Chloe health update

I regret not taking her to the veterinarian earlier.

It turns out she has hurt her thoracic (middle-to-upper) area of her back. She may be in the beginnings of slipping a disk. She may have simply hurt herself. An X-ray at this point wouldn't distinguish the difference and treatment for both conditions is the same.

* She's on muscle relaxers and pain killers.
* For the next four weeks she must be in her kennel at all times, except to go to the bathroom, during which I'm to keep her on a short leash. And when she's on my lap. The vet doesn't want to risk her running around and reinjuring herself.
* The vet taught me how to lift her to not cause further damage.
* I need to put her on a heating pad three times a day, for 10 minutes each time.

Wide Awake

Wide Awake: A Memoir of Insomnia by Patricia Morrisroe

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I loved this book, a combination of memoir and good journalism. Morrisroe, in her 50s, has struggled with insomnia her entire life.

Personally, I can relate: I struggle falling asleep. Morrisroe can fall asleep but in the middle of the night she wakes and cannot return to sleep.

In fact, she's a fourth generation insomniac, and I was touched by the stories of her family members' insomnia, especially those of her beloved grandpa.

Yet Morrisroe writes with sharp wit, especially as she describes her adventures with overnight sleep studies, napping service companies, insomnia drugs, dream therapy, cognitive behavior therapy, hypnosis, music therapy, mattresses that promise a good night's sleep and even a second home in the country. But the book's more than a funny story about an overnight sleep study: Morrisroe parses through research on sleep and sleepness using her fine-tuned background in journalism to help novices like myself understand what really can be known for sure on the subject. I've learned about the iffy science, business interests and New Age hokus pokus behind insomnia. Just as important, however, I learned that freedom from insomnia requires solutions that are individual and could involve some of the very solutions Morrisroe questions.

Morrisroe ultimately finds an effective solution to insomnia. You'll have to read it to find out what that is!
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Another Christmas tune

"Last Christmas," by Wham! I recently watched an interview in which the activities in this video were described as a "swingers' retreat."

Great Christmas Songs

"Merry Christmas (I don't want to fight tonight)" by the Ramones




"Fairytale of New York" by The Pogues. Gotta love any song that starts with "It was Christmas Eve, babe, in the drunk tank..."

I lied

On Friday morning and afternoon the snow melted and I saw the grass and sidewalks again. I even saw a neighbor outside, stringing Christmas lights in jeans and a T-shirt.

Friday evening and night, we had wind, snow and, bizarrely enough, thunder and lightning.

Even if occasionally melts or blows away, that still doesn't excuse you from feeling sorry for poor lil Laura, freezing her you-know-what off in Wyoming, trying to adjust and be brave.

I just wanted to announce this in a sort of honest, self-disclosure aspect of my ongoing pity party.

Thank you for reading.

The Jews of Wyoming: Fringe of the Diaspora by Penny Diane Wolin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Beautiful photographs and story about the history of Jews in Wyoming. Three waves, basically, the first during the Dry Homesteading Act, the second in the 1920s from Eastern Europe to escape discrimination, and the third second-homers in Jackson.

I find history books too often boring. But I need to learn about the history of Wyoming. So I'm doing it by learning from the stories of minorities.

The photographer is a Jew from Cheyenne who started her career shooting the Cheyenne Frontier Days -- the largest rodeo in the United States -- then became a professional photographer of Hollywood types, and returned to Wyoming to work on the book on the side. She received money from the National Endowment for the Humanities to finish it. Some of her captions, I felt, led me to asking more questions. Photos are black-and-white and since it took 15 years to complete the book, there is a lack of consistency, in my opinion.

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Missing ye

Whenever I return to Salt Lake City, I remember all the things I miss about metropolitan areas. Which is funny because I never considered SLC much of a metro area. Then I moved to Wyoming and now I realize it's all relative.

I notice the vehicles around the Salt Lake City airport pick-up area and think,

"Oh foreign cars, how I miss ye: Hondas and Acuras and Toyotas and Nissans and Volkswagens and Audis and Subarus and Kias and Hyundais. How I miss ye."

