Shot In The Dark: Dust

August 04, 2006

Dust

I'm off in North Dakota for the day. Posting will be light until, most likely, later tonight.

I'm up here for some sort of thing involving the ashes of my grandparents; my mom's brother and sister and their spouses are in town, along with my brother and (so I hear) sister. I haven't seen my uncle in about thirty years, so this should be interesting.

I drove up last night after work (and after the squirrel-herding task of getting the kids over to their mom's and getting out of town). I actually enjoyed that part; driving across North Dakota at night is a singular pleasure. Watching the glorious purple/red sunset turn into an indigo sky that covers about 182 degrees above your head is a singular joy. And driving across the darkened prairie, with the scattered lights of farms and the occasional cluster of small towns around you, feels like flying through space, schussing between little galaxies...

More later.

Posted by Mitch at August 4, 2006 10:26 AM | TrackBack

Comments

Oh man. As I've told you before - it's my favorite landscape in the world.

Posted by: red at August 4, 2006 10:41 AM

No snarky comment from IncensedJester, AnnoyedBuffoon or whatever his name is? Did NY get nuked?

Posted by: Euthansia-B at August 4, 2006 11:57 AM

Mitch:

I was going to have Zam over tonight. Have your people E-Mail/call my people.

Flash

Posted by: Flash at August 4, 2006 12:18 PM

Gee Mitch, it sounds, well, singular. Aren't you supposed to start the new timeslot on NARN tomorrow?

Posted by: Kermit at August 4, 2006 07:01 PM

Growing up, my family and I would trek across North Dakota to visit my grandparents in Dickinson. On the return trip, we'd always leave just before dawn to get a head start on the 8 hour trip home. If there are no clouds in the sky at the break of dawn, the hills of North Dakota cast infinitely long, infinitely black shadows. It's a wonderfully alien world for about five minutes, then the sun crests the horizon and you're back on Earth.

After that I'd usually sleep until Jamestown, waking up in time for breakfast at Big Jim's.

Posted by: Ernst Stavro Blofeld at August 4, 2006 10:01 PM

Am I the only one that is having trouble with Shot in the Dark loading completely?

Posted by: Colleen at August 5, 2006 11:18 AM

Its only partially loaded for me as well. How am I going to get my daily angry clown fix?

Posted by: Bill Haverberg at August 5, 2006 11:37 AM

Yeas it just stops. And where did the sidebar go?

Posted by: Kermit at August 5, 2006 03:35 PM

I've had problems loading Mitch's site. I suspect the attempted MT->WP conversion is the culprit. Once you get into mysql acripts the world changes.

Posted by: Terry at August 6, 2006 01:39 AM

Cool. Now the top post is partially covering the banner.

Posted by: Kermit at August 6, 2006 02:47 PM

Damn Mitch, keep it quiet will you. We 600,000 or so that live in ND would like to keep it this way. People start hearing how nice it is here, and pretty soon we'll end up as crowded as Minnenoplace. Oh, bye the bye, I just attended my 30 year high school reunion and spent some time chatting with one of our graduation speakers over vodka and cigars. That would be one James Lileks... What fun!

Posted by: zipity at August 6, 2006 04:12 PM