What's in a name?

"O! be some other name:
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet" ~William Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet, Act II Scene II We had a talk about names the other day- a seemingly fluffy exercise in my weekend workshop class on counseling skills. What is your full name? What's its story? Significance? What's your attachment to it? In groups of four we answered these questions, one person at a time. And for the first time it hit me - hard - what's not in my name. My name is Cortney Copeland. Nice and simple. Nothing hidden there. I was almost Cortney June Copeland, according to an unofficial birth certificate I found during one of my childhood forays into old cabinets. June was my maternal grandmother, though I never knew her. My parents couldn't agree on using that name, and never picked a different one. On all my legal forms I just put a dash through the section for middle name. I might have ended up Cortney June Maska-Copeland, had my mother chosen to keep her name and do one of those hyphenated deals that seem to be popular among couples lately. I could even have been Cortney June Merczejewski-Copeland, had my maternal great-grandparents not been required to Americanize their name when they immigrated to the USA from Poland. Is Cortney June Merczejewski-Copeland really the same person as Cortney Copeland? Because as my name stands, it obfuscates so many realities. The reality of my immigrant roots, of my connection to the pariah side of my family - marginalized by the strong strain of schizophrenia running in their blood, by poverty and "disfunction" among my mentally ill aunts and other relatives. My name hides these things. It erases them from what identifies me. Juliet asks Romeo to "Deny thy father, and refuse thy name." She asks him to turn away from the blood feud tied to being a Montague, as I've been turned away from all things on my mother's side of the family. Granted, I've fared much better in life than Romeo, and I can also understand why he'd want to no longer be a Montague. At least family doesn't practice blood feuds. And we do have Thanksgiving dinner together, schizophrenia and all. I mean this in no way as a statement of absolute opinion on naming decisions. People have their reasons for giving, taking, or leaving a name. But now at least I understand that little twinge of discomfort I feel when somebody I know changes their name for whatever reason - I am still grappling with the changes in mine. What's in a name? The visible bindings that would compel me to call my mother's side of the family my family.

The Trial of Mediocrates

Back in high school, my friends and I used to joke that there was an ancient Greek thinker named Mediocrates, who wasn't quite as good as Socrates or Hippocrates or any of those men we see carved in marble today. He halfheartedly tossed around the idea that mediocrity was the way to go. But he never really asserted it, or advocated it. That's why his work hasn't been preserved so well, you see. He created it but didn't fight for it. 

Despite having made the guy up, I didn't know until just a few hours ago how much Mediocrates has affected my thinking. Maybe this hypothetical philosopher really is as influential as his more famous brethren. So many of my decisions (or lack thereof) are based on what Mediocrates tells me to do.  

Why?

While mediocrity does not get awards, it also does not get punished. 

Effort, however, sometimes gets punished. Excellence, even, gets punished. It separates you from people. Sometimes, when you try really hard, people see something different in you - and that changes things. Like that time in a high school literature class when we had to get up in front of the class to read a poem from the textbook. I picked one about war, and anger, and pain. We only had a few to choose from, so several other people read it too. But I planned where I would pause dramatically, where I would be loud, where I would be heavy with pensiveness. I read that poem with all my heart in front of the class, and it felt amazing! Thrilling! The teacher was beaming. But when I looked out at my classmates, they looked... scared. Awkward. Like I just crossed a line I wasn't supposed to cross. We were doing okay until I took it too far. I was no longer like them, the people who just got up and read their poem as if they were just themselves, in a classroom, reading a poem. After crossing that line a few too many times - getting too high of a grade and ruining the curve, trying too hard and looking like a teachers' pet, getting too scary when I played an angry character in theater class - I guess I learned to stop. 

I remembered Mediocrates this evening after I watched my friends dance in a low-key Jack and Jill competition at the local blues fusion venue we all frequent. They were amazing, and fun, and.... I knew I loved dancing with all of them. How could I have not taken the opportunity to do so and be celebrated for it together? Why wasn't I out there with them? 

Because I was afraid to be seen trying. Not afraid of failing - no, I'm a decent enough dancer - I was afraid of dancing my absolute best with and in front of people who know me. It seemed pretentious, foolish, like thinking the big present under the tree is mine and taking it in front of everybody before realizing I'm wrong. 

