a sucker.

what is it that makes me a sucker for the sappy love stories. i sat here tonight enjoying waking the dead. i guess it doesn't help much that jennifer connelly looks at least a little bit like the ex girlfriend. i love love stories. i'm a sucker for them. i sit here crying as events unfold on screen - thinking about the love lost in my own life.

the cold and lonliness of this place are also a contribution.

ahh. it's too late. i should have been here pouring out the emotions earlier, as they've slippeed on. but you get the point.

so, tonight was a kick back to the old school with a meal straight outta 1994. it used to be my specialty, and i've not had it in a long time. yum. (what is it, you ask? well, it's potatoes, onions, green peppers, mushrooms and tvp with chicken seasoning, all fried up nice and crispy over rice)

i missed (actually, am missing would be better) my first monday night football game of the season tonight. why? dont' know. i've been going up to marc and rene's a lot. kinda feel like i'm imposing. they didn't call and invite me up, so i didn't go. instead, i stayed home and watched the newest arrival from netflix, black and white which brings me almost current on ben stiller movies. gotta love bijou phillips and whoever it is getting it on in the opening scene.

which brings me to another point - one of the recurring themes here. love lost. why is it that every movie has to have a sappy love story interweaved into the plot. makes me realize how much it sucks to not have a girlfriend. or is it to not have THE girlfriend. who knows. either way, today was a bad one in that department.

oh -- yesterday was the cave trip. a push trip (which means we go to the edge of the cave and try and extend the boundaries) guess what. we got nothing. a measly 178 feet. which isn't much (if you're wondering) and.. i'm vowing to never do a cave trip the day after snowboarding again. man am i stiff today. sheesh! but... on the way home last night the northern lights were pretty kicking. cool stuff.

"what the fuck was that?"

- it sounded like a truck just ran into the house. which was weird, since
we're in the middle of a national park, in the middle of nowhere.

a lound "bang" with a simultaneous shake. it was truly weird. and almost in
perfect timing with the bad scifi/horror movie we were watching on the 50-inch.

about 30 seconds later, i realized i had finally felt my first earthquake. pretty
damned cool. of course, we went outside in the cold to make sure it wasn't just the
basement collapsing, or a tree falling on the house or some shit like that. nope. an honest-to-god earthquake. cool. within minutes other folks who live in the park were calling for some confirmation that they weren't just on drugs.

i realize for people in california and other earthquake-prone regions, that this might seem insignificant, but we're so close to smack-dab in the middle of the north american plate here, that it's a big thing when it happens. and weird. and cool.

anyway. yesterday was also the first snowboarding day of the season. a good day, too.
decent snow, not a ton of people, and i met some folks on the lift around 12:30 or so
that i spent the rest of the day with. cool folks, even if they were skiiers. (telemarkers get so much more respect from me.)

today, it's back in the cave. and i'm sore as shit. why do i do this?

what a depressing thanksgiving, in terms of sports.
with the dogs losing the egg bowl to ole' miss, and the pacers losing to toronto (shouldn't have let mark jackson go. and he sure showed it tonight.)

other than that, it was a relatively boring day. the dinner was good, and i managed to help marc fix some bad survey data in one of the big caves we'll be working in on isla de mona in a couple of weeks.

and - i got bored and dorked around with filters in photoshop:

FUCK!

so. thanksgiving. i was making a pumpkin pie. put it in the oven, and 10 mins later smelled it burning. the crust was completely black. this sucks. so, i decided to scrape the filling into another pie shell and try again at a substantially low temp.

this was going well untill the last scoop, which, of course, dumped the entire old crust on top of the new pie. picking bits and pieces of crust out o' the pie, and scraping as much pumpkin as i could back into the new one. it turned out ok - edible but not pretty. oh well.

i was going to make a fancy fake-turkey pot pie that has been the staple of my vegan thanksgivings for the last few years, but the whole pumpkin-pie incident made me think twice and now it's a bit tooo late.

so. it's pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes, and possibly some sweet potatoes. me and the potato. yup. my main sustenance is going to be potatoes and stuffing today. this is not exactly desireable, but hey, it's a start. oh well.

and then there's the idea of thanksgiving. giving thanks. here's the scoop on the thanks for this year:

