Your last night away from home puts you in an unfamiliar place, across the table from a face you haven't seen in six years and forty pounds. He is older and bearded, and the baskets of wings vary from sweet to hot, and the pomegranate margarita is exactly the kind of sweet, fluffy drink you want at the end of the trip when beer tastes too much like effort.

You explain your life to his girlfriend, with all its complexities and oddities and self-determined ethics, and what should have been a completely substandard hot tub visit due to lack of 'hot' turns into utter hilarity when the preteens invade the tub. The four of you mock them mercilessly, their senses of self-preservation so woefully undeveloped they do not even recognize your mockery.

Denver comes with a blast of dry air and a welcome-back nosebleed. You call vaguely-new netfriends and get an offer of electrons and wi-fi from his place of business. You pick up a rental car that cost a fourth of your Detroit rental and head through industrial Denver for a temporary place to roost.

You celebrate your unemployment with a margarita and stuffed peppers at a Mexican restaurant.  When your turn comes to speak, you do it easily. No wings, no fear; it's just a room full of librarians, after all. When the opportunity for a mid-afternoon coffee run comes, you jump in the minivan with newly-minted colleagues for a cold shot of caffeine.

Next to last city. Since a week ago today I have been in:

• Huntsville, Alabama
• Atlanta, Georgia
• Detroit, Michigan
• Minneapolis, Minnesota (technically Eden Prairie and St. Paul but who's counting?)
• Denver, Colorado
• Fort Collins, Colorado

I remain here until Saturday afternoon, when we'll switch back to Denver one last time. I fly home Sunday.

Everything intended has been done. 4x4 and Spitty are married. Class has been taught. Deep-dish pie accomplished with Dan and Stephanie. Shopping with jowilson done. Ethiopian food with all of the Minnesota folk. Drupal library meetup in Denver. There's more left to do, but all in due time.

Oh, my dear little librarian. You pile up enough tomorrows, and you'll find you are left with nothing but a lot of empty yesterdays. I don't know about you, but I'd like to make today worth remembering.
- from The Music Man (thanks, Katie!)

Or ...

The cheese dances in the park after the seance.
(Thanks, Rachel. We'll come back to this one in a few months.)

Listmaking has begun in earnest. Panic started two days ago. There is much to do and a rapidly-lessening amount of time to do it in. A rough idea of my itinerary:

At lunchtime, the raindrops were starting to find each other and think about congregating on windshields, and I thought about Chris, out west, half a world and a blizzard away.

The incantation remains the same:

Memory, leave me something - I lose so much on a daily basis; give me this, on days when I was happy, for the days that will inevitably come when I am not, so that I may remember the taste of these moments that, inevitably, go…
— 'Rockies on my right,' 10 October 2004

I had my seat belt unbuckled before we even came to a stop, safety be damned. I grabbed my books, yawned, and all but tumbled off the plane. I was halfway through the jetway when the altitude caught up with me. Denver air will do that, sapping your muscles of energy while your brain still thinks there should be more in the tank.My tank was empty. It had been for twelve days. All I had to do was fall forward onto the motorized walkways, keep falling forward into the inter-concourse trains and hope that I ended up ass somewhere near teakettle on the escalators to baggage claim.

"She's not a Chinese puzzle box like you."—Chris

I forget sometimes that what I write here doesn't necessarily have to come with an explanation or an easy answer. Some days and some sentiments require me to take a deep breath and trust that what I say will be accepted for what it is, no more and no less, because I am as complex as my life and as simple as my love.

Live and sleep-deprived from Colorado, I present … us. Click the photo for a larger version.

Pandora is the little uber-plushy penguin on your left. Phoebe is the larger penguin with the knitted hat and scarf that we liberated from a thrift store earlier this week.

(Peter, the original Disco Penguin, is at home, guarding the cats.)

I think we all need sleep. Pity none of us will get it before Wednesday.

Home soon.

I wondered where I'd be. I got the answer tonight; an answer that was nearly four years in coming. As usual, the answer wasn't what I expected.

It was less.

It was more.