Yankee-Mex is not Tex-Mex, but is pretty okay nontheless.

Actually, it was flan and tres leches cake.  Tasty!

Update: Hooray for the Internet

Marmots: They're sort of both.  Males are territorial and have harems of multiple females and offspring, usually creating a family unit of less than 20 animals.  We can split the 10 points.

Planets: Here are descriptions of where the planets are chillin' at over the course of this year.  They are not always visible, but it was probably either Jupiter, which is at opposition right now (essentially we're seeing a "full Jupiter") or Saturn that we looked at with binoculars.  One million points for me for general astronomical correctness; ten for Tyson for correctly differentiating between a star and a planet.

A Dirty Sanchez is either funny or gross, depending on the degree of seriousness with which it's suggested.

Brian Jones founded the Rolling Stones and is now dead.  I still don't know how or why John Darnielle thinks he'd be like Brian Wilson. Maybe sort of old and sad, and trying to capitalize on their past success?

Dinu Lipatti was a Romanian pianist.  I don't know why someone would need his bones.

Gas in Baker is an even $5.

Sand accumulates not because of static cling or anything like that, but primarily because of a process called saltation.

The lake that covered a big chunk of the intermountain west was Lake Lahontan.  A summary of Nevada's brief history as a seafloor is here.

As for Mercury, that's going to take some digging, and I haven't downloaded Google Earth on this computer yet.  If anything interesting turns up, I'll post it.

Arguments and Discussions that Require Internet Assistance, but Arose While Travelling Without Immediate Computer Access

What is the deal with the town of Mercury?  The sign says there are no services, and roads leading into town appear to be gated.  Also: check Google Earth for satellite photos of the Nevada Test Site.

What are the social habits of yellow-bellied marmots?  Are they social, like prairie dogs, or more territorial?  (Ten points for me if they're social.)

Was that, in fact, Saturn we saw the other night?  Can someone please find a way to explain to Tyson that Jupiter and Saturn are NOT visible every night, all the time? (Minus one million points for me if I'm wrong on that one, because I'm not.)

What are the physical properties related to the movement of sand dunes?  How come all the sand in the Great Basin desert is all in one place?  What keeps the sand together as it moves?  (I say the size of the particles and their composition--lots of silica--does a static-cling maneuver and holds everything in place.

What parts of Nevada were, at one time, under water?  When?  How many times?  Salty or fresh water?  What about the lake that covered central Nevada all the way to Idaho and into Washington, and now survives as the Great Salt Lake in Utah?

What is a Dirty Sanchez?

What happened to Picaridin, a DEET alternative in bug repellent that keeps bugs off but DOESN'T melt plastic?

Who is Brian Jones, and why would he be like Brian Wilson?

Who is Dinu Lipatti?

If gas in Mammoth Lakes is $4.99 a gallon, what's it going for in Baker right now?

That's What I Just Said!

Some bigshot (I initially typed "bogshit"--twice!--how's that for a Freudian slip?) over at the Chicago Trib just had to add his two cents to my reminiscing about summertime and cheap(er) gas prices. 

So fucking original, dude.

It's the end of an era.

It makes me really sad that Americans' God-given right to throwing camping gear in the trunk and driving aimlessly around the country for days on end seems to be over.

Not that it's been very economical for two or so years now, but 4 dollars a gallon? Now the low-budget road-trip is a dying institution.

Tyson's been on shaving strike since school got out until he catches fish. He got as far as laying all the camping and fishing gear out in the living room, packing some of it in the motorcycle saddlebags, and, well, that was it. The official reason for the delay of tonight's scheduled departure to California's southern Sierra is the wind, which on our smallish bike in the middle of the night is certainly a legitimate concern. In a frenzied fit of cabin fever, he even proposed both of us taking the van. Consider the horrendous fuel economy (about 10MPG lately) and the fact that the a/c isn't working, and you'll see just how desperate we are to even entertain the notion of a road trip.

One of the best things about living in Vegas is the sheer variety of outdoor stuff within just a few hours--from the beach, to Baja, to the Sierras, to the Colorado Plateau, to the Grand Canyon, to great fishing and hiking and kayaking and climbing. Let's face it: Vegas is not the most interesting place to actually be if you're not a tourist, club whore, or rich. The huge appeal (besides not ever having to wear more than a jacket over a t-shirt in the winter) is in going somewhere else.