Then I'd look (again shocking because I never saw much of this before. Again, it's all relative) at the racial diversity and say, "Oh Hispanics and Asians and Pacific Islanders and Native Americans -- how I miss ye."

Colorado Bulldog

If you're anything like me, White Russians taste okay. I want to like them more than I actually like them.

I wish I liked them as much as I like mudslides. After watching "The Big Lebowski," I really, really wished I liked them.

Ahem. Introducing a new drink, the Colorado Bulldog:

• 1 cup crushed ice
• 1 (1.5 fluid ounce) jigger vodka
• 1 (1.5 fluid ounce) jigger coffee flavored liqueur, i.e. Kahlua
• 1 (12 fluid ounce) can or bottle cola-flavored carbonated beverage
• 1 fluid ounce light cream

Fill a tall 16 ounce glass 1/3 full of crushed ice. Pour in the vodka and coffee liqueur. Fill to within 1 inch of the rim with cola. Fill to within 1/2 inch with light cream. Stir to blend.

Since I had a bottle of ready-made White Russian in my freezer, I just used it and added some Coke.

Yum.

(Note: Some recipes call for a "splash" of cola. So experiment until you find a tasty combination.)

Chlobear health

Since I know each and every one of you is concerned about an 11-pound bichon-poodle's every move, I wanted to let you know that Chloe sprained her side. If she were a human, she would have sprained her left love handle.

But she's a dog, so she sprained her side near her bum.

Little dogs tend to jump up on couches, beds, chairs. Sometimes they over-estimate the springs in their legs and think, "I can reach that!" And they hurt themselves in the process. That's most likely what Chloe did.

WInter Driving

Since Utah has a reputation for some of the best downhill skiing and snowboarding in the world, no one in Wyoming seems to believe that I'm not used to snow.

In the valleys in the Salt Lake City area, where most people live, it melts in four days at most. (It's only in the mountains that it stays for a long time.) So during "snow storms" you just microwave hot chocolate (OK, so I'm not that gourmet) and delay errands until it conditions improve.

Not here. Life goes on. The snow is here to stay. Sure, it will melt a bit, but I'm not going to see grass and sidewalks for four months or so.

Last night, I went to a dinner party at my editor/publisher's house. She lives on a hill that's probably an 800-foot climb. My 2007 Honda Civic couldn't do it. I was gunning at like 60 mph, creating a lot of exhaust. My car wouldn't move.

Festival of Trees

Because Gillette has only 1,000 or so members of Relief Society -- the LDS Church's women's group that tends to do lots of crafts, transforming women into crafty Martha Stewart types -- the trees and wreaths here weren't as cool as the ones I've seen in Utah.

That was how Gillette's Festival of Trees was inferior.

How it was better than Utah's Festival of Trees? The booze.

In Utah, the Festival of Trees is held in a suburban convention center, and hot chocolate costs like 5 bucks -- more expensive than a mixed drink at Gillette's event.

Tonight, the event was more of a sit-down dinner. Kind of fancy. I definitely was under-dressed. I purchased a mixed drink but drank free wine in the beginning. I got into the wine and cheese event beforehand because I know the band. And by knowing the band, I mean my newspaper was a sponsor of the event.

And today, it's...

The forecast said the low would be 1 degree.

Actually, it was 4 degrees -- with 22 mph winds.

Making it fee like negative 17.

The Weather

This is the first of what I'm afraid will be a million posts.

When I moved to Wyoming, it was early summer. My mom was driving and she commented on all the snow gates along on the highways and interstate. I ignored her. I was so excited to begin my new life.

My Horizontal Life

My Horizontal Life by Chelsea Handler

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I was on a weekend trip and read this on my Kindle during my spare moments of time. It's apparently one of her first -- if not the first -- book and it's about her sex life.

I'm not a prude but I was looking for laughter that hurt my stomach, such as when I read "Hello Vodka, It's Me Chelsea."

