and here we go.

Long post ahead.

S left town. R&L left town. T left town. K is staying for another week and a half. She thinks an extended period of time under her parents' roof could drive her nuts though.

Friday T'n'K'n'myself went to hike Longs Peak. Tons of people on the trail. I warned them beforehand that I was a bit out of shape. Turns out I was right. My knee coming down was unhappy in a way that my knee has never been unhappy before. It wasn't fun. Almost locking up. Or locking up. But then we ended up at the Southern Sun for dinner, which is a five minute walk from where I used to live and a really fun place. T had wanted to go, and he definitely approved.

Ended up going back to their place that night because we live on opposite sides of town, and we wanted to just get to bed after a long day. When I went to bed I thought we were just going to brunch to play games - K REALLY likes playing games; it's sort of a disease - but when I woke up the plans had changed and after picking up E we went up to Cheyenne for the first day of the Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo. Weren't sure we were going to get tickets, but K scored some while the rest of us waited in line.

There was all the usual - I say usual but I don't have a whole lot of rodeo experience - rodeo stuff like bull riding and bronco riding and cow wrestling and tying and stuff. K had really wanted mutton busting, which I hadn't heard of. I guess it's where they put helmets on little kids and have them try to ride sheep the way the adults ride bulls and broncos and stuff. Apparently, it's pretty funny. But there wasn't any mutton busting.

Instead, the highlight of the day turned out to be this ridiculous event called wild horse racing. Teams of three guys, maybe twenty teams total. Each given a completely wild horse, never ridden, really really having no desire to be ridden.

Teams have to get a saddle on the horse and one of them has to do a full lap around the track.

Chaos. Absolute chaos. Horses breaking free and running around, lots of bucking, etc. But the best was when one horse pretty much broke free started sprinting around the track, but one poor dude managed to hold onto the rope and got dragged, face down in the dirt behind a wild horse at a dead sprint, probably 1/4 of the way around the track before it occurred to him to let go. I can't imagine how much dust he ate. My lord. But it was awesome.

Had Indian food on the way back down with the team, which was fun. It was right below the place I'd taken my old housemate to get her wisdom teeth out last year. She was *so* drugged and *so* out of it when I took her home and had to take care of her. Pretty hilarious.

Tonight loom girl is playing a concert. So, a bunch of years ago I did this thing for a year and afterwards everyone else who'd done this thing met up to talk about it at this conference. And there was a girl there who had the most amazing energy and aura about her and I basically fell in love with her instantaneously. And all growing up as a kid in my parents' basement my mom had had this giant, basically room-sized loom that she pretty much hadn't used since I had been conceived. And for various reasons it occurred to me that this girl was the person to whom the loom should be given, who would appreciate it and put it to good use, and I ran back to my room and called my mom on my phone and told her she was going to give her loom to this girl. And my mom wasn't convinced, but I put them in touch but eventually my mother did and this father of an ex of loom girl's disassembled it from the basement and packed it up in his pickup truck and drove it across the country.

Anyway, turns out loom girl isn't using the loom so much right now because she's playing in this band that's doing pretty good for itself and is on tour in my town TONIGHT. So I'm going. And it'll be really good to see her and really fun. Sadly, she currently dates the main boy in the band, after whom it's named. But I've really only spent, like, thirty hours with her in my life. But she's awesome. Awesome.

And tonight she's playing a concert with her band here in town. Yay loom girl.

But a fun couple of days. Aside from the soreness, which was causing my to do some silly hobbling yesterday at the rodeo.