I can remember waking up one Saturday morning in the early fall having just gotten over a nasty, lingering cold. On an impulse, we threw all our crap in the Matrix and went west and north about 4 hours to the Alta Toquima wilderness. We hiked around through yellow aspens, and it was so nice to feel like I was finally over that cold. But the water was low and the fishing was not great, and it was still way too light out to set up camp and sit around until 11, so we drove about 4 more hours back east, making a big zig-zag across the lower half of the state to get to the Snake Range and Great Basin National Park, where we camped out and in the morning were practically assaulted by gangs of deer who just marched through our morning coffee and oatmeal. We hiked up to a bristlecone grove, then drove back home, stopping to look over to top of Cathedral Gorge and again for dinner at the old Caliente train depot.

All said and done, we drove about 800 miles in 36 hours, just to get out of our house. Driving the van right now, that's 80 gallons of gas, or $320. That's just not the kind of money regular people can afford to pay for no good reason.

But for people like me and many others in the West, there is a perfectly good reason to take trips like that. One of the reasons we moved out here was to explore and enjoy this relatively wild and empty part of the country. Impractical? Yes. Romantic? Definitely. Yes, I realize how whiny I sound, getting all bent out of shape about not being able to drive aimlessly all over the place. I know that my attitude is probably representative of stereotypes of American hubris and entitlement. But dammit, I'm done working for 10 weeks, and I want to go hiking in the mountains because it's 105 outside and it hurts my skin to stand in the sun for more than two minutes.

So anyway, we're about sick of dealing with the Matrix. We're waiting for a phone call from Toyota corporate tomorrow to find out if they're willing to help out with the $4000 engine replacement, but are not very hopeful. I think going about 14 months without an oil change is not going to help us out there. Our new Plan B is to trade the Matrix, and quite possibly also the van, for the smallest, cheapest, most fuel-efficient, best-warranty-having hatchback we can get (a Kia Rio5 or Spectra is looking good) and paying it off as fast as possible for approximately what we're paying now. Then, when that's paid off in about 3 years, we can get the natural-gas-powered Civic we really want. If we get things squared away in the next week, we can probably make it to the Sierras before Tyson has to be back for jury duty and I have to watch our neighbor's dogs.

Summer Vacation, Day 1

It's the first day I don't have to get up and go to work.

So what did I do?

Woke up at 6 and made a gradebook template for my program with the right calendar information, attendance codes and categories, color-coding, score categories and weights, and semester grade calculations. Then I went to the gym, then got JUST ABOUT done with formatting the 28-page syllabus (We call it an Employee Handbook!). I just need to double-check some factual things, like how many extra grade points you get for an AP course, and it's good to send out to my team. I'm sure there'll be more edits to make before we go back in August, but edits are way faster and easier than starting from scratch so the hours I've spent on it, even at 6 a.m. on my first day of vacation, were in no way time wasted.

Now it's 10:30, and I'm actually getting a little worn out. I think that's enough school work until I go in to school on Monday to bully my facilities guy into writing a very large check for furniture.

Probably the least successful vacation-trip ever!

Oh, man, I knew my luck would run out sometime. We had intended to get out of town about 10 yesterday morning so we could climb in Veyo during the early afternoon, but T didn't even get up until almost 11 [I let him sleep out of guilt; he's been sleeping badly for the last week or so (and I have been re-watching The Office on Netflix whenever I have 20 minutes to myself)].

We got into St. George in time to catch a movie (Be Kind Rewind--not bad--this site ran a "sweded films" competition with some great entries), but decided it was to early to turn in yet, even though we had called the climbing park to get permission to open the gate and come in after hours to camp and climb early in the morning. Instead, we drove up through Zion to Mt. Caramel Junction, the one-horse burg where we found ourselves nearly stuck about this time last year, and got a motel room so we could have HBO and showers in the morning.

