News

         I'm in an unbelievably good mood right now.  It smells like summer and there are frogs singing, and there's that cool evening breeze.  I want to eat those red-white-and-blue rocket popsicles.  I want to have a picnic.  I feel like riding a bike to a park.  I feel like lying in green grass.  I want to wash a car.
         I was just hanging out with Becky and Molly.  We went to one of those drive-in diners and ate terrible greasy food and ate fizzy, fruity drinks that stained our tongues.  Perfect.

         I was just thinking about the Boundary Waters the other day - I'd love to go back sometime.  I want to find that boulder at Twin Lake again and leap off into the water ten feet below.  I want to drink straight from lake without worrying.  I want to sweat and curse and feel like I'm about to die on a long portage.  Want to paddle for hours until I don't have to think about it and my eyes are dazzled with the sun off the water.  I'm feeling adventurous.
         Which is why, on a slightly related and much more relevant note, I'm moving to Denver.  In a few weeks, actually.  I don't have a family, I'm hunting for jobs - I'm as unencumbered as I'm ever going to be.  So ... why not.  I'm packing up all my earthly possessions into a minivan and taking off west.  I don't have a job lined up yet, but I think that once I'm there, I'll find something.  It always seems to be easier to find work when you're not trying it from a distance.  I'll be staying with a cousin until I find a place of my own.
         I've been feeling the westward call for a while now, ever since I studied the history of the American frontier movement my senior year.  Barring, you know, the mass genocide and land wars and vicious politics, there's something romantic about that intrepid, daring spirit.
         I'm ready to try on arid landscapes, to redefine my concepts of beauty.  I can trade grass and greenery for mountains and horizons, I think (though I'll need forests every once in a while).  Hopefully I'll be able to take regular weekend trips into the Rocky Mountain National Park.  I'm feeling the need to grow some vitamin D and to fill my lungs with thin but bright mountain air, instead of sticky Chicago vapors.  Denver gets an average of three-hundred days of sunshine a year.
         I think I can live with that.
         (You should all visit me, too.)