Happy Birthday to ME!

Let's go fly a kite
Up to the highest height
Let's go fly a kite
And send it soaring
Up through the atmosphere
Up where the air is clear
Oh, let's go fly a kite!


(Or, as the case may be, a hang glider! Unfortunately, it doesn't quite rhyme.)

















Happy Birthday me!!! Granted, this was over a month after my birthday, but HANG GLIDING off Mt. Sentinel was my big birthday present to myself. Three cheers for jumping off mountains! Strangely enough, the hang gliding itself was not scary. The scariest part was those brief seconds just before we started running, when I was standing on the edge of a steep mountain slope, looking down . . . down . . . down at the Clark Fork River far, far, far below. After that, it was just RUN RUN RUN and there goes the wind lifting us up and now we're in the air, soaring above the golden autumn landscape like magic.


















Golden-leafed archway above my street in October:










































Lying in a carpet of leaves:
























Other October happenings:

Big Brothers Big Sisters Halloween Party--here's me & Jade, and a close-up of Jade's sparkly hair:
































Slipping into November . . .

A late birthday present from Mom & Dad: a gorgeous warm soft down comforter, for which I bought a beautiful duvet cover and then of COURSE I also had to buy flannel sheets for my bed, right? What's more cozy during a Montana winter than to snuggle between soft flannel sheets, beneath a comforter filled with toasty warm down? Mmmm . . . Well, with such a lovely bed, I had to rearrange my room in a more suitable fashion.



















The rearrangement allowed for a new cozy reading space under one of my slanted ceilings:



















Then, a mere handful of days after rearranging my room, I had to (sniff) leave it . . . to visit Tricia & Benjamin and baby Miriam in Toronto. Yay! In the midst of our busy season at work and an increasing pile of schoolwork, a week in Toronto was exactly what I needed.

I provided hand grips for Miriam (so THIS is why new moms cut their hair! Aha!):



















We made lots of yummy food, including pizza:
























I was very helpful in the cooking process:



















We also made a triple-layer lemon cake with lemon curd filling and lemon cream-cheese frosting, which the three adults proceeded to polish off over the course of four days:



We did take a break from cooking one evening to visit Chinatown and have delicious dinner at a popular Chinese restaurant:



















We also spent time watching the first four Harry Potter movies (vice! vice!), playing Blockus, laughing at Minuet's antics, and entertaining Miriam:







































While I was there, Benjamin also put the finishing touches on the pan flute he was working on:



Tricia says that one of most common comments she and Benjamin get about Miriam is her alert look and big eyes. After spending a week with her, I understand why!



Chatting before naptime:



The 'alert look' once again:



Modeling the Moby wrap, which was my baby gift to the family (and I can now personally attest to the fact that it is a MOST useful gift, and that there is something deeply comforting and soothing about carrying a sleeping baby so close to your body):



We had a wonderful week, and now I am back in Missoula, enjoying a Saturday at home and looking forward to Thanksgiving, and Jen & Joe visiting from St. Paul!

Life is good. I slept in, had a nice fried egg on toast for breakfast, vacuumed, diminished clutter in the entryway, put up curtains on the hallway window, burned incense, took a long hot shower, and am now updating my blog. Tonight, I'm looking forward to eating fish tacos at the Old Post with Than & Kara, and then spending the rest of the evening contra dancing. A perfect Saturday!

Blessings to all!

October.

The leaves are turning colors here, and it's surprising to see what changes happen overnight. I walk down the street on my way to school, and come upon a flame-red tree whose colors shimmer in the air and scatter along the sidewalk. Or I'll turn a corner and look down a long gilded archway of branches, with the leaves glowing golden above me. Though the days have been gray and rainy, the bright colors of autumn are bursting forth as if trying to make up for the lack of sunshine. They seem to be succeeding.

My coworker Marissa is down in Central America right now, vacationing. She and her fiance just got married down there--I suppose you might call it an elopement, since they took a plane to an exotic location and got married on a beach without any family or friends present. At any rate, we had a bridal shower for her before she left, which included lots of wine, good food, flowers, and, of course, fun gifts. Marissa is beautiful, and she manages to look elegant even while wearing a plastic Viking helmet with sexy underwear hanging off of it. Ya just gotta envy some people!
















Besides the occasional fun night out with friends, I'm back in the swing of school (well, mostly, anyway). Thankfully I'm only taking one class, but it's going to keep me busy enough, I'm sure! And then of course there's work . . . and the longer I work this 8-5 (or 7:30-5:30, or 9-6) schedule, the more certain I become that this is not they way humankind was meant to spend its days . . . and months . . . and years. Of course I am grateful for the income which allows me to buy plane tickets to visit friends in Toronto and go home for Christmas, or to pay for the gas so I can visit my sister, or to allow me the resources to eat out with friends one or two nights a week. At the same time, however, I am resentful; I feel as though I'm selling my soul for security, and how can that be a good thing? SIGH. Change is in the air . . . the first whispers of it, anyway, and I'm excited to think of the future and see where it takes me.


