QotD: Thanksgiving

What are you thankful for?

The Milky Way, and living in a place where I can see it almost every night.

Family and friends and all the many people who fall into both categories, one way or another.

Animals, even when they're being holy terrors.

In a few weeks, I imagine that I shall be extremely thankful for the internet.  I'm always somewhat thankful for it, but I haven't been spending much time online in the past few months because I've been spending a lot of time outside with my boyfriend, who, in mid-December, is moving to rural Virginia.  Living in rural Wyoming is, for the most part, wonderful, but because I come from more populated areas where there are more people and more ideas and more art and more–well, just more–I sometimes feel a little lost here.  The internet–or more exactly, the people who make it up–are part of how I manage to feel a little less like a tiny dot on a dry, windswept hill.

A Happy Thanksgiving to all of you in the US–and a happy day to all.  Here's a picture from the trip Jim and I took to Utah just recently.  Lots more where it came from on Flickr, and more on the way. . . I went a little crazy with the camera.

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QotD: Sugar, Sugar

What was your favorite candy when you were a kid? How does that compare to now?

My father kept a jar of peppermints and lemondrops in the car at all times.  It was a compact Plymoth station wagon, and in preschool, my best friend and I were allowed to ride in the way back, which is, of course, way cooler than any other location in the car (and this was before the days of childseats for children larger than infants), and we were allowed to eat as many peppermints and lemondrops as we wanted.  All these rules were of course suspended when my mother was driving, when we sat in the backseat and pretended to be watching movies on imaginary pull-down screens.  The movies were actually quite magical–you could watch a movie of anything you wanted–kittens, your last vacation, Oz, you name it.

I've never been much of a candy eater, now or then, but peppermints and lemondrops are still probably my favorites (truffles, I think, don't exactly qualify as candy).

I seem to be writing a great deal about my father here of late.  I'm not sure what's up with that.  In a couple of weeks, it will be twenty-five years since he died, so perhaps our culture's fetishization of anniversaries is having some subliminal effect on me.

On an unrelated note, is anyone else having difficulties with the drop-down menus on Vox?  I searched the help sections and sent them a note the other day.  Basically, I can't change who can see my posts because when I click on the drop-down boxes, I get no options, so they're all friends-only.  I appreciate the option of exclusivity, but I'm not trying to be exclusive all the time.

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horseback

As promised, here's a picture of me on Baby, the palomino, from my horseback riding excursion with my friends Shane and Tiffany the weekend before last.  I had not been on a horse since I was six, so we only rode for about an hour.  I was somewhat sore the next day, but not too bad.

This weekend Jim and my friend Edie and I took what turned out to be a 13 mile hike (we had been planning on a 7-8 mile loop) up the South Fork of the Wood River and Chimney Creek.  The next day I woke up and thought, "I could do that again"–or at least, "I could do that again if it weren't so freaking hot."  I must be getting stronger, though, because a couple months ago 8 miles left me totally whupped. 

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identities

I've been feeling some indecision about what picture to use as my identifier here.  Today, probably as a result of thinking about Meredith's comment about mp3s for maple syrup on my previous post, I chose this one.  The Vermont t-shirt is one of the last things my father gave me before he died, which is sort of an awful thing to say, since it lends a good deal of bathos to the picture.  But I was actually happy to find this picture when I was sorting through some things a year ago, because I look so happy in it, and I'm sort of glad to see evidence that I was still happy at least some of the time that year. 

My father's family had a summer house way up in northern Vermont, in a town called Enosburg Falls.  We went there every summer, and my father and I both loved it.  My mom didn't like it so much, though that had less to do with Vermont and more to do with her mother-in-law.  We stopped going after my father died, and I've only made it back a few times since.  Someday maybe I'll write about my last visit, in 2004, when I saw my half brother and sister for the first time in 20 years, but tonight it's time for bed.

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chuckwagon dinner, horses, and a little more about me

Last night I went, along with my boyfriend, Jim, and my friends Shane and Tiffany, and the chocolatier, Tim (more on him in a minute), to the Chuckwagon Dinner at the Oasis Motel on the north edge of town.  Basically, it's an outdoor dinner (roast beef, green beans with bacon, potatoes with bacon and cheese–do you notice a theme here?–and salad and brownies and iced tea, lemonade, and water; byob if you want booze) with music and some dancing, as you can see.  This is the only really good shot I got of the dancing, though I took a bunch, and I may post a few to Flickr later.  I'm such a recent digital camera convert that I haven't gotten the whole action shot thing down yet.  (Incidentally, is anyone else having difficulties with the drop down menus when posting photos?  I can't get them to be visible to anything but "the world," which makes me reluctant to post pictures of friends, since my non-online friends tend to be a bit shy about having themselves visible to the world.)

