Read. (That question was way too easy!)

Hmmm...I'm still pretty high off that Chicago trip, but I think I'll still go with my Montana/Wyoming vacation in 1995. (Yikes! It's been that long?) I'd worked in Yellowstone during the summers of '88 and '89, which had been good but stressful. This time was just for pleasure. I got to spend over a week with my friend Martha, who at the time was my most kindred of kindred spirits. (Alas, she's since gone to Rome, while I've settled in Geneva, and we are much less kindred now.) I visited my old haunts in the park. I made my favorite hike to the brink of the Lower Falls. I stopped for a bit at the little unnamed waterfall that isn't exactly spectacular, but it's a nice idyllic wooded place to sit and munch an apple and read a book and meditate on God's grandeur in creation. Then I hiked back up all the many switchbacks (I was in much better shape then!) and headed for the Grand Tetons. I stopped on the way at a museum (the Whitney Gallery of Western Art?) that Martha's husband Dan recommended. I got a quick look at the mountains before heading back to Martha's and Dan's in Gardiner. This was really too far to go on a day trip!

The three of us visited Virginia City on another day. That was not too far to go for a day trip, and it was lots of fun. I remember listening to "Through the Fire" by The Clay (a recording made in Hungary by a now-defunct band that included a friend of mine) and "Dancing in the Dragon's Jaws" by Bruce Cockburn (one of my all-time favorite albums) in the car on the journey. Martha called the latter "perfect park music."

I extended my stay with Martha and Dan as long as possible, but since I'd promised my friend Linnae that I'd visit her, too, I eventually bade them goodbye and headed for Bozeman. Linnae and her husband, John, took me hiking and I ate the best meal of my life on that outing -- antelope meat (from their freezer, having been hunted by John) and onions roasted on a camp fire. Mmm, mmm good! I can't remember if we camped out or if we just went on another outing the next day, but I had to get from wherever we were back to the airport that evening to return my rental car.

I hadn't left enough time, so, this being the glory days of no speed limits in Montana, I drove back at a hundred miles an hour. Wooooo-whee! And then I couldn't find the car rental place! So I called 'em. Turns out they didn't actually have an office at the airport, but they told me where to leave the car so they could get it the next day. Happily spared the unpleasantness of a planned night in the airport lobby, I headed off to a cheap motel for the night and returned to the airport in in the morning for my flight back to Baltimore.

I'd become a whole choir and sing the Agnus Dei set to Barber's Adagio for Strings.

Are those my only two choices? I'm not gaga for either, but I guess I prefer Gauguin's boldness and vibrant colors to Renoir's mushiness.

"Morning"...isn't that what you do when someone dies?

Harry has entertained me greatly, but Narnia was my bread and meat during my adolescence. Nothing will ever supplant the place Narnia holds in my affections.

Luxury. Sports cars have never looked very comfortable to me. My great hope for my next car is enough legroom that I don't get cramped when I drive for long distances.

I love complimentary colors...the ones that say, "Valerie! You look fabulous today!" or "You are such a nice person!" or "Wow! You are such a genius!" Oh...maybe you meant complementary colors? ;-) Um, I thought complementary colors were contrasting colors. I knew I should have taken a color theory class!

Addendum: Complementary or analogous colors?

Depends on the context. For clothing, probably analogous in most cases. Today's ensemble is turquoise with green, blue and purple. I can't imagine wearing turquoise with orange. I guess I tend toward analagous colors in design work, too -- e.g. this blog layout. But complements can be nice, too. My Christmas layout was red and green. And I've done more contrasting colors in some other folks' blogs, but generally with subtler colors than primaries and secondaries.

I left home at about quarter past seven. I tried to sneak out through the back yard to go pick up my car from its other home at the repair shop, but Mr. Henry, my next door neighbor, was lying in wait again and would not hear of my walking down to the service station alone. He shanghaied Maurice, the neighbor on the other side of his house, to give me a ride. I had the not-so-pleasant experience of paying a hundred and fifty bucks for the work (repairing the map sensor and replacing the spark plugs and wires), and then I had the so-pleasant experience of starting the car and not having it stall three times before I go on the road.

And just in case you meant that question in a different sense ;-) I never really left home. I went away for a while a couple times, but I'm back where I started.

The first time I left was my freshman year of college. We packed all my stuff in the Little Blue Chevette (baby, you're much too slow!) and headed to New Hampshire for an August vacation, not knowing whether I was going to Simon's Rock or not. We stopped at the college for a tour and interview and were told that they'd never received my application. Although I feigned surprise at this news, I knew they couldn't have received it, because I'd never sent it. I was such a compulsive little liar! That lie was so big, though, and so easy to get away with, that it scared me. I didn't confess, but I did get much more truthful after that. Wish I could say compulsively so, but the old man dies hard and very, very slowly. Anyway, they let me in. Mom had to get back to B'more, so when we made our usual stop at my cousin's in Connecticut she left on Sunday, the 28th. The next day I turned 16 without the fanfare that often accompanies such an occasion, and Maryann drove me to Great Barrington on the 30th.

The next year, having already blown my entire college fund, I went to Towson and lived at home.

The year after, still attending Towson, I moved out to live with my friend Chris and her two golden retrievers. I was working as an assistant manager at a bookstore, which paid the rent and kept me fed. My tuition was stolen from the U.S. taxpayers of the time. Sorry 'bout that. If it's any comfort, I'm pretty sure I've given back way more than four times as much. I wonder why my mom, who would never in a million years have taken welfare (though we surely would have qualified), didn't have qualms about government financial aid. I'll have to ask her about that sometime.

I moved back home for my remaining years of college, did my second Yellowstone stint after my May '89 graduation, and then lived with friends upon returning to Baltimore. First I lived for a year with Eileen and Joe and their little daughter Kate. It was Kate who nicknamed me Bobbie because she couldn't say Valerie. Then I lived for nine months with Pat and her yellow Lab Jessie.

When mom announced she was going to live in New Hampshire long-term to take care of Nana, who had Alzheimer's, I moved back home and I've been there ever since. I became a proud mortgage owner in 2000. Just 12 more years and it's all mine, baby.

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