Last post for awhile; I'll miss you!

Let's see. Updates. I leave tomorrow morning for the Riding with Larry roadtrip with my best friend. The highlights:

Day one: Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Supposedly the safest city in the nation as far as traffic fatalities go. But we are taking a car with 200,000 miles behind it, so all bets are off when it comes to auto mishaps and break-downs.

Day two: Rapid City, South Dakota. One day to cram in Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse monument that never changes, Custer State Park, Wind Cave, the Badlands, the Black Hills, Wall Drug, and Devil's Tower. Think we can do it?

Day three: Boulder, Colorado. One of my favorite cities of all time. It's the Madison of the Rockies, baby.

Day four: Moab, Utah. Where I get to meet Caryn!

Days five and six: Cedar City, Utah. Southern Utah national parks and heatstroke, here we come!

Day seven: Boulder again, and then I fly home. Cindy gets to hang out in Colorado for a month longer, lucky girl.

To get myself in the mood for the drive I recently watched Transamerica (I give it a thumbs way up), National Lampoon's Vacation, and Sideways, which of course I loved the first time I saw it. I didn't watch Easy Rider or Thelma & Louise, though. I guess I wanted to focus on roadtrip movies in which the protaganists, you know, LIVE.




I'll be away from the blog for a week, but I'll post updates and photos upon my return on the 28th. Or 29th. I may need a day to come out of a roadtrip-induced stupor.

In other news, on Saturday I met the Oshkosh writers' group (thanks for inviting me, Oshkosh writers!) Then on Sunday we headed to my parents' place for Father's Day. While there, my mother said a sentence I've never heard uttered by any other human being: "Oh," she said, tossing her head in the direction of a cat sashaying across the porch, "that cat HATES Fuckface!"

And then, of course, a new catchphrase was born. See, Fuckface is a cat with a strange, mottled coloration on his face. Hence the name. His previous owners dropped him off in the field near my parents' house when they got tired of him, but fortunately he's adapted well to life on the farm with the bevy of semi-brain damaged cats that call my parents' place home. But there is one cat that hates him, apparently. I really hope they can work things out.

I'll miss you all and hope to stop by for one more visit at your sites before I leave. While I'm gone, I know someone can come up with a fantastic caption for the second picture. I just know it.