CONTRACTS AND CHEESE

Yay! I finished my last shift of internship and i am now officialy eligable to be a utah state theraputic guide. Apparently work likes me because they have offered my a one year contract. Good pay, awsome co-workers and a six and a half day weekend were compelling reasons to sighn on for the long haul, and the fat contract bonus was too much to resist. I never thought of myself as the type of guy who would sign a contract to work for a corporation. Then again the great basin desert is my office, and it isnt every day that you find a company where you will hear people say, with no hint of sarcasam, "I love our administrators".

This shift in the field i made a wheel of cheese to enter in the primitive crafts contest at the seasonal "shindig", which is held at the single outpost in the middle of our field. I took a two pound powederd milk ration and boiled it with some salt till the curd seperated. I then strained the whey into a nalgene using a bandana. Of course, without retin the cheese would not harden, so i baked it at a low temperature in a pot till nearly all the moisture had been driven out. Everyone said it was a shoe in for first prize becauase it was so different (most people entered things like stone knives they had knapped or nicely whittled spoons) or at least would get a good laugh. But shindig was postponed due to snowstorms, so i ate it.

Life goes extremely well on most fronts. I have a great job. My friends sarah, johanna and i are appartment hunting in st george this week (soon i will have a place to live!). I am looking forward to a hike this weekend with the beautiful young woman i met st patties day. She in quite intiuging in that she knows hot to make hundreds of string figures and knots. She has also been known to play sad songs on the fiddle her uncle carved her.

Yet in spite of all this, i still feel slightly malcontent. I am not sure what it is that causes this unease. Perhaps it is all the paperwork i need to finish before i can officialy qualify for guide status, or perhaps it is because I am still living on the streets, but it is tough to shake the sense that even now somthing is still not quite all right. Ah well. So it goes.

May the sun shine upon you all, and may the lord smile upon you, my friends, till we all meet again at the great cheesewheel in the sky.