had dropped it on the pavement in some drunken and idiotic moment I can barely remember, which made me feel a lot better about myself and the world.)

It’s wintertime in Missoula, dark, cold. It’s been mighty hard to get out of bed these last couple weeks. The sun is away on its yearly trip to Australia and we miserable suckers who aren’t down there with it should just stay in bed until next June or whenever it comes back to us.

I'm not running distance so that I can become repaired over the winter. Without all that running and preparing for running and recovering from running I'll have so much free time, man - just hours and hours of nothing to do - and so I have instituted a winter reading project. Over the next three months I'm going to read everything on this list that I'm going to read. (I know it's a summer reading list rather than a winter reading list - I'm slow, I know.)

If you want, you can join my reading club, but don't expect any meetings or any discussions because there won’t be any. We won't discuss anything because we'll be too busy reading. It's not forbidden to discuss the books - if you and I perchance meet one day on the street and you wish to exegise on whether Norman Maclean's referring to his brother as "my brother" rather than by his name is humanizing or dehumanizing, you may do so. I may choose not to respond, but certainly, please, feel free to broach the subject.

I am on my third book. Fortunately for you, and unfortunately for me, I am a slow reader, so you should have no problem catching up and ultimately surpassing me. So it goes. Here's what I've read so far:

Double Take by Kevin Connolly. Although this is not exactly a travel memoir, I am pleased to have read it without coming down with a terrible case of wanderlust.
A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean. Too much fishing.
The Big Sky by A.B. Guthrie. So far, the kid who ripped the head off a chicken got the clap from a whore in St. Louis, and four cats have fallen off a boat into the Missouri River.

After this I will read two or three books not on my winter summer reading list, and then I will probably go back to the list, depending on the whims and flurries of time. We might want to read The Maltese Falcon along with the rest of Missoula and nation, or we might want to read Selected Works by Richard Hugo along with the rest of Montana. You might want to read Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin along with all the freshmen on campus but I won’t be reading that as I’ve had enough of books about fishes.

My third and final announcement is that I might be switching over to a single space after a period. Typographical implications have been considered; now I evaluate the psychological effects.

p.s. Note to my biographer (who, if he’s worth his salt, will have already researched this year's weather records by the time he reads this, but you never know if he’ll instead decide to spend his huge book advance on hookers and blow and forego any actual research): In order to understand and appreciate things, you should know that it's not winter yet, nor is it not sunny. Sir, perhaps you should read The Big Sky by A.B. Guthrie. First, it would count as actual research (and I can’t do everything for you – you’ll have to put in a little bit of effort), and second, maybe the discussion of STDs will scare a little sense into you.

49. Fauna of Missoula and other communities, beer, civic engagement

2010-09-21T17:53:00.006-06:00

Been trying to calm down and focus enough to write another informative, cohesive, exciting, and articulate newsblahg post for y'alls but I've been having massive, massive troubles doing so. So nevermind about information, cohesion, excitement, and articulation. Nevermind about all that, except for the excitement part, which is a total given.

For your reading pleasure: bullets.

Freaking mice, taking over the freaking planet. I've lived the entirety of my life with only fleeting interactions with the bastards, but now suddenly they are everywhere - and when I say everywhere, I mean everywhere, including my last safe refuge: my childhood home. The discovery of mouse poo in the front entryway came mere weeks after my parents put down the satanic and schizophrenic Beatrix Kittylove. Is this her revenge? Is this the doings of BHO? Is this the gay agenda?
Bears are all over the place all of a sudden, falling out of trees, stalking people on campus, biting people on their juicy thighs. Bears, people. When are you going to wake up and realize this isn't just a coincidence!
I saw in the news the other week that BHO once again addressed our nation's schoolchildren. Remember when he tried to pull that stunt last year? Remember when he tried to tell our kids to wash their precious little god-given hands?!? I don't have kids but if I did they wouldn't have gone to school to listen to that crap. That crap belongs in the home! No one tells my kids to wash their hands except me, and I'm not going to because that's what commies do. Anyway I apparently was the only person to even notice this stunt this year. Wake up sheeple! (Is it okay to say that now, or is it outdated?)
I bet you $500 that I get a cat within a year. Take that BHO! Take that Gay Agenda! My cat will eat your mice!
My summer was faaaabulous, thanks. In addition to seeing someone pooping in the Northside pedestrian overpass, I: rode my bike all over the doggamn town, and... that's all, actually. It seemed fun and eventful while it was happening.
The highlight of my summer was seeing someone pooping in the Northside pedestrian overpass. Remember when Missoula made it illegal for everyone other than gays and scallywags to use the bathrooms? IS THIS WHAT THEY WANTED? SEE WHAT WE HAVE BEEN REDUCED TO.
I have decided this: PBR makes me feel gross. I went to a wedding a few weeks ago and had not one or two or three etc. beers but FIVE and I was FINE. I wasn't hardly drunk at all, except for that part in the middle that I don't remember much about, but by the time I went to bed I was FINE and I didn't wake up at 3 in the morning like I usually do when I drink and I didn't feel bad AT ALL the next day because it wasn't PBR that I drank. One week later I went to a rock and roll show and had a PBR giantboy and didn't even drink the whole thing and I felt like poo the whole rest of the goddamn week. PBR makes me feel like I'm made of gravel and have mad cow disease and I shan't drink it anymore.
I have the power to participate in the homecoming parade this year with two separate entities and I bet I'll refuse to do anything. I marched in that parade once and felt dumb. Every other year I've slept through it and been okay with that.
If you are lucky enough to get a Christmas present from me this year, it will be crab apple jelly. If the crab apples fall through, it will be nothing.

Thanks for reading!

48. RETURN OF MOUSE

2010-08-02T18:10:00.000-06:00

Sunday - could it have been just yesterday? - the little dog and I are enjoying the peace and tranquility of a mouse-free house, our psyches recovering after the dark trauma of Thursday night. I'm playing the piano. I pick out a Simon and Garfunkel tune that's been stuck in my head for 18 hours. The little dog wags her tail after the songs she enjoys.

Later, I'm in the kitchen sitting at the table (again) and I hear some little noises (again). I think maybe it's the thermal shade I've got down - it can be crackly. But... after a while (I am slow), I realize with chagrin that it's not the shade, it's not rain, it's not wind. I call the little dog over and lift up the dog crate. Lo. Another goddamn mouse. The little dog attacks, the bastard mouse evades us and runs underneath a shelf. The little dog stands guard while I ride over to Ace. They don't have the kind of mousetrap that I threw out last Thursday. I buy two of a different brand. They are reusable (eeeeeeeeee!!) but not as robust. I'm worried that 1. they won't kill, and 2. they won't enclose the mousebody and I'll have to see, like, the rump sticking out, along with the tail oh sweet jesus.

I test the traps with folded cardboard. Snap. I halfheartedly put some peanut butter into the traps. I go up to bed, dreading the morning. I hear some scuffling downstairs - the little dog is chasing something around. Next morning, nothing - traps have not gone off. WHAT'S NEXT. THOSE BASTARDS. OH GOD.

47. MOUSE IN THE HOUSE, MOUSE DEATH

2010-07-30T17:32:00.006-06:00

Background: housesitting

Setting: old house, Northside

Foreshadowing: mousetrap by garbage can

Previously: gone for a week-long vacation; neighbors were to watch little dog; I left a bowlful of dog food in case the neighbors forgot or whatever

Scene: Sunday afternoon. I'm sitting at the table a couple hours after returning to town. The little dog is out on a playdate and won't be home for hours. Suddenly a little mouse comes scurrying out from under the table and slides around the corner into the living room. I give chase but lose the mouse near the fireplace. A couple hours later I'm sitting at the table again and hear a strange little noise, sounds maybe like rain. I go out to the deck, it's sunny, the noise stops. I hear the noise again and go out to investigate - is it the wind? It's not, the noise stops. The noise starts again. It takes me a while (I am slow), but I finally think, "The mouse, ah ha!" I determine that the noise is coming from the little dog's crate, so I shut the crate door and prepare to take it outside to dump, but when I lift up the crate I find the mouse underneath eating stray dog food. The mouse scurries to the living room again. I get out the vacuum and clean everything. Later I'm sitting at the table and the noise starts again. I construct a chute system to funnel the mouse into a box. I lift up the crate. The monster runs straight into my chute but manages to change direction at the last second and careen over to the stove. I bang on the stove with the garbage can to let the mouse know I do not approve of it. I disassemble the chute - brilliant plan, wily opponent. The little dog returns from her playdate and falls asleep in her bed in the living room. I hear the noise under the crate again. I yell at the dog and lift up the crate - bastard mouse scurries into living room past now-awake dog - dog gives chase but loses bastard mouse by bastard fireplace.

Next day. I'm sitting at the table. Bastard mouse runs out from under refrigerator, sees me, runs back under refrigerator. Bastard! I'm rationing dog food, there's nothing lying around for the mouse to eat. The bastard should realize it has no future here and should move on. Also, there are ants in the dog food bowl today. Whatever, ants! They meet a grisly fate at my hands.

Next day. Nothing.

Next day. Nothing.

Next day. The place smells funny, someone needs to take out the garbage. But that doesn't make sense, because there's nothing in the garbage. Maybe it's something in the refrigerator. Neither stinks, but I decide to put the garbage outside for the night to see if that clears the air. I pull out the garbage can. AND THEN! I see the mousetrap. It has moved since the last time I saw it. It is at a slight angle, and - the light is kind of dim and I can't really see, but is that - no, is that a little tail coming from the end of the trap? Is it? IS IT! Oh god, oh god, what do I do what do I do? I'll pretend I don't see it. I turn on all the lights... aaaaand, great, yeah, that's a little tail coming from the trap, there's a dead mouse stinking the place up. Someone needs to do something about it. But not me - I will ignore it and pretend everything's okay and I'll let Jacquie deal with it when they get back. Wait, wait, no, it's not going to get any better, if I don't deal with it tonight it will only get worse but WHAT DO I DO OH GOD. I am a fine lady. I call my dad. He tells me to throw it away. But how! I don't want to touch it! He tells me to put a plastic bag over my hand. THAT DOESN'T HELP AT ALL, YOU CAN STILL FEEL EVERYTHING. He says to put paper towels over it. AGGHH NO WAY, THERE IS A MOUSETAIL STICKING OUT OF ONE END. My dad refuses to make the three-hour drive to Missoula tonight and suggests I use a dustpan to aid in the disposal. I hang up and decide to find a stick to give myself a little distance. I find a long wand thingy for bubbles that some kid left on the porch. I am increasingly hysterical. The little dog comes to me, responding to the various noises I am emitting (which come alarmingly close to the stereotypical "eek"). We cower and freak out together. Every time I eek I give myself goosebumps. The little dog whines. I might swoon. You can see a bit of fur through the hole at the front end of the trap! Probably not the bastard mouse's nose like you'd think, it's probably the top of its squished head! Finally I steel myself and manage to get the mousetrap wedged between the dustpan and bubble wand. I lift it into the air. The mousetail moves, eek. It's actually not as gross as I'd built it up to be - you can't really see anything with this newfangled mousetrap (other than the mousetail and fur). Still, gag. The trap is reusable but NO WAY, I'll just buy them a new mousetrap. I deposit the soiled contraption in the garbage can. I take the garbage out. I go to bed. I will tell you this story in person and I will get goosebumps. So will you.

fin

46. Weather, health, running

2010-06-23T22:58:00.001-06:00

Quick, let's talk while it's stopped raining - it could start again any second.

The other day I had lunch with a friend, a young friend, a very young friend - a baby practically - and we were sitting there talking about our health problems like little old ladies. I suspect our friendship will remain the same throughout the ages and in six decades we will have the exact same conversation we had last week, except it will also include reference to prune juice and other unmentionables.

I have been thinking a lot lately and reanalyzing everything. EVERYTHING. I hate to admit to any weakness but I will concede that I need a little temporary help, so I've started taking vitamin D supplements. This was actually demanded by my doctor a few weeks ago and this week I decided to acquiesce. I started taking the little buggers last night and so far all it's done is put me in a bad mood. This is very odd, very rare - I had been in a constant good mood for three years. Thanks a lot, vitamin D - you're not even a real vitamin, you hormone bastard!

I'm too busy to tell you anything of consequence, but this should bring you up to date: Beach Boys -> Snow White soundtrack -> Wayne Newton -> Debussy -> The Who.

Something is wrong with my leg. Someone needs to be getting more sleep.

45. Running, weather, ice cream

2010-06-09T21:48:00.000-06:00

Went for an 8-mile run in the rain tonight - wasn't nothing. Eating ice cream now.

44. Health, crime blog, tires

2010-05-11T19:27:00.008-06:00

Hi. You'll be wanting to know all about what I've been doing lately, I bet. I'm too tired to tell you though - too tired, yes, because I'm still not entirely well. Boy I tell ya, pertussis is terrible. It's been months. A few months, a few ribs, and here we are. I'm getting better and better, every day, but I cannot completely recover until everyone gets a booster shot. I've told everyone I know to go get one, and people seem to agree to it (perhaps to get me to leave them alone), but so far I know of zero (0) people who have actually gotten one. Including my family members. Perhaps I have not been graphic enough in my descriptions of the illness. Is that it? Is it? If so, please read on.

