A brief sketch:

Man, I'm bushed.  Two days training in Visitor Services, learning how to not completely screw up cash register transactions.  It'll become second nature before I know it, but for now it's like translating a foreign language in my head - I'm a half-step behind the other rangers, and the foot-tapping visitors who have no inkling and less of a care of the mental gymnastics I'm throwing.  (PS: Be nice to your service professionals, please.  Just.  Do that.)  One day of this was enough to drive me home belting out an a cappella version of "9 to 5" that would make Dolly smile politely but cringe inwardly.

My head has grown three sizes - it is approaching proportional Cabbage Patch dimensions.  I'm learning everything, everywhere, at every minute.  My learning curve is so steep that yodling cut-out man on the Price is Right would demand to speak to his union rep at the sight of it.  But I love it.  I feel like a really inquisitve kid (and I do know what that feels like), or a fish out of water-- strapped into a tiny cyborg walking suit, then given a map and electronic translator.  On the moon.  With Steve.

Ridiculous metaphors aside, I'm learning and experiencing new things in nearly every single dimension of my life right now.  New environment, people, job, skills, place to live, ways to teach...  Before, when I was deciding whether to do an SCA position or return to my beloved job in elementary school, I wrote in my journal that the possibility of Arizona felt "like a brand new body."  And really, I said to myself, terrifying though it may be, how could I pass that up?  Well, ladies and gents, let me provide you with lotto numbers, because my powers of prognostication have not failed.  I feel brand new in so many ways.  Not entirely divorced from my life of before, but it's quite a sharp turn my path has taken.  And the view is so very different here.

Friday through Sunday is an aberrant four-day weekend, so off my housemate Kelly and I go: to Zion, Bryce and the Grand Canyon's North Rim.  Utah!  Climbing!  Camping by the seats of our pants!  Vistas too ridiculous to be true!  If I return, I promise pictures.

Show me something I've NEVER seen before. Something never before set to film. Something that neither I nor anyone else has ever conceived of. Give me a first rate, world class "Wow" from beyond my wildest dreams. 

Take. My. Breath. Away.