great falls, montana

it's not very far from idaho, but it's a world away from idaho...

cowboy poets spin rhymes abundant in mountain swears and wash them down with 80 proof. oh, yeah, we're not in idaho...

we're librarians. we don't censor and we don't judge. we like to be taken aback with poem and prose. we're not afraid of the f-word... thank God we're not in idaho.

i'm in great falls until saturday for the montana library association conference. this is one of my favorite conferences because it's in montana and not very many people like to come to this from idaho. so my pal, rena, and i come up once a year and have a ball! we shop, we eat and we do library things.

so, of course, i'm having fun, but i miss my boys...

jackson... that's birthday cake on his face

ryan... also with cake and the oft seen get-the-camera-out-of-my-face sneer!

one last thing... i saw this over and over today:

Montana. It's everything Colorado thinks it is. - Anonymous

word of warning...

Tequila is made of one specific type of the agave plant: the Agave Tequilana Weber, blue variety. There are many different varieties of the agave plant in Mexico. But tequila is made only from the BLUE AGAVE.

why do we care?

when we were at the desert museum i was enthralled with this huge agave plant...

... it looks like a big asparagus and that's kind of neat, right? well, this is NOT a blue agave, so no tequila was available when i tripped over a rock next to this agave and broke my fall in a teddybear cholla! do you know about these evil things?

see, don't they look soft and fuzzy? not the case...

i came away with several--give or take a hundred--barbed spines in my hand! i thought i was going to DIE from the pain, and then i had to ask myself some very serious questions:

• if it would really be necessary to pull those out?
• was there any tequila nearby?
• would the festering sores last long?
• did anyone see me trip over a rock and fall into this devilish cactus?
• was there any tequila nearby?
• where was the nearest place to get said tequila?

well, the spines all had to be plucked out, and the forty-11 wounds cleaned (hello? STINGING!!) and my poor arthritic, libriarian's hand swelled up! i know--poor me.

but to add insult to injury, ryan says to me, "you know, you should stay on the trail." he's so wise...

these pictures are from the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum site