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:

Sunday, Rainy Sunday

Okay, so today isn't Sunday. I actually wrote this two Sundays ago, as in, June 10th. And for some reason I wasn't able to upload the pics I wanted to upload, so I didn't publish the post. This evening, however, I was successful in my picture posting efforts. So here they be!


Sunday, Rainy Sunday

And thus a perfect day for sitting in Bernice's Bakery, surrounded by the smells of fresh bread and coffee, drinking my hot chai, and writing. But first, I feel compelled to blog, since my last post was from Cusco, Peru. Now, of course, I am back in Missoula, Montana, Los Estados Unidos, Norte Americana, back to summer, back to work, back to the routine of my life here. Life is good.

I'll post a few more pics here, but I recommend that you all check out the pics I put in my online web album, if you haven't already.

Blogs are a strange thing. I know this is not an original thought, but last night I was absent-mindedly sitting in front of my computer, and I typed in a random blog address, wondering what kind of person would name their blog "life is good." Lately I've been feeling that life is very good, and I wanted to read the thoughts of someone else who thought so, too. Turns out it's a mother of four who lives in Colorado and blogs several times a week. Randomly enough, she and her husband lived in Lima, Peru, in the early '90s, and their first son was born there, during an earthquake. Huh. Anyway, it's amazing how one can peer into people's lives--and even more amazing that people put their lives out there to be peered into.

So, a few more pictures from my trip:


The ruins of Sacsayhuaman, on a hill just above Cusco





Our porters climbing agilely up the Inca Trail




















hiking in the mists of the Andes














Machu Picchu














Bill and I at the top of Huayna Picchu (the high peak behind the ruins in the above photo)














Here we all are (except for Bill's wife Beverly, who didn't hike the Trail with us) at the top of Warmiwañusca (Dead Woman's Pass, altitude 13,800'):

Brenda D, Brenda V, Bill, Diane, me, and Marco

Estoy en Perú!

Yo amo Perú.

Yo lo amo mucho.

Es un país muy hermoso: la gente, las montañas, las ciudades, todo.

I am having a marvelous time, and at the moment I simply don't have the words. A few appetite-whetting pictures will have to do:

Salcantay:












Yo (la joven), Bill (el viejo en el grupo), Brenda (la soltera otra), y Marco (nuestro guía guapo):












Yo a Machu Picchu, despues de 4 dias en el Camino Inca. Soy guapa, no?












Estoy contenta.