Hours of Daylight – 9:57

I don’t have the words necessary to accurately describe how glad I am to see January come to a close. January was a nasty month on so many different levels that if i kept records January 2006 would be among my top five baddies.

That i managed to close January with a positively gut-wrenching job-related mess really helped land the month on a spectacularly low note. Basically Albertson College turned me down after two interviews and months of waiting-to-hear. I then did a very bad thing. I called my connection at a state job that i’d applied for separately and said i’d take the state job. That action was a very bad, shortsighted, childish, fear-driven, inconsiderate, and utterly unprofessional way to act. To make it even worse, i went right to the brink of signing papers with the state, wasting more precious time that the group could have been using to find a more proper candidate. I finally wrote an email… the worst i’ve ever written, and backed out of the deal.

It was the right decision for me, but i must be broken… something in my head must simply be damaged beyond repair to cause me to act like i did. The end of this January is yet another in a long string of personal failures that just won’t go away.

So, to try and build my spirit back up a bit i spent the morning grading student work, sending personal emails to a few, sniping at a couple for failing to follow the class rules, and basically getting caught up on my one paying job here in Boise.

Once i finished with most of that work i elected to take a short drive up toward the mountains to have a look at the snow that is breaking records left and right. I was impressed first by the water level at the Diversion Dam. You remember the Diversion Dam… i’ve mentioned it several times before. It’s the last dam on the Boise river above the city proper. It’s where a portion of the river is diverted into the New York Canal and from there feeds the flood irrigation system of the Treasure Valley. It’s also where T-Mobile cell service stops. Since we’re not in the irrigation season the diverter is closed and the flow of the Boise river is normally very low. But not today! Because of the record snowpack up in the higher elevations the Army Corps of Engineers has opened the gates at the Arrowrock dam and the Lucky Peak dam and has raised the Boise river right up to flood stage. They’re trying to keep the reservoirs low in order to accomodate the massive melt anticipated come spring.

Here’s what you see if you drive 15 miles from my house:

My feelings on where we live are so mixed it’s impossible to get a clear read. While i would love to live up in those pines i realize given what Annette (and i) do it would be the height of impraticality. It’s also a massive ego statement built on a foundation of gasoline. We would need to sell the VW Camper and the Volvo, buy a Subaru Forester and probably a Jeep Wrangler, or maybe a compact pickup truck, and then be prepared to live and die by those vehicles. But what’s more troubling we’d probably end up being even more isolated than we are now. Robie Creek Rd is not pedestrian friendly at all so it isn’t like we’d be out strolling hand in hand every evening chatting with our neighbors. Sure we’d hoof up the hills behind our place, but only until someone richer that us bought the land, cut a driveway, and put up NO TRESPASSING signs. And the reality is we wouldn’t be living there – we’d be sleeping there. We’d get up in pitch darkness, Annette would ready herself, then she’d spend the next hour getting in to work.

Since broadband internet is not available at the place we were looking at buying I’d have to share her office (while that deal lasted) and drive in too. We’d be able to share a ride some days, but on others we’d need two cars. I could ride the motorcycle, but only during the summer months as it would be impossible to navigate the back country once the snow started flying.

Then at the end of her workday, say, 7pm, she’d start the ride home, arriving at the entrance to Robie Creek Rd in pitch darkness 5 months of the year, and have to negotiate a potholed dirt road for 12 miles while her mind replayed the events of the day and began worrying about the day to come. For at least three months of the year she’d only see our house in daylight on weekends, sick days, and holidays. Living up in the hills is one thing, sleeping there with two hours of driving between home and work is another.