First, it was like a cold. After a week or so, moss started growing in my throat, or cat hair, or hay. I started having fits of coughing, coughing so hard I'd have tears streaming down my face, coughing so hard I'd gag, coughing so much my abdominal muscles were sore. I'd wake up with coughing fits four or five times a night. My inhalations in between coughs were staggered. After a week or so my sides were sore. After another week my back muscles were sore, making my entire circumference sore, making everything I did extremely painful, including coughing, including moving, including going to bed. I had the full-on whoop in between coughs - you know, when your airway is constricted so that the only bit of air that can get into your lungs makes a high-pitched whoosh on the way in. After about three weeks of nonstop coughing and gagging and whooping and tears, the frequency of the coughs started decreasing but the intensity of the coughs increased. I barfed on the floor once (it wasn't my floor). I ran out of food and medicine but couldn't stop coughing long enough to go to the store for a couple days. I was on antibiotics for 35 days and they didn't do a thing. Then I started breaking ribs, pop pop pop. That made my torso even sorer than before, making it extremely painful to think or even to be. The narcotics were a bust. Every single day was the worst day yet, culminating with spectacular misery the day the second rib popped - when that happened I couldn't even walk and I started wondering if I was ever going to get better. Then I thought things were getting better but - cough pop pain, a third rib popped. Then I thought things were getting better again and they really were, albeit very slowly.

I still cough a little, and still whoop a little, and my ribs still hurt a little, and it's the middle of May. People! Pertussis breaks ribs and kills babies! There's a reason they invented a vaccine for it! It's miserable! Stop being such a jerk and go get a shot! Honestly. What kind of idiot catches a completely preventable illness?

Anyway, I was totally going to change this blog into a Missoula crime blog, or perhaps a Missoula health blog, but instead I think I might change it into a Missoula auto blog. My car, as you know, is a showpiece, but for reasons that could not be helped it now smells like tires that smell like shit. I'm hoping the smell is not permanent. I'll let you know next time.

43. Weather, crime, other outrages

2010-04-13T20:44:00.001-06:00

Things are pretty hairy here in Missoula these days and we are all walking around on tenterhooks. First of all, there's all this weather happening in Missoula. One second it's sunny, the next second it's snowing. In April! It's completely outrageous. It could be argued that crazy weather happens every spring in every place in the entire world, but... it's outrageous! Right now it's not snowing - can you believe it?

Second, we here in Missoula cannot stop robbing pharmacies. It's hard to say why, although obviously the culprit is OBAMANOMICS which has driven us to destitution, and also we really like drugz. Here's a tragic fact: I am immune to opiates. I was disappointed to discover this. Last month I got the cough syrup with codeine. Everyone told me how great it would be. But I'd take some and it would do nothing, and then I'd take some more and still nothing. Now I'm taking hydrocodone. Again, everyone told me how great it would be, it was much hyped. Excited, I took the first pill, anticipating great things. Nothing. Boring. (Also, painful. Painkiller, hello?) I can't really understand why people would enjoy it so much they'd decide to steal it. I can think of much better things to steal, like tennis rackets or new pillows - things that would actually be useful. Hydrocodone? Stupid! It doesn't do anything at all!

Third, there's this whole issue about the gay homos wanting to use Missoula bathrooms. Can you imagine! It's outrageous. Early this morning, the city council passed an ordinance requiring all the women and children in Missoula to marry cross-dressing rapists, even if it's against their religion. Previously, the only refuge fine ladies like myself had from pedophiles in dresses was the bathroom. But now we have no protection. Where do I run to now if I see them coming at me on the street? I don't know! Also, if you are a family of four and some confused person wanders into your bathroom and wants to rent it, you have to rent it to them now, even if you don't want to. I tell you what, it is terrifying. I am terrified to go to the bathroom now and have been holding it for the past 18 hours and 45 minutes (and counting). Which is uncomfortable, because I've been drinking a lot of kombucha lately. What everyone but me forgets when they're talking about this issue is, what about the children? The children! It makes me so ANGRY.

After a quick but highly intelligent skimming of a webpage on the internet, I have determined the secret hidden agenda of the ordinance: the GRAMMATICAL DEGRADATION OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. They're going to require everyone to stop using masculine and feminine pronouns and start using the neuter pronoun - which, as everyone knows, takes EXACTLY THE SAME FORM in the nominative and in the accusative! The commie-lib-concrete-dwelling linguistic prescriptivists in the Missoula City Council are ultimately trying to do away with the case system! But not with MY pronouns. I refuse to give up my American heritage. My ancestors created those cases! All these illegals today want to get rid of them just like that? No thank you ma'am. I for one am someone whom won't stop using the case system my ancestors so painstakingly created. We have just shards remaining of the genitive and the dative, and the precious pronominal remains of the accusative need to be cherished and preserved like old dried rose petals in vases that gather dust and don't smell good anymore anyway. Oh, don't even talk to me about the syntax picking up the slack in indicating grammatical relations. Syntax? Please. And - just between you and I - I would also like to see the creation of English ablative and allative cases. Latin had them, why can't we?

(By the way, guess what else I found out on the internet! About all those earthquakes... it's Mother Earth giving birth to, um, either Jesus or The Beast, I'm not sure which [because I didn't finish reading the blog post about it]. It's one of them, one or the other. I mean, it's God, not Mother Earth [because the earth is a PAGAN]. God just really doesn't like Joe Biden [because Joe Biden said the f-word {also known as the 'f-bomb' - bomb! BOMB! Coincidence? Of course not.}].)

I'm obsessed with surf music and can't think about anything else right now, so I have to end this entry as soon as I extend the following internet threat: if I find out you haven't gotten a pertussis booster shot I will KILL you in 3-5 weeks when I can fight again.

42. Health, technology, philosophy

2010-03-16T19:19:00.006-06:00

Kids, I'm still sicker than any dog has ever been. Last week my doctor told me I need to "rest", which I think means modern medicine can do nothing more for me and he's had to resort to old-fashioned metaphors for death. My last days will be spent in pain, as I seem to have damaged a rib coughing today. Also my last days will be spent all hopped up on chemicals. I tried to get off the smack but now have a prescription for (among other things) something called "prometh". PROMETH. More teeth will be lost, I suspect, as will more lives. A shame. Listen to me: Spring haircuts may be tempting, maybe all your friends are doing it, but resist! It's been my downfall, and it will be yours.

~~The internet and I kind of think~~ I have ~~para~~pertussis. (Ed. w/clever <strike> to update medical condition.)

And now we turn our focus to technology.

As a philosopher, I'm always talking about how we're trapped in prisons of our own making. I oftentimes accompany this self-important rambling with the parable of the family dog, who was terrified of vacuum cleaners but insisted on being in the same room with you, even if you were vacuuming, so he'd end up being terrorized, constantly, by the vacuum.

Point 1, text plan. Guess what! I got a text plan! What prompted this vast shift in ideology for me is that I've been super popular since I got back to town. All these fools sending me texts. So one day I'm all, aww f*^k it dawg, and I call my sister (she's in charge of the phones, it's a family plan) and I was all, sign me up for a text plan yo! So she did. I could have done it eons ago, although I didn't need a text plan back when I only got like 4 texts a month. But lately it's become a prison, a prison! So, the plan. I think it will help me make friends.

Point 2, phone battery. My phone's battery started dying over a year ago. I never talk on the phone, I use it as an answering machine and alarm clock, but also I couldn't talk on the phone because it would die. Well, I am pleased to announce that I have escaped that prison as well and have purchased a new battery and now could talk for hours and hours if I wanted to. But the fact remains that I hate talking on the phone. So don't call me, send me a text. If I don't write back it's because I'm being persnickety and not because I want to respond but don't want to pay the eleven dollars it would cost to send a text without a plan. (Or maybe it's just taking me a really long time to type the stupid message, as I am still the kind of person who takes 15 minutes to compose a text and walks into trees while doing it.) (I really did walk into a tree last week, but maybe it was because of all the drugs and not because of the texts.)

Point 3, laptop battery. This has also been dying for over a year. Still trapped in that prison. They're expensive though.

41. Weather, traffic, health update

2010-02-23T17:01:00.008-07:00

Greetings from sunny Missoula MT! It is uncharacteristically sunny today (it has been sunny on my birthday only one other year of my very long life) and the sunshine is the result of my extremely powerful DJ abilities. I played sunny songs on my show last week and what's happened? You're welcome.

I went to Dairy Queen last night and it was barferiffic. I may have perhaps overestimated or exaggerated my passion for frozen desserts, but probably the reason it was gross was that I didn't get a chocolate nut whip, a mistake which I ought to rectify asap.

One of the things homeless people like to do is drive their beautiful cars around, so that's what I've been doing a lot lately. And so I am now kind of a huge expert on Missoula traffic signals. (I might change the focus of this blog from weather to traffic.) I came to this place from Seattle, and in Seattle they've got the traffic signals timed so that once you hit a green light you will always hit a green light no matter what you do. It makes driving through downtown Seattle an incredibly peaceful and pleasant experience. But in Missoula - oh, in Missoula we have the signals timed so that if you hit one green light you will never hit another green light ever again. Red lights everywhere. It's so dumb! So dumb! Dumb!

Facebook has no idea where in the world I am and it lies about how it figures out your timezone.

And now for an engaging and detailed account of my personal well-being:

I have been sick since 22:00 on December 30, 2009. As it turns out, I've got bacterial and viral infections. I am not a doctor but I should have become one, because I have a keen and intuitive understanding of the human body. Here's what I believe to be happening inside of me: In my sinuses, which, as far as I know, are comprised of a large room behind my nose - a room that is supposed to be empty or occasionally have a stalactite or stalagmite of booger - a large mass of snot has been hanging out since New Years Eve. This snotcloud was supposed to exit through the front door (called the 'nose') but, drunk and confused, instead tried to exit through my ears, which is impossible and attempts at which are uncomfortable (can't hear!). And so the snot went on a bender, having a months-long cocktail party in my head, and has stayed in the room of sinus behind my nose to party itself to death, rot and fester. This is dangerous, because its zombie snotcloud corpse could eat through the lining to my brain and attack my cerebral cortex etc., maybe.

Meanwhile, also, bad things were happening in my throat and lungs - viral things - and I probably could have died!

I got antibiotics to kill off the bugs and mold growing in my sinuses, and I also got pseudoephedrine - meth, practically - to eviscerate the petulant snotcloud altogether. So far nothing has really changed, even though I've practically been on meth for five days. I've lost three teeth and yesterday I killed some dude, I've scratched my legs off, but my head is still vaguely snotty.

All I ever want to do is take a nap (in spite of the meth) but there's too much going on to do that. Too much going on!

I totally have plans to start running again this week.

40. Weather, tragic storage practices

2010-02-18T17:05:00.000-07:00

Missoula MT, dark and dreary, glumpy and groomy. It gets dark so early! How do people live like this?

As everyone who knows anything knows, there is no point at all in being here when the Dairy Queen on Higgins is closed. It's too hard to deal with. I am pleased to report that it's open again and I am back in town.

I haven't been to the Dairy Queen yet - it's too far out of the way. It's out in the middle of nowhere. No one lives over there. Why is it so far away? When the Dairy Queen was built way back when, Higgins Avenue was probably a rural highway.

I predict sun the next few days, and also I predict that I will go to the Dairy Queen very soon. Tomorrow will be three minutes and thirteen seconds longer than today.

What kind of moron cannot anticipate future music obsessions and packs her Beach Boys albums in boxes hidden deep in the cavernous depths of her storage unit?

Missoula, we're hanging by a thread.

39. Weather in various locations

2010-01-20T15:50:00.001-07:00

Good morning. I am not writing to you from Missoula MT because I have left that place. It was a dark day, the day I left Missoula - a dark day indeed. It was as if the place were saying to me, "Go away please." I brought the rain with me to LA, although it took a while for it to find me - the evening I arrived and the next morning were lovely, and then in the afternoon the rain rolled in and soaked all those poor people attending the Golden Globes. I've since hopped over the ocean and the rain hasn't made it this far yet. It's quite summery here, in fact. In fact, it's quite sunny and quite hot.

I'll be back in Missoula whenever. If I decide to internet in a literary fashion, and I'm not saying I will (because I kind of don't feel like it at all), it will be here. Yes, the name is clever and hilarious. TTFN.

38. Weather, devolution

2010-01-14T20:00:00.005-07:00

Good evening. I write to you from Missoula MT, which for the past few mornings has been covered by a dastardly fine layer of ice (unnoticeable to me and my snow tires). Apparently also the days have been dark and gray, although I haven't noticed. Oh what's the point in trying to talk about the weather here, when there's such tough competition at the Missoulian? I can't be that cute! I won't do it anymore.

My life has devolved into that of a couch-hopper. My journal has devolved into a collection of to-do lists. My most current to-do list includes the following item:

write list

Tuesday night I wrote a list of songs to play on my radio show, the most preparation I've done in six months (if not three years). Here's a list of things I've accomplished in the last week:

moved out
went home
got resickened
got new shoes
changed the power back to the owner of my old house
sent in receipts to the insurance company, now I twiddle my thumbs to see what comes back
moved my bike to campus to wait for my return

I am full of good ideas (as you well know) and the name of my Australia travelblog will be blaugstralia.blogspot.com. Or it might be blaustralia. I haven't decided.

Can't stop coughing. Good night.

37. Whole lotta nothing, weather

2009-12-30T17:08:00.000-07:00

Reasons for not posting more frequently in thisahere bloggy thing:

Don't got nothing to say.

No time lately to compose posts full of nothing (which I'm very good at, normally).

Distaste for the vacuous - the internet's too full of people saying they don't have anything to write about and I ain't got time to read all that and I ain't got time to write about it. (Yes, ironical, I know that's really all I do.)

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

My (neighbor's) internet done broke on me.

Busy eating.

... I guess that's all, I guess just the six reasons.

