Mountains and Islands

   I had a job interview for a marketing specialist position on Monday, with a follow-up assignment sent via email to provide a graphic and a writing sample on Tuesday. This second step seemed like a positive thing to me, like a second interview. So there I am, Tuesday afternoon, feeling pretty good about the interview and the samples I sent that morning. The Doctor Dog and I are cruising up the road for an afternoon walk, feeling light of foot and generally good, when we hear a familiar sound. There's no mistaking the distinct bumble of my neighbor's Anthurium-red BMW with the black rag top and miscreant muffler. It closes in on us fast, prompting us to step aside and into the grass along the non-shoulder of our one-lane road. Her window is down when she reaches us.    "You didn't play tennis Monday, did you?" she asks. It's a weird question, since I play with her.    "Nope. Had a job interview."    "Oh yeah? Where?"    "At a loca...

Some people collect Hummels. Others like stamps, or coins or those commemorative spoons from places they visit around the world. For me, it's college degrees. The next one will have to wait a few years, however, since I am fresh out of cash. Time to go earn some. The mission, which I have no choice but to accept, is to find a job. This, I believe, will prove more challenging than earning any degree. The competition is keen. The pickings, slim. I've applied on the island for positions ranging from Seasonal Cookie Dipper to Marketing Specialist, and if that goat herder opening appears again the paper, I'll go for that, too. I like goats.  I'm happy to be home for now with my husband and dog and adorable kitties, and yet, more often than not, my head is elsewhere. To be specific, it's in Colorado, or Alaska. "There is no hope for the satisfied man." So states the motto of The Denver Post. If this applies to middle-aged women, too, then I am about as friggin...

Yes, I know. I've been remiss with the blog. Shoveling sawdust and vole poop will do that to a writer. It's been nearly two weeks since my arrival in Gunnison and I should be ready to go home. Instead, I don't want to leave. The house is clean, or clean enough. It meets our standards, anyway, which have plummeted in recent years to about the level of limbo bars for cockroaches. The plumbing works now -- mostly. The grass looks like a bad haircut. But it's still a way cool house, in a groovy town, and I want to stay. My friend Brian said it best in quoting the theme from Cheers on my Facebook page recently: "You wanna go where everybody knows your name." Lots of people know me here, and I know lots of people, and we've been genuinely glad to see each other these past days, in coffee shops, at their houses for dinner, on the sidewalk, at the market or the hardware store. Everywhere I go. Everywhere. And the people I've encountered who I don't know?...