The motel had a great little pamphlet about touristy stuff in the area (go figure, right?), and we had been meaning to check out Best Friends Animal Sanctuary for some time, so we headed down the 89 a little ways. When we arrived, a tour group had just returned, but there wasn't going to be another one for an hour and a half and T didn't really want to wait that long because the tour itself is 90 minutes of touring the canyon and visiting some of the dog and cat buildings. T had found out about a ghost town west of Zion that he wanted to bike to later and didn't think we'd have time if we spent 3 hours at the sanctuary, and I've been feeling another cat coming on for a few weeks now so it was probably a smart move on his part.

Instead, we dinked around the gift shop for a half hour, then walked down by the horse/burro area and to the pig pens. You know what? Horses kind of give me the willies. They are just too big and after reading one too many fantasy novels I am convinced one of them will kick or bite me in the face. But the pen full of shaggy burros and floppy-eared goats was wonderfully entertaining.

On the way back up to Zion, a very nice Mormon man showed us around a little cave his parents bought in 1950 and turned into a bar/dance hall. Now it's a museum with dinosaur footprints and petrified dinosaur poo (among other things, of course).

And that, unexpectedly, was the height of excitement for the day. N was very, very tired when we arrived in Zion with every intention of riding the bus to the top of the canyon and biking back down, so we settled for a short nap followed by early dinner (Utah time) or late lunch (Nevada time) in Springdale. The ghost town was supposed to be a few miles past town, and at only a 6-mile round trip, we thought we could leave N to continue his nap in the van while we biked in, took some pictures, and biked back out. The turnoff was not marked as well as we'd thought (or at all?), so we missed it and figured "oh well."

It wasn't that much farther back to St. George and the Veyo resort, but it was just after 6 local time, and T doesn't stop for the night any earlier than 11, but there wasn't enough daylight left to get on and off the rocks....so we came home. With the intention of being at Red Rocks early tomorrow, but still. We just needed something to eat up some time, and driving home to sleep in our own beds sounded pretty nice.

Which leaves the bikes still untouched on the back of the van, and the climbing gear in a bucket with last year's dirt still on it.

We should have at least gone on the animal tour.

Spring Break Check-In #1

So last week, T called and made us a reservation to paddle down the Colorado from the dam to Willow Beach. It's about an 8-mile paddle downstream, and you used to be able to just take this steep little road down below the dam and plop your boats right in, but in the aftermath of 9-11 you have to pay a licensed tour company to put you in. Anyways.

We started out at the Hacienda casino just after 7 a.m. We had to be checked in by a little government employee with a clipboard, but that was all the bureaucracy involved. Way to keep us safe, Uncle Sam!

I was in the sit-on-top boat, and my fat self just about toppled over with the first swirly patch of water we hit, so I swapped with T and we kept heading on down. Somehow he got stuck with the flimsy emergency paddle too (a last-minute Walmart purchase: a mistake he won't be making again), just about doubling the effort and concentration required for the trip. (He is just now recovered enough to get up off the couch. Interestingly enough, I was worse off in the calves and hip flexors than I expected.)

The highlight of the day was definitely the Arizona Hot Springs. After about an hour and a half on the river, we tied off on a beach and hiked about a half-mile up a gravelly wash, stripped down to swimsuits, and climbed a rickety old ladder up to a series of warm-water pools in the slot canyon. A tour group was already soaking when we arrived, but the pool was plenty big enough to share.

We got back to Willow Beach just after 3 and ate the very best post-exertion snacks ever: candy bars, Dr. Pepper, crumb donuts, and gas-station-style microwaved chimichangas. At any other time, a meal like that just tastes sleazy, but after an all-day activity there is nothing better.

We took off yesterday and today to lay on the couch, but tomorrow it's off to Utah for the second leg of our multisport vacation--rock climbing in Veyo. There will probably be a post about that this weekend.

Another Preemptive Sick Day!

The one good precedent set by the Bush administration over the last 7+ years has definitely been the doctrine of preemption. Yesterday I was feeling crummy, but not quite sick, so I put in for a sub day, figuring I could cancel it if I wound up feeling better. When I got up today, I was feeling OK, but the kind of OK you know will start to wear off after about two hours in the vertical. So I'm taking the day off to lay around the house so I don't wind up getting really sick. Take that, germs!

And guess what?

After a nap this morning and a motorcycle ride out to Boulder City, I am feeling much better. Thanks, President Bush!