I've actually gotten a bit hazy about which parts of my life are online and which aren't, so, with apologies for any repetitions, here's the "a little more about me" part.

I'm 30 years old, and I live in a tiny town in northwestern Wyoming called Meeteetse.  I'm not sure what it means–I've seen at least three different interpretations, but it seems to be Indian in origin.  I moved here four months ago to take the first full-time job I've ever had.  I spent my twenties going to graduate school (I got an MFA in Nonfiction Writing–one of those really useful degrees–before I went to library school) and working odd jobs and being unemployed and travelling a lot.  It was a good way to live, though it did create a certain amount of debt.  I feel pretty stupid about that part now, but on the whole, I don't regret it. 

I am the librarian here, and a lot of people refer to me that way, as in "Hey–librarian!"  I find it charming, mostly, though some days I wish my identity was a little bigger than "librarian."  But it's such a small place that there's often only one of everything, and so people who have regular jobs become the thing they do.

I don't normally make friends in a new place very quickly, but I have here, which seems like another sign that coming here was the right thing to do.  Shane and Tiffany run the local coffee shop, and they help out with various other work around town–ranch work, fencing, painting, whatever.  Jim, the guy I've been seeing for a few months now, paints and does other handyman work when people can convince him to do it.  Mostly he tries to avoid work.  And then there's the chocolatier, Tim, whom I'm sort of friendly with.  He's a cowboy, but he also makes chocolates.  I'm thinking of seeing if he'll barter truffles for better web design.

Anyway, to get to the horses part (a little out of order), this afternoon I went horseback riding with Shane and Tiffany up in the Shoshone National Forest.  I forgot my camera, so I don't have pictures, but if you've been on my Flickr account lately, it looked much like many of the other hikes I've taken.  Tiffany did take a picture of me on Baby, the palomino, so when she sends it to me I'll post it.  I haven't been on a horse since I was six, so we just did a short (maybe 45 minute) introductory ride.  We still got up pretty far, though–it's amazing how much farther you get on a horse than on foot.  Then we came back down, and Shane, his nephew, and Tiffany's daughter went for a longer ride while Tiffany and I sat around and gossipped.  Tiffany's daughter is ten and very funny.  She was telling me on the way back about her imaginary friend George, and she was delighted to hear that I had an invisible friend George (what can I say–it amuses me).  She told me a long story about George, which I regret to say I've forgotten, but it had to do with moving to Hawaii and the Denver Broncos and the color orange.  Last night at the Chuckwagon dinner she asked Jim if he'd brought his friend, and he said yes, pointing at me.  Today she wanted to know how I'd met Jim (he was one of the people they rounded up to help me move in) and if I liked him (yes).

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Digital Photo Relics

What's the oldest digital camera photo you have on your computer? When is it from? Let's see it!

Not really a relic at all.  I only got a digital camera in February.  The oldest digital photo (actually taken with a digital camera, not scanned from print) that I have is this one, taken by my more technologically advancced friend Felicia in October 2004. 

She was up from Miami to visit her brother in Chicago, and one night she and I and my then boyfriend (who was a vegan) went out to eat at the Chicago Diner, which is a vegan diner, which is better than it sounds.  And they have margaritas.  Mmmm.

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hello world, hello voice

I think most of you reading this know me either in person or online, so this may be redundant. . . .

I'm a librarian in northwestern rural Wyoming.  I've been here for about four months now, and it's fascinating and wonderful, if sometimes very strange.  I'm originally from Iowa City, Iowa and have lived in Poughkeepsie, NY (during college), the suburbs of Chicago (right before I came here), Indianapolis (during junior high; a time best forgotten), and a few months each in San Francisco and Minneapolis.

I love cities, but I also love living now in a town of 351 people, even on the days when it's strange.

Yesterday most people in town were either elated or downcast: hunting licenses arrived in the mail.  The elated had elk tags; the downcast, nothing.  On the 4th of July (a holiday I usually avoid–I used to have an anti-4th-of-July party in Iowa City) my boyfriend (who is a particular fan of the holiday, either) convinced me to spend the afternoon hanging out at the reservoir.  Since that's the sort of thing I feel I never did enough of in my youth, I went, and I had a fairly good time sitting around and drinking beer and enjoying the stillness.  Yet it was odd–many of the other people there had not graduated from high school, or had only barely graduated, but they work in the oilfields and pull in as much as $70,000–more than twice what I make with 1.75 masters' degrees.  I would like to be better at integrating the worlds I live in.

I have some other online presence, most of which you can find via my website, The New Rambler.  But there have always been things I wanted to write about, like the bit above, that don't seem to fit in any of my other spaces.  Perhaps this will be the one where they do fit.

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