in honor of the solstice & the end of the world
(both yesterday)
here's a picture of some god blowing the fires of the world to a frenzy
(either that or Zach in his backyard when we were out for his wedding in June)
Greetings from Carter's Camp, the local watering hole at Nye, Montana, which has high speed wi fi. Cool that. I've had spotty internet coverage on my travels--& travels I've had. I left Asheville the afternoon of December 11th & stayed with my friend Beth Gwinn in Nashville. Check her out at
The next day I drove to the Horseshoe Casino at Tunica, Mississippi (pretty near Memphis) with a stop at the West Tennessee Regional Art Center in Humboldt, Tennessee. Really lovely exhibit of Mildred Jarrett's work, which has since come down, but you can see her work at
At Tunica, I played in a couple poker tournaments. The first night I got great cards & played pretty well & I'm not sure where I placed because I forgot to check when I got knocked out. The second night I got pretty good cards & played super & made it to 12th place out of 38. Not in the money or anything, but I wouldn't have played much differently. A bunch of strategic all-in bets that worked for me--until my last one when my trip kings got beat by a straight. Had to play it that way...
I am definitely going to plan a poker junket across the U.S. sometime. Cheap rooms. Free drinks. Reasonable food. Fun entertainment for not much investment. (Each tournament cost me $60, for hours of entertainment. Plus I already improved from night 1 to night 2, so imagine how good I'd be when I got across the country.)
One night at a mom & pop motel in Perryville, Missouri & one night at my friend Suzy's place, the Home Motel in Salem, South Dakota. We hit it off as great friends on my way out to Montana after Zach's wedding & I now have a regular room there. She is just fabulous.
& now all things Montana. Lots of pitch with my folks. A bit of casino with Mom. A nice turn-around-&-come-back road trip with my dad to do things like drive a 4 wheeler onto long teeth of a forklift, lift it to the level of the tailgate of a pickup, back it in, climb out & move the forklift away. My dad's 78, but you'd swear he was 40.
I'm having a Guinness here at Carter's. (Just had lunch, so I can afford one beer.) I had to get my emailing done, because a mother/daughter book club in Massachusetts is featuring Growing Wings for their January selection, so I came up with a list of discussion questions for them.
Blog alternative:
245. Surprise someone with a holiday card, especially if you don't usually do them. I used to do a very clever one, but haven't yet this, umm, millennium... So someone is about to be very surprised.