Isn't it about time for some pictures?

For the long weekend, we celebrated N's birthday by going down to Phoenix for a Renaissance festival they have there. He'd never been to one; I can't remember what came up in October, but we didn't go to the one here, plus it's always between 90 and 100 degrees here, and the idea of parading around in fancy clothes in wintertime was pretty nice.

As you can see, we lucked into a nice, overcast day. It started out pretty cold, and I was really, really wishing we'd brought the giant gray robe I'd made a few years ago. These pictures are from the tournament. We went to 2 different shows because there was a pirate, and really great special effects. Think the "Black Knight" sequence from Holy Grail.

There was also a falconer with some raptors. This horned owl looks just like T's cat, Fea.

This is a lees falcon, a relative of a peregrine falcon, the fastest known animal, who can dive at speeds in excess of 270 mph.

Outside Prescott, there was a wild animal rescue where we saw javelinas.....

and this tiger with a sinus infection,

plus coatis, really fat raccoons, coyotes, the butt end of a sleeping porcupine, a black bear, another horned owl, a raven that walked over to you if you said its name, big hairy spiders (although not the Goliath birdeater advertised in the brochure), and lemurs.

On the way home, we drove through Jerome and Sedona, but because it was a holiday weekend, we skipped the "vortex tours" and tried unsuccessfully to have a nice steak dinner in Laughlin instead.

Summer is almost over!

In fact, my first class starts in just over 12 hours. Crap.

Not that I haven't been bored as hell lately, but still.....

And there's not really anything to worry about on the first day, but still.....

And I know that I'll do a good job, but still....

*****

I have a short list of things I need to be doing tonight so I don't have to do them tomorrow, but I'm not doing them. I've tried all my procrastinating techniques: cleaning the house, playing video games, reading all my blogs, and now I'm here (that should say something about the hard-core procrastination I am doing right now). Officially, my excuse is that I need some of the files that are on my jump drive, and I don't know where my keys are, and, hence, my Swiss Army Data Knife thing. Tyson may have them actually, and he's at Wal-Mart with our JVO swimmer getting swim and school supplies.

So too bad, so sad, I guess my homework will just have to wait. Seriously, none of it is for tomorrow, anyway, just stuff I should print up and get to graphics by the end of the day tomorrow. School gets out at 1:15, so I'll have more than an hour before I have to leave, and I will definitely have my keys then, and I will possibly be more motivated.

One thing I am....let's say apprehensive....about is that when I got my rosters on Friday, I had between 40 and 45 kids in each class. That is scary. And I saw some kids wandering around the halls doing whatever kids who come to school a week early do, and they are so huge. I don't know how 45 of us are going to fit in my room. Probably between 5 and 10 each period won't show up, on the first day or ever, but I only have 37 desks in my room. I'm trusting in karma to take care of me on that one; I figure I'm a decent enough human being that things will just "turn out," without me having to worry any more about it. I'm getting tables eventually anyway, and you can always cram one more kid if you have to, if nobody is too particular about their elbow room.

So anyway, I will keep everybody posted about how the first day goes. Right now, in my head, it's going alternately perfect or horrible, but I'm sure it will be somewhere in between.

Finally, I got a camera that works!

I'm actually pretty impressed with this picture: it's a tiny little 9-inch rainbow trout swimming along the shore of Long Lake, in the Little Lakes Valley.

I left for California at about 8:30, just as the sun was going down, and made it all the way to the White Mountains without stopping, where I slept by the turnoff for Schulman Grove. Check out the view of the Sierras from up here!

I got into Bishop, got a mocha from Looney Bean (which I promptly splashed onto my white sweatpants), and headed up the road a ways to Rock Creek Lake and the Little Lakes Valley.

This is the third time I've done this hike, and it is still just about the prettiest place I have ever been. I actually hiked the whole way to Chickenfoot Lake, about 3/4 mile farther than Long Lake, seen here, where I had never been before.

I got back into Bishop and returned to the Looney Bean, where I chatted with Tyson for a while before taking the kayak up to Lake Sabrina.