Sometimes, when life gets busy and you're being pulled a thousand different directions at once and you're just overwhelmingly STRESSED OUT, DAMN IT!--well, there's just nothing for it but to put on your footie pajamas and watch Brotherhood 2 videos and Daily Show clips online.
















Okay, so this is admittedly random, but I bought this completely gorgeous green pepper a couple of weeks ago and just had to take pictures of it. Isn't it lovely? Almost too beautiful to eat . . . but eat it I did, and it was GOOD. And I have a picture (or six) for posterity!
















So last weekend my friend Francie and I drove up highway 12 to the Woodman School, where Francie teaches, to decorate her classroom for Halloween. We did this last year and had a grand time, and have decided to make it a tradition. Francie & her skeleton:




















Cobwebs--and creepy spiders!--paying allegiance to the American flag:















Here we are, two gorgeous girls enjoying lovely Montana!




















I didn't take any pics of this, but yesterday I had the opportunity to attend one of Missoula's most popular and peculiar cultural rituals: a Montana Griz football game. Yes, indeed, I spent three and a half hours sitting in a stadium with 15,000 maroon-clad fans watching a bunch of guys fight over an elliptical chunk of pigskin. GO GRIZ! Around the stadium, filling the parking lots, were an unseemly number of RVs, around which people stood drinking beer, grilling hot dogs, and having loud, drunken conversations. We won, 24-23, with a field goal in the last 1 1/2 minutes of play, and I guess it was actually a pretty good game (??), but my favorite part was just before the game when three parachuters jumped out of a plane a mile above the stadium and dropped down onto the field, right onto the Griz insignia. Pretty sweet. At any rate, I was glad to expand my cultural experiences and to participate in an event that will allow me to better understand a significant percentage of the people in my community.

And now, on to my homework! Woohoo!

Really, ya'll should be impressed that it's only been two weeks since my last blog. Amazing! Truly spectacular! Take note! Who knows when this may happen again??

Some Pictures for Your Viewing Pleasure

At last, a quiet afternoon for updating my blog. Ahh.

It may be trite to say, but life has been incredibly busy these past couple of months. Since the beginning of August I've gotten a wonderful new roommate, Elsa; started my second-to-last semester of grad school; worked WAY too much; thrown a kegger to celebrate three birthdays (mine and those of my friends Heather and Emily); gone out to eat a great number of times for various important occasions; spent a lovely weekend contra dancing up on Flathead Lake; hiked 14.5 miles while my friend Emily ran a 57K (because she is one of those crazy people who do such things); and played hostess to five nomadic friends on their way back from a summer in Alaska.

Of course there's more that I've done, but I think those are the activities that stand out. The past few weeks have just been GO GO GO!! with precious little time to breathe, much less post anything interesting on my blog.

Today is a rainy Sunday, the first long rain we've had in months. It came last night, and all through the night I could hear the steady gentle drip of rain on the roof, and this afternoon I am cuddled up on the couch with my fuzzy blanket, purring cat, and laptop, and am very content indeed. I may make meself a cup o' tea to increase the contentment level . . .

But before I do that, I will post pictures, since it seems that those are of most interest to my friends. Thanks to you all, by the way, who check my blog several times a week in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, I've managed to update it. Do not lose hope! I am here! I am well! I am posting!!


Fire season in Missoula: mid-July to end of August. Ugh. Here's smoke billowing up from a fire near Frenchtown in August:

 

And the red sun rising over shadowed Mt. Sentinel:

My Big Step Into AdultHood (Or Something) For 2007:

(last year: full-size bed. This year: knife set. What comes next?)

What do you mean, this isn't what they're supposed to be used for?!

New addition to the household: Elsa's cat, Olive. She is very weird. She is convinced that she is always starving, and is working her hardest to convince us as well. She meows loudly in the morning and runs to her food dish when the first person emerges from her room, and keep meowing, loudly, until she is fed. She runs across the house like a cat possessed. She sits in the sunshine in a very ladylike manner. She is currently purring madly and sitting on my feet, utterly content. In short, she is a cat, and a marvelous one at that.

Below is Elsa, during our two-day preparation for our Luau Kegger Birthday Party. On the menu: 1 enormous bowl of guacamole, 1 gargantuan bag of tortilla chips, 4 pineapple boats full of fruit salad, 70ish shish kabobs, 3 cakes (carrot, coconut-lime, and chocolate raspberry), and 2 kegs (Bayern Amber and Big Sky Summer Honey). Talk about hours upon hours upon hours of prep time . . .

