The Adventures of Gondola Boy

Our Pictures So Far

I'm having a great time here. Here's a quick update on what's going on:

• The weather is dry, dry, dry. It makes your armpits sweat.
• I'm convinced that Aspen is a fake town. The prices are through the roof and the mountain landscape looks like a set-design. So do all of the cute buildings and "downtown" area.
• The Gant is a lovely condo. My workshop class is held in a condo with a long table jammed in it so it feels like we're in somebody's apartment.
• My cohorts are pretty nice for the most part. There are two young Indian women who seem to be really good writers and (more importantly) enjoyable, interesting people.
• My teacher, Sue Miller, is top notch, just like I'd hoped she would be! We started the class with line editing two specific pages (hand picked by her) of three different stories, mine among them. I was the very first person whose story got picked over, so I started learning and benefiting from the workshop right off the bat.
• While I really dislike the stories and writing styles of all of my cohorts besides the two Indian women, they were all really gracious readers. I'm pretty sure only I and this other pretentious girl are the only ones under the age of 35, so it's nice to be in the company and opinions of all of these fully-formed adult women (there are no men) who don't have giant egos (except the loud offensive gay women who sits right beside me and leans over and blocks my view of Sue Miller).
• Sue Miller is old school: a stickler for clarity, grammar, and imagery, and she immediately pin-pointed my weakness in terms of style: the tendency to be vague and suggestive. Right down the my habits with wording! It was so helpful and humbling. I've got some REALLY sloppy lines. She also had some really encouraging things to say that knocked my socks off: she said my story was "smart" in the sense that I "seemed to know all of the ingredients to brew a story" and that it was "promising" in a way that "shows promise in general." She's the kind of lady that says "terribly" before everything, too, and she has blue sparkly eyes and gets excited about characters. She said I was a good writer in a matter-of-fact way that makes the undergrad in me want to do a cartwheel. She thought the tension and subject of my story was "terribly interesting" and that its biggest strength was the "sharp" dialogue.
• The theme of our workshop is "passage to India" and we went to a really good reading today of six Indian authors (from their novels). I bought one of them because her story was the funniest and best.
• Chelsea and I are doing a lot of cutting up. It's like Eppert's class all over again.
  

Now you thought you were getting too much information (or T.M.I., as Jeanne says) with me gushing over my teacher's comments, but here comes more: I'm having my first period in almost a year (after the IUD removal). It feels great! It might be a placebo effect, but I feel like I returned to my normal self hours after its removal. Like my uterus could exhale, or something. I felt light.

For those of you who were wondering, it was only slightly uncomfortable to get it removed and it lasted about two seconds. It felt like a little cramp. I couldn't be happier to have it gone!

We're about to go down to Roaring Fork river to do our "homework."

In Leif news, Leif has a week-long pass to the gondola and has been overdoing it with the hiking. He said he saw a white deer butt just now. I've been calling him Gondola Boy.