The weather was clear, and the lake was so pretty. The last time we were here, the dam had just been rebuilt, and the water was still very low, but now it was full and gorgeous--even prettier than South Lake. Unfortunately, my camera was acting cranky, and I was unable to take pictures that day.

I slept in the car at the pack station about a mile from the trailhead to Paiute Pass, fully intending to make the 5.5-mile trek in the morning, but totally punked out. It was just too cold to crawl out from under my blanket until about 9:30! Imagine that! Too cold to get out of bed! It was delicious.


On Monday, instead of hiking the pass, I was feeling lazy, and I couldn't really settle on anything to do. I went up to Mammoth and drove around in the mountains, thinking about reading a book by one of the lakes, but (this is mildly embarrassing) I couldn't find them. I'd remembered driving right by about 6 little lakes the last time I was out this direction, but didn't have any real luck just stumbling across them, and I didn't feel like the concentrated effort finding out how to get there would take.

Instead, I ate a fresh churro from Schat's and found a coffee shop with wi-fi and chatted with Tyson for a while. Then I drove aimlessly back to Bishop, got myself a motel room, and lived like a hedonist for the rest of the afternoon, taking a hot shower and watching Lifetime in the air-conditioning. For dinner, I ate at this place called the Petite Pantry where I had the best chile verde and apricot pie ever.

On Tuesday, I went back up to Sabrina, where I actually got some pics; there was a front coming in and it was overcast. There are some really nice beaches around the lake, and if it had been warmer out, the water would have been perfect for swimming.


Finally, I started back towards home, but this time I drove the 20 extra miles down to the Schulman Grove and the Bristlecone Forest. There, a 4.3-mile hike takes you down the ridge and into a valley where there are trees that were old when the Roman Empire was young. Methusulah, the oldest, is more than 4300 years old. Pieces of dead wood more than 8600 years old have been found there. (Interestingly enough, it is this 8600-year tree record that helped scientists make necessary adjustments to carbon-14 dating, allowing them to be much more accurate. In case you were wondering.)


One day, I will get a giant tattoo of a bristlecone pine covering my whole back, that's how much I like these trees. So you can get an inkling of my intense disappointment, anger, and frustration when my camera stubbornly decided it wasn't taking pictures anymore. I came very close to chucking the damn thing off the side of the mountain until I remembered I'd just have to go and get it if I wanted to take it back.

After the hike, I drove home. It was unexciting, except for a quick stop in Beatty for peanut-butter-cookie ice cream and dried mango slices.

"Tyson Luck" Stays at Home and Wreaks Havoc There, Too

God dammit.

Okay, it's not like I didn't have internet access regularly during my trip. Ask Tyson; we've been IMing every day. But that new camera I bought is getting more contrary by the day. On Sunday, it decided it was going to keep all the pictures for itself, and not share any with my computer. Monday, it decided to consume batteries at the rate of 4 per day, and still have the nerve to display "battery low", and with an aggravatingly passive-aggressive-sounding beep, shut down. Then yesterday, in the very presence of the oldest f*cking trees on the planet, it decided it didn't take pictures anymore, either, and started shutting down every time I pressed the button to get a shot.

Most everything else went fine, and as soon as I liberate my pics from the memory card, I will tell you all about them. But we're talking about Tyson Luck today.

So I got home last night just after dark, only to find an orange door tag from the water company. I'll get to the details of that later, but there were a few other unpleasant discoveries when I arrived home: my dog had had a bout of explosive diarrhea inside the house, and whatever was in the trash can stank to high heaven (turns out it was bunny litter and raw chicken--eew!)

I thought briefly about going to the gym to take a shower, but it frankly seemed like too much effort, and the one time I tried taking a shower there, it was shockingly cold. They have those faucets that you have to turn from off to cold to hot, and there's nowhere to step out of the way of the water while it warms up. And also, I didn't feel like being naked and dirty in a public place, and then having to go home and sleep on dirty sheets that I couldn't wash until the water got turned back on anyway.

I went to bed, and about 3:00, the Diarrhea Dog started whining, just a little, about every 8 minutes, until I let him out. Fifteen minutes later, one of the cats cornered a mouse in the bathroom and was yowling at me to come check him out. As I walked into the hallway, he chased the mouse right over my bare foot and into the bedroom. We tried to catch him, but the cat couldn't understand that he and I needed to be on opposite sides of the crack in the door, so the mouse got away.

