duck-shaped pain

As much as I complain about where I live, I will admit that there are some nice things about living here.

We have two decent radio stations -- more than just about any other place I've lived. One is a good, locally run public radio station and the other is the college station. Both have more than occasional flashes of brilliance, such as this morning, when the public station played the entire new Go-Betweens record while I was driving to work. An unexpected thing to hear, really.

We also have a lot of Scenic Wonders. My favorite is this one:

These are the Coke Ovens in the Colorado National Monument. I work only a couple minutes' drive from them, so one of my favorite things to do in the winter (they don't chage admission in winter) is to drive to the point that overlooks them for lunch. There's a sort of out-of-the-way spot there where I can sit down and eat without anyone else noticing me -- just me, my thermos of soup (soup is mandatory) and the Coke Ovens.

This is Independence Monument, also in the same area. It's sort of become the defacto symbol of the valley, and you see its likeness (skillfully or crudely rendered) on everything.

(The guy who took those pictures is a former co-worker of mine. Another thing about here -- you just sort of randomly stumble into people you know everywhere... Other scenic pix can be found here.)

It doesn't take much more than about ten minutes to get anywhere (although, that seems to be changing with our ever-expanding population).

We have our own native hallucinogenic flower, too (sorry, I don't know the scientific name). Too bad most of the people who ingest it end up running naked and incoherent down our main avenue -- local hallucinogenic flowers deserve a better rep than that.

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