I'm at that place where my head is full of blog topics, but I can't find it in me to write any of them. I wanted to write about my road trip with Jessica, which was a TON of fun (there's something very satisfying about camping . . . facing all these tiny challenges like gathering wood and lighting a fire and cooking dinner)--I decided I want to live in the Southwest for sure eventually. (I'm already kind of Southwest, but I'd like to be south-er and west-er.)

And then I wanted to write about my first day on my new job (proofreading the local newspaper). It's pretty cool, because it's basically like being a Classics major, except I get paid to pay attention to tiny details and talk about grammar. I think I may be a little over-educated for the job, though. I got teased for writing "STET", and when I started talking about serial commas, people just kind of stared. On the other hand, all the people who work there are really nice, so I think I'll enjoy the job. If nothing else, it's nice to have a job that actually uses my skills.

And then I wrote most of an entry about the memorial service for the man who was my youth pastor, but couldn't bring myself to finish it. I don't really want to talk about it here, either, because it feels strange and sort of wrong to lump that in with the other little inanities that I've been thinking about. Suffice it to say that it was very sad (he was only 37, with three young kids), but also very inspiring.

And now, if I wanted to, I could write about spending the past few days at the Palisade Bluegrass Festival, where I was delighted to discover that I wasn't the only fiber-lover who skipped the Estes Park Wool Market this weekend--there were two alpaca farms in a booth, and I scored 7 oz. of beautiful brown alpaca, which I've been spinning rabidly all day. I'm super excited about it.

(By the way, this entire post is an example of praeteritio. Cool, huh? And they tried to convince me I wouldn't use my Classics major!)

My friend Jessica from school is visiting me. It's really cool to have somebody from Sweet Briar out here in Colorado! Tomorrow, we embark on a four day camping trip in the southwest--mostly in southern Utah, with a little visit to the Grand Canyon. It should be a lot of fun! We are all packed, and should have lots of good food to eat along the way. I'm really excited about the whole thing.

Today, in addition to preparing for our trip, we sort of hung out in town. (I'm trying to give Jessica the Small Town, CO experience, which involved hanging out in my brother's coffee shop and visiting the Egyptian Theater. We saw UP. It was awesome. The dog was the best part.) I interviewed for that proofreading position with the local newspaper. I start Tuesday! And, well, only work Tuesdays, since it's only a one day a week job. But, it's good experience, and any income is positive.

We will be returning from our camping trip on Sunday, but I will not resume my normal internet presence until Tuesday, which is when Jessica has to leave. Until then, I'm going to go have FUN, and I hope you all do the same.

So, the last 48 hours were pretty much hell. I slept for about four hours on Wednesday morning, and between my Greek and Latin finals and packing, I didn't manage to get a start on my paper for Cathy. I stayed awake all night, and left for Charlottesville at 4am (with Aud, who should probably be sainted someday, and who owns my first-born child now). I had three flights. Fortunately, everything went very smoothly--my long flight ran a little late due to a heavy tailwind, but I made it to my last flight just as they were boarding.

I slept fitfully on all three flights--I was so exhausted that I couldn't even keep my eyes open while I was on the plane. That was the only sleep I got for almost two days. On my layovers, I did a little extra reading for that 15-page paper that was due . . .

When I got back, I wrote and wrote and wrote. I knocked out 15 pages in about ten hours, after going two days without sleep. It was HELL. I don't know if the paper was okay . . . I felt like it was probably too heavy on summary/quotations, and too light on actual analysis . . . actually, it felt like I just told a story and tried to take some analysis in on the ends. And I e-mailed it to my professor at 2:30 am here, which was 4:30 am there, which I'm pretty sure is much later than she would have liked . . . so, I don't feel great about it. Which makes me sad, because it was a VERY interesting subject. But at least it's done.

I slept for ten hours last night. I couldn't sleep any longer, because the Colorado sun is freaking amazing and was making my room too hot to sleep.

