Sunday, October 31, 2004

Yesterday was a day of fishing, driving and a Haloween party.

Today is a day of unseasonably cold temperatures, stupid time changes, and headaches.

All in all a very nice weekend, though marked by a rather large disparity between the two days, one inspiring and insightful, the other glum and marred by water-torture like conflicts.







Here's a teaser for what's to come, as energy permits.

I'll write yesterday longhand and write further tomorrow, I lack initiative and the creative spark to reach through today's fog of war to yesterday's beauty, but I shall.

Tomorrow.

Friday, October 29, 2004

We're not in Yellowstone for UEA weekend this year, as is the long-standing tradition. This is partially because I've not gotten the Suburban fixed to our satisfaction yet after six months, partially (well, mostly, for many reasons and consequenses) because of financial difficulty, and to tell the truth, because even if we'd gone, it'd be the most freezing trip up there imaginable because of these crazy cold temps. So it's actually good we didn't try this year, the kids, and therefore we all, would have been pretty miserable.

The days are getting really short and the cold has arrived really suddenly this year. These combine to create a stunning amount of apathy and angst in my little mind, and I don't predict any breakthough treatments or environmental changes to alter the season's prognosis of hard times for my moods.

Beware, dear reader, we're probably in for a bumpy ride this winter. My full-spectrum lights and positive outlook are already fading into the same vortex that the sun's light and warmth seems to be disappearing into.

It'll be just fine though. It always is.

Saturday, October 23, 2004

With a twinge of regret for the past week unblogged and the memories a wispy tangle, I write, though without much sense of purpose or aim.

Mondaytuesdaywednesdaythurdayfriday, that's how it seems to go. The combination of low energy and a rather constant low-grade anxiety attack seems to aggravate my seasonal tendency to begin a psychological descent at this time of the solar year. Thus, I haven't written in the midst of this busy week of grading and winter preparation.

We've been to the local pumpkin-patch this week, I've been on a daddy-daughter date put on by our LDS ward, I've been in the foothills and the mountaintops looking for grouse and snowshoes, had the principal dujour while the real thing was out at meetings for a couple of days this week, we've cleaned the house and re-created chaos numerous times, and I've bought a pickup for a thousand bones that I'm having serious second thoughts about. It sounds busy, but I only remember a color-washed whiteout blur.

There are those who don't have this sort of self-wrought challenge, those who are well and fine with the weekly march of events that parade in and out of their days and ways, but perhaps I'm wiring it wrong.

I've been noticing again that my web log isn't much of a journal, more of the proverbial mask that I put on to entertain my dear friends and family (oh, how I dislike that word, mask.) Not that this account isn't a true one, but that it only recounts the pleasant and the paradeable, leaving a terrible body count of my less-than-photogenic thoughts, perceptions and everyday struggles left off the pretty page and scattered in the back of my crowded heart.

What can I do about that? I can keep a journal aside from this, one more inclusive to keep track of the necessary spaces and holes in this blog, I could beg from the cosmos a greater helping of creativity so that I can return to my true love, poetry, and therein encode both my too-basal and elevated experiences, or I could just write the whole thing down here in the blog.

Neh. I don't think the latter will be the solution.

It's an interesting idea, though far too public in scope for my liking. Besides, I want you to be happy when you come here, don't I? If I rant and mourn all the time, operant conditioning dictates that you'll grow rather weary of the reward and not come back to this humble website nearly as often as you do.

So I'll try to balance this out, a wee microcosm of my own oddball psyche, and show you a more honest portrait of my life and times, especially as the winter comes on and SADD or whateverthehell it is increases its tug on my inner space. It's much easier to control words than it is to control cortical impulses, serotonin levels and questionable perceptions, after all.

Friday, October 22, 2004

My muse has been up to her ears with kids and family logistics, while I've been nutty trying to get the quarter wrapped up and winter prepped for. I'm still working on both, hopefully tomorrow I'll find some time to catch up and let you know the progress that has been made.

That wouldn't take long, that's for sure.

But seriously, watch for some new stuff tomorree.

It's gotta happen.

Friday, October 15, 2004

I've been thinking quite a bit today, going through old stuff and getting ready for the winter. It amazes me how little I know, and how much I learn about even myself on a day like today.

People are detached from one another, I don't know if that was ever different in the history of mankind, but it seems to be something that has gotten more chronic in recent times. Transience and the need for economic mobility seems to have done the trick to this generation.

