It's a beautiful day. The sun is shining, the wind is blowing, I don't have a coat on and it's February. And am I outside, hiking, spraining my ankle again at Red Rock? No. I'm inside grading papers. And when I'm done grading papers I'm going to do homework. Do you know how hard it is to change the world when you're a graduate student? Sometimes I look around at the university apparatus surrounding me and I think, I'm not part of the Rebellion, oh no, I'm now one of those officers on board the Death Star. My goals to keep fighting for the revolution are steadily being buried under stacks of writing begging desperately to be validated.

I do have good news, though. My students this semester, as a whole, are generally good people. I know, that seems like an odd thing to say, but in past semester's that hasn't actually always been the case. Of course, since this is 102 they may have just better learned how to hide their evil ways. Oh well, I'll pull it out of them if it's in there. But they are all, generally, anti-stereotype. I can't even begin to express how happy that makes me. This isn't to say that they don't stereotype; in fact, many of them used stereotypes to argue against stereotypes, but their little black hearts are in the right place. It rejuvenates me at a time when I seriously beginning to doubt if I was going to make it.

All-in-all I'm enjoying myself now that I am more acclimated to the desert. Red Rock is still, by far, the most beautiful thing about Las Vegas, but one trip out there renews the soul. When I'm hiking in the mountains I don't think about the smell of the casinos or what I have to get done or how hot it will be in the summer. It's just me and the rocks. And the snakes. I saw the delightful sign that said "Stay on trail, snakes are awake."

And on a tangent I have to ask: is that really necessary? I know there are people that are not appropriately afraid of snakes but I am not one of them (see Lonesome Dove inspired snake rant). But once you see the sign all you can think about, and by you I mean me, is that a particularly cranky rattlesnake could be lurking in the bushes just waiting for the chance to eat one unsuspecting chubby girl. Judging by human reaction to my ass I'm guessing snakes might want to love on it too, but theirs is the love that can kill you. Or at least rot your flesh away. So not sexy.

But all of that aside, there is a certain beauty in the desert. I still feel slightly claustrophobic at times, but less so now. And honestly, knowing that everyone back home is shoveling snow and still in winter clothes makes me love life that much more. Someday when I am a rich and famous trashy romance author I will live where there are seasons and totally fly out here or some place like it come January.

So I don't actually have anything of real substance to say. Mostly I just don't want to finish grading and I want you (especially if you are somewhere cold) to feel my pain with me via the lovely weather right now. Of course, I can't really get to high up the moral ground since my world is still rocked by Lonesome Dove. That just seems wrong on so many levels. But first there were the snakes, and then there was Robert Duvall, and then there was Tommy Lee Jones. By the time it was all said and done I felt like I had traveled to Montana and back. And I think I've discovered it's not so much the moving character studies I enjoy in my Westerns as simply hot guys shooting guns and saving babies. Yes, I'm shallow. But it's only to protect my tender heart from the extreme emotional scars of Lonesome Dove. A girl's gotta have her pride after all.