Normally this time of year I like to write some sort of emotionally wrenching recap of the year gone by but this year I'm not going to because of the above reasons and because I'm finally starting to grow out of my late-blossoming emo stage. (You should be glad because if I had you'd be crying so hard right now.) Instead I will calmly announce that I will soon be dusting off my very first Blogger bloggy thing. Here ensues a short history of me and the internet:

I first started a blog back in the day, ca. 1996, but in those days, kids, they weren't called 'blogs'. They were called nothing, and you had to write the html yourself. In those days, the only thing you could do on the internet was make hyperlinks and blinking text. It was all very awesome.

My first blog thing was hosted by a friend at his university, and then other places, and then UCSB. Then Blogger was born and I decided to use that when I went on a trip to Australia, publishing to my UCSB page. Then UCSB took away my server space because I was a dropout. I still have all those entries (or, rather, Blogger does), but I don't got the server space anymore and will have to have blogspot host. Which means I will have to come up with some sort of descriptive or clever name.blogspot.com, and I have a very hard time doing that, which means it will be some weeks before this thing is unveiled. It will be two weeks. Because, you see, I'm going to Australia again, which means I can't post here. (This blog is strictly for Missoula-related adventures).

Thank you for your rapt attention.

Now, some news from the heart of Missoula:

It's snowing. Barely. Missoula has tiny snow. Missoula never gets snow. The only snow we ever get is in June and September, when no one wants snow. In winter, no. But right now, today, it has snowed enough to make you think that there might be snow. There won't be.

It's pretty quiet in Missoula this week. Sometimes I am able to live too completely in the moment, which is what I'm doing right now, which means I've almost completely forgotten that just a couple weeks ago I was deep in the miserable throes of having three jobs and in just a little over a week I will be deep in the miserable throes of 1. moving out (into nothing), 2. wedding (not mine) and related activities, 3. getting ready to leave the hemisphere. Got lots to do but can't be bothered with any of it. It's this week right now, always has been and always will be.

The next decade, if it happens, will be better than the last, I'm wagering. Better be.

36. Running and the weather, Missoula holiday parties

2009-12-12T22:31:00.011-07:00

The only things anyone in Missoula cares about are sports and the weather, which is why that's all I write about here. Today, everyone in Missoula is glad that it's finally snowed, and everyone in Missoula is glad that there's a Lady Griz game tomorrow. Also I think there was a football game this weekend?

I went for a run for the first time in ages today. It had warmed up into the low 20s and was quite nice. This was before the giant enormous winter storm rolled in (so far at my house one inch of the lightest, fluffiest snow ever has fallen, softly and quietly). Last winter after that stupid half marathon I took a month off and when I started running again I felt better than I ever had, so I'm hoping the same thing will happen after this hiatus. I was able to keep up all my numerous and obsessive Sportaktivitäten for most of the semester, but lately they've gone by the wayside - a huge problem, given my piggishness and the approaching holiday season with all its stupid chocolates.

So far I've been to one holiday party and skipped two. This coming week I have four more holiday parties to not go to. One will undoubtedly involve me sitting by myself in a corner eating cookies and getting schnockered, and then going outside to barf. The cookie barf will freeze. Deers and dogs will come by all winter to gnaw on it (there will be a lot).

At the one party I did go to, I found myself at the center of the party universe, talking to a revolving cast of strangers. I am infinitely interesting (being both faculty and staff and etc. etc. - a universal ambassador for everything) and so these revolving strangers had many things to say to me that I didn't care about at all, and I found myself saying stupid things that I didn't even mean, and I was trapped in these weird conversations for hours and hours until I finally was able to make an awkward and desperate getaway.

My jobby job never ended so I had three jobs all semester. I know I shouldn't complain, and I am grateful to have gotten those two careery jobs without having to write a cover letter or anything, and blah blah blah, but I worked pretty much nonstop (when I wasn't working I was making Sport) from the end of August until yesterday and I'm glad it's mostly over. I slept 12 hours last night, woke up this morning feeling and looking like I'd been hit by a bus. I still feel like that. I guess I was tired. I guess I still am. I meant to do some productive things today but didn't (other than running, and making soup). I'm reading a book about preserves and heartbreak. Glad I found it, although I could have used it earlier - it might have made this decade a little easier for me, and I probably would have won mad canning awards at the fair the past few years.

Yeah, so I went for a 4-mile run today, am getting back on track after being derailed for a while. The operative metaphor here is that I am a train.

35.

2009-12-02T17:19:00.002-07:00

Did you see that full moon coming up through the canyon? It was bright. And the next full moon will be blue. In Missoula it's cloudy only five times a year, so you can pretty much guarantee that we'll have a nice view of the blue moon.

Been eating a lot of potatoes lately. Here's my tentative Christmas list:

pajama pants that aren't flannel
pink (or not) running shoes
pony

34. too busy for titles

2009-10-25T17:24:00.002-06:00

Hey, I found this great band, they're from England, call themselves the Beatles. They're pretty great, tell all your friends.

Never mind about what I said about my jobby job ending, because it hasn't yet. It will someday, maybe in a week or two, I don't really know. Also, even though I was busy enough with just the two jobs, I had to go and get myself another job. Which isn't true, because this new job came and found me. I can't turn down a job that comes and finds me, can I? No. This third job, like jobs 2 and 1, will not extend beyond mid-December, so I will still be 100% unemployed in January and so I am still pretending to plan a trip to Australia. I'm renewing my passport, I'm signing up for WWOOF, I've started telling people about it. I can't tell if I'm lying about it or not; normally I have a pretty good sense of whether I'm actually going to do something, but with this I can't tell. I could. I might. I don't know.

Too busy for writing these days and too busy to even care about that. Too bad, because if I had any time to write I'd have told you about some pretty incredible shit: about how it's puppytime again in Missoula (puppies everywhere!), about Sport (I've decided to capitalize and italicize the word to emphasize that it's the German that I'm using here), about how Butte is trying to win the title of festiest city (whatever!), about how God took fall away because he's pissed at us (probably because of that whole AC thing - oops!), about how I'm normally pretty depressed in the fall because either summer's ended way too early or I've been dumped or both but I'm not this fall because neither happened. Alas. We can only dream about how great those entries would have been. Oh well.

Grappling with issues of life and death today but not finding any answers. Now I'm too hungry to think anymore.

Wash your hands.

33. Bullets re: Missoula, running, THE AC

2009-09-21T21:10:00.007-06:00

Words + paragraphs = too hard. Bullets.

Missoula is fine.
To escape the horrors of my life I have turned to Humphrey Bogart. I've watched more movies in the past week than I can count on one hand.
My preoccupation with Sport (still said with the German accent) continues. Am now doing track and yoga and pilates etc. Pilates can be like yoga but to a much more dastardly effect.
Half marathon yesterday vindicated my training. Or vindicated me. Or vindicated half marathons. Not sure which. I felt good and in control and started thinking, "I love half marathons!" but that was around mile 6 and around mile 9 I was thinking, "When will this stupidness end!" and then I started freaking out at mile 12 but overall it was fine and I broke 1:50.
Have started reading conservative blogs. Did you know that BHO might be the AC?!? True story! I'm not saying he is, I'm saying he probably is. Also, did you know that hand-washing is for commies? It's true! Jesus tells us in the Bible not to wash our hands! Only the AC would make us wash our hands on 9/9/9! Not that hand-washing is bad, it's just that, Jesus says kids don't have to wash their hands, and kids are special, and BHO is the AC, and did you know that he was born in a country that didn't even exist yet? Only the AC could manage to be born in a country that doesn't exist yet! Also, my heart bleeds for all the 10 to 15 million people who didn't get to read this entry because they were aborted by BHO. Also, online translation tools are bad because they're destroying the Tower of Babel that God built with his own two hands.
Got a record of Disney Just So Stories today and I just realized (I am slow) that they are creation stories and I'm surprised I was allowed to listen to them when I was a kid. Did anyone think Walt Disney was the AC? And if they didn't, why not?
My jobby job ends in a month and with it my health insurance and full-time paycheck etc. Come January I will be completely unemployed and sooooooooooooo: I am planning an imaginary trip to Australia! To make it unimaginary I'm thinking of selling my car.
I don't want to sell my car (it's a goddamn showpiece) and if I do I know I will regret it for the entire rest of my goddamn life and I will spend the entire rest of my goddamn life talking about it, but maybe we all need tragedy like that in our lives.
Bedtime!

32. Clarification

2009-08-28T07:51:00.000-06:00

The other day someone asked me if I'm a cheerleader. The answer to this question is no.

31. But meanwhile in Missoula

2009-08-10T19:45:00.002-06:00

I have a degree in a field that doesn't offer any particular abundance of job opportunities. I happen to be one of the most unindustrious people I know (I have no gumption) and so I've always hoped that one day I'd be walking down the street and an incredible job would present itself to me without any effort on my part. I am also sometimes one of the luckiest people I know (but sometimes not) and so something like that has kind of happened to me. But I am also one of the most self-defeating people I know and so instead of being happy or even feeling a tiny bit pleased I am only stressed out and worried and scared.

I haven't been able to sleep for a month and I've bitten my fingernails down to China. Sometimes I forget to eat dinner, and sometimes I decide that ice cream makes a good meal. (Well, it does.) I lose things and I forget about things, I stink and I scare people. I wreak stress-related havoc everywhere I go.

And instead of behoovementally dealing with reality and getting organized, I'm distracting myself and spending all my time on Sport (said with a German accent). I don't know why but ever since the training group ended I've been going nonstop. I'm even running up mountains, and I hate mountains, specifically running up them - but for some reason I've decided that it's good for me. I'm tired, my body is tired, even my spine is tired. (Saying your spine is tired sounds way more hardcore than just saying your neck is sore.)

And I feel sorry for myself. Poor me, really. Last week I had to - I was forced to - I was coerced into giving a presentation at an academic conference and I was stressed the fuck out about it all goddamn summer. The presentation went fine or whatever but I have decided to retire from the conference presentation circuit forevermore. Too much stress and I'm too dumb. Poor me! Anyway, after the conference, I really just wanted to go home for the weekend to indulge my self-pitying wahwah. It didn't work out - too many fun things to do in this glorious stinking town - but I'm going home this weekend and I want to get food cooked for me and sleep in and swim a lot. It better be sunny and summery or I'll cry.

I realize this blog has taken an alarming turn away from its original purpose of serving as a guide to Missoula for pleasure-seekers and scientists and is now all about me and only me. I will stop writing about myself after this post, probably. Isn't a fear of success really just a monstrous fear of failure?

30. Pretension, concluded pretensiously with a quote from Freud

2009-07-28T20:30:00.002-06:00

Missoula MT is a town I made up myself. It existed for a few years in the late '90s and then disappeared until three years ago, when I moved back. I insulated the town, enclosed it in a bubble, and everyone was pretty happy with that. I had a bear and some deers and fishes, I had nice sunsets and some hills to climb up to watch those sunsets. Downtown was a western railroad town with old brick buildings and even a cobblestone street or two. It was pretty nice, I was pretty pleased. I would ride my bicycle around aimlessly, discovering new streets and neighborhoods with every turn. I went wherever I wanted to go, didn't know anyone at all, liked it pretty well. Some things were about the same as I'd left them when I abandoned the place in the year 2000 - the same smell of oak trees on campus, for example, and some of the same scenic faces walking around with the same backpacks on. One time, before I left, I looked up at the green slope of Mount Sentinel and saw the sunset reflected off the golden sides of a herd of grazing deer.

We just got new bike lanes downtown on Higgins. Very comfortable bike lanes - 'comfortable' is the only word to describe them. But now they've covered over the lines with chip seal, erased the lanes, so forget about them - that's all there is to do. South of the river, Higgins is blocked off for a couple blocks. I like it, I really like it. If I had my way Higgins would be blocked off all the time. But probably no one else would approve of that. They can have their street back after the summer.

The river trail has been extended west. I was unaware of this development, but it's happened despite my lack of knowledge or input. There's a creek crossing over there, and you have your choice: plank, pallet, or plywood. Apparently the plywood is the suboptimal solution. There are low-hanging bridges, so you have to watch your head. This was a new part of Missoula that I hadn't run through before. Maybe, if I were still connected to the land, if I hadn't moved south of the river, I would have known about all of this. Instead, I haven't even been to a baseball game this year.

At work I am trapped, all my exits blocked off except two of them, and one of those comes with a warning sign. Perhaps the best way out is a window?

"The unconscious is the true psychic reality; in its inner nature it is just as much unknown to us as the reality of the external world, and it is just as imperfectly communicated to us by the data of consciousness as is the external world by the reports of our sense-organs."
- Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams

29. Summertime and projects, running is dead to me

2009-07-20T18:22:00.005-06:00

If you'd like a visual representation of what my race was like, this is perfect (the wan ghostly figure in the foreground is me) - such a contrast to last year (the cheery speed demon in the lower right is me). Obviously cutting off my hair really did me in this year, it really did me in. I cut off my hair and then immediately got sick, stayed sick for a couple months, started falling all over the place, and had a tough race. Exactly like Samson! But will I learn anything from this? No, because I look like a shaggy dog right now and I'm going to get my hair cut again. (This one's funny too. I finished the race and then just stood around for a while being miserable, bewildered, and dumb.)

Addendum to the previous post: It was perhaps a tad self-aggrandizing and scientifically irresponsible to diagnose myself with a heretofore unknown type of cancer just because I got cold during the race. I've talked to a few other people who also got chilled, so, maybe I'm not dying, whatever.

Now, on to other things. I'll probably never write about running ever again.

Okay, so if you didn't know, Missoula is heaven right now. True story. Missoula right now is the kind of place that's so heavenly you're a sucker for not doing everything you should be doing while it's so heavenly, know what I mean?