Mediocrity is safe. When we are mediocre, we are right there with everybody else who shares the big part of the bell curve. But when you - yes, you, I'm singling somebody out but am not willing to make it me - when you really, really try, you grow. You change. You find or perhaps even create parts of yourself that weren't revealed before. You challenge others to see what you can do, to look at you and reevaluate their conception of who you are and what you are capable of. And perhaps you impact those around you in some way - you make them feel or see or think something they weren't experiencing right before. When this happens, you lose the control of self-image that comes with sameness. People may love you or hate you rather than just liking you well enough. Perhaps you inspire people, or scare them, or make them laugh. Whatever you do, when you try to be good at it you are set apart and then you have to grapple with yourself: Who are you really? Because you aren't just who you thought you were, and now everyone can see this you whom you don't even know.  

Much safer to be mediocre, and leave excellence to the people who are good at it, right? Some people are allowed to get away with being impressive or talented or beautiful, so we'll leave it to them. So don't mind me, I'm here chillin' with my buddy Mediocrates. We'll passively enjoy your awesomeness without ever acknowledging our own ability to engage it - after all, we would't want to intrude. 

 

Interestingly enough, in some facets of my life I have been able to leave Mediocrates behind. While riding my my horses, for instance, I can try with every fiber of my being. Yesterday my big Thoroughbred gelding was terrified of some equipment along the arena fence. He balked, he spun, he skittered, he ran backwards - he did all sorts of things that are very scary when the one doing them weighs 1,100 pounds and can throw my comparatively itty-bitty human body in the dirt - but he eventually cantered bravely up the rail, because the gaze of my eyes and the lift of my hands and the weight of my seat and the tallness of my spine and the pressure of my legs and the depth of my breath all told him "We're going for it! We're going to keep cantering and we're going to make it!" That kind of attitude gets very important when you start throwing in wooden obstacles to jump over. 

Horseback riding has taught me to try 100%, because sometimes 99% fails. Sometimes 99% means you gallop to the groundline of the jump but then crash into it because at the last second you had a shade of doubt. It means you get run into the arena fence because just enough of you believes that the horse isn't going to turn. But 100%? Never, never has it failed me on the back of a horse. And that is the scary part. If you give 100%, you can't stay within the safety of your known problems. You can't just stop at the jump before takeoff - you have to stay with your horse once he leaves the ground, no matter how ugly it is. Giving 100% means you go somewhere that scares you. So, through horseback riding, I have learned that if I can't get my horse to do something, it's because not all of me wants to get it done. Part of me is still listening to Mediocrates, but instead of protecting me he's going to get my ass hurt. 

Zemo stopped at this jump twice, and then I remembered to ride like we were going to get over it. 

 

So, back to this dance contest - why didn't I enter? Why didn't I dance, even when I can be so confident in situations where much more is at stake?  

Perhaps I'm just a little scared to get to know myself, because that girl whose strength convinced a terrified horse to keep on going and whose intensity over a poem drew uncomfortable looks from high school classmates - that girl invites new tests and judgments and responsibilities her way. Making it over one jump brings on the next one, and makes people watch to see how many strides I get and what track I takes, and emulate what I did well and fix what I did wrong. Making an effort gives people something to work with, but it's scary because I don't always know what I'm giving to whom. An effort has consequences that everybody can either tear down or build upon. And if I had danced, my goodness, people would have looked at me. My effort might have made them feel something, and then it wouldn't just be mine, it would be ours. 

Mediocrity, meanwhile, seems safe because it keeps people from testing you and from judging you. It keeps you from having to share yourself. 

Tonight, mediocrity kept me feeling full of regret on the sidelines, selfishly hogging all my potential to myself because I was afraid of what people might do with it. And meanwhile my friends danced, seemingly unafraid of putting their effort out there where I could see it, and claim it as something of ours upon which I can reflect and build not only my conception of them but my conception of myself. 

Thanks guys, for your efforts. For your dances, of course. 

Mediocrates, this trial has shown you to be a miser. Go drink some hemlock.  

 

Dance, my heart!

The greatest journeys may travel not a mile.
I just got back from one that never left a room. I drove home racked with sobs, grinning and laughing too. That's what journeys do. That's what we want when we watch these great movies of stirring adventures, isn't it?. We want the tragedy lightened with a chuckle, the big-belly laughter dampened by a tinge of sadness. The moment of triumph, the shock of failure.
Fear. Relief. Love.
This is what journeys are about.
I keep looking elsewhere for them. I drive thousands of miles, fly thousands more. Anybody who reads this blog will know I only write when I'm traveling.