At 4:30, about the time I was good and asleep again, the dogs wanted in. Insistently. As though there was some dog-monster chasing them. When I went to let them in, though, they were all wagging tails and dumb "let's go play" smiles.

At 4:50, I had to chase my gray cat all over the house because she wouldn't stop clawing at the side of my bed. Shortly after that, the Mouse-Chaser decided to groom my hair and claw all over my sunburned shoulders. (Not very sunburned! Don't worry!)

I finally, finally was getting some good sleep when the alarm went off at 7:25, reminding me to call the water people first thing, so hopefully they would turn my water back on first. The door tag last night said a $75 check had been returned, but when I checked my bank balance online, there hadn't been a time where I had less than than in my account, so I had no idea why the check had bounced. When I called this morning, all the information they could give me was that it was returned because the account it was written on had been closed.

Shit, I thought, and ran through a mental inventory of all the other checks that might possibly be out there somewhere, chiefly the rent check that our landlord (and Tyson's boss!) keeps in his wallet for weeks, then cashes on a whim.

I tried calling the bank, but kept getting a busy signal. Then I realized that if it was anybody's fault, it was the bank's, and I'd better just pay and have my water turned back on. There was a $25 returned check fee, plus a $20 service reinstatement fee, and the woman on the phone was all like, "if you can't afford it today, I can put the twenty-dollar charge on your next bill" in this sweet, patronizing voice. Ugh, I wanted to scream, but instead was almost in tears from the overpowering sense of victimization I felt, and managed to hold my voice steady while I read off my account number to her.

I finally got through to someone at the bank, but, as she could only access my account history for the last 10 transactions, she was no help at all. She took down the information, and my phone number, and said someone would call me back. What I really hope is that, when they call, I can muster up the spine to tell them they need to pay the $45 it cost me to have my water turned back on, rather than my normal pattern of just saying "thank you," as though, by bouncing my check they had done me a favor.

Anyway, all this is compounded by the fact that I am sticky with dirt and leftover sweat, I have no clean clothes or sheets, a poop-smeared dog kennel, but no water in the hose to clean it with, which means scrubbing later today, no more bonus toilet flushes, even though my stomach is starting to gurgle, and a houseful of pets who are snoozing peacefully, saving their energy for another bout of restlessness early tomorrow morning.

I wonder how long it would take to pack up my car again and get out of town?

I will remember to put gas in my car this time, I swear

Woo hoo! Tomorrow is the day!

When I got into my car yesterday at about 5 in the evening, my car said it was 122 degrees. I thought it was exaggerating until I drove by the bank down the street. Nope. It was 122 degrees outside. (Even though the "official" temperature topped out at 116.)

Which makes me indescribably happy to be leaving tomorrow for the southern Sierra. I'm putting the kayak on top, throwing a mattress in the back, and getting the heck out of Dodge. My plans are to do three or four hikes, ranging in length from 4 to 11 miles, and checking out the world's oldest tree, some glacial lakes, and the view from the top of the Sierra range. I will also be visiting the home of the Best Mochas Ever (Looney Bean in Bishop), and going on the prowl for marmots and pikas before warming trends in the West reduce and gradually eliminate their habitats. (Not just because they are cute and fun to watch.)

Anyways, I do promise to be careful, and in a way I am, by letting all of you know where I will be before I go. If I don't check in here before, say, the fifteenth, tell the search-and-rescue people I'm somewhere on the east slope of the Sierras. That should help some.

Another Kayaking (mis)Adventure!

I know this will shock and startle many of you, but it comes to my attention lately that, for someone who often obsesses about the details of things in her head, I do not always make the most well-informed decisions.

Example: Yesterday I wanted to go kayaking at Nelson's Landing, about 40 miles south of here, sort of on the way to Laughlin. It felt too hot to even think about leaving the house until about 7 p.m., when I finally grabbed my keys and ran out the door. I made it as far as the dry lake bed on the 95 before I realized the sun had already slipped behind the mountains and there was no way I was going to make it to the water in time.

Today I learned my lesson on that point, at least. I left a little after 5, and everything was looking OK. Until I hit the turnoff to Nelson and realized my fuel light had come on.