Missoula has an impossible line-up of happenings to celebrate its heavenly status. Way too much to do - so exhausting I usually opt to go to bed instead. Look, there are festivals in Caras Park every single freaking day, there are outdoor movies, there are concerts and films at the Wilma, there are farmer's markets and horsey rides, there are band concerts at local parks, there are block parties, there are races and baseball games and other such sporting events, there's kickball on the Oval, there's porch-reading and deck parties and warm evenings that you need to ride your bike through, etc. etc. etc.

The other day I saw some crazy hooligan swimming in the Clark Fork. He was alone, bobbing around in the middle of the river, just his head sticking up, heading slowly towards the rapids. It really worried me. First of all, my god, the fishes! Didn't the guy know that the river is full of fishes just waiting to rub their fishbodies all over your legs and various appendages? Eek. Second, the unclaimed bodies! People are drowning in the river all the time, their bodies seldom recovered, just waiting for some hapless something-or-other to stumble upon them. (I saw him a few days before the latest body turned up - I don't know the circumstances of that, maybe it was him. Sorry, maybe I should delete this paragraph.)

Now that I don't have a gigantic race to train for I don't know what to do with myself in spite of all the summertime festivities I had enumerated above before this post got all macabre. Since my reading-by-decade project was ruined last week by that jerk Agatha Christie, I haven't had anything to read. A couple months ago a couple people loaned me a couple books, which I haven't read because of the constraints of my 1930s project (I've decided to start calling the various pointless things I do 'projects'), but now that I'm free to read anything under the sun I totally do not want to read those books that I should have read months ago and I'm considering giving them back unread. What I really should be doing, now that my spring running project and its celebratory week are over (in the last week I've gone to more parties than I have all year [3 - so crazy!]), is get ready for the two stressful projects that are coming up very, very quickly. But since I'd rather do anything but prepare myself, I've been engaged in cleaning projects. Very soon my house will be spotless.

Yesterday I went on a hiking project with a friend and we talked about traveling and my wanderlust kicked back on and I might die from it. Maybe, depending on how things go this fall, I'll leave on a big fat traveling project in January, one that requires a passport and ~~sensible shoes~~ quick-drying underwear.

(soundtrack)

28. Running. No gory stories about squirrels.

2009-07-13T21:39:00.005-06:00

I might have forgotten on purpose to write that the big race of the year was coming up. That's because I was feeling very pessimistic and out of shape and fat and lazy and I was trying to pretend that the race was still way off in the distance. Instead, it happened yesterday.

Dumb things:
1. I finished the race at a full sprint.
2. I got COLD during the race.
3. I am extremely sore today.

Discussion:
1. You should finish a 5K at a full sprint. You shouldn't finish a half marathon at a full sprint (unless you're winning). But here's why I did: I sped up for the last mile because I was excited that the stinking race was almost over and I knew if I didn't speed up considerably I wouldn't beat my time from last year. I was running on fumes, passing people, wondering if I was going to fall over, and I finally got to the Higgins bridge and I passed a lady. She did not like this so she sped up. I thought she was probably in my age group and I wanted to beat her so I sped up, which she took issue with so she sped up, which I didn't like so I sped up. So by the time we got to the finish line it was a flat-out sprint and I beat her by a split second. Turns out she wasn't even in my age group. I need to be more dignified in life. Sorry, lady.

2. It wasn't cold yesterday. I've been fine running when it was 8 degrees. I've been almost uncomfortably warm when it was 24 degrees. The low yesterday was 55 degrees = not cold. I got cold and was cold for about the whole last half of the race. Maybe it was because I was dehydrated, although I drank plenty of Gatorade and water on Friday and Saturday (although admittedly I am not the best judge of what I actually do imbibe on any given day - example being that I forgot to eat dinner last night even though I was starving). But normal dehydrated people experience an increase in core body temperature and not a decrease (my internet research skills are to the max) and so I am forced to conclude that I was not dehydrated but instead have body temperature regulation cancer.

3. My quads are killing me. I have not been this sore in a very long time. I was sore after the first half marathon I ran - I felt like I had whiplash - but I've gotten better at it since then. But today I can't go up or down stairs without groaning loudly and grimacing like an old man. This might be because I didn't eat enough after the race and messed up my recovery - I was too busy chatting it up with my homedogs to eat. But also I felt pukey and couldn't force myself to eat much. I kind of still feel pukey. Today a coworker gently suggested that I might be getting sick. I might agree with that.

It was a tough race for me. I didn't have a bad race by any means, but I didn't have a great race. Sometimes you run and feel like you could run forever, you feel light and fast and built for running and it's incredible. Yesterday I felt like I was wading through mud and it was not incredible. It was fine, though, and it was fun, and I did get a PR, so I'm happy.

And thus concludes this year's running season, I guess. There's a race in two weeks, and two half marathons in September, but no more running group and no more discipline. And now that this is over I have to start thinking about the things I've been putting off thinking about. What do I do for escapism now?

And the day before the race I discovered to my great dismay that I had been hoodwinked into reading a book written in the 1970s. Totally threw me off!

27. Weather, no more running, no more squirrels + bonus very scary story

2009-06-23T18:42:00.005-06:00

Missoula has been experiencing a rash of squirrel-death of late and, despite our healthy population of the little buggers, I wonder if come wintertime there will be any squirrels left. There are squirrels lying dead under trees on campus, squirrel bodies lining every street, squirrel pelts in the middle of the roads getting flatter and flatter with each car that drives over them. The other morning on the side of River Pines Road there was a... like, a, well, it had been raining, so the squirrel was wet, but it also kind of looked like it had been skinned. I'm sure it was very juicy and teeming with fauna. It smelled bad.

Want to hear the grossest story ever? Okay! A couple weeks ago at the mouth of a driveway I saw a squirrel whose back half had been squashed, you know, half of it was pancaked and stuck to the road. But the front part was still okay AND STILL ALIVE. THIS POOR LITTLE SQUIRREL. Still trying to push itself up with its poor little arms, all it could do was sit there in Modified Plank Pose and hope to be rescued by a kind-hearted veterinarian who would give it an ostomy pouching system and some little contraption for it to wheel its flattened half around on. However, unfortunately for the squirrel, there was a crow - THERE WAS A CROW - and the crow had decided to put the poor bastard squirrel out of its misery. The crow was all, "Yum, fresh!" and the squirrel was all, "Oh god." The crow knocked the squirrel's front living half over, the squirrel pushed itself back up. The poor bastard, there was nothing it could do except maybe try to punch the crow with one of its poor little fuzzy mammal arms. I drove on, heartlessly. (Who am I to play god!) It kind of made me want to barf.

Hey, anyway. The running season is practically over, basically. Oh sure there's still the big race and stuff, but the biggest training run is done and it's all downhill from here. On Sunday we did 15 miles, but it turned out to actually be 15.35 miles, which can and should be rounded up to 15.4 miles, which, after a feat of clever mathematics, is pretty much 20, which is just a 10K shy of a full marathon. It was fine. The training has been pretty easy for me this year except for those two months of being sick and all that falling. I mean that the training has been easy for me structurally. My feet just started hurting a couple weeks ago - last year they hurt the whole time - and on Sunday my left hip started hurting. My left hip has never hurt before so that's pretty exciting. Also my right shin/ankle started hurting on Sunday, and today my calves are still sore. But other than this, I've been fine this year. Oh, also I have a black toenail again. Last year, in addition to the black toenail, I was limping around for a month or two, my right hip hurt so bad it was audible, I had achilles tendonitis for a few weeks at the beginning of the season, and I felt tired and beat up all the time. This year is better because I've turned to performance enhancing drugs.

Weather: It is now the summertime. Yesterday was very cold, very very cold. I wished I had gloves when I rode my bike to work, and I wished I had gloves when I rode home after work. I walked to the drug store in the evening for more performance enhancements and the sun came out and shone hotly upon the land and I got all sweaty, even my legs were sweaty. Then I went to Dairy Queen for a nut whip and got really cold. Whenever I order a nut whip they look at me funny. Hey, I didn't make up the name, it's not my fault.

LATE-BREAKING NEWS: So I'm at lunch today, right? And there's this crow flying high overhead cawwing its head off and being annoying, right? And there are these crows having a cawfest in a tree, right? And so I get done with lunch and I'm walking on an innocent sidewalk and the cawfest gets louder and louder and suddenly this crow drops out of the tree and lands in a rumpled splat on the ground right next to the sidewalk. Scares the crap out of me. The crow stands up and looks around, mouth agape. I stop and stare to see if it's going to die or attack me or what. It hopped away. Hopped away to die under a bush? Freaky.

P.S. Speaking of the beasts, and myself, you know how I got a bunch of scars because I kept falling this spring? And you know how there have been so many mosquitoes in Missoula? Well the mosquitoes apparently like scar tissue. I don't know why, they're morons.

26. Mysteries, running, weather

2009-06-18T21:32:00.001-06:00

HOT DAYS, COOL READING

For many months all I've been reading is books from the 1930s. It started with a Perry Mason book, and then a very bad murder mystery from England, and then some P.G. Wodehouses, and then Agatha Christie. Someday I will venture forth to another decade but not yet. Last week I went to the library and checked out more 1930s books - Agatha Christies and another Perry Mason. It wasn't all that easy to stay within my preferred decade - there are many from the '50s and that won't do at all. I don't know why I'm reading 1930s books but I am and I like it. I went to a thrift store the other day and got Brave New World so that's on the list for when I get sick of murder and jewel theft. (I also got a math textbook from 1907 and it's fascinating and promises hours packed with fun. There's a page of subtraction problems and it says to try to finish them all under 13 minutes - that's actually why I bought the book. I ran home and did them in 14.5 minutes but I'll get down to 13, I will. I learned about greatest common denominators last night. Hours of fun!)

However! Now that I'm finally enjoying my secular life, reading fun books and having not a care in the world, the following horrible things have thrust themselves upon me: 1. I will be presenting at an academic conference in August. 2. I will be teaching a class Fall Semester. This means I will be stressed out from now until December and I will only be able to read boring horrible academic crap. 1930s, goodbye. It is flummoxing and heart-wrenching for me, as I'd thought I retired from academia two years ago. There is a very real chance that 1. I get rejected for the conference, and 2. the contract for the teaching job doesn't go through - we can only hope. If either happens, or both, I will feel sad/embarrassed for a second but will then happily go back to my book to find out who kidnapped the prime minister and why they're taking such pains to keep him alive. And so, also, I'm "looking" for a part-time job, which means I'm not really looking.

DETECTIVE

Last week my Griz Card and my coffee card and my extra house key all mysteriously vanished one night under highly suspicious circumstances. I, as you now know, have been reading copious detective novels, and I have learned quite a few tricks, quite a few tricks indeed. Obviously the three items had been thieved from my room that night, and they were either still together or had been sold individually. I was gathering clues when, a few days later, I found my extra key hidden under an envelope in the place where I keep my extra key. So I deduced that the key had not been part of the purloining. Then, one morning, I put on my pants and found in the right-hand pocket, along with some hair clips, my Griz Card. And so the thief had been after my coffee card all along, had stolen the Griz Card to deflect suspicion, and had then returned it to throw me off. I am not so easily duped, of course, and was getting very close to solving the mystery when I found my coffee card in a pile of very important papers. The thief had been frightened by my sleuthing, obviously, and had been unsuccessful at selling my coffee card on the black market.

MISSOULA HOODS

South Central, where I live (actually North Ave West), is full of concrete, urbanity, yard-tending neighbors, and mosquitoes. I don't know where the mosquitoes have come from because there's no water anywhere, but they've come and they've come in swarms. I went out to look at my tomatoes last night and the mosquitoes swarmed me so badly (I could hear them yelling to each other, "She's over here, very juicy!") I had to run back inside after two minutes. This is very sad, because these are the longest days of the year and I'm forced to spend them indoors.

LONGEST DAYS OF THE YEAR

Tomorrow will be 9 seconds longer than today - remember when each day was like 3 minutes longer than the previous? That was great. It's light until very late at night now. How late? I have no idea, because I'm always in bed by then. I don't know why, but I've been going to bed at 9:30 lately. I wake up at 5, which is annoying, blah blah.

ALL ABOUT THE RUN ON SUNDAY

We went up the Rattlesnake and it was beautiful (no mosquitoes of course - the Rattlesnake is heaven). I just deleted some sentences detailing our training plan because it was too boring. Anyway, things are going well and I'm on track to totally win the race, or, barring that, do better than last year.

ALL ABOUT THE RUN YESTERDAY

7:40 pace, avg. It had stopped raining, mostly, and everything smelled good.

COMPUTING

Do you have the Sims 3 yet? I don't either! I'm going to have to buy more memory first. Memory is cheap.

WHAT TO DO FOR THE FOURTH OF JULY

I haven't decided yet, but the Missoula Outdoor Cinema season starts the night before, and the Big Sky Film Series has a film that night too, and it's totally possible to do both, and you know how I'm a sucker for a film series. But there's no place better than Sandpoint for the Fourth of July. One year I stayed in Seattle instead of going home and I did laundry that day and it was so unpatriotic and depressing I'm sure I cried all day. Who does laundry on the Fourth of July? Only libs and commies, that's who. And concrete-dwellers! ('concrete-dweller' is the hot new insult in Missoula.) In my hometown there's a parade and fireworks and horses clipclopping past my window in the morning, not to mention a lake and mountains and food and watermelon - so much better than Missoula. But no outdoor movie. While I was typing this I decided what to do. Thanks for listening.

25. Q&A about weather, running

2009-06-06T19:13:00.005-06:00

Q: What's been going on?
A: Lots, but nothing.

Q: How's the weather in Missoula?
A: Pretty great.

Q: How's the knees?
A: I haven't fallen in weeks.

