You are here.
I'm spending three weeks of my Christmas break in South Dakota visiting my dad and stepmother. It's nice to be here, but it's cold, and it can get pretty boring. I'm up in the Black Hills - about 25 minutes from Rapid City - with no cell phone reception and no cable. At least I have intrawebs. During the day I sit around the cabin while my dad watches a tv that's always too loud. In the late afternoon, we go about 5 miles down the road to a bar called the Happy Tavern, where I drink cheap beer for a few hours. All is well.
My dad got some hay to attract deer to his backyard (he lives on a mountain in Black Hills National Forest), and there's a rather plump doe out there right now chomping away. By this point, my dad's three dogs have seen enough deer that they just gaze listlessly in the general direction of the beer.
The forest service is burning some piles of wood they cut down this year to thin out the trees in case of forest fire. The smoke has tinted the sky orange, and it looks like snow is dimming the hills across the road. It's looked like sunset for most of the day. It's beautiful here.
