No reason, just happy

Today was one of those day where I felt inexplicably happy. There was really no good reason, and perhaps that's the best reason of all. There is something settling about the days, normal ones, where I go to class do homework, clean the kitchen and make fried zucchini . . . and nothing major happens, but yet I can tell my life is good. Its like I know my happiness isn't dependent on one person or thing - and that makes me more confident than just about anything.
Breakups usually leave me feeling in a funk, sometimes for longer than I want - and it was nice today to recognize that I am officially funkless. One of those tender mercies about moving on and healing happily. Maybe its the start of a new school year or just remembering all the reasons I like being me. But somehow I know everything is going to be alright.

Jeremiah G and back to school.

I have a crush on Jeremiah G. He's a boy in my family literacy class . . . man really, but there's something about a guy who's getting a Phd in adult ed, teaches at correctional facility and then he tells me he's spent the summer on a 10,000 mile road trip with his three legged dog. You know he had me at the three legged-dog. He with his quirky stories makes my Family Literacy class that much more interesting, not that it wasn't great before, but Wednesday afternoons have a whole new flavor now.
Being back in school is a familiar reassurance for me. I can do this classroom thing. The loose schedule of summer and the endless idea of writing and writing make me want to go a little unhinged, but suddenly three days and two classes into the semester I feel the structure of an 8-5 day creeping back in my life, along with the excitement of a random guy who has a three legged-dog. How could this not be a good semester?

Roadtrip History

I don't know when Katie and I started chronicling our road trip with times and brief events but maybe it started with the absurdity of taking pictures at the Rexburg temple at 1:00 a.m. now how do you explain that. But then again, much of our road trip was more than a little unexplainable . . .
Monday
12:30 a.m. taking pictures outside the Idaho Falls temple
1:15 Rexburg temple
2:00 strange gas station . . . strange people
3:00 enter Yellowstone park beginning the adventure after an unknown wrong turn!
3:30 come to a roadblock that won't open until 8 am - decide to sleep in the car
4:00 Katie can't sleep decides to drive the other way through the park!
for the next five hours Katie proceeds to drive, Andrea wakes up "every half-hour" when Katie slows down to take a picture of the sunrise, the moose, the elk, the people . . .
9:00 left the park
1:00 after not finding the excitement we were hoping for at a random museum in Montana we found the Spotted Eagle Lake
Car danced like crazy
2:00 Kissed a life-sized dinosaur
3:00 Ice cream break
3:30 Andrea gets creamed trying to dump the rest of Katie's ice cream out the window entering North Dakota
Dickison Dinosaur Museum . . . we didn't go in, but the gift shop was pretty great
5:00 Decided to eat real food at JDs BBQ
6:00 thought the car had a major malfunction - sounded like a train
"Can we camp here tonight?"
"Sure" says the girl at the both, "but I'm going home," those were just tornado sirens.
6:30 out running tornado
Radio - "Winds are moving at the speed of 40 miles an hour"
Katie - "Well we're going about 80 so we should be just fine."
7:00 Stop in the booming metropolis of Hebron, ND population ?? Stayed at the one and only motel (6 rooms) got the last one. Gracie, the owner gave us a Hebron Brick - her family owns the factory in town
7:30 Meet Bill, a man with a million degrees, a wife in Jersey and who loves Katie. He gives us some great advice about sites in ND.
Toured the town
Went to Bed.
Tuesday
2:oo a.m. Huge thunderstorm - Katie wakes up . . . Andrea sleeps
8:00 a.m. slept through alarm
9:30 arrive in Bismark ND to meet the General & Mrs. Custer: the man who wears the velvet suit. Then Lance who doesn't like the French, and toured the Mandan/Nu'eta Indian dwellings
12:30 Bismark temple
1:30 Saw largest hill . . . found out it was a crane
1:50 Saw largest Bull in Jamestown, drove right by. Katie sights mystical white buffalo. . .
3:30 Eat with Aliens, where besides the decor the best thing about the restaurant is the sauces.
4:30 Katie begins epic back-road-drive - Andrea sleeps through everything!
9:00 p.m. Entered Canada, or tried to after our long garbled explanation about where we had come from and where we were going and how we knew each other.
9:30 Passports stamped!
Katie continues epic drive
We spend the night in the car at a gas station outside Thunder Bay. . . oh yes we are adventurous and more to come! :)