Q: Where's the best place to run in Missoula?
A: Not east on the Kim Williams Trail.

Q: I saw your name in the paper!
A: Yeah, so I've heard.

Q: What books did you check out at the library the other day?
A: Some Agatha Christie and Perry Mason, and also a book about writing short stories from 1898.

Q: What's your problem?
A: I don't know.

Q: When does summer start?
A: Summer started on Wednesday. I made the official declaration while riding my bike downtown.

Q: Is that why it's gotten so cold suddenly?
A: That's ridiculous, you superstitious fool.

Q: Are you still saying you got sick this spring because you cut off your hair?
A: That's true, though.

Q: Found a new job yet?
A: No but am looking.

Q: How long till you find out whether your incredible receiver is irrevocably damaged or not?
A: A few days. I don't have high hopes.

Q: What's the best thing to get at Dairy Queen?
A: Chocolate nut whip.

Q: Is that real?
A: I don't know, but it's delicious.

24. Collisions/illness, travel.

2009-05-12T17:39:00.008-06:00

Internet, hi. I haven't written anything at you in a while because I haven't had anything to say. I'd thought maybe I could write about the wolves (or "wooves", as my dad says) or the SWINE FLU PANDEMIC, but I don't want to. I could write about the weather, but there's really not much to say about it (it is spring, the weather remains variable). I could write about running (I've been doing a bit of that), but blehhhh. No, instead, I am here today to tell you all about my health problems.

First of all, lately I've been having problems with gravity ("eating shit"). In the last month I have fallen, twice. My plan, after the first fall, was to stop falling, but that didn't work out as I'd hoped - the best-laid plans of mice and men, as they say, you know. The wounds from my first collision with the ground were just starting to heal (although my ankle was still swollen) when I collided with it again and reinjured all the same injuries, with a few new ones thrown in for balance. Today my knees are all scraped up and my palms are bruised and my ankle is still swollen, although falling again didn't rehurt my ankle - instead I was running around the yard yesterday trying to make a kite fly and that's kind of what rehurt it. (Kites need wind, I found.) I'm getting good use out of my knees and palms because I'm sure they're there in order to catch us when we fall. Which hurts. Especially falling into pavement at high speeds (very high speeds - do you know how fast I'm running these days?). I'm glad I was wearing shorts both times I fell because if I'd been wearing my (expensive and fabulous) running pants they would have torn and that would have made me mad/sad. Being constantly injured with wounds takes a great deal of mental energy and I have been exhausted. I have used up all my bandaids.

Second, before I ever fell I got sick. I know! It surprised me too! I never get sick! And it wasn't like I got sick and then got better, nooooooo. I got sick and then stayed sick for weeks and weeks and weeks. And during that time I was signed up for not one or two or three etc. races, but six. Six! Races! Sick! It was terrible. And then on top of all that, as if running while sick weren't bad enough, in the first of the six races, I fell [see previous paragraph]. (I received medical attention from firefighters, it was very patriotic.) Oh it's been so miserable around here. Maybe you don't empathize enough, so let me tell you more about it: First my lungs turned to mush and I got coughy. Then I felt feverish (98.9 degrees fahrenheit!), and I rolled around and moaned for a while. My throat was engulfed in flames. Then I thought I was getting better, but then I kept on coughing, and then I started feeling feverish again. My eyes were weirdly glassy and people were scared of me. My voice became weak and feeble and then people felt sorry for me while maintaining their distance. My head, including my ears, filled up with a thick, frothy snot, and I couldn't hear for the next three and a half weeks. I went to lunch with someone and could not hear anything she said. (I smiled politely and said "Mmmhmm" at various intervals, trying to fake it.) I felt very disconnected from humanity. The snot in my throat was made of silica gel and I was awake all night every night unable to breathe or swallow or anything. My cough turned into the kind you can chew up and eat, the kind that rumbles through canyons and disturbs flocks of birds, the kind that can fertilize gardens. I couldn't taste and I couldn't smell, and I had no appetite for a few weeks (awesome). Then my cough turned into a thin, persistent, pointless, uncontrollable cough, and my ears remained plugged and my voice remained weak. Sometimes I'd cough so hard I'd nearly barf. I felt like I had straw in my throat, or a furball. Then finally I thought I was getting better when one day my throat started hurting bad, it felt like I was swallowing hot razorblades. But that turned into nothing.

I have had the good fortune to have done some interstate traveling the last couple weekends, giving me the opportunity to spread my illness far and wide. As everyone knows, the only way to get over an illness is to give it to someone else, so with any luck I've infected the populations of three states. I'm fine now, thanks.

I am not technically a fan of the early morning but I was out and about one morning at 4:30 and it was really very pleasant. I was at the 50,000 SILVER $$ bar very early on a Sunday morning and it was a strange mixture of people who were still having a Saturday night and other people who were having a Sunday morning. (For me it was Sunday morning.) It was exciting, in an Americana kind of way. I didn't buy anything.

23. Montana, stardom, running. (Too long, sorry - no self control.) (Weather is good.)

2009-04-07T21:06:00.009-06:00

Montana news

The plague of fires burning up Montana downtowns seems to have subsided. Also, in Missoula, we've stopped robbing and murdering for the moment (dude, we're too busy slacklining). Instead, what we're dealing with now, every single day, all over Montana (in addition to MTV film crews), is airplanes coming out of the sky and landing on the ground very unelegantly. Occasionally the occupants of these airplanes survive but usually they do not. It just keeps happening, man. Over the last few years I have been getting over my theoretical fear of flying, but I think now I might be just as afraid of flying as ever, theoretically.

News about me/running

My ever-increasing fame continues to increase ever so much. I recently discovered that I have made a cameo appearance in a short-form documentaryish film/clip about a race I did last month. In my most dramatic theatrical performance to date, I appear two-thirds of the way through the clip walking very quickly through the Oval. Those five seconds are perhaps not the highlight of the film, but it's a special moment nevertheless. Also, I or my feet were probably on the news last week, along with the 200 other people or 400 other feet in my running group. (We are a large group.) I don't have a teevee so I don't really know, but it may or may not have been on KPAX. (If you would like to request a copy of my autograph, please contact me through one of the various ways I can be contacted.)

(Soundtrack to the entry)

For the first time in maybe forever I don't have a race this weekend. That means I could sleep in on Saturday morning if I wanted to, and I do want to. I won't be able to, I'll wake up at 6:00 like I always do, but I will lie in bed for hours and hours after that pretending to be asleep.

The running season is going very well and somehow I'm much faster than last year. For months I have been writing an essay in my head for the running club newsletter about how I'm getting so fast I will probably become invisible very soon (or blurry at the very least), but this essay is having a very hard time getting from my head into a computer. I think I'd like to write it but apparently I just can't be bothered to. Anyway, I may or may not in the near to distant future buy a pair of Reeboks.

Please skip this paragraph if you are not interested in my dreams. This morning I had a stressful dream about the half marathon in July. I was planning to run the race with a sister or two, and we arrived at the race not early, and the starting line was in an airport, and in order to check your gear bag you had to get a head x-ray on a waterbed, and it was 5 minutes to race time and they messed up my first x-ray so they had to do it again, and my sister was saving my place in line for the bathroom but when I went to find her she wasn't in line anymore because she and some of my running friends had used this special bathroom operated by this wily brown guy. He charged people to use his special bathroom but didn't charge my running friends because. I don't know, they made friends with him or something. And so I went into this bathroom, and there were lines of toilet stalls with glass walls. (A recurring dream theme of mine is bathrooms with privacy issues.) Each toilet had a special show it put on before you used it - a magic trick or something. It was a very special bathroom. 50 seconds to race time, I hoped they'd start late. Then I remembered there were timing chips, but I realized I didn't have a timing chip. I picked a stall in the corner. There was this urinaly thing, and, like, a plant in it or something, and the special toilet performance or magic trick started and then my alarm went off and woke me up. What happened? Did I make it to the race? Did the wily guy get mad that I hadn't paid and didn't know him? Did I ever get my timing chip? We'll never know.

I have been learning a lot of life lessons through song lyrics recently.

Animals of Missoula (cats and dogs)

The other day on my way home a white and tan cat ran up to me on the sidewalk. It was a very friendly cat. I petted it for a while and then said goodbye, but the cat wanted to continue the acquaintance and decided to walk with me. We went a few blocks, the cat meowing and being friendly and walking right beside me all the way. We crossed Arthur. It became apparent that the cat was lost and had decided to adopt me. I decided to put my new cat in my garage while I went to my running group, give it water and tuna, call the animal shelter in a feeble and insincere attempt to find its previous home, and then keep it forever and ever. But then my new cat found a sympathetic yard and decided to stay there. I don't know where it really came from but I hope it's okay.

On Sunday I opened my back door and there was a very large gray cat sunning itself on my back stoop. The cat lives in my basement (which is not mine).

Yesterday I saw a little dog escape from its yard. The other little dogs in its yard were yelping at it. I don't care about little dogs, nor do I trust them, otherwise I would have saved it. The little escaped dog knew it was being bad and it was hard to tell if it was enjoying being on the lam or if it was not enjoying it. It ran across the street, ran back to its yard, then ran back across the street. Later, boys were playing basketball in the driveway in front of the little dog's yard. I don't know if the little dog went home or not and I don't care. I doubt anyone does, other than its owners.

I saw a greyhound in the mall last weekend.

22. Weather and BIRD MURDER, hot topics (poo/fire), nothing about running (even though that's all I do now)

2009-03-25T20:11:00.000-06:00

After my last post in this here blahg I was able to unjinx the weather, but whoever jinxed us must be a great wizard - my skillful and powerful writing fixed things for only a short time, and we soon lapsed back into coldness: snow! wind!

Here's what happened earlier this week: One day as I was walking home innocently enjoying the springiness and studying the neighborhood sidewalks (I am becoming kind of a huge expert on Missoula sidewalks ca. 1910s-1950s, and I may or may not in the near to distant future publish a pretty great coffee table book on the subject), suddenly in front of me a tiny black and red bird flew with a magpie in hot pursuit. The two birds experienced a midair collision orchestrated by the magpie. The tiny bird flew to a tree and the magpie followed. And then the tiny bird flew to flee and the magpie flew to strike. The tiny bird landed in a driveway and the magpie landed next to it and with its baneful beak struck a fatal blow to the neck of the tiny black and red bird. I thought maybe the tiny bird was playing dead or being submissive - the strike was so quick and seemed so innocuous. I started walking towards them to break it up, to scare the magpie away, but the tiny black and red bird was dead and the murderous magpie, Pica pica canibalis (or P. pica horribilis), took the tiny black and red bird's body in its beak and flew up to a rooftop to gloat and squawk. The incident was weird, kind of upsetting, and clearly meant more than you might think it meant. The murderous P. pica/winter dealt a death-blow to the tiny black and red bird/spring, and we have suffered ever since.

Lately I've been kind of downtrodden and/or extremely frustrated and I'm going to project that onto all of Missoula now. We Missoulians are kind of downtrodden and/or extremely frustrated these days and I think it's because of all the dog poo. There's dog poo everywhere - we don't know what to do. It's because of the dogs. We have so many dogs, and our dogs need to run and they need to poo, it's what dogs do. So what are we to do? Clean up after them? No! Keep our dogs on a leash? No! How will our dogs run really fast then, huh? But some people want our dogs kept on leashes so they won't eat other dogs or get in fights with deers or attack runners or poo all over. We are at loggerheads, we are very mad at each other, we post messages online calling each other bad names. I, for one, walk around kicking rocks and wishing I'd bought some freeking chocolate the last time I went to the store, which I never do (sometimes).

Furthermore, despite our best efforts, towns all across Montana keep burning up, and there seems to be no end to it. It's spreading like the flu. I guess it's only a matter of days before Missoula catches it. Maybe the only remedy to all this fighting and destruction and winter is to get revenge by killing some magpies so it will finally get warm, our towns will stop catching on fire, and the frozen dogpoo will get tracked around and dispersed.

Maybe we all need to take a vacation, get out of town. I don't want to take a vacation, though, I want to travel. The differences between vacationing and traveling are: duration, cleanliness, aesthetics, and notebook size. I want: long, dirty, ugly, and large. Blah blah.

I will probably plant basil soon.

21. Weather, running, consumption

2009-03-11T20:42:00.001-06:00

Things are pretty tough in Missoula these days, let me tell you. There we were, enjoying a nice springy winter, getting excited about Dairy Queen and outdoor cinema and running around with no clothes on and all that, and then some jackass goes and jinxes the springtime and ruins everything. What a jerk! Whoever did it probably feels pretty stupid right now, pretty stupid and pretty cold. It was 10 degrees in my mailbox this morning, on Monday morning the windchill was seven below when I walked to work.

So instead of watching outdoor movies like I ought to be, I'm still going to indoor movie festivals. Dude, I've seen so many movies lately, dude. And films. The best one was about woodpeckers, but I missed the beginning and the end of that one. What I did see of it was super good and sometimes I dream about it (or so I'd like to have you believe). I've also seen movies and/or films about: twisting, easy riding, Wilco (♥), Italian virgins, animatronic restaurant bands, late '50s degenerate youth and the dangers of weak fathers and driving cars off cliffs, a house in Seattle, Frankenstein's monster's love life (so bad), and a barbershop.

In other news, I just discovered that I'm practically famous. True story! I'm in the slideshow of photos from 2008 on the Missoula Marathon website. I'm not the lady running across the Higgins Street bridge, I'm not the dude with the beard, I'm not the skinny guy winning the marathon, I'm not the people in the dark, I'm not the girl running by the river, I'm not running at all, actually. It's funny that I didn't discover this until eight months later - for two weeks after the race it was all I could think about and I kept going to the website and looking at the results, looking at pictures, writing about the race, talking about the race, thinking about the race, surreptitiously saving other people's photos onto my hard drive, etc. etc. etc. I saved the splits in my watch until, um, January, actually, when I had to clear the memory to make room for keeping track of all the dozens of laps I was doing in the rec center.

