Fire!

There is a fire burning about 15 miles away from the town of Red Lodge, moving towards the town of Red Lodge.  This is the smoke plume.  There is a big town meeting tomorrow morning, I guess that they might be setting up the snowmaking equipment on the ski mountain to protect their structures.  I hope the mountain doesn't burn.

In other news.  I left my job today.  I guess that I came to this realization that I can only hit my head against a wall so many times before taking two steps to the left and walking out the door.  It's not like this was a random thing.  I have had a couple meetings over the summer with my boss to try to work everything out.  Yesterday in what started out as a 'mid-summer review' quickly deteriorated into personal attacks and I had to bring in a third party!  

It's hard, and I'm not excited about leaving this place a little over a month before I was originally planning.  It's hard to say goodbye to all my friends.  It's also really good that I can leave, this summer has sucked.

Oh yeah, plus with this fire, I don't think I can take the backpacking trip I wanted to go on.  :(

Bummer

What better end to a frustrating day than going fishing?  Well, I wanted to do just that.  Drove about an hour to get to this lake that I wanted to fish and what happened?  Not only rain, but lightening.  Rain I could have done, no big deal.  Lightening?  That's another element entirely, I'm not messing with that.  

Tiny Little Fish

Went fishing again today.  Caught a little baby fish and sent it back out into the lake.  Then I tried a new lure and a different baby fish grabbed ahold of it.  The problem was that this fish decided to swallow the lure and I couldn't release him.  It died.  Well, I had to step on it's head, then it died.  

Because it died, I have to eat it.  (I was hoping to use it as bait for a bigger fish, but it wasn't about to happen)  So today for the first time I not only killed a fish, but I also gutted and set it up to marinate overnight.

The picture is really just a great illustration of how small this fish really is.

Ice Falling From the Sky

It was an amazing hail storm.  Biggest hail that I have ever seen, it was 1/2" in diameter at least.  The leaves and ice reminded me of mojitos.  Man that sounds tasty now too... 

Iron Horses, Hearing Loss & Machoism

Today was the iron horse rodeo.  Lots of fun.  Boring at points, crazy at points, incredibly insulting at points, but a great exploration part of the culture I'm surrounded with.  So here is your picture tour of the rodeo.

First stop is the parking lot.  I ended up driving, could hardly find a spot for all the bikes parked all over the place.  It looked like in the beginning there was a plan, but towards the back there was no rhyme or reason to how anybody was parked.

You could really tell that this was a professional rodeo by the registration numbers on the bikes.  That right, big numbers written on plates.  Classy.

There I am, sitting in the audience with my colored clothes and all the people around me look something like this...

Oooh! How could I not include a picture of the fabulous snack options available?

Spice Up My Life

Your result for The Which Spice Are You Test...

Fennel

You are Fennel!

You're a cool cat. Crisp, clean, fresh, and extremely complicated. You're like quantum physics or modern jazz. Think Niels Bohr meets Ornette Coleman. You may look normal now, but once you sprout, you look kind of, uh, funny.

Take The Which Spice Are You Test at HelloQuizzy

Biker Patches Are Different Than Pirate Patches

Biker rally is happening in town right now.  It's pretty entertaining.  I'm going to the 'Iron Horse Rodeo' on Sunday night.  While browsing the patch booth I found this one with the military section.  If you can't read it it says "P.T.S.D. Not all wounds are visible"  That's cool.

Fabulous, Hilarious, Awesome Discovery

Wow this is amazing.  Hilarious, and smart.  What the heck am I talking about?  Maybe I should share.  I'm talking about the GCN's (Gay Christian Network) musical production "Straight to Heaven".  I'm sad that I can't put it on this page, but I can put in a link....

CLICK ME!!!

It's pretty long, but worth every minute.  One of the greatest things is the fact that all the songs are parodies of other musicals.  As in: "If I Had a Boyfriend" instead of "If I was a Rich Man" from fiddler on the roof.  My favorite quote: "you heard that?  It was supposed to be a soliloquy..."

What A View

Not my normal view, but today I was excited to see something more along the lines of this:

Granted, I was out there to pick up a student to take to the Dr's office, but hey, not a bad day.  The rest of it was really crazy too.  All sort's of chaos going on at base.

Balancing Act

I don't know about you, but this set-up makes me a bit nervous.  Wouldn't really want to be behind them on the highway.

Wow... OK

CE

Tent Set-Up

I went out to a course end these past couple of days.  Got to sleep in a wide open space.  This here is my tarp set up.  Pretty spiffy eh?