Now I have to write a much easier 6-page paper for my Good and Evil class. Then I'll be done with finals.

I'm back in Colorado. I hadn't realized I missed it, this time, but now I'm back, I love it so much it aches. It hit me on the train, as usual. I saw sagebrush out the window, and I was so excited. It's been forever since I've seen sagebrush. So, right now, I'm just kind of soaking up the landscape--all the ridges and cottonwood trees and mountains in the background, and everything in shades of tan and grey. (Forget green. Tan and grey are comfort colors for me.)

The train ride was pretty much as usual, although it was shortened by about half a day since I left from Charleston instead of Virginia. I'm not positive it was an improvement, though. To get home by train, I have to take a train to Chicago, and then from Chicago catch another train to Colorado. There are two trains I can catch to Chicaco--the Capitol Limited, and the Cardinal. I prefer the Capitol Limited, because it's bigger and cleaner (although the staff tends to be really anal). But, to leave from Charleston, I had to take the Cardinal.

I dunno what it is, but I just have the worst luck with that train. It's small, and dirty, and somehow it seems to attract a lower class crowd than usual for the train. The first time I rode it, a creepy old hobo-type man sat down next to me, and wouldn't move even when the conductor told him that there were whole empty seats ahead. The guy smelled. The second time, I made a point of sitting next to another college-age girl, but then a lady sat across the aisle from me and I had to listen to her talk about her various illnesses and her mother's dementia all the way through West Virginia and Kentucky.

( TMI behind the cut. You have been warned. )

The good news is that when I get to Chicago, I get on the California Zephyr, which is my favorite train of all. It's clean, and very family-oriented (case in point: we were warned to wear shoes at all times while moving about the train . . . and not to swear when other people could hear us). The crew tends to be very amiable, and it's more of a tourist train than a too-poor-to-fly train, so the passengers tend to be less creepy. I meet nice people on the California Zephyr. This time, there was young mother across the aisle, with her five year old daughter. (Kid had the coolest name, too--Isis.) Her husband was in the army. Towards the end of the trip, I let the little girl watch a My Little Pony movie on my computer. She enjoyed that, and she was very polite--she thanked me several times. It was sweet, and it made a nice end to the trip.

Now I'm back at home, and on dialup (what I hate the most is not being able to watch videos online). I'll be working for my mom on and off, and volunteering, and keeping pretty busy. But if anybody wants to RP at all any time soon, give me a shout! I've got a hankering.

Aud and I just got back from D.C., where she was getting a visa. It was an adventure! I wrote about part of it over on my blog. (Hint hint.) Apart from what's detailed there, highlights of the trip included:

--No air conditioning in Aud's car on the 3+ hour drive there, OR the 4+ hour drive back.

--Aud having WAY more paperwork than she actually needed to get her visa. (Including a $16 postage paid express mail envelope which is pretty much useless now.)

--Me having to sit on the sidewalk outside the French Embassy reading Aristophanes because they wouldn't let me in, since I don't want a visa.

--Getting hopelessly lost in the bus system and getting off at Union Station because at least there would be lunch there.

--Aud and I accepting a flier from a lady on the bus, branding ourselves as Not From Around Here, Huh? (Well, that and the fact that we were worriedly discussing which stop we should be looking for and whether we were even on the right bus, and do we need to pull the cord if it's the end of the line?)

(The flier was for career assessment, and had phrases like, "Learn More On How You Can Get Into These Exciting Fields". Like office administration.)

--The Museum of Natural History, where we discovered that dinosaur bones lose some of their ability to inspire awe when surrounded by a couple hundred screaming children.

Basically, we both lost every remaining scrap of dignity we had. But, Aud got her visa. And dinosaur bones are still cool, even with the screaming children. Also, Aud's uncle makes a mean roast chicken. zomg. Amazing.

