not a whole lot to report this evening…

the extra-dry air circulated in the cars here in the train make my skin dry out, and also have made my nose bloody. i’ve got lotion for the skin(almost made a silence of the lambs joke here, you can insert your own) but no remedy for the nose. drinking lots of hot tea(yogi’s tahitian vanilla hazelnut!) and water hasn’t helped.

i’m in north dakota now, and in approximately 6 more hours i’ll be in minnesota, my new home state. about 10 hours left on this train trip, i feel cheated that it gets dark so early and stays dark so late, so i may not get any more fantastic photos of the dakotan countryside. heck, even montana didn’t see daylight until probably 8am this morning, so i’m wondering if it’ll be dark still when i arrive in minneapolis.

my musical selection has moved on to tom waits again, a consistent selection these past few weeks. i can honestly leave his orphans box set on random repeat and be good for weeks on end, i’m pretty sure. one of my favorites is two sisters: “and i’ll be true to my love, if my love’ll be true to me…”

what else happened this afternoon? i briefly chatted up a cute girl with long braided hair who i caught reading a hunter s. thompson book, and we shared our love for his works. mostly i’ve been trying to nap and relax and catch up on all that lost sleep from the last week or 10 days of stress from the moving. i know that without the help of some of my best friends this wouldn’t even be happening now, so i really appreciate them.

i’ve been eating the lounge car’s veggie burgers for lunch and dinner today, since they’re cheap and not too bad if you put some dijonnaise and ketchup on them. ok, so maybe they are bad, but they’re cheap and i’m too scared to try the cheap meat items here like hot dogs and hamburgers. anything of that variety that comes microwaved is just a pre-packaged gastrointestinal disaster, guaranteed, and that’s the last thing i need on a long train trip.

other than my naps, i’ve been spending almost all my time in the lounge car, just because it’s better for people watching, and it also has tons of electrical outlets, great for facilitating long movie watching and cell-phone charging. that’s extra necessary because the battery dies soooo much quicker when it has to be searching for service over half the time, in fact last night i went to bed with 50% charge remaining, and when i woke up only 5 hours later my phone had already shut off.

we seem to be making good time through north dakota currently… google maps on my phone is reporting that we’re outside a town called rugby. i think we have less scheduled stops in this state, which might be why it seems we’re crossing this state quicker.

hmm, looks like i’m out of tea in my cup. gonna go take care of that…

-h

Tags: north dakota, stephen h, Thoughts, Writings