Well I'm traveling now. Traveling on a journey that started while snuggled on a sofa with friends, just watching dance videos. Traveling through love and anguish and insecurity and jealousy and just plain WOW how did they do that?! Through beauty, beauty made of suffering or of death or of the littlest seemingly mundane things. I will say of dance what I once said of literature, a number of blogs ago: it makes the ordinary a work of art. And not just the ordinary. Pain, addiction, love, loss, desire, business, humor - dance paints it all with the art of the human body. And after a few too many YouTube clips of SYTYCD, the floodgates of my heart were overrun. Open one emotion and you open the possibility of them all.
I shed a few quiet tears, and tried to maintain at least a little bit of composure as I hugged a friend goodbye. All I really wanted to do was bury my head in his shoulder and hold him tight and cry because life is so...
One word won't do it.
That rush of feeling when you see the person you love, that breathless awe at the first glimpse from a high vista, that crumbling when things fall apart, that warm comfort of familiar old friends...
We can communicate that in a dance, a look, a touch. A much needed embrace. A breath.
Poets can put it into words, I guess. I'm not much of a poet.
I'm restless because I sometimes forget that it is the emotional side of the journey I long for. The world is small compared to the heart. And when the world stops inspiring me, I don't always remember that that other, greater territory holds possibilities both endlessly gratifying and terrifying. But oh, how today reminded me. I am risen from the dull pain of apathy, freed from slow panic of boredom. And I'm kind of a mess. A laughing, crying mess who can't even write the term paper I left my dear friends for because this story was demanding release.
It's been a good journey. And this should make for a great dance someday.

Road Trip Diaries Conclusion: Only a Month Late

    Hey guys. As most of you know, my road trip did not actually end a month late. I got home well into the night of Sunday, August 26th after a pretty epic few days, some broken headlights, way too much time in or near a Wal Mart, etc...
     And then I went back to my regular life full of homework, horses, and other things that are not blogging.
     Finally, my insomnia and my failure to replace the diary I lost in Disneyland several months ago have compelled me to finish up this series and move on to more contemporary things. Like, I don't know, the exciting revelations of GRE math. Or perhaps pomegranates. I was definitely stirred to eloquent words about pomegranates yesterday.

     Anyway...

In a Nutshell: Overview of Days 19 and 20
     I actually did start writing my California blog on time - I just didn't finish it. So here's that snippet before I move ahead. Now, close your eyes just a second, travel back in time a little bit, and voila - open them and read on.

     Radio stations are few and far between in the lonely desert land that spans southwestern Arizona and southeastern California. I managed to find one station shortly after crossing the border into California, and of course it played the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I cruised along singing Californication, finally realizing how strange and dramatic a place California really is. Good to be here, even if it is crazy southern California.

Overview of Day 19

Route: Flagstaff, AZ to Santa Barbara, CA

Miles traveled: 566 today, 6,593 total. 

Hours in car: 9.5 today, 86.5 total. 

Coffee Consumed: Caitlin: 1 cup today, 26 total. Cortney: 0 today, 5 total. Combined: 31 cups. 

Food highlight of the day: Pho at Pho Oxnard. It was a close tie between this place and our breakfast at Macys- they were equally highlight-worthy, but since Macys got the highlight yesterday the pho wins out. Caitlin and I had been craving pho for hours along the drive, and looked this place up on Yelp. The menu is huge, the clientele is largely Vietnamese, and we both devoured bowls of noodles with super spicy chile sauce and Sri Racha as we sweated and turned red and absolutely loved every minute of it. Best pho ever.

Quote of the Day: Cortney: "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" To understand this quote, it is first necessary to read this amazing comic/blog: Hyperbole and a Half. For context, "eeeeeee" is how I feel about SoCal drivers. Within minutes of one another, we saw one who ended up down a bank, and another who ended up straddling a curb. They're nuts here.