The training group has started! There are hundreds of us, it's fun. Problem: I can't breathe. I don't know what's going to happen.

QUARTERLY UPDATE, RESOLUTIONS (a few weeks early): Well done, I must say. For transparency I will report that I have imbibed of the drip coffee at work three (3) times, but those instances were minor, justified, and as follows: twice a small amount in my hot chocolate, and once a small amount to dilute my horrible horrible instant Cafe Au Crap (corn syrup solids so offend my delicate palate they make me want to brush my teeth, die, and barf).

20. Ice cream, insanity, illness and runners (not me)

2009-02-23T20:10:00.003-07:00

Hello and welcome. The big news around Missoula these days is that the Dairy Queen on Higgins is open again. It closes for the winter, it is very quaint and ridiculous. They put a sign in the window that's all "Sorry suckas! No ice cream 'til mid-February!" Mid-February is normally pretty wintery/crappy - I thought the sign was a bluff, or a relic they never bothered to change, left over from the '60s when winter didn't last as long as it does now. But mid-February was true! Last week they put a sandwich board in front of the store with a cryptic countdown, it was very exciting. Everyone would drive by, see the sign, perhaps crash their cars or run over pedestrians because they were so excited.

It's barely in time. Missoulians have been experiencing a dangerous calcium deficiency since the Dairy Queen has been closed, and it's driven us to robbery, vandalism, vigilantism, and, occasionally, murder (we prefer stabbing). Some might be concerned that frequenting the Dairy Queen now will make us fat and Missoula will lose its status as Fittest City Ever (which we won last year from some magazine) but did you know that Dairy Queen doesn't even serve ice cream? They serve ice milk! Because the fat content is so low! They don't advertise that fact, because who wants to eat ice milk? Gross, no one does, so they call it something lame, like 'frozen treat' or whatever. But it's ice milk - milk, not cream. If they tried calling it cream, angry Dairy Farmers of America or whoever would come raid them (so the sign in the window actually read 'No ice milk 'til mid-February!', or it would have if that's what it actually said, but I was paraphrasing).

Since the Dairy Queen reopened, there have been unending lines of people standing outside it, all day long, even late into the night. I live right by the Dairy Queen, a few blocks away. I've spent the past many days walking by the Dairy Queen and I've stopped three times since it opened, I've been unable to resist. Yesterday I got a vanilla cone. It was fine. I got a malt once, that was fine. I got a Blizzard once, a Choco-Cherry Mega-Blasto XXXtreem Dream, which is not as good as Cherry Garcia and I can't recommend it - however, I haven't killed anyone or robbed anything since then, and I also haven't been run over, so, you know. Caveat emptor.

The reopening of the Dairy Queen gives credence to my premature call for the end of winter. And only two days after the Dairy Queen reopened, I saw my first shirtless jogger/moron of the year. I've been pushing the idea of spring since December, but this guy just... he was all pinkish, not because he was hot but because he was cold. Just because it got over 40 degrees doesn't mean you should take your clothes off and run around. Also I saw a lady running in a tank top. Temperatures in the low 40s warrant short sleeves, maybe even shorts if the sun is out and you're doing speed work, but that's it. Come on, people - no wonder half of Missoula is sick. (Half of Missoula is sick.)

19. Cursing, jinxing, running, weather

2009-02-12T17:10:00.003-07:00

I have recently developed a special interest in the sh- word. It has turned out to be the most useful and appropriate word for many situations. This is surprising to me - traditionally, the sh- word seemed very weak to me, but now it seems pretty fantastic. I had always thought the f- word was the best and most versatile word in the language. Perhaps my embrace of the f- word led to overuse, which led to a weakening of its powers, which has led to it becoming fairly passe.

And now, at the risk of jinxing everything, I'm going to say that the winter has gone by very quickly and pleasantly. I know it's only the beginning of February and there could still be many terrible months ahead, but really, man - the sun shines merrily every other day and I've been wearing my spring and autumn jacket for a month. Last winter I was wearing polar bear hides from October until June. (That's not true, that would be gross.)

Sidebars:

1. A couple Novembers ago I saw some guy on campus scantily clad in deer furs, and he was barefoot.

2. Although I'm very superstitious about jinxing things, I don't think it happens. For years I've been trying to jinx myself into getting sick by saying that I never get sick, but it doesn't work. I never get sick and I won't get sick even though I'm saying that right now. Try and get me, germs, good luck. So even though I'm kind of worried that I'm setting us up for another long cold wintery spring by saying that the winter went by quickly, I don't really think I am.

3. It's been so nice and springy and last weekend was so lovely I changed my bedding to my springtime bedding on Sunday night - I was sweating all winter under my down comforter and finally I was like, "Well, shit, man" (a couple months ago I would have said, "Aww f*@k it, dawwwg" - you can see how elegant and expressive the sh- word is, and now you understand why my curse of choice has shifted) and so I changed my blankets, as I said, to my springtime bedding and it's been really comfortable and nice. So that was Sunday night, I say, and guess what! I opened my door Monday morning and there was like an inch of new snow on the ground. Which means I jinxed the springtime.

4. You know I got that membership to the rec center so I could go running inside when it was dark and terrible outside, and ever since then it's been light and warm and springlike outside, which means I jinxed the winter.

5. A month ago, when it was very cold, I lost a glove on the way to work, because it was actually not very cold and I was dressed too warmly and had to take off my gloves and hat, and when I got to work I realized to my dismay that at some point on my walk one of my gloves had silently slipped from my grasp. I worried about it all day but then found the glove on my way home, which I took as further confirmation that the Fates are back on my side. And I hadn't lost anything else this winter and I was very pleased by my ability to hang onto my wintery clothing items, and I bragged about that to my boss just yesterday. And then! Last night I forgot my hat and gloves at the movie theater and they are gone. Clearly, I jinxed myself with my braggery. Oh, such hubris.

6. I've been getting very bored lately. Also, I've lost my power bill.

7. The "preferred" spelling is actually wintry, but that's dumb.

8. I'm reading pulp.

End of sidebars.

Nothing else to say - I just wanted to get the word out that the winter has been relatively painless and I'm using the sh- word all the time now.

LATEBREAKING UPDATE: After much to-do, I have recovered my hat and gloves. Clearly, by writing about how I had jinxed myself, I unjinxed myself.

18. Running, weather, potential and realized calamities, wide-angle lens

2009-01-30T20:34:00.006-07:00

A. Dog On The Run

This morning as I hobbled to work (in the light! today was 2 minutes and 42 seconds longer than yesterday!) I saw a loose dog, always a worrying sight. Loose dogs always run like they know where they're going, but they really don't know where they're going and they often end up changing course and veering out into the road with no warning. Last year I apprehended two loose dogs and returned them to their owners - one of them was my favorite dog in the neighborhood who never barked and always jumped up on the fence for me to pet him when I walked by. He was running towards the interstate on-ramp. The other dog was some wandering retriever I found running towards the river. I don't know what happened to that dog renegade this morning - it was black and fuzzy and running with its head down and determined, heading south on the sidewalk on Higgins. I hope it didn't run onto the street. Higgins is stupid busy - why do so many people drive?

B. Hobble and malarkey

I was hobbling because I have a blister the size of the Great Lakes, if my foot is America. Because I am a lady I will not discuss how I have had to repeatedly lance this very large blister, and I will not discuss the surprising amount of fluid that seeps out every time I lance it - such details should remain the purview of people like my dad who look back with fondness on halcyon days of working as medics in the Navy and participating in surgeries on hemorrhoids and popped-out eyeballs. Ladies such as myself do not mention unmentionables like this. Instead of all the horrid details - so horrid you would squirm - suffice it to say, I have a blister on the bottom of my foot, and I limp.

And I have a race tomorrow morning. Will I be able to run? Will my archrival be at this race? Can you hobble and run at the same time? What if my enormous blister pops during the race and swamps my shoe with ooze? If I get a slow time, and I probably will, can I blame it on the blister? Will people be sympathetic to that? These are all questions I will have answers for before 10:30 tomorrow morning.

C. Weather

Here's how the winter's been in Missoula: it was warm, and then it was very cold, and then it was warm, and then it was cold again, and now it's warm again. I'm kind of done with winter. It's not wintery anymore and I don't care about it. My house is warm, my heating bill is low, each day is longer than yesterday. Last winter seemed really long and dark and horrible - I started my job in January and it seemed like I walked to and from work in thick darkness for months and months. But this winter, here it is still January and I walk to work in blazing pre-sunrise daylight and see sunsets after work. Is it because I've moved to a more southerly location? It's a different climate on the south side of the river, for sure, but I didn't know daylight hours would be so different. Well gee.

D. Calendrical forecast

Unless I am wrong, and I am never wrong, I will be spending the next few weeks in darkened theaters watching movies. When I emerge at the end of February it will almost officially be springtime. In addition to the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, there is a series showing on campus that will be very enjoyable. I always go to these campus film serieses thinking they'll be good and they end up being not good - a French film series, for example - you'd think a French film series would be enjoyable, wouldn't you? But no, it wasn't at all, and one of the films was so bad it gave me a two-day headache. A Japanese film series - that would be interesting, right? But no, it wasn't. So bad. So disappointing. I nearly despaired of ever seeing a good film series again. But this upcoming series is a classic film series and it will be rad. I will buy candy, maybe popcorn.

E. Desires

All I want is a wide-angle lens, for my Canon or my Argus. Is that too much to ask? I want other things too, but there are too many to list here.

17. Weather, running, senselessness.

2009-01-13T21:50:00.006-07:00

In Missoula this month for no reason at all it's incredibly springlike. There is still snow on the ground and ice on the streets but my dad says he saw robins last week. Yes that was in Idaho and not in Missoula but same difference. My point is, it's unseasonably warm. I am unseasonably warm. Every night I wake up at 3 a.m. sweating. I wear extra clothes to work out of habit and every afternoon at 3 I'm sweating. It gets up to 80 degrees in my office, for no reason at all.

This month's unseasonable springishness is startling because last month was cold, unseasonably cold - colder, they were saying, than it's ever been anywhere. Ever. One day I walked to work and it was so many degrees below zero every single thermometer in the state had broken. It was so cold ducks were freezing and falling out of the sky with nary a quack. Do you know why our tears are salty? It's so our eyeballs don't freeze. I made that up but I'm sure it's true.

I have gotten a membership at the campus rec center for no reason at all. Or, rather, I had one reason - the weather/darkness/general terribleness of outside - which became moot when it turned so springlike, is what I'm saying. Know what I'm saying?

What I'm saying is, I've started running again, inside, on a tiny track. You have to go around 10 times to go a mile. It's almost dizzying, or would be if I went any faster. It's hard to keep track of the number of laps. I use the chron on my watch, it's what it was born to do. Running on a tiny indoor track is boring and almost claustrophobic, and there are too many people, but at least it's something, right? Am I right?

For no reason at all, I went to a talk last night about the marathon. I've done it, or, I've done the half, every single year the Missoula Marathon has been in existence (two), and so I totally already know everything there is to know about it, and about running in general. And I was already excited about the beginning of another running season, so there was no reason for me to go to the talk last night, no reason at all. But the talk made me so excited I went home and wrote in my journal (a.k.a. diary) and underlined words and used multitudinous exclamation points.

The training group starts at the beginning of March. Last year I also did the Snow Joke Half Marathon training group, which started in January and led right into the Missoula Marathon training group in March. The Snow Joke training is what is not happening this year, as expounded upon previously, and so I am footloose and fancy-free until March.

The training program last spring was tough but it was great, and the results were so great that now I don't even think about how tough it was, I just think about how great it was. Here, you see, I had just finished the big race in July and was walking over to Anders, our coach, who was right there cheering everyone on, who gave me a hug even though I was slightly sweaty (only slightly, because I am a lady). And not to be weird or pathetic but that was one of the high points in my life, those few seconds right around when that picture was taken. I almost asked for a copy of that photo for Christmas because it still makes me kind of giddy to look at. Instead, I asked for a copy of this incredible photo (please note the water droplets suspended in mid-air awesomeness).

So, like, totally looking forward to formal training again. Etc.

In other news, tomorrow on my radio show I'm going to play bands that start with V. Benjamin Franklin, that son of a bitch, is still in England. Length of day tomorrow will be 1 minute and 53 seconds longer than today.

16. Status and progress report, 1-8 January 2009

2009-01-08T21:11:00.004-07:00

Resolution Area #1: Have not had drip coffee in two (2) weeks. Ostensibly, progress on this front is significant and commendable. However, the unstated intention of this resolution was to drink significantly less coffee, and while that is technically true, I have been going to the market for lattes like three times a week (during four-day work weeks), which is silly and is a trend that cannot be continued, although, to be fair to myself and everyone involved, last week there was a guy working at the market who was nice, new, and bored, who gave me multiple stamps on my card multiple times, so it would have been stupid and improvident not to be getting lattes, know what I'm saying? I got my free one on Tuesday (because Monday I was out sick!)! I really needed a free latte on Tuesday because I was terribly moony and lattes combat moonishness. By 'moony' I mean I looked like the moon, and my head was all... moony. 'moony' is a real word.

Resolution Area #2: Very good progress made, good job.

Resolution Area #3: Nothing to report.

