Photos of Ben and Me

The day after I published that last post (Tentative Love-Letter to a Relationship Now Concluded), I heard from Ben via email. I had half-forgotten he had email; my defenses weren’t impenetrable after all. He said he was good with me posting photos. Getting his polite, two-sentence email sent me straight into an emotional black hole,

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Everything I Learned on the Washington Road Trip

Editor’s Note: This was mostly written back in August 2021, and I just didn’t publish it then. My bad. I filled in two lines, and now it’s done, and I’m gonna pretend it was done a year ago. So there. This is not actually everything. And some of these things I already knew. Ben and I

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Hiking in the Rainforest While Complaining About the Weather

I feel like I nailed the headline*, but this first sentence? Hard pass. Was trying to figure out where in the world it made sense to go backpacking in May, and came across reports of an enchanted valley in Olympic National Park called Enchanted Valley. Pitched it to Ben, was in agreement, and eventually it

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And, Suddenly, My Life Made a Lot More Sense

I need to be my actual self from now on. I’ve gotten whatever it was I was going to get from not doing that. When I was living in Oklahoma, I was so depressed I was worried I was just going to not wake up one day. That was the main factor that drove my

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The Vicinity of Moab and Me: An Attempted Rapprochement

Southern Utah isn’t my place. It’s great for 12 hours or so, but then I want water and a color outside the orange-to-red part of the spectrum. Or, at least, THAT’S WHAT I THOUGHT. Friday: Little Wild Horse and Bell Canyons These slot-ish canyons are right near the BLM primitive camping sites just outside Goblin

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A Eulogy for My Membership in the Mormon Church

The LDS church is no longer part of my life. It seems like a good time to compile the good parts and put that chapter to bed. I’ve been mostly Mormon for my whole life up until semi-recently (2020), where by “mostly Mormon”, I mean… I dunno. I usually (not always) went to church, only

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The Specific Ways that Recovering from an Adult Tonsillectomy Is Miserable

I wrote this on Day 9 after the surgery. Pre-surgery, I was trying to find info on what the experience was like. Everyone said it was miserable, but couldn’t explain anything beyond that. So, yeah. Read this, and then you’ll know. The first couple of nights, there was phlegm or something in the back of

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Selling My House in River Heights Last Summer

Last summer, I sold my house in River Heights. It was a little small and not super expensive when I bought it — I chose it originally because (a) I hadn’t sold my house in Okie yet, and so didn’t have as much cash as I would’ve liked, (b) the house was slightly below median

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Springtime in December for Austria

Plus a hearty acknowledgement that I’m posting this more than a year after it happened. I shrug. After the conference, the conference in 2019 (here), I thought it’d be fun to extend my trip into a Euro ski vacation, despite the fact that I’ve written multiple notes-to-self with the instruction that I should never (again)

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My One Day in Salzburg

My brother told me that I should visit Salzburg while I was in Munich, so I did. It was cool. An amazing place for a one-day tourist (it’s probably great for more than one day — I just had a day and it was amazing). Rainy day though. bkd