So, that was an adventure. My train out of Colorado was delayed by three hours when I got on, and by five or seven hours at various points during the trip. I missed my connection in Chicago, so Amtrak had to put me up in a hotel, and I missed my first day of classes. At least I'm finally here.

Now I have class in the morning, and I haven't unpacked at all, and my computer's acting up--I do NOT need this right now. It's being really slow, and it sounds like it's working really hard even when I'm barely doing anything. I'm afraid something got knocked around during the journey. And I had to force a shutdown, and even though I shut Firefox properly first, Firefox ate my bookmarks and all the tabs I had open! Dangit! I had a backup of my bookmarks, but it was a few weeks old, so I lost all the cool knitting patterns I found over break. Seriously not cool, and that bookmark eating this is a very bad habit of Firefox's. And, of course, I'm also worried about Cicero. I can't afford computer problems right now!

So, I was going to catch up on my friends list tonight, but I'm too tired and stressed out and exasperated. So, maybe tomorrow. Hopefully Cicero feels better then.

So, tomorrow morning, I'm hopping on a train to head back to school. At least, that's the plan. It looks like the same train was six and a half hours late yesterday, so . . . I'll keep my fingers crossed, but mostly just hope. It won't kill me to get back to school a day late, but it would be really yucky. So, if you're the praying type, any prayers you could shoot my way couldn't hurt. And if you're not, cross your fingers too, eh?

Now I've got to try to organize my luggage so that it all fits. I hate packing, have I mentioned that?

I'm having one of those days where I wanna LJ about at least half a dozen different things, but don't have the time, energy, or attention span. So, I'm a little afraid of even starting a post, because I suspect it will turn into one of those laundry lists of half-developed ideas, and who wants to read that? But, I need to get a few of them out, so I'm going to, despite my apprehension.

First of all, thanks to everyone who commented about Aidan. I really appreciate your support . . . it means a lot to me. We're doing better now . . . my mom's still sad, but more resigned now. We'll be recovered soon, though we'll probably miss her for a long time.

I got my mom to trim my hair today. It was getting thin towards the bottom, and she ended up taking off six or seven inches. Now my hair is shorter than it has been in several years. I really don't mind, though. The only reason I have long hair is for the sake of convenience--to have short hair, I would need to style it daily for it to look presentable, and I don't want to. When my hair is long, it requires only shampoo and conditioner (though copious amounts of both), and once it's dry, to be combed out. Wash and wear. It'll be the same at this length, and it'll require less shampoo and conditioner, and it'll be easier to comb. So, I'm content. It'll grow back, and in a year or two I'll trim it off again. That's just how it goes.

My part of Colorado is due to get hit with some pretty major snowstorms any time now. So far, the blizzards have been mostly confined to the Eastern Slope, but this one's supposed to hit us, and it's supposed to linger. I'm getting on the train to go back to school on Sunday, so I really hope that the delays aren't too bad. I guess I should just be grateful I'm not flying.

Speaking of heading back to school, I'm feeling a little overwhelmed. I have to sort through all the junk that's accumulated in the month I've been here, and pack what needs to go back, and put away everything that doesn't. Also--and this is going to sound silly--I'm in the middle of reading Orson Scott Card's Homecoming series, and I'd really like to finish it before I leave. Since they're library books, I can't take any with me, and I just hate dropping a series midway, even though it's a reread, not the first time. Right now, I'm about halfway done with the second to last book, so there's still a chance I'll finish the series, but I have to cram it around packing and cleaning. Not to mention the fact that I really want to spend time with both my parents before I leave on Sunday.

Reading the Homecoming series has been educational for me. It's not one of Card's most celebrated, but it's held up very well to this second reading. The first time I read it, I was unaware that it was based on the Book of Mormon, and I enjoyed it just fine. This time, I do know that, but since I know nothing about it, the only new insight I have is, "You know, this does read kind of like a religious text. And, by golly, it makes more sense now!" I'm also trying to read as a writer this time, to pick out how Card uses the tools of writing to accomplish his purpose. Whatever you think of his writing, or his religious or political views, it's hard to argue that Orson Scott Card isn't a significant author in his genre, and since that happens to be my genre as well, I'm sure there's a lot I can learn from him.

