Off we go into the wild blue yonder

So I'm off today to face the great unknown. Oh, I'm only going back to North Dakota, to Harvey, a town I've been to 10,000 times before, but always when I went there, it was because we were "going to town." I've never lived in town before, at least not in North Dakota, and I'm not sure how I'm going to profitably spend two weeks. People always say that the country is more boring than the city, but I don't really think that's true. In the country, you can always go outside and talk to animals and play in snow and things like that. What am I going to do in town?

I've actually been making a list, and here are some of the things I've come up with:

1. Go to the bakery, which I always thought was the most exotic and sophisticated place in town when I was younger. (OK, it was second to the Tastee Freez, but that's probably closed for the winter.)
2. Go to the library, if I can manage to figure out which couple of hours a day it's open. You can sign up to use the internet for 15 whole minutes a day!
3. Look at every item in every store in town-- 6 times.
4. Go to the movies all by myself! My mother tells me that only teenage boys go to the theater there, so that should prove to be interesting.
5. Catch up on all these books I keep dragging home from the library but never get around to reading.
6. Parade up and down in front of the radio station. (I have a mild crush on one of the DJ's.)
7. Watch some of my mother's new TV programs with her, most of which feature home improvement of one sort or another. (Blech!)
8. Have myself a merry little Christmas and a happy new year.

In other words, I won't be back in the land of the living (meaning the internet) until about January 3rd. (If I don't get stranded in some airport again.) Happy holidays to any of you that might actually be reading this!

Poetry corner

I think this poem describes very well how I'm feeling at the moment: world-weary and uncertain. But I have no time to be maudlin; I have a holiday party to spearhead!

I've got no strings on me

So I've come to a decision. I'm not going to renew my lease, and it's not because I'm planning on moving someplace else here in town. It's because I've realized there's nothing further holding me here, and I should start looking for a different place to spread my special brand of magic. It feels good just to have made the decision!

The bliss of consumerism?

I'm in a very good mood, and I'm not sure how long it's going to last, but I'm going to relish it while it does! Last night I watched Murphy's Romance, and it made me so happy. I think it was as much the music as the actual plotline, and the fashions and everything took me back to 1985, which was a very pivotal year for me as a tween. (Of course I didn't know I was a tween at the time, because the concept hadn't been invented yet! I had to settle for being a much-less-hip-sounding "pre-teen.")

The funny thing about the movie is how chock-full of product placements it was! There were two-gallon jugs of KC Masterpiece everywhere. Has anybody not in a cafeteria or restaurant honestly ever bought a two-gallon jug of KC Masterpiece? I also noticed Ivory liquid (in the old bottle back when it was still white), Barq's root beer (which I'm pretty sure didn't exist in North Dakota yet back in 1985), extra-strength Tylenol (which Sally Field asked for in the drugstore by name), Purina Chows (which I remember fondly from too much time spent in Lautt's Feed and Supply as a girl) and a host of other products that have slipped my mind. But guess what? I didn't really mind them at all, because it made it more like a true depiction of life in 1985 in a small town just like the one I grew up in. Will today's product placements seem as quaint in 20 years?

A belated obituary

So I've discovered what happens when you don't keep up with your email: you miss important things. In the last couple of days at work I went through an email reading frenzy, and I've gotten my number of unread messages down to zero, and my number of saved messages down to three digits again. I deleted a lot of old university announcements for things that had already happened, but something told me to open a particular day's Outlook, and it said "Ohio University mourns death of political science student." I always have to look at every article about somebody who died, and it always turns out I didn't know them, but I looked anyway, and staring back at me was a picture of a very familiar face. I assumed he must be a frequent library patron, but no one else professed to know him. Finally, 12 hours later, my brain finally processed the answer: he used to wait on me all the time at my neighborhood grocery store. He always seemed like a nice boy, and he always smiled at me. And now he's dead, and it took me a whole month to mourn him. Maybe I do always miss the most important things going on around me all the time.

Want and plenty

So I was introduced to this verse yesterday, which I had never seen before, at least not in this translation, and it helped. "I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need." (Phillipians 4:12) So maybe this is just a hungry period for me right now, and that word "abased" really speaks to me somehow.

Speaking of hunger, if you want to read an interesting story about pioneers over 200 years ago and the hardships they faced, try this on for size.

I heard a fly buzz when I died

I see that I've had a slight uptick in visitors lately, so I feel I should be posting something fresh and exciting every day to keep you entertained. But this is all I've got for today: what's up with all these flies? I have had several in my apartment, which has been so thoroughly exterminated through the years that the only bugs I ever see are dead ones. (It kind of makes me wonder what all those chemicals are doing to me, but that's the subject for another post.) At my cousin's house in Beavercreek, I went on a fly killing bonanza, killing dozens of the things during my 3 days there. And we actually have set two fly traps in the staff lounge at the library because there are so many in there (attracted by the food, no doubt.) Since I don't remember a plethora of flies this summer, where are they coming from? Anyone with an idea, fanciful or serious, feel free to leave a comment below!