Running: Miles logged so far this year: 0. Running group? Not happening! I am devastated! My friend June and I are going to do our own running group but it's not the same! After the half marathon in December I decided I wasn't going to do any runs longer than 3 miles for the rest of the month, and I stuck with that decision so well I ended up not doing any runs longer than 0 miles for the rest of the month. I feel fine.

Weather: It's spring! Tomorrow will be 1 minute and 33 seconds longer than today! Missoula is full of water and ice, tiny lakes at the four corners of every intersection. Take care while walking and driving.

Food: I have been getting incredible deals at Safeway. Everyone is invited to my house for dinner, or for tea, whichever you'd prefer. (Please choose tea, I don't cook.)

Deers: What are they doing? They're all over the place, even in my new front yard. Don't they know it's dangerous? Morons!

2009 Year In Review (in progress): I have been sleeping with the light on. I have started reading The Poisonwood Bible, which my sister loaned me three years ago in Costa Rica. It flew back to Seattle with me, unread, it moved to Missoula with me, unread, a few days ago my hand picked it up to put in the to-be-donated box, but then my head changed its mind. In truth, I'm only reading it to avoid that prolific bastard Benjamin Franklin, whose phantasmagorically boring biography I've been reading since 2002. Today I made the alarming discovery that what I think of as a tuba is actually a sousaphone! Descended from the helicon! I think I'll make lasagna on Sunday.

And now, please to enjoy song I've been listening unceasingly now two weeks.

15. 2008 year in review etc.

2008-12-30T17:01:00.001-07:00

Hi. First, here are my resolutions for 2009 (I forgot to make any resolutions for 2008 [other than a goal time for my half marathon {which I totally smashed}] which was a mistake because my resolution for 2007 was completely and totally successful and I was on a resolution roll [my 2007 resolution was for peace, unfortunately not world peace - I should have made a resolution for world peace but I didn't know how successful the resolution would be at the time I made it, so I selfishly resolved only for personal peace] and I felt too much pressure to make a good resolution after that one - how do you top peace? - and so I kept putting it off and putting it off and here we are, the year is over, it's too late to make a resolution for 2008):

1. Stop drinking the drip coffee at work. It's gross and there's no point.
2. Equip.
3. Motion.

Obviously two of them are not in the form of traditional resolutions but I refuse to elaborate. Also, perhaps I should add my new half marathon goal time as Resolution #4 but since I didn't count that as a resolution last year I won't this year.

Now, here is my 2008 Year In Review:

In January I joined a running group and it was the first time I'd ever run with anyone else. It turned out to be very awesome and it kept me busy and beat up through the middle of July. I'll be starting it all over again in a week or two and I can hardly wait.

In January I got a job. Turns out, working full-time makes me surly. But hey.

In January I bought a Fisher MC4040 for $15 at Goodwill. I was so enamored with it until I realized that there's no A+B speaker setting. There's A, there's B, there's Off, that's it. Regardless, what a beautiful piece of equipment.

In January I started going to Lady Griz games with Jordon and Xtino. That was rad.

Etc. I'm not going to detail each month of the year like this, that would be ridiculous.

In June I got a black toenail. It wasn't black, it was blue, and then it turned into a very pretty marbled brown. It took forever to go away. Maybe it was from running, I never found out.

In October I went on the best trip to Seattle that ever was.

In November my car died on multiple occasions and it really hurt my feelings.

In December I moved south of the river. The Clark Fork is born near Butte (where it is briefly known as Silver Bow Creek) and flows northwestward through Missoula into Idaho, where it feeds into Lake Pend Oreille, which turns into a river and flows into Washington, meandering into Canada for a second before turning around and coming back down to meet the Columbia River, which heads south awhile before turning abruptly west for the ocean, and I have not lived south of this water since California almost six years ago.

People who live south of the river are funny - they talk funny and dress funny and smell funny and now I am one of them. My little Rattlesnake alley house was my retreat for two years, and I was inches away from Greenough Park and Mount Jumbo and all those other things like bears and mountain lions and the moon and dysfunctional neighbor relations. I dug up my primroses and dianthuses and one strawberry plant to take with me across the river but I left behind tulips and crocuses and strawberries and lilies and lupins. My alley house was heaven in the summertime. My new neighborhood will probably smell like poo once things thaw out. The only bright spot in this horrible stinky debacle is that I'm two blocks from Dairy Queen, but even that's an unattainable carrot because Dairy Queen is closed for the winter. (I'm just kidding, I'm in love with my new house, but that's probably because I don't have a roommate yet.)

A while ago someone said something to me like, "If only you'd moved to Sandpoint" and I stopped for a second... yes, I was going to move back home and I even started telling people that I was going to move and I would have told my boss if I weren't such a chicken. Then at the end of July I went to Sandpoint for a week and I missed Missoula and decided to stay here until at least next April (or August). I feel like I'm supposed to be in Missoula now, for whatever reason. Maybe I'm just wasting time and trying to convince myself of things that aren't true, I don't know, but I did move back here after six years elsewhere and I do have some good things going on. But who cares, back to the issue at hand.

In December I got rid of my Seattle phone number. This took me two and a half years, it was not easy. I did not want to leave Seattle. I had more fun in Seattle than anywhere. Seattle has a reputation for being a hard place to get to know people - nice, polite, but distant and not particularly friendly - but I made more friends there than I ever did anywhere. I loved living in Seattle. And I was coming here for one year to finish my stinking master's degree and my friends and I said I could move back to Seattle after that, and I could have, but I knew I wouldn't. Now that I've finally gotten a Missoula phone number it's pretty much guaranteed that I'll be leaving soon, right? I don't know.

Before I moved back to Missoula I dreamed I got hit by a car on South Avenue by Goodwill. I was walking across the street and bam, I flew through the air. For the next two days I went to work (at the law firm in Seattle but in Missoula) but then went back to the scene of the accident, talked to some of the witnesses, and found out that I'd been killed. Turns out, after I'd gotten hit and flown through the air, I landed, splat, dead. I felt bad for the people who'd had to witness it, apparently it was pretty horrible, but mostly I was worried that HR would see the date on my death certificate and wouldn't pay me for those two days that I worked after I'd died. For reasons no doubt of great psychological interest, I moved to Missoula anyway.

In December the Fates decided to stop shitting on me (those bastards) and the CD player in my car miraculously came back to life. Also, I had an incredible yoga session.

Too long, sorry. No more reflecting or resolving for now.

14. Happy holidays

2008-12-23T20:56:00.001-07:00

I've been watching too many movies on the teevee.

13. Weather, teeth, running shoes

2008-12-01T21:39:00.002-07:00

This morning it was warm and foggy in Missoula. Some people were wearing hats and gloves, some people weren't. Two people were walking across the river smoking a pipe and one of them said, "Is that how you can tell the people who were born here?" and the other said, "Yup." They were trying to draw some sort of birthplace/hardiness correlation, but they did not take stupidity or frizzy hair into account.

These days all I can do is wait until it's bedtime again. That's because I'm so excited to brush my teeth. I have a new toothpaste, you see, a very fancy toothpaste. It's so fancy it's available only by prescription. It's so fancy it's not even called toothpaste, it's dentifrice.

Yes, I have gone to the dentist, after two and a half years of not going to the dentist. I have a very fancy dentist. It's not like having a dentist at all, actually, it's like having a family of dentists. At my first visit, one of them did all this stuff to me, and then another one came in and did more stuff. He was the Head Dentist and he is in love with my teeth. He was very complimentary and then he tried to sell me a very fancy and expensive mouth guard. I said I'd think about it, even though I didn't intend to think about it at all.

I left for a couple weeks and then went back for another dentist visit. The person I visited with this time was not so in love with my teeth and she spent an hour doing pretty mean things, like poking needles into my gums to see if they'd bleed. They did. But she gave me the fancy toothpaste and told me to come back in six months. She told me to stop brushing so hard and she gave me a fairy-soft toothbrush. The good thing about having a family of dentists is that they don't know who's already given you a toothbrush, so now I have two fairy-soft toothbrushes, ha! They are both mauve.

I now have two of nearly everything: two toothbrushes, two stereos, two houses, for a minute today I had two car batteries. My two current pairs of running shoes are both nearing the end of their useful lives and will need to be replaced soon. Hopefully I'll be able to find some red ones.

12. Running socks, weather, voting.

2008-11-04T10:35:00.006-07:00

Election Day morning, I sleep in - I have the day off work - my bed is too comfortable and I stayed up too late last night. But I do manage to wake up in time for NPR Business News and instead of my usual cursing I greet the day with "Yay." I have some tea and sub-par toast, and I put on my Pearl Jam sweatshirt and my favorite running socks (and other clothing items) and walk the block and a half to my polling place. It's stopped raining/God has stopped crying for a few minutes. A small wet dog behind a fence tries voter intimidation tactics on me, or so it seems at first, but it turns out the dog is just cheering me on. Prescott School, yonder. An 18.0001-year-old boy gets there right before I do, I get ballot 509, all the voting booths but two are full.

Here is my hand voting for a Black Man:

I turn in my ballot, get an "I Voted" sticker and some coffee and a delicate pumpkin muffinette, and come home. I feel like listening to Simon and Garfunkel now.

11. Weather, running, I have a nutritionist, car.

2008-10-26T20:25:00.000-06:00

Hello how was your weekend. I'm sure it was great and not frustrating at all. It was beautiful in Missoula this weekend. It's been sunny and the leaves are all golden and flying around. It hasn't rained yet, the leaves haven't gotten sopped and mushy, when you go running they fly up behind you and make you feel like you're going fast.

Right here in this paragraph I would have offered you some fascinating information about my run this morning (incidental details such as that it was chilly but nice, that hobos had fires, and that the slowest bicyclist in the world was out for a very slow bike ride) but I'm pretty tired and don't want to. I'm just going to make dinner now so I can put something on my food diary for tonight other than ice cream and then I'm going to bed.

I'm keeping a food diary now and I have a nutritionist (not really) with whom I meet on Fridays to discuss food and such. Whenever I use 'whom' in a sentence I'm being sarcastic. My nutritionist is actually a something-or-other in training (not a nutritionist, I'm making that up) and I am a guinea pig. I am providing a service to her. So far, all that's happened is that I've eaten fewer Mr. Goodbars and then lied about the ones I did eat.

Basically, I don't have anything to say, other than that Missoula is lovely and that I'm pretty much an expert on dismantling Subaru dashboards now, so if you'd like some help with yours (or your neighbor's), let me know. Unfortunately, I'm not an expert on CD changers.

10. Weather, poo, running.

2008-10-05T16:47:00.007-06:00

I am drinking a cafe au lait and I should be working on a story but I am not, instead I'm just kind of in a daze. It's been a long weekend. There have been rainshowers aplenty flying through Missoula this weekend and I have been outside for many of them. I am just now starting to dry out and warm up. This cafe au lait is delicious.

I'm glad it's raining - maybe it will clean this town up a little. Missoula has been smelling like poo lately. The other day I was riding downtown and the smell was inescapable. Everywhere (except in the Rattlesnake - it always smells good in the Rattlesnake), every street I rode down, poo. It smelled like poo by the new railroad crossing, it smelled like poo on Spruce, it smelled like poo on Pattee. It just kept on smelling like poo, I couldn't get away from it. I wondered if it was me who smelled like poo - and you might be wondering that too - but it wasn't. It was probably the mass accumulation of years of dog poo. This town is a dog town and maybe it has finally reached the breaking point.

I was on my way to yoga. Before class, the ladies said, "The weather's been so nice, we've been really lucky." I got all weepy because I hadn't seen it - I hadn't seen that. I spent much of the first half of this year outside and I feel like I've spent too much of the last two months inside. Being outside in the weather is so much better than looking out at the weather from inside.

This weekend I began my Official Training for the next Big Race I'm doing and I'm happy about that for so many reasons, not the least of which is that I'll have to be outside a lot.

But what I'm most happy about is that I'll finally have something to say to all the people who are asking me about running these days. Everyone asks me about running now all of a sudden. Everyone. Always. Obviously I am a huge braggart, obviously I spent the first seven months of the year bragging about how I was such a huge runner. Now, people come up to me and say, "So how much are you running these days?" and I mutter something quietly and try to get away. They probably laugh and snort at my retreating figure. "Ha," they say, "what a fake."

Now they won't be so smug. This morning I got out of bed in the terrible cold darkness and went for a run through the rain up the Rattlesnake with a very fast person. It totally kicked me. I did not dominate. And that's what training is for. It was a perfect morning for running.

For the past few months I've been trying to write an essay for the running club newsletter - another thing I'm all talk about. The essay is not cooperating. Usually these things write themselves, and if they don't - if I have to actually work at it - overwhelming laziness takes over and I give up. I give up!

I think on my radio show this week I'll play bratty songs.

9. The weather, so terrible. Plus: food!

2008-09-24T19:36:00.003-06:00

Oh, Missoula, you may be nice today but don't think I've forgotten about the terribleness of Sunday and Monday. Nor have I forgotten that June 11, 2008, looked like this:

Summer was such a tease, it lasted two days. And so leaf subsides to leaf, and although only a few trees in my realm have started changing colors, I'm doomsdaying. My house is 5 degrees warmer than outside and it's only going to get colder. What a terrible, terrible cold place. I go to bed at night and shiver for an hour feeling feverish, entertaining wild thoughts of moving back to California to follow the sun, or to Seattle, where winter doesn't happen and rain is a myth.

I remember once upon a time when I stood outside in the dimming evening without a jacket last week, watching the folks of the town converged upon the Oval, singing. The singing was horrible but at least it was warm out. There was a bonfire because everyone loves fire. Some of the students from the village had climbed up the face of the mountain to the giant white concrete M, and when it turned dark they turned on their flashlights and waved them around. There were not enough students to outline the whole M but the people in the valley below cheered anyway. Suddenly, without warning, fireworks were lit off right above my head. Debris rained down. I am now terrified of three things, fireworks being one of them.

