We's in Montana

When we first got to Montana we lived in a hotel for a few nights.  By the second day I knew everyone who worked in the hotel by their first name.   I worked from "home" in the hotel with the "Please Do Not Disturb" sign hung on my door.  On the first day, I was disturbed 4 different times by 3 different hotel employees before noon... Only one of them, the last one, spoke English.  No I do not want my bed made today, but thank you for asking.

Montana home #1, room 218

Living in Montana is a lot easier to get used to than say living in Denmark.  For one, two and three everyone speaks English, writes in English, and uses dollars.  So it's just a matter of getting used to new roads, new stores, and new friends.   The people here are really  nice.  Always saying "thank you", "how are you?", "oh no, I insist after you."  We went into a Mongolian BBQ restaurant and there was this punk-looking teenager in front of us, with long grown out bleached hair, baggy ratty jeans, a cut-off vest with silver studs on it.  I was thinking, "Ok this guys is going to be a little jerk."   And then he says to Trevor, "Oh excuse me sir, please go ahead of me..."  I never heard anyone call Trevor "sir" before.  Guess there is a first time for everything.  I am so judgmental...

Montana angel child

We went to a bar in Livingston the first weekend we were here (June 16th to be exact) with our new third wheel, Chris.  Livingston is the next town over and we were headed there to watch a reading / acting out of James Joyce's novel Ulysses.    June 16th is termed "Bloomsday" because this whole book takes place on June 16th and the main character's last name is Bloom.  Anyway, I never read the book, but the acting was entertaining and the plot sounds good, so I probably should.  After the bar we were walking down the street back to the car when a middle-aged man and his 10 year old son road up on bikes.  The man says to Chris, "Excuse me sir, but my son found this on the street back there, and he thinks it might have fallen out of your pocket."  It was Chris's $10 bill.  Chris gave the kid 5 bucks.

Bloomsday advertisement

On the drive out to the bar we were in the car,  just me in the back seat,  Trevor in the front passenger seat, and Chris at the wheel, when all of a sudden Trevor nearly jumps out of his car seat and is fussing around with something in his crotch.  It's like he has ants in his pants, or as Chris calmly put it, "sometimes you have an itch you just need to scratch."  Turns out it wasn't an itch he needed to scratch, but a biting beetle he needed to get out of his underpants.  The beetle was big and black in color and apparently bit Trevor.  We didn't get too good a look at it before Trevor threw it out the window.

Not knowing anything about the general insect life around here (or anywhere for that matter) I googled "Montana poisonous bugs" just to see if maybe there are dangerous insects out here that we should be worried about.  I found a picture of a big ugly beetle and ask Trevor jokingly if this is what it looked like? Paranoid at this point he says "YES that is exactly what it looked like! How the heck did you find that?"  I said I just googled "Montana poisonous bugs"...eeeeek!

After further reading though it turns out that the bug does have a poison in its veins or something so if you were to eat a bunch of them you might get sick, but the beetle doesn't