Whatever, I thought, as I forged on ahead. I should be fine. I can almost drive across town and back with the fuel light on (one of the benefits of a nearly-30-mile commute is feeling comfortable with the needle below the bottom of the gauge!), and I was feeling heady and a little reckless and didn't want to turn back a second day in a row.

I drove all the way down, and the beach was the most crowded I have ever seen it. I managed to find a parking spot more than a quarter-mile from the water, but I just couldn't get up the desire to take the boat down and hump it all the way through all the gravel, just to paddle around in the middle of some family's barbecue. Seriously, people practically stand in ankle-deep water and grill burgers and shit there. It's actually not very pleasant or relaxing at all.

Besides, I couldn't quite relax because, in the back of my mind, I knew I didn't have enough gas to get back home.

I made it to the town of Nelson, where approximately 7 people live, and there was not a gas station or anything, naturally, so I pulled up next to a guy in a truck and did my best cute-pink-haired-girl-with-car-problem routine. The guy, whose name was Roland, his dad, Ron, and his uncle, Mark, dug through a shed, a garage, and the entire property, and came up with about a quart of diesel. They sent me down to the mine down the road to see if they had any gas, but no one was there.

When I got back up to town, they tried to siphon gas from a truck, had no luck, then tried siphoning it off the carburetor. I had no idea you could even do that, and apparently it didn't really work all that well, because about the time they got enough to slosh around in the bottom of the gas can, the truck's battery went dead.

At about this time, a man, a woman, and their son pulled up with a busted tire, also looking for help. Not having a spare, there was really nothing to do for them but call a tow company to come get them.

Finally, Mark called someone he knew down the street and found about 3 gallons of gas to put in my car. We sat around on the porch for about 5 more minutes, watching the little cottontails under the manzanitas, sharing breakdown stories, then I left. All the cash I had on me was a single, lonely dollar bill, so they made me promise to "pay it forward" and maybe come out for a visit next time.

Then I went to my friend Bill's house and blew up dry ice bombs to celebrate.

So, anybody who needs a favor, it's my turn.

I can do it in the park...

and I can do it in the dark!

By "it," of course, I mean kayaking. By myself.

So my plan was to get to Willow Beach, about 15 miles south of Hoover Dam at about sunset (which, you'll notice from the above photo, that I missed by a good half hour), paddle upriver until the sun set and the moon came out, then turn around and paddle back by moonlight.

I put the boat in, and paddled lazily across the water, more like a narrow lake than an actual river, watching the hundreds of bats swirl and dive above the water. A few bright stars and airplanes started to become visible over the cliffs. It seemed like an evening made for being on the water.

What I failed to take into account is the fact that, particularly on a river in a canyon, there is a pretty severe gap between the sun dropping over the horizon and the moon rising high enough to be of any help. It's also very dark during that time; too dark, in fact, to see the shore well enough to park and wait.

I kept paddling upriver, and upriver, and upriver, looking over my shoulder with increasing agitation for the bright yellow rim of the moon, and all the while it just got darker and darker and spookier and spookier outside. Remembering the motor boats that tear up and down the river, I tried to stick to the shoreline, but it eventually got so dark that submerged trees seemed to jump out in front of me, and, given the way the sound of the locusts, ducks, and whatever else was out there carried over the glassy water, I figured I'd have ample warning of an approaching engine to get out of the way.

I still couldn't rest easy. I tried to calm myself by imagining worst-case scenarios. This sounds like it would work, because I'm a strong swimmer, my boat is sturdy plastic, and it doesn't seem likely to get lost or attacked out in the middle of a river, so the list of reasonable worst-casers doesn't seem like it would be that bad.

But oh! my imagination works better than just about any other part of me. I imagined hungry man-eating water tigers, floating dead bodies that were, in reality, zombies, and a parallel universe in which the moon was never coming out. I imagined Deliverance-style wildmen lying in wait along the banks (in reality, much to steep for anything but bighorns, and only bighorn-navigable in places). I started counting strokes, telling myself that I could turn around and check for the moon after 100 strokes, then 100 more. After 300, I got too creeped-out to count any further.

