I can't watch that one, I don't know where to skip.

So here we are. I have moved in. I have maps of the world and the fifty states up on opposite walls, I have my magnetic poetry calendar next to me with the nonsense: "summer light is never magic it is a ghostly memory of an apple" still in position. I wrote that in San Francisco one morning, with the idea that I could do one every morning and put them on Twitter. I can't really do that here, since during the week I am in places like these:

That is an oil well. We also spent three days at gas compression sites. The job is like this: Ender and I drive around in a giant Dodge truck with a 300 gallon tank in the back that can spray twenty feet left to right off the back. We drive around as much as we can, spraying where we have been, marking the territory with blue dye and ground sterilization chemical. The reason? Places like this can't have weeds. They are a fire hazard. So we come, with our hard hats and our safety goggles and our workman's boots and we spray. When we can't get to it with the truck (in between equipment, too close to other Dodge trucks) we go at it with spray units that are also attached to the back of the truck with fifty foot hoses.

It's a weird job. But you can do it with iPod earbuds in, so it's not a bad one. Even with my hands lightly blue and my clothes sticking to my body from the heat, and hunger pangs from bad planning, a lot of it is listening to music in an air conditioned car with one of my oldest and best friends, talking about life and seeing country that I have never seen before.

There are unexpected perks too, like spending the last week in a giant cabin with six rooms and a cannon downstairs. My room had a spa bath, and the stairs leading there had a taxidermy pheasant. It was a mixture of bizarre and homey, and they walked the line like pros.

When I'm not doing that, I live in this house. Please do not look too closely at it.

Honestly though, I'm glad I'm here. I have serious homesickness for San Francisco and the life I used to lead, one without restrictions and such, but in the mean time I am getting used to the idea that not all space between buildings have to be filled, and the view from the cab of a truck can be mighty pretty.

That's Ender, in case you didn't know. Look closely at his shirt. He's missing a lot of buttons.

Next on this blog: what I miss about San Francisco, Provo is weird, and maybe the first chapter of the book that I'll never write about this.