Denver

I'm in Denver as I type this. Ten-hour drives are for the birds.

If you're looking for the post related to the poll that ends this Saturday, you need to scroll down to the next one.

Anyway, I made it to Denver. I'm hanging with Sarah when I can, singing when I'm supposed to, and spending the other time trying not to think too much about that drive back to Kansas City.

As I was driving to the first event this morning, I had to reflect that it wouldn't suck to have mountains to look at every day as you drove to work.

Then I thought, "Yeah, but I bet after a while you'd forget they were there. Or, worse yet, maybe you'd come to resent them for some reason."

This led me to start writing a story in my head about someone who, as he drove to work every day, would look at a mountain top and imagine there was someone there who didn't have all the worries he had. He would imagine if he had this guy's life, he'd be so much happier. The guy becomes obsessed with the idea, and one day, after receiving one more piece of disturbing news to make his life more difficult, he sorta snaps and decides he's gonna go to that mountain top and tell this ideal-life guy off (having gone just insane enough to forget that he made the guy up in the first place).

So he pulls off at the next exit, and begins figuring out how to make sure he goes to the right mountain top (because he is sure he must go to the specific one that is the source of his anger).

At this point, my story became fuzzy, due to a need to research how he would go about figuring out how to get to that specific mountain top. But, in the preliminary version, this bitter and angry man gets to the right mountain top, and of course there's nobody there. There's no cabin (because he'd imagined this guy lives in a very nice cabin, and looks down at the folks on the highway, thinking, "I'm so glad I don't have that sort of life"); no sign of human life at all.

I didn't have anywhere to go with it after that, and traffic drew my attention away from the story. As I think of it now, I think the guy should decide to leave his life behind and live on the mountain until he could find some sort of sane way of living. But that's just this version of it. I'm sure if I sat down and wrote it, the story would go some completely different direction. I'm not saying I have a story that goes anywhere. I just wanted to give you a glimpse into what my brain is like on a morning drive.

Then, as I was typing this entry and specifically the part about how nice it would be to see the mountains every day going to work, I realized that on good days (when I have a good and restful evening the night before, anyway), I like to get to school by 6:00 in the morning. So how often would I get to see the mountains on my way in to work in the morning? Well, there it is.

Anyway, I'm going to nap now. Did I mention that 10 hour drive yesterday, and how much it wore me out?