It's just Drie and I, through the past thirteen or fourteen years, and the rest seem to have gone on to bigger things instead of staying. We haven't been able to stay in many physical places for long either, exascerbating the situation. I don't really know what I think of that, only what I feel.

And it ain't good.

Nevertheless, we have been blessed with great friends to pass the days we find ourselves in, and for that I am grateful. The past doesn't make a very good prognosis for the present or future though, so it's a good thing I hang on to a shred of my old stubborn idealism, and I'll just let things happen as they will. I believe they'll be all the better for that, and this is my hope and an article of faith regarding all my friends, both those here and some departed.

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

My mother is up at my sister's house this week, sister and brother-in-law have a getaway planned ans my mom's going to watch their kids for the duration. My mom's away from her computer, and that explains the absense of her comments for you who follow her commentary as much or more than mine.

The temperature is still nice here in Springtowne, with the days staying within sandal limits. Most of the Aspens have dropped their leaves, all of the maple and oak have done their show and cast theirs down at the higher altitudes, and we're just waiting for the other shoe to drop down here in the valley. Snow will fall, the coal stove will be stoked, and the long, cold winter will be here untill March or so.

Since I finished some drywalling in the upper story here in the house, it seems like things have stayed a bit warmer later into the night than it used to, so it may be a little easier to keep the house warm this winter. The little things bring hope to me, and though they don't bring much, I can still amplify them to do the good I need.

Sunday, October 10, 2004

After a half a day of housework, there was an irresistable call from Thousand Lakes Mountain. That call was heeded, and this scene was one of the blessed results.





Wednesday, October 6, 2004

Things have been going well as ever they go, though nothing of great note or import has passed through our life's stories this week.

All I have to report is the usual ups and downs of my soft conditions, a certain ambivalence toward life's entrances and exits. I wake, I do the regular actions of waking and dressing for the day, I eat, I drive, I teach and edit and tutor and record, I shop for groceries, I fix plumbing, I eat, I edit and record, I blather, and I return to the bed from whence I came.

There are irregularities and changes in response on my part as well as others', but in my current humor, I feel not much passion for the description and day's record.

But what of the clock, of the sun's travel from our Colorado Plateau to the West Mountains? The speed of Helios' chariot from hence to thence quickens my awareness of the same, though the events played out under that same sun bring the opposite to my mind and effect.

Why am I writing thus? Hell if I know. I simply enjoy it, even if I don't feel a great need or spirit to write anything.

I like to write. I like to share my thoughts and observations, just as so many others seem to on this goodly planet, and I hope that my thought's aspirations have something to do with those of other idealistic and hopeful people. As I've said before, I hope these thoughts have some concordance with some of you, dear reader, and at least awaken some sort of harmonic response in your heart. Hopefully a response that would bring you to an awareness of connection between all of us, at some level.

Things ebb and wane, according to all manner of variation and forces whithin each of us. Sometimes those variations have great import to that around us, others it would seem that nothing comes of our daily effort and walk.

The point is to stay in whatever helps to keep us happy in our days and ways. And to share, to some extent, that which does the same.

Sunday, October 3, 2004

I went up to Southfork with Ryan this morning, and though our original intent was to make it to the Skyline and down Reader ridge and wherever we might find ourselves inbetween, but Ryan's battery got jarred over by the nasty road, ripping some jerry-rigged wires out of the fuseblock and killing the engine.

We had no idea where they came from until we figured out that the battery was in fact, out of place. The new positioning of the objectives made it pretty clear where the wire had come from, although the snow and relatively light clothing on our backs was making it rough to make constructive decisions at the point we found that out. Things were progressing rather slowly on the electrical diagnosing front, so Ryan called his Dad to have him pull us down with his truck.

At about the point where hypothermia was becoming a serious consideration, we were fixing to get a fire going and aggressively diagnose the problem and get it jerry-rigged back together.

At about that same time, Ryan's dad finally arrived to help us drag the thing off the mountain. That was an adventure as well, with exploding tow-chains and overheated brakes, borrowed operable chains, switching from pulling the dead Toyota to following it down with the chain behind for braking, and painfully slow headway down the hill.

We made it though, and later on in the afternoon after warm showers and hearty lunches, we tackled the problem anew, with the sun shining and ample tools and material, over at Ryan's house.