I couple times, especially toward the end, I laughed out loud. But otherwise, I just found the book to be a collection of entertaining stories, at best, and dry navel-gazing at its worst.

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Bad Dirt

Bad Dirt by Annie Proulx

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this book. A dear Utah friend, Doug, sent it to me when I moved to Wyoming. It fulfilled two needs: Entertaining short, breezy stories and insights to Wyomingites.. I enjoyed "Bad Dirt" so much, in fact, I'm contemplating starting an Annie Proulx book club at my public library.

She has a hodge-podge of characters -- a couple from New York who purchased a retirement home outside Jackson, an heiress in Casper who plays polo in Sheridan, plenty of ranchers and even a group of talking badgers. Only one group of characters in the invented town of "Elk Tooth" are a group she returns to throughout the book, with maybe three or four stories about them.

The people she writes about are almost all made up, and so are the narratives, except for history. She references Buffalo Bill and the Teapot Dome Scandal, for instance.

Wyoming has a handful of locales that sound nearly identical. I’m sure it’s no different than in Utah, but I lived in Utah for 20-some years and studied the state’s geography in school. In Wyoming, I was plopped into a newsroom, where I am to write stories without displaying amateurishness or a learning curve.

Evanston - A town near the Utah boarder. Supplies Utah alcohol and fireworks.
Evansville - Suburb of Casper.

Laramie - A town of 30,000. Home to the University of Wyoming.
Laramie County - County in which Cheyenne is located. The county where Laramie city is located is Albany County. Interstate 80 separates Cheyenne and Laramie city by about 40 minutes.
Fort Laramie - Near the Nebraska border, hundreds of miles north of Cheyenne and Laramie city.
Laramie River Station - A coal-fired power plant near the town of Lusk and the Nebraska border but not at Fort Laramie.

Pine Haven - A pretty town about 40 minutes from Gillette on the edge of a reservoir.
Pine Bluffs - A town off I-80 near the Nebraska border.
Pinedale - A town that’s on one of the routes to Yellowstone. Southeast of Jackson Hole. Since home prices in Jackson Hole are so high, I think Pinedale has become a (somewhat) cheaper alternative for retirees and people looking for second homes.
Big Piney - South of Pinedale (also somewhat cheaper than Jackson Hole.)

Kemmerer - A town by Rich County, Utah. Home to first J.C. Penney store in U.S.
Kinnear - A town outside of Riverton, which I think is sort of in the center of the state.

Then, there’s people’s names. I don’t understand why so many Wyomingites name their sons and dogs Cody. That’s the name of a city in Wyoming. It would be like a Utahn naming their kid Fruit Heights. Outside of Wyoming, a lot of people name their daughters Cheyenne. Luckily, I haven’t run into any Cheyennes in Wyoming.

Howdy and Happy Halloween

At the Gillette bars on Halloween, there were real-life, honest-to-God cowboys. Then there were men dressed in costume as cowboys.

"How could you tell the difference?" a friend asked.

Well, the look of irony on the faces of the costumed cowboys, mostly. And their lack of tans. And some of the costumed wore ridiculous accoutrements that even novices like me realized were inappropriate. For instance, real cowboys don't wear leather vests with fringe.



That's plain stupid. Why would a cowboy wear a leather fringe vest? In ranching, function always trumps fashion. The bandanas around their necks protect them from the sun and cover their mouths during dust storms. The cowboy hats protect their heads from sunburn and the hats' wide brims provide shade. The denim protects from injury. Ditto with the long-sleeves.

Flying home - SLC to GCC

I know I'm on the right plane to Gillette because
1) It's a turboprop
2) It has mostly men on board
3) They reek of cigarette smoke

This little guy is AWESOME!

And the winner is.... Docket No. 56724931771abc

My paper is trying to give out the weekly award for the football picks contest... Turns out, the winner is in jail!

I seriously need to start a hashtag on Twitter called #onlyinwyoming.