After about an hour in which the moon stubbornly failed to appear, I turned back downriver. The darkness in this direction felt a little less ominous, probably because it was, at least, familiar. Going with the current this time, I made it back to the marina fairly quickly. My pants and shirt, which I had stuffed behind my seat, were soaked, but my camera was miraculously dry. I balanced my boat on the roof rack, and got it tied down in just a few minutes, using the light from the restroom windows to see. When I got back into the car, I was surprised to see that it was after 10, and I had been on the river for almost two hours.

Now I am tired, and smell like a lake. I need a shower, a bowl of cereal, and to crawl into bed with a cranky gray cat.

In which I enumerate my awesomeness!

Today was a good, if outwardly inauspicious, day.

• I ate sushi.

It was of especial delight because a) I didn't have to share my Sue roll (tuna, shiitake, cucumber, and avocado--yum!), and b) there is probably no sushi in Versoix, so Tyson can be jealous of my doings, for once.

• I talked to strangers in a public place.

People who know me (and my antisocial proclivities) will know that, for me, this is cool. I talked to the sushi guy (he says "Hi," Tyson), and to the guy at the bar next to me. This was, in fact, way better than Tuesday night, in which I got all dressed up to meet a friend at an actual bar, and did not talk to people or have a good time.

• I got a new book, and read it.

It's called Into the Wild, and there's actually a movie coming out about it.

• I visited my old Starbucks.

Where everything is different. It's been remodeled, it's staffed by tattoo-showing people (that was not OK when I worked there; I always had to wear a watch), and they closed at 10. (I spent four years of Friday and Saturday nights there making frappuccinos until midnight.)

• I read Dinosaur Comics.

I am working my way through the archives. Today I got to May 2005.

• I replaced broken parts on my roof rack.

Soundly, and all by myself. That is the second car-thing I have fixed on my own this past week, and it was cool.

Tomorrow I am practicing my kayak tie-down skills by taking a sunset/moonlight paddle at Willow Beach. I will probably also do dishes, and vacuum.

One day down, 29 more to go...

At about this time yesterday, it seemed fairly certain that Tyson would not be leaving for Switzerland at 8 this morning. The airline said they could reschedule for Saturday evening, and we were pretty sure that was our Plan B. So when we finally got a call at 5:07 a.m. from the post office telling us his passport had arrived, we had about an hour to get out of the house, pick up the long-awaited package, and get him to the airport.

It was actually good, in some ways. It all happened so fast that neither of us had time to get all sad and sappy. It signaled an end to a lot of worry, stress, and frustration. Yes, having another few days together sounded nice, but they would have been filled with stress and resentment and not really all that pleasant.

On the other hand, it meant that he spent our last day together for a month on the phone, pissed off at government bureaucracy, while I played on the computer, trying to stay out of the way.

It's getting to be close to bedtime now, and, while it's fun to be independent when the sun is out, this is the time of day the house feels the emptiest. Miss you, baby.

"I'm totally going to the gym every day for the next 5 weeks," Day 2

So it's Day 2 of my nefarious plan to rid my body of unwanted mass so that I can buy new, smaller clothing, and, let me tell you, it sort of sucks.

I've done all this work, like trying to do step aerobics moves (requiring me to count and differentiate right and left--at the same time!) while also simultaneously using hand weights, then attending an uninspiring pilates class that left my midsection trembling like a Jell-o mold, then furiously riding a bicycle that steadfastly refused to go anywhere...

...and I still can't wear most of my pants. So now I'm just tired, achy, chafed, sweaty, and fat, which is two adjectives more than I was at this time on Sunday (tired and sweaty are par for the course around here on summer afternoons), with no benefits. Where is the instant sexiness and energy promised to me by the diet-and-exercise people? Where is the tighter, less jiggly ass? The firm, pert bosom? The sculpted abs? Not to mention the overwhelming feelings of joy and empowerment. I paid my dues. Now how 'bout a little something in return?

What they don't tell you is that sometimes all you get is tired, achy, chafed, sweaty. And, if you're watching what you eat, bitchy from lack of cookies. Try putting that on a poster and using it to sell gym memberships.

On the brighter side, I think I rode harder than the very pregnant woman next to me in cycle class this morning. Go, me!