1- moved out of mississippi. big bonus.
2- got a job doing cave stuff. again, big bonus (even if it's only a 6 month position)
3- living somewhere where it's cold. yay.

and then there's the rest:
4- got dumped by a girl i seriously thought i'd spend the rest of my life with
5- left school without my masters degree in hand - something that i told myself wouldn't happen
6- living somewhere where there's no one around, and being in HUGE debt. that sucks.
7- the girl thing again. cause it's such a kick in the arse. oh well.

i'm in need of a good book. i've finished a couple in the last week or so, notably

deep secrets by Stephen Reames, Pat Kambesis, Larry Fish, and Paul Burger
and
intensity by Dean Koontz

both of which were pretty damned good.

i'm getting ready to start

man in black

by the legendary johnny cash this evening, and i'll let you know how it comes out. but if anyone has suggestions,
i'd like to hear them.

it's weird getting older.

friends get married. other friends buy houses. crazy shit is happening all around me. i've been thinking a lot about this kind of stuff lately. nearly all of my friends have moved away from our hometown. continuing their lives with different people, making new friends, etc.

i was pretty much the first to do this. every time i went home, things would have moved on since i'd last been there. a real rip van winkle feeling. i've now bounced around between so many undesireable places to live, and now everyone's moved on. i still have the same van winkleian feelings. i've lost touch with my best friend. i'd hardly call us friends anymore, as little as we actually talk. it's just weird.

tomorrow is thanksgiving. i'm making a vegan pumpkin pie. and some mashed potatoes. my friends marc and rene bought vegan stuffing especially for me. how nice/considerate. it's good to have friends here, in the middle of nowhere (it doesn't hurt, either, that they have a 50" tv, dss, and a wealth of japanese monster and other generally bad horror movies.)

you (like there's anyone reading this) should really check out the tni blogs and maybe the funny stuff at the spark

the end.

"now i sit around, with my head hangin' down, and i wonder, who's lovin' you"

i've alwaays had a problem expressing my feelings with words. well, at least with
my own words.

the first of my two "serious" girlfriends was always upset about this. it seems
i always used song lyrics to relate my feelings about what was amiss in our
relationship. it really pissed her off. (i'm sorry, sara.)

anyway. like i said. i've always had this problem. so many others have said the
things that i wish i could've said - and expressed the feeling so perfectly. it
does, however, make for some decent consolation out here in the middle of nowhere,
because i can just put in a cd or drop on an lp, and share in the pain of those
before me.

another thing i've always wanted to do, but have usually (ok, always) failed at, is keeping some sort of regular journal. i started one about this time last year, and thought i'd keep it up, and have a good record of what was going on in my life. well,
it's a year later, and i've used maybe six pages. what a feeble attempt. however, some of the best and worst times of the last year are recorded in those pages. the highlights, and the lowlights. of which there were both. some of the highest, and
by the same token, the lowest of my life thus far.

other than that. i've been ditched three times in as many weeks by a girl. tonight
was the worst instance. she's in town (ok. i don't live in a "town" - but she's
in the "area') and didn't come by.

which brings to mind another point. how can girls be so cool, but at the same time,
suck so much. a frustration that we will never release.

more sunday than you can shake a stick at. lazy days of websurfing trying to find
interesting content.

soundtrack to the afternoon:
(in the changer)
project kate - the way birds fly
fiona apple - when the pawn + live stuff
american beauty score
jimmy eat world - static prevails
beth orton - trailer park
ida - a random collection of songs (thanks, napster.)

here it is. southwestern south dakota. a veritable, albeit beautiful, wasteland.
not many people can handle this type of isolation - living in a community of about 10
people, 20 miles from the nearest town (pop. 4000 or so) far from the hustle
and bustle of the city, and all of the hassles that come with life in the "real
world"

sometimes i'm not sure that i'm one of those people who can handle the isolation. i've
done it before, and i'm here in the same situation again - something just keeps
calling me back. thankfully there is the power of the web to keep me occupied
on days like this one.

i must first give credit where credit is due: i've been directed to the world
of blogger by the fine folks at tni books .

also, check out my home and current employer: wind cave national park