My first email from Miles City

I'm starting my 3rd week here in Montana and my second week in school. It is proving to be a pretty good move. We've had a few hot days - but apparently an unusual number of normal days in the low 80s.

I like my apartment a lot. It is less than a mile from school, grocery and drug stores and fast food and about a mile to Church. It has high, vaulted ceilings but the walls that separate the rooms are only 7 feet high - not reaching the ceilings. It has a more open feel than you'd expect from a place where the rooms are too small to photograph well. There is nowhere near the amount of police activity that there was in Federal Way but yesterday was an exception as I saw four police cars with lights flashing parked about two blocks from my apartment. As I drew closer to the cars I saw only the police on the scene, a crossover vehicle parked in the middle of the street with red markings on the road around the tires...and a child's bike with a bent wheel lying on the side of the road nearby. I could find no reference to it on the Miles City Star web site but I assume some poor kid got hit by a car on his or her bike. Sad.

The students are a nice bunch and the faculty and folks at church have been very welcoming. There are a few things you don't see in Seattle though, like:

* Signs on the bathrooms: "Please don't spit tobacco in the toilets"
* The jangling of a student walking in the hall by my doorway...in spurs! Lots more cowboy hats than Green River. Way way way more cowboy hats than Highline.
* A pickup that parks on the campus with a bumper sticker proudly proclaiming the owner is a "bareback champion"... oh wait, you might see that in Seattle...it just might not mean the same thing.
* The phone conversation from the office next door - the professor wants to have a class in "A.I." next semester. The guy teaches ag. The course topic has nothing to do with artificial intelligence -- its more about sheep and cattle. "Spread 'em, Dolly"
* The car in our parking lot with the sticker "Obama: just another bum looking for change" on the back and a dead bird with feathers and feet sticking out stuck in its grill.

I asked about helping out with music at Church. Sight unseen, the accompanist pulls out a schedule and puts me on for the following Sunday...as the cantor. It seems to have gone well. I did it last Sunday too. It is a friendly, normal church.

I am going to join a bowling league with a couple of friends of the other math instructor. Should be interesting.