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Chester is wonderful. He never fails to make me smile.

Every night, he locks himself in the bathroom. The door swings itself shut, and Chester is never able to resist the allure of a closed door that he can nose his way past. The outcome is always the same: someone in my family asks “where’s Chester,” and soon enough the muffled whines start from the bathroom. Hoping that he’ll someday learn, we typically let him whine for a good five minutes before someone rescues him. But so far… Additionally, the dirty spot where he uses his nose to push open the white door keeps reappearing, despite being frequently washed off. =)

Excerpt from a previous phone conversation: Sean says to me “yeah, do you mind driving, because the last three trips to Wellington have been in my car.” Wellington is the first city in Colorado across the border– about 40 miles from Cheyenne. “What’s in Wellington,” I ask. Sean tells me “well, you see, there’s this gas station.” “Gas station,” I counter, inquisitively. “Yes, gas station,” Sean continues, “where we’ve been buying lottery tickets.”

If you know Sean, you’ll understand why is this, no joke, the funniest thing I’ve heard in a very long time.

That aside, life has been reasonably calm. On Saturday night, Sean and I drove to the Little Caesar’s in Laramie to satisfy an amazing craving for a $5 Hot & Ready. Go figure– we drove two hours (round-trip) for a $5 pizza. It was good though, and so was the pizza.

Sunday my sister and I took my mom down to the Boulder Dinner Theatre’s production of The Wizard of Oz, which was quite enjoyed by all three of us. Most impressive, I think, was the scene with Jitterbugs and Flying Monkeys– the Monkeys actually managed to fly some, suspended from the ceiling by bungee-cords, and did some thoroughly amusing acrobatics.

I suddenly remembered why I was a film buff. It’s not because I have some great love of film, nor because of film’s capacity to move and inspire, nor because of film’s ability to to take the viewer to far off places and vicariously live a whole range of human experiences, nor because I want to work with film, and not for a hundred other reasons. Simply put, I was a film buff because Cheyenne sucks.

And now, I’m starting into my third movie in two days. That’s as many, in two days, as I watched in the last two months in Bozeman combined.

Good heavens.

I just finished Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, and have been set into a thoroughly odd state of mind by it. Not that my state of mind has been especially normal over the last few days… but in that vein of thought, Nakobov the far and away the most talented linguist I have ever read. And beyond that? Lolita was masterfully crafted. The prose was rich and at times powerful and poetic. The characters were despairingly believable. I’ll not put on airs as being able to provide any sort of “review” of the book– hardly. I don’t think I can even provide you with a taste of the book. Read it? Sure. After you finish the 1,000 other things that you want to read. Or: if reading isn’t your thing, then don’t sweat it.

So.

The whole of my post-Bozeman existence has been dominated by sleeping and eating. I’ve slept an obscene amount, and yet, despite my relative inactivity, I still find myself exhasted. I didn’t leave the house today. I didn’t even step outside. The last time this happened was exactly a year ago, following my unfortunate encounter with a semi-truck. But what else is there to do when it’s May 11th and snowing outside? When there’s nothing outside any more intruiging than my books and piano? …

I took Chester for a walk… not last night, but the night before. We left my house just as the sun was setting, and Chester had gone a mile or more before we even made it out of the driveway. The first half-hour was marked by the t-t-t-t-p! of the retractable leash going out (usually accented by an “ug” on my part as my arm was partially pulled from its socket) and the v-v-v-v-t of the leash retracting as Chester chased across again to the other side of the road in front of me. Sometimes I ran and tried to keep up but… keep up with a 1-year-old English Setter? Hardly. And so we went. We re-approached the house in semidarkness, and I fully appreciated the sweatshirt I had brought.

God damn these blogs… how could I ever begin to convey the emotion and full reality of walking, alone with my puppy, across the darkening Wyoming plains, lost in thought and wonder and regret? And what’s the purpose? Even if I were somehow able to capture just one moment from our hour-and-a-half walk and share it here with the rest of the world, to what avail? Would you know me better? Would you have a better understanding of who Mark is? Would you in any way be able to share the immense humanity of the moment I captured? Would you gain anything by it?

Or would you have just read my blog?

God, such angst.

But enough of that. Let’s keep to the superficial– the rest is a waste of time.

I saw Kingdom of Heaven last night. I very much enjoyed it, although from a critical standpoint it’s probably not more than a three star film (of five). Regardless, I have no doubt that it will receive a Best-Picture nomination. From my perspective, however, it was amazing. I love Ridley Scott and his eye for visually spectacular overwhelming film, and I very much appreciated the film’s subject matter. I would certainly recommend the film to anyone who 1) enjoyed Gladiator or 2) is interested in the subjects of the crusades, God, middle-age warfare, or “what makes a man.”

And so, once again, it’s snowing outside. Nope, actually it’s not. It stopped snowing about four hours ago. Now it’s just 28 degrees and dark.

Semester 2 GPA: 3.86

Cumulative GPA: 3.73

HIST 109D Modern Asia: A

HIST 319 History Ancient Rome: A

MTA 218D Internatl Film & Television: B+

UH 202 Texts & Critics: A

UH 210 Mentoring Gifted Children: A

This semester should have been a 4.0, but I didn’t properly invest myself into my film class. Meh.

It’s been a few crazy and full (and computerless, to boot!) days since my last. This is the first of what I anticipate to be a deluge of posts.

Some of you may remember how, when I moved to Bozeman last fall, I had planned on leaving Wednesday morning, but Wednesday became Thursday and Thursday became Friday before I eventually left. Ssimilarly, I was expecting to be packed and moved out by 5:00PM on Friday. Well, it turned out to be 4:00AM Saturday morning before I was ready to go, and so at 10:30AM on Saturday I left.

Since then I passed a wonderful Mother’s Day with my family (my sister came over from Laramie for the day, which helped make things extra special) and ate enough good food today that I probably won’t need to eat again until next Wednesday!

I’m halfway through the process of unpacking, and I’m most excited by the realization that, for the first time in nine months, I have absolutely nothing else that I should be doing right now. There’s no homework I’m behind on, nor is there reading that I need to do. As a matter of fact, looking at my planner for the next week, the only scheduled event is Sagar’s b-day next Sunday. And you know what? It’s a great feeling. So I’m going to take some time, post a little, read a little, work on the blog some, sleep a lot, and enjoy these few precious days while I’m responsibility and obligation free.