   

     We got to Santa Barbara by nightfall, (here begins my month-late writing), where we were inundated with bro-speak and hordes of drunk pedestrians making it very difficult to drive. I don't know what it is about UCSB and Isla Vista... you have to be a particular kind of person to exist here.
     We stayed with my longtime friend Kristin, and had a bonfire in her backyard with a number of other people. Kristin, relieved that nowadays I finally drink alcohol, was soon dismayed when she learned I do not drink Miller. Or Coors. Or anything of that sort. I have earned myself a permanent reputation as an alcohol snob among the people by that bonfire, because I drove off to get a bottle of wine.
     This is when the car trouble started. Utterly unmoved by cajoling and wheedling and other attempts to get me to drink cheap beer, I hopped in the car to drive to Safeway. I pulled away from the curb, and both headlights went out. Simultaneously.
     Sorry Nell Genzlinger- I just listened to your rant about this word on the Q broadcast tonight, but, really?
     So I got yelled at by some frat boys, turned on my brights, and, staring at the Google maps on my iPhone, somewhat treacherously made my way to Safeway and got there 2 minutes before they were to stop selling alcohol. As the PA system announced this, one bottle emerged before my eyes: An Argentinian Malbec.
     I was saved!!!
    And it was a great night, brospeak included. It's really funny to hear guys talk science in bro. "Dude, the otters are, like... a keystone species... yeah man." I've never heard trophic cascades and marine food chains explained in such a manner. It was an incongruity like the time I climbed a pasture fence in fishnet stockings...
     Speaking of cuddly marine life, let's move on to the final day of the road trip - a drive up the coast from Santa Barbara, up to Monterey, and finally inland to Sacramento.


Overview of Day 20
Route:  Santa Barbara, CA to Sacramento, CA via Highway 1
Miles Traveled: 415 today, 7,008 total.
Hours in Car: Lost count today due to car trouble... perhaps 9 today, making 95.5 total.
Coffee Consumed: Caitlin: 1 today,  27 total. Plus my 5: 32 total.
Food Highlight of the day(s): Even MORE Vietnamese food at a restaurant in Monterey, which I have now forgotten.
Quote of the Day: Cortney: (while darting out into street by WalMart parking lot) "Duh nuh, duhnuh duh nuh (Mission Impossible theme) duhnuh duh nuh.... VICTORY!!!"

     We left Santa Barbara early, knowing we were headlightless and had to make Sacramento by nightfall. But then... there was the beach.

  Full of cool rocks...  

Most of which Caitlin wanted to climb...

There was no way we were getting to Sacramento by nightfall.



The tide pools and elephant seals only exacerbated the problem. Far too much sunny coastline, beckoning to us to come and frolic...

Yeah, there was no way we were getting home before dark. Uh oh. 

     Now, the headlights should have been a quick fix - just go to Pep Boys or something, get the bulbs switched out, and carry on. Right? But Caitlin is apparently the do-it-yourself type. So, with her fiance on videochat on her smartphone, she poked and prodded that car for a couple hours before we realized we didn't have the right tools. We went to Target to buy tools. Fail. We went to WalMart to buy tools. Success! But we had the wrong problem - we were playing with and testing the wires, because nobody believes that two headlights would go out simultaneously. It had to be the wires...
     Nope.
     We spent 4 or 5 futile hours testing that car's wiring before finally finding an AutoZone that was still open, buying some headlight bulbs, and realizing that 5 minute endeavor plus a few minutes to screw them in was all we needed to do.
     This is why I just take my car in to the shop. But I love you anyway, Caitlin, and your do-it-yourself spirit.
     When we finally hit the road out of WalMart, Caitlin realized that we had left the registration booklet, manual, etc on top of the car. Great. We drove a loop back to find it, and, lo and behold, I somehow saw that grey book on the blacktop (perhaps it was our new shiny headlights). By this time we were utterly delirious, singing the Mission Impossible theme, and darting out into the street like inebriated ninjas.
     Needless to say, we finally made it back to Sacramento. And I finally wrote my blog.

*Insert token photo of Highway 1 here*

Road Trip Diaries Days 17-18: The Grand Canyon

     BAM! Just thought I'd get your attention. 

     Caitlin and I are nearing the end of our journey- we're now just one border away from California, here in Flagstaff, AZ. It feels so far west! So big, so dramatic, so perfectly suited to hopping on horses and galloping into the sunset... but my horses are in California, so continue driving we must. 

In a Nutshell: Overview of Days 17 and 18

Route: Albuquerque, NM to Flagstaff, AZ --> then to Grand Canyon National Park

Miles Traveled: 404 today, 6,027 total. 

Hours in Car: 6 today, 77 total.