Today in Missoula it was nice. So was yesterday. Tomorrow will be as well. Whatever though, you know? Winter breathes down our necks.

Some days I'd just rather walk than ride my bike even if it triples the commute time. This afternoon the air was a little warm and heavy and walking seemed like the best thing to do. Near the footbridge the band was practicing and anyone who knows anything at all about me knows that one of the few pleasures I have on this planet is marching bands. Now I'm at home grilling, or trying to. I've already mangled the pineapple and killed the charcoal - if this doesn't work I'll cook everything in the oven and it won't be very awesome but I'll try again tomorrow.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: The grilling was a raging success and I'm never eating anything ever again unless it's been grilled THAT's how good it was and I should have a party on Saturday night, a grilling party, and everyone can come over to my cold tiny house and I will grill for them like the grilling pro I have become. Tomorrow night when I get home from yoga - never mind, I'm going to Libby, Montana after yoga - but maybe after that I'll come home and stay up all night grilling. I want to bring my little grill into my house because it is cold inside and the grill is hot.

The grill was a gift from my kind former neighbors Matt and Kate.

8. Weather, radio

2008-09-17T18:17:00.005-06:00

Hi, Missoula, you're so beautiful. You've been pretty stinking nice all week, and all last weekend, too. I've been sleeping with my windows open at night again.

The moon earlier this week gave me a strong hankering for Neil Young and "Harvest Moon" and songs about the moon in general, and on my radio show this week I played some moon songs. I couldn't have done a show of only moon songs because of playlist/rotation stuff that I had to play, and even if I had played only moon songs it would have been untimely and awkward, being in the middle of the day. But maybe one day I'll cover a graveyard shift during the full moon and play a few hours of moon songs.

I can't stop listening to Langhorne Slim. They came through Missoula last week and I had no idea. I just happened to be out and about and all I caught was their soundcheck (I have an early bedtime) but I was so impressed I introduced myself and Mr. Slim himself gave me a copy of their new CD for the radio station. I enjoy.

Bill Cosby looks like my dad. Or vice versa, probably.

7. Running, weather, various calamities

2008-09-08T08:15:00.003-06:00

Shit:

My favorite pen at work ran out of ink. The bookstore does not carry replacement ink cartridges.

Recently I have lost all of the following:

two pairs of sunglasses

a vintage 5 Valleys 5K series commemorative sweatshirt from the inaugural year of the series (2007) (and if you've read my essay about last year's running season [pg. 5] you understand how heartbroken I am about this)

one (1) pink Planetary Design Double Shot french press coffee mug (stolen!) (PINK)

my car keys, rendering my car unusable except as a planter or other decorative item (a largish problem)

They raised the coffee prices at the market and I was ten cents short this morning.

I got hit by a car today on my way to work.

Not shit:

They gave me my coffee anyway.

Yesterday I had ice cream.

Insomniatrical moments are coming at 6 a.m. these days instead of 4 a.m.

Not dead yet.

I did not do the 15K yesterday because that's when I discovered I'd lost my car keys and there I was, stranded in the lower Rattlesnake while the race was taking place far away at Blue Mountain. I often casually lose my car keys, finding them after an easy lighthearted search, but this time they're not anywhere a smart person would put them. I've checked pockets. I've checked the refrigerator and the freezer. I looked in the car and under the car. I looked in my mailbox. Gone. And seriously, crap! because my car has been costing me an arm and a leg lately (new power steering rack + insurance + registration + loan payments + gas = tons of dollars) and now I can't even use it and I don't even drive the bastard (raddest car in Montana!) anyway except to go to Sandpoint. I love my car and if I sold it I'd be selling a piece of my soul (histrionics) but my checkbook would be better off and Microsoft Money would stop shouting at me every time I do my finances (once or twice in a blue moon).

This weekend I: went to First Friday and briefly saw my dear old friends Jordon and Xtino, ran a 10K and got a certificate stating that I'm probably just about the fastest person ever, took a nap and a half, drank two (2) Dr. Peppers, finished one book and nearly finished another (which I've been reading for the last 6 months), ate about four (4) lunches in two days, went to bed early, had a dream that I was a little boy whose dad had died (it was sad and woke me up), ran alone on the Kim Williams trail instead of doing an awesome race at Blue Mountain, cleaned out my stupid bathroom, painted so much my forearms are sore, drilled and hammered, scoured out my sink, washed about 9,000 dishes, took a shower (or two).

Forecast for today: sunny and 77. It's still pretty shocking that summer is over and I'm still incredibly angry and/or pissed about it, but yesterday was a really nice day and today is looking to be that way again. Fall is nice - I like fall a lot, I just hate the end of summer.

I suppose I could start wearing my helmet when I ride my bike.

6.

2008-09-04T17:05:00.000-06:00

Today at work during the course of doing something incredibly important and pressing I came upon a picture of Hong Kong at night and now it is my desktop background and now I want to go to Hong Kong. I became hopelessly distracted by the picture and half an hour later tried to refocus on work - the thing I was doing was incredibly important and pressing and still is incredibly important and pressing and I need to do it, either now or later, but now would be better.

This will be my third four-day week in a row at work - I've missed the last two Fridays because I went home two weekends in a row, and this week is short because of the holiday. I am behind on my work. I am also behind at home. No one's paid my bills, no one's cleaned my house, no one's balanced my checkbook, no one's pulled weeds, no one's done anything at all. My house has been driving me crazy. For weeks I've been wanting to pick up every single thing I own and put it out in my yard, then sweep, then put everything back in a different place. Am I really going to live in that tin can another winter?

So I've been busy and have "lost" the last two weekends. Here's what I did instead of housework: saw one of the most incredible concerts ever, drove through torrential downpours, saw a perfect rainbow, ate at Dick's in the middle of the night, ran across the Long Bridge, went to the Bonner County Fair, took Fair Queen photos, washed my car, read, went swimming, took a nap, watched a movie, ate a lot of food, dried some hops, went to the Farmer's Market, went to an antique show, went shopping, went to coffee hour after church (but didn't go to church), played the piano, caught up with my oldest friends, saw my exbestfriend get married (a happier person I've never seen in all my days), made friends pose for couples portraits for my new soft-porn wall calendar business, hiked through ancient forests, drank coffee and ate bread. I can't complain about anything at all.

A couple years ago I came to the conclusion that things will never slow down - this is my life - but I'd forgotten that so I've had to come to that conclusion again. This weekend I have two races, a 10K and a 15K, and I thought after that things would slow down but they won't. The real conclusion is this: I don't want things to slow down - if I did, I'd stop doing what I do. Everything I do I do because I want to.

p.s. The picture of Hong Kong is so incredible - I'm such a sucker for light and water.

5. My health and the weather

2008-08-26T18:35:00.000-06:00

I refuse to get sick so that can't be it, but yesterday morning my throat hurt, my ear hurt, my scalp hurt, my face hurt, my eyes were burning and glowing red like an albino rabbit. Today, though, I feel so much better. My throat still hurts but it obviously has issues and it's best to ignore things like that - I refuse to indulge drama queens, even when the drama queens are my own body parts.

My eyes were still kind of red so I wore my glasses again today, two days in a row. I walked to work without them on, walked through a blurry world. It had rained hard early this morning, made me dream about a flash flood coming down a hill, woke me up in the dark - but the rain had stopped by the time I left for work, leaving scattered alley mudpuddles but dry sidewalks and big fragrant clouds. I know you can't smell clouds but I'm leaving that.

The population of Missoula has increased dramatically in the past 48 hours. Everywhere you look there are streams of people on bikes or streams of people in cars or streams of people walking down the sidewalk and none of them know where they're going. Everyone is wandering around hurt and confused, wondering what happened to summertime.

Students! I am almost envious of them.

It was 64 degrees when I walked home from work today with my glasses off.

Earlier in the day I ate a peach and my stomach started whistling. I threw out my Amish Friendship Bread - I had neglected to mush it like I was told to, and I don't have any sugar or flour to feed it. Nor do I have three friends to give its babies to. Nor do I want to participate in group breading. Nor did I want to bake anything - but now it's winter and baking isn't so unattractive.

My plan for this evening - the only evening this week I have time to do this - was to venture into the world of retail to find something to wear to the wedding this weekend but screw it I'll go naked. Instead I'm staying home to listen to NPR, eat, and watch a movie.

Overheard today in the basement of the music building: "No, pitch and density are the same fucking thing."

4. Weather, neighbors, running, food

2008-08-19T15:58:00.000-06:00

Yesterday in Missoula was pretty awesome - no, wrong word, I mean 'warm'. Yesterday in Missoula was pretty warm and when I was riding my bike home at 6 after work it was 103 degrees. Then it cooled off into one of those perfect evenings that you read about in the magazines. Someone finally cleaned my living room and it was very pleasant - windows and doors open, Christmas lights on for ambiance, M. Ward singing sweetly from the speakers of my Fisher MC4040. My new freeloading neighbor disturbed my solitude when he came by to steal my water - that pissed me off, and I'm still pissed about his disgusting late loud party from Saturday night/Sunday morning, and then the mofo tries to ask me to a movie? Ha. I met my other new neighbors/lot mates, also boys, but they seem sweet. We watered our lawn, once the freeloader finally stopped freeloading. What a mooch.

The weekend was pretty awesome because I totally dominated in my race on Saturday. And although I did not win a raffle prize afterward, nor did I get a medal, whatever, you know? Domination is a reward in itself. I am zen like Steven Seagal and lately I've been doing Warrior 3 poses every chance I get. I really probably should have become a ballerina like I wanted to in second grade, although my plan then was to change my name to Kelsarina the Ballerina and that would have just been lame. But just a plain old ballerina - I totally would have dominated that sport. I'd be doing ballet on NPR now I bet. Sad. But Warrior 3 is fun.

The next couple weeks will be awesome because 1. Wilco = awesome, 2. Sandpoint = awesome, 3. Sandpoint twice = triple awesome (the awesomeness increases in seemingly nonsensical increments like that), 3. KBGA concert in the Oval = awesome, 4. exbestfriend's wedding = awesome, 5. free food = awesome.

Basically all I can think about these days is food. Yesterday was a heartbreaker because I was thinking about cheese enchiladas all morning but only got a stupid taco for lunch - there were no enchiladas. But! If things go as planned, by this evening I will have eaten pizza four days in a row, and that's, you know, super awesome.

3. not about running, not about the weather

2008-08-13T10:02:00.000-06:00

People in New York are so '80s, aren't they? I'm watching a video from one of their recent Saturday street closures - the people are in the street doing aerobics, rollerskating, walking their dressed-up dogs. They are smiling and enthusiastic. It's like so '80s - it's like the '80s never stopped.

In other '80s news, I've become somewhat obsessed with '80s music this summer. I've been watching '80s videos on youtube and they are SO FABULOUS. Poison and David Lee Roth, of course, are pure genius, with their spandex, huge hair, synchronized sidesteps, and tranny makeup. (David Lee Roth could jump real high.) The music is brilliant, as are the lyrics. ("C.C., pick up that guitar and, uh, TALK to me, yeeeuh.")

I've also been listening to Madonna. Here's a story: when I was in fifth grade, my best friend, my big sister, and I flew to New Jersey. There, we were introduced to leg shaving, the ocean, peach and mint green interior decorating schemes, french-cut bathing suits (Jennifer and I got matching ones, pink and purple, but she was not allowed to wear hers when we got back to Idaho), and Madonna. True Blue is the best album ever (sometimes). Ever! (Also on that trip, we ate pickles and climbed up the Statue of Liberty, and someone puked in a gutter. [Maybe that was me.] [I think it was.])

Anyway, the other day I also watched a T'Pau video - remember her black eye shadow? So cool! Also, Paula Abdul. I'm going to request Milli Vanilli on the radio today. My sister should knit me some legwarmers this winter.

(Time to make an '80s-buttrock-themed seeqpod playlist.)

(Ayyyvry rose has its thone, just lak ayvry not has its doune, just lak ayvry cowboa sings his sad sad sowng, ayvry rose has its thone.) (Yeah, it does.)

(Sorry, I can't stop.)

2. Running and the weather

2008-08-08T22:00:00.000-06:00

Last night in Missoula we had the most amazing storm - I would have watched more of it but I was 1. doing something else and not paying attention, and 2. tired. I went outside and watched it for a while, though, until the rain started coming in sideways and I started wondering if I was going to get hit by lightning.

Tomorrow morning June and I are going running - I did go on Wednesday, on the Kim Williams, and saw no lurid displays of manhood. The run was fine but my heart was heavy and fat - I haven't been eating like a runner lately.

Aaaand that's about it.

1. Hello

2008-08-06T20:05:00.000-06:00

I've been kicking around the idea of having a non-anonymous blahg for a while - not because I think anyone wants to read what I write, and not because I really have anything to say, but, uh, because... um, I should have thought more about it before actually doing it. I'm not normally this reasonless. Or maybe I am. Oh, I know, I want the street cred that goes along with a blahg. I'll make stickers and put them on light poles around town.

Last night was awesome because I went to sleep at 9:30 and didn't get up until 7. Today in Missoula it was 70 degrees when I woke up and the sign said it was 98 when I left work at 6. I was planning to go for a run with a friend but it was too hot and I was too hungry and tired. Now it's clouded over and I've eaten dinner so I have no excuse other than laziness. Fine, I'll go. I'll go down the Kim Williams trail - I haven't run there alone since that man got naked at me a few months ago. If I never post again you'll know where to look for me.

There - that's what this blahg'll be all about, running and the weather.