And, speaking of writing, I may post later about my progress on Story Year. I don't really want to lump it into a junk drawer post, since I have some thoughts I'd like to work out.

Just got off the train in good old Colorado. I'd rather wait to post for when I'm not so tired, but I have a feeling if I do that, I'll never actually make the post. So, in no particular order, some things from the trip:

On the train to Chicago, I was munching on some Cheez-it crackers in a bowl (this was my main form of sustinence for the past three days), and a lady walked by and said, "Awww, little snack-ums! That's the way to travel!" When she walked away, I made eye contact with another lady who was sitting across from me, and raised my eyebrows: wtf? The lady across from me raised her eyebrows in agreement: wtf.

I finished reading Anansi Boys. I read the first two thirds over Thanksgiving Break, but then finals hit. Up until the end, it was a really good book. After the end, it was a great book. Neil Gaiman is so amazing.

Which leads me to . . . after I finished Anansi Boys, I was a little bummed, because I had realized that I actually had less reading material than I had thought for my three day trip. And I was all, "Woe is me!" Then I happened upon one of those shops you get in airports and train stations, the kind that sell packs of gum and magazines and overpriced souvenirs. Usually the books in those places hold no interest for me--it's basically all romance novels and war novels. Oh, and Sudoku. I swear, I was in an airport this summer that had no less than six different Sudoku books, and not a single science fiction novel. So, anyway, I definitely didn't expect to find anything of interest, but it was worth a shot.

They had Good Omens.

Not just, "Oh, hey, an author I like!" No, this was, "Omigosh, I'vewantedtoreadthisbookforages and NOW IT'S MINE!" So, I read that all the way from D.C. to Colorado. It was also very good. I'm redoubling my determination to write over break. (Although, reading the masters like Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett can be a little discouraging . . . except, it's so good that you mostly manage to forget that you will never compare.)

But you're probably interested in things that happened that don't involve me buying geeky books. Well, when I got on my last train in Chicago, the lady sitting in front of me turned around and said, "You're awfully young to be traveling all by yourself!" I told her, actually, I was 20. She said, "Honey, you don't look it." I'm going to hope that this was because I had been wearing my hair pulled back in a French braid. But, seriously--airlines stop treating you as an unaccompanied minor when you're 15 . . . so how young did she think I was?

Taking that Biology class has altered the way I look at the world. In Virginia, there are lots of deciduous trees shedding lots and lots of nice yummy dead leaves, which decompose into nice soil, from which spring yet more deciduous trees. It's self-perpetuating. Here in the Rocky Mountains, though . . . well, okay, there's a reason they're called the Rocky Mountains. We went through a canyon that had walls of solid granite going hundreds of feet into the air. But here's the thing--there were still trees growing there. One way or another, these trees--I think they were either spruces or firs, but my bet's on spruces--managed to scrape together enough soil on this solid rock cliff face to grow. I've always been aware of how much plants out here have to worry about water, but it hadn't occurred to me until just then that just finding dirt to grow in was also so hard. Plants are pretty amazing.

There were lots and lots of small children on my car from Chicago to Colorado. Believe it or not, I enjoyed this. Kids on a train really bring things into focus for me--they're so into everything. There was a family with four kids under the age of six. Apparently their minivan had gotten hit by a careless driver in Chicago and the insurance companies were putting them through some ridiculous rigamarole. The thing is, though, they seemed like they really had things under control. I mean, if I was traveling cross country with four kids--one of them a toddler--after having my vehicle destroyed and not knowing if I'd be getting the money I needed, I'd be pretty scattered. They get lots of bonus points, even though I'll never see them again.

I need sleep. Remind me to post my list of Goals for Break sometime.