Coffee Consumed: Caitlin: 4 these days, 25 total. Cortney: 0 these days, 5 total. Combined: 30 cups. 

Food Highlight of the Day: The best soup ever at Macy's European Coffeehouse in Flagstaff. Way back at the beginning of the trip, some hippies at a rest stop told me I needed to go to Macy's. When my friend Amber mentioned it, I remembered the hippies and the fact they tend to have excellent taste in vegan friendly food, and so I went. 

It may not look out of the ordinary, but that red lentil potato soup is the best soup I have ever had in my life. It is so savory, so perfectly spiced, and the potatoes are the perfect melt-in-your-mouth tenderness... regular lentil soup or regular potato soup will just not cut it for me any more.

Quote of the Day: Cortney: "Oh Joel and Caitlin are playing video games." Amber: "Ewww gross!!!!"


Rugged and Awesome Arizona
   There is nothing like a desert thunderstorm. We got stuck in many between New Mexico and Arizona- the clouds roll in, the thunder rattles the car, and all of a sudden the raindrops come with such volume and velocity that driving becomes an exercise in how hard one can squint and squeeze the steering wheel.
     We had to pass through such a storm on the way to the Grand Canyon, and only hope that it would clear up. Like desert thunderstorms do, it soon retreated just enough to provide a stark contrast with the blue sky and eventually moved well beyond the horizon.

The break in the weather as the storm crossed the canyon

    The canyon started out almost blue, filled with mist and rain and distant shadows of the other rim. At some parts it was so wide that we couldn't see across, at least not until several hours later when the storm had completely gone.

    When clear, the Grand Canyon is a brilliant spectacle of geology. Exposed layers of old earth tell a story in many colors and textures. The bottommost deposits we could see, the Vishnu Basement rocks (a name very pleasing to a religion scholar like myself), are over 1.8 billion years old. That means they were around in the Precambrian Period. The continents were jammed together into a big old supercontinent back then, as far as I can discern from a rather complex Wikipedia article. Layers upon layers were deposited, and the dinosaurs walked along the top of them here before water erosion started forming the canyon about 6 million years ago.  

     Sure puts things in a different perspective. 

Here you can see the top 3 or 4 layers. There are still several deeper ones. 

For some reason being on the edge of a cliff compelled me to try yoga.

     After a very informative lecture from a ranger about why squirrels are the most dangerous animals in Grand Canyon National Park (anybody who goes to Sac State can understand this), Caitlin and I went farther out to Desert View, a point with an old watchtower where a handful of people gathered to watch the sunset. Luckily we were attacked by no squirrels. Sounds like they might be even more vicious here than Sac State. Instead we simply had a peaceful sunset surrounded by a variety of people from Europe and Asia. Relatively few Americans at the Grand Canyon, but it is definitely a global destination judging by the number of languages we heard.

Um... you know that awkward moment when you realize you cannot possibly follow something so awesome? Yeah. Feeling that. 

Road Trip Diaries Day 16: New Mexico Wins the Pretty Sky Award

     Hello from Albuquerque, New Mexico. I'm lounging on a comfy bed in the aging but still cute Route 66 Hostel (Samantha Brown from the Travel Channel came here!) while Caitlin plays some excellent classic rock. Her taste in music and portable speakers have been a godsend these past two weeks. And this moment is pretty darn perfect. I've settled down from my let's-go-all-day-and-see-everything-possible mode, and sitting in a private hostel suite listening to Pink Floyd and Eric Clapton and The Animals is hard to beat when I'm this tired. mmmm acoustic guitar...

In A Nutshell: Overview of Day 16 
Route: Denver, CO to Albuquerque, NM
Miles traveled: 451 today, 5,623 total.
Hours in car: 7.5 hours today, 71 total.
Coffee consumed: Caitlin: 2 today, 21 total. Cortney: 0 today, 5 total. Combined: 26. Although I probably lost track of a few, these are just the ones I remember. I'm more of a tea drinker.
Food highlight of the day: Finally getting some real Spanish rice after fantasizing about it since last week.
Quote of the day: Caitlin: "I'm completing my slow but inevitable transformation into a gay man." This while admiring a striped scarf in a thrift store named Plato's Closet.

It's weird being this close to California again.

New Mexico: Way Prettier than I expected. And certainly way prettier than Nebraska. 