Heather, organizing the Luau Kegger Birthday Party playlist in the bathroom, because there was no other space in the house:

Emily, attempting to shrink the constantly-growing pile of dirty dishes:

Dave, mixing up his far-too-delectable punch (which, unfortunately, kept people from drinking as much out of the kegs as we'd hoped . . . ):

And me, carving out pineapple boats for our fruit salad:

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the actual party, but since the prep time ended up being about 5 times as long as the party itself, I'm sure ya'll will be satisfied with the prep pictures I posted. At least, you'd darned well better be!

One of my delectable cakes, perhaps one of the best I've done, a Black Forest Blackberry Cake, with three layers separated by a decadent blackberry filling, slathered in chocolate icing, and topped off with homemade whipped cream and milk chocolate shavings. Magnifique!

Yay, a day spent with Amy Gesch-Woman, who was visiting her parents in Helena for a few days. So good to see her over the Labor Day weekend!

And then, my lovely contra dance weekend up on Flathead Lake. It was a sublimely beautiful few days, with dancing galore, gorgeous sunsets, night skies full of stars, and me making WAY too many pots of coffee for all the crazed caffeine addicts. Oh, well, the rest of the experience made up for that stress!

I just took pictures of scenery--sorry, no dancing pics! Someday I'll take my camera along to a contra dance . . .

Last weekend I went up the Swan Valley (finally, after two years!!) with my friends Emily and Lacey. While Emily busted her butt running for 10 hours and 9 minutes, Lacey and I slept in, ate breakfast at Brookies Cookies, a funky little cafe in Bigfork (in fact, it was the only breakfast place we could find in the entire town!), and hiked a mere 14.5 miles. Below, Lacey and Todd (Emily's hyperactive Australian Shepherd who herded us the entire day. Eep.):

Hall Lake, in a beautiful alpine valley. Unfortunately, these little alpine lakes are FREEZING. Lacey jumped in for 12.5 seconds, but I stuck with numbing only my feet and ankles rather than my entire body.

We decided to take a 3-mile detour to Six-Mile Peak, which turned out to rather painful on the way up, but the view was worth it! We could see plumes of smoke from various wildfires; perhaps sometime I'll go up on a clear spring day and see the landscape stretching out for miles.

HAD to take a victory picture at the top!

Emily sleeping in the backseat on the way home, using Todd as a pillow.

Insha'allah that will satisfy those of you faithful readers who have long been awaiting a new post . . . and insha'allah it will not be six weeks before I post again!

Love and salaam to all!!

it's the good ol' summertime

Hmm, it's about that time. About time for another post from this Montana mountain girl!

And I feel very Montana mountain girly today because my friend Jenny and I hiked up to Carlton Ridge (just below Lolo Peak) yesterday, camped overnight near lovely Carlton Lake, and woke up to early morning sunshine and blood-sucking mosquitoes. Ah, Montana! Gotta love it. My legs are not at ALL happy with me, as they have not been subjected to such torture since my days on the Inca Trail, but they will get over it. I love having sore muscles, actually; it feels so utterly lovely to stretch them, and it's also lovely to know that they've gotten a good workout. Ahh.

I'm not feeling overly wordy today, so I think I'll just post some pictures from the past month and a half of my life:

My annual June 13th pilgrimage to the top of Mt. Sentinel:





























My friend Beth and I at the famous Missoula "M"































Andrea and some of her friends attended a wedding in Bozeman, so I drove the short 3 hours to spend a day in Yellowstone with her and her friends. Some silly sister pictures, which are, scarily enough, also NORMAL sister pics:































































































Useful Yellowstone signage:





































































































































































Beehive Geyser, which erupted RIGHT IN FRONT OF US while we were waiting for Old Faithful. We got wet! It was great! Yay, geysers!!











































































































And, in Iowa in July, I got to hang out with Rita before she and David moved to Ithaca































I went to my family reunion on Castle Rock Lake in Wisconsin, and had a blast with my oldest nephew, Dillan. It's great when you find another kindred spirit . . .





























Sunset on Castle Rock Lake





























And, just this last week, my parents and Andrea came through on their to WA! Andrea's moving out to Lynden to start teaching this fall. But of course, we had to do fun Missoula stuff in preparation:


Getting our hair wet in Rattlesnake Creek:































Me sitting happily in the creek, and Andrea all wet and drippy:































Looking sexy at the Old Post (where they CARDED me for the first time in a year--what, because I was with my parents or something??):































And, of course, FLOATING the Clark Fork!! Woohoo!!































The mountains of the Missoula Valley from my hike this past weekend. See all the smoke from the forest fires??































Beautiful (and icy!!) Carlton Lake: