I don’t know who I was in a former life but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Wild Bill Hickok. And that’s about all I have to say about that except that I bet y’all have work meetings that sometimes veer off into the twilight zone too.

I was once in Deadwood though (that’s where WBH died, in case you didna know). Spent the night there back in the summer of, hmmmm, oh yeah, it was 1998. I know that because I had spent the year fighting unsuccessfully to keep the school board from morphing our alternative middle school into something else. Took me all summer to decompress from that. And Lizard Breath was heading off to high school in the fall. Of course, the next fall also brought on the Ganzhorn Grab and subsequent Gash but that’s a whole ‘nother story.

Anyway, we were on one of those loverly family trips. You know the kind. The car breaks down, the kids get sick, and the dog runs away. Er, not quite. We didn’t have a dog and nobody got sick, although there was one notoriously obnoxious pistachio-eating episode during which I thought somebody might get killed. And the car didn’t break down but on our very last morning, after a night in the absolute worst Holiday Inn ever (Naperville, Illinois, do not go there), the loverly [not-so-]old POC’s fuel pump started up with a wailing noise that didn’t go away for an hour or so. Didn’t exactly inspire confidence in the American auto industry but we did make it home.

We went to Mount Rushmore (highly overrated). And the Badlands (NOT hightly overrated). And Wall Drug — I guess if you are hanging out by the Badlands, you have to go to Wall Drug. There was a dinosaur there if I remember correctly. And I think we ate buffalo burgers or something and bought a cute little egg container for camping, which we were sorta doing some of the time. And then there was Devil’s Tower, which I didn’t think I would like but fell head-over-heels in love with. And I fergit what else. There was a cave tour somewhere and Needles, South Dakota. We did NOT visit Crazy Horse. The GG refused to pay the rather exorbitant price. On principle, I guess. Anyway, he made a u-ey outta there and I didn’t argue.

Oh yeah, and there was Deadwood! Kee-reist, I lost myself in my own blahg entry (The Engineer would love this) and just now figgered out what got me off the track. Wild Bill Hickok died in Deadwood and that was brought up in a meeting today (in the on-line banking industry, go figger). I wasn’t on the hot seat at this meeting so I was sitting back in the peanut gallery with W1.5 and others checking facebook on my phone googling Wild Bill Hickok and “dead man’s hand” and Deadwood… And I remembered! Oh yeah! I’ve been to Deadwood! We stayed overnight there. Slot machines everywhere. Lovely old ladies with perfectly coiffed blue or purple hair sticking the plastic cards that were attached to chains hanging around their necks into the slot machines in front of them. I’m not judging here. We all have our own personal vices and I was just fascinated by it all. And Deadwood is beautiful. It’s in a canyon if I remember. I loved it there. Even though I left one of my fav-o-rite hairbrushes in our motel room…

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