     As I mentally prepared myself for another day on the road, I imagined today would be full of flat ugly desert. Kind of like Nevada, where there are few things other than prisons and signs telling you not to pick up hitchhikers. (Note: Nevada is obviously not on this trip. I crossed it on my way to and from South Dakota when I worked there in 2008. And to those who live in Nebraska or Nevada, please don't take offense- I know your states may have decent and interesting areas too, but driving across them in their entirety.... oy).

What I expected from New Mexico
(photo taken in Montana)

What New Mexico actually looks like

But back to New Mexico: When I saw the sign announcing that we had crossed the border from Colorado to New Mexico, I was taken aback by the fact that we were surrounded by pleasant green hills and striking mountains. And even as the dirt became redder and the trees became shorter, New Mexico remained stunning and hilly and a nice pale shade of green all the way until we reached Santa Fe to take a short break. 

     We stopped in Santa Fe for about 40 minutes, because a number of people have told me I needed to stop there. And it's cute. Full of little square adobe buildings and slowly ambling tourists with big cameras around their necks. It seems like a good place for a retreat, like the ones I went on at my Catholic high school. It is very Catholic in its roots, too. Signs all around the cathedral proclaim "Celebrating 400 years of faith!" Caitlin has a more cynical way of putting that. Missions have a rather dark history, but today this place is a lot friendlier and very pretty. 

 

I got some mango sorbet, strolled through the little plaza, and it was time to go. Santa Fe is quaint and quiet and it has two Whole Foods and a Trader Joe's within minutes of each other. Road tripping college students clearly don't belong here. It is for people with money who like a pretty little town, as far as I can tell. And there are lots of flowers. It reminds me of my grandma's house. 

     Albuquerque is only about an hour south of Santa Fe, and quite a different place. The land dries out after Santa Fe and is full of creosote bushes. 

Still more exciting than a lot of our drives

     Albuquerque is a fairly big city, with bars and pizza places and all kinds of noisy hangouts that would not dare rear their heads in the adobe-clad historic district of Santa Fe. Perhaps in other parts of Santa Fe, but we did not visit them. 

Albuquerque- I keep calling it Albequirky. 

       Anyway, this seems like a pretty cool spot. I'm still recovering from going out blues dancing last night in Denver though, and alas, tales of New Mexico's nightlife will have to come to pass some other time or in the life of some other person. I'm chillin' in this janky old hostel listening to the Rolling Stones, my 6 day headache has subsided significantly, and I'm enjoying this thoroughly.
     Oh, and about the title of this post- I'm serious, the sky has been amazing this entire day. You can see the bright blue in some of these photos, with perfectly fluffy white clouds, but there were also various shades of grey and even golden clouds hovering over the hills and bluffs, some with streamers of rain visible from where we were on the dry plains. The sky here is remarkably multicolored, and often the horizon will show two or more kinds of weather as it is influenced by the terrain.
      And here's the sunset as viewed from the window of our janky old hostel. Prettiest sky of the whole trip- thank you New Mexico!

Road Trip Diaries Day 15: I Need to Live in Denver

Hey there. So, I don't actually have plans to move to Denver, but it needs to happen. The seed for this thought first planted itself in my brain when I was here for Lindy on the Rocks in 2010. It occurred to me that of the (then few) American cities I'd been to, this was the only one outside of California I felt I could live in. Vegan food abounds, the roads are drive-able (unlike Chicago), the trains are non-ghetto, there are skyscrapers but the nearby mountains are bigger, the baristas at Starbucks are friendlier than golden retriever puppies, there are parks, there are pedestrianized urban walkways dotted with painted pianos, there are enormous installations of happy, humorous street art, there are blues dancers.... oh, I knew before arriving that I liked Denver, but little did I know how hard I would fall for it.

In a Nutshell: Overview of Day 15. 

Route: Omaha, NE to Denver, CO
Miles Traveled: 532 today. 5,172 total.
Hours in Car: 9 today, 63.5 total. Yes I know this data is redundant.
Coffee Consumed: Caitlin: 1 cup today, 17 total.  Cortney: 0 today, 5 total. Combined: 22 cups

"All desserts are vegan." The best words

 I've ever heard in my life.

 I've waited two years for this. 

