There's a lot going on here, actually, when the students are still around, the weather turns to spring, the sports seasons get started, etc. We had a bit of a cold snap early in the week, like Tuesday or Wednesday, but by now spring has arrived pretty completely and I'm beginning to see green in people's lawns that arrives by dint of either careful watering, or just plain spring. Other lawns are entirely, completely full of weeds, or, in some cases, just red dirt and scrubby weeds.

I've gotten into red dirt music more than the red dirt itself, which doesn't seem to want to grow my onions or my flowers. The music is great though. I admit that I never would have even heard it up north; they have no such thing as "Texas only" radio stations, or "all Texas all the time". If I can get myself a discriminating ear I'll learn differences between Texas country and other country; maybe I'll even make some. Stay posted.

As of Apr. 1 I've been here eight months, though I've left town a few times. I've come to like coming back and I heard a story once of a movie star, name forgotten, who got a house in Lubbock because it was so easy to slip in and out unnoticed. As a full city, it has a convenient airport, but it's just minutes from anywhere, and it seems virtually empty as you come through it. I can see how this would appeal to people who get mobbed at busy places and who value their time a lot. I actually linger a little; I like the cotton fields that surround the place; I like tumbleweeds that you get out in the country; I like the wide-open sky that you see outside of town.

I have to say, the tumbleweeds kind of rattle us. Sometimes the wind picks up and the dust swirls around, especially around the edges of the road or around the horizon where you'd like to see where you're going or where you've been but you can't. But the weird thing is, these tumbleweeds come bounding out of nowhere, jump and skip at eerie awkward angles, and fly into your car with a scratchy sound like they might be ripping the paint off the side. The wierdest thing is their bounce; since they often carry cotton around here, they look sometimes like these outsized stick rabbits, an irregular jaunt, out to hop the prairie. It's Russian thistle, they say; came over here with the settlers, and caught on, and now it goes a-skipping across the plain.

More later; I've worn out.