Food Highlight of the Day: Finally going to Watercourse Foods after hearing about it in 2010, and getting a vegan milkshake. Mine was chocolate-peanut butter. It was thick- the kind that is a little tough to suck up through a straw, but totally worth it. It could easily be eaten with a spoon. This is how milkshakes should be. Watercourse makes their shakes with coconut milk ice cream, so they definitely have a coconut flavor. I happen to love coconut, so it works!

With my chocolate peanut butter shake, and
some Boston cream pie cake.

Quote of the Day: (in Starbucks)
Cortney: "Can I get a tall iced-"
Barista: "No."
Cortney: "Okay, well can I get a tall soy-"
Barista: "No."
Cortney: "Fine then, I'm just going to steal your WiFi and not get anything."
Other barista: "Ah, he's just being disagreeable."
Cortney: "But that's not disagreeable. That's apathetic. You need your disagreeable face."
First Barista: *tries several awkward grimaces until I approve*

Denver: I want you, I need you, oh baby, oh baby. 

     I really am this obsessed with Denver. Of course, driving across all of Nebraska before getting to it possibly intensified the feeling, but I really do love Denver. I mean, not only do they have tons of vegan food (kind of like Portland), but in the summer the weather is actually good enough to play piano on the streets (definitely unlike Portland). I mean, look at the photo below, and tell me: Does it get any artsier than this?

     Another thing I've noticed about Denver is that it is unusually happy. As I am an almost sickeningly happy person (I spent my afternoon in Denver jumping around and telling my friends, "Let's frolic!!!"), I think I would do very well here. I could be one of the weirdly perky Starbucks baristas- they have personalities and senses of humor and stuff. One guy was fully devoted to lightheartedly teasing me for the entire time I was there, and I probably should have gotten his number. You know, for when I move here and need a cute, happy Denver boyfriend. He got very excited over the fact I was having a FaceTime conference with a professor and group of student assistants back home in Sacramento. Perhaps I just have a thing for cute guys who work in coffee shops. It took a while for me to be cured of the temptation to go back to Iowa City to find the guy from Fair Grounds who had (according to my friends) been flirting with me.
     But it's not just the baristas who are really happy in Denver. Look at these dancing statues- they clearly agree with me that Denver is totally frolic-worthy:

     I think I pulled almost the exact same move last night when I went blues dancing at the Mercury Cafe- a (get this) vegan/vegetarian cafe with a full schedule of dances and dance classes in the evenings. Tuesday is Blues night, and I recommend Googling the calendar for all the other events they have going on. The dance is upstairs, in a large room with a beautiful romantic ambiance and an old, dark wood floor. In terms of atmosphere, this is one of my favorite places to dance. Not to mention that staff come around and pour ice water for you while you take a break at one of their cute little tables by the windows. 

    So, I've already got a built in social scene for when I move to Denver. Dancers are never without friends. What's more, I've even got a potential roommate, seeing as my friend Haydn who hosted us wants to move again already. His car has already been stolen, rummaged through, and parked at the apartment on the other side of the parking lot... a perfect excuse to move downtown by the University where it is way less sketchy and roving teenagers won't steal candy from his backseat. I'm glad they didn't see the Sour Patch Kids in Caitlin's car. 

Haydn: "Are either of you comfortable with scruffing?" 

 I must now go off on a bit of a tangent, purely for the sake of including this entertaining photo. Haydn has a cat named d'Artagnan, a black and white longhaired and very handsome feline fellow. d'Artagnan is not happy about the new apartment and especially about the fact that it is full of boxes. They are terrifying, offensive, and overall upsetting. So d'Artagnan tucks himself behind the TV and refuses to come out. I think he's protesting. We could not lure him out even after several hours, so Haydn and Caitlin teamed up to get him out of there. 

     It worked eventually. And of course, Caitlin's the cat whisperer and they were soon to be best buddies. She has convinced every pet we've encountered on this trip to adore her, it's quite a skill. Although overnight, d'Artagnan proceeded to disturb our sleep by clawing just about everything in the apartment. 

     Cats. 

     But I could live with cats. My life plan now goes about this far: Get into grad school in Denver, move in with my literature-nerd friend Haydn and his easily offended cat, eat lots of vegan food, go blues dancing every Tuesday, find a cute Denver boyfriend at a coffee shop, and be happy and awesome and go frolicking down the pretty pedestrianized city walks day in and day out. 

     I really don't think I need to do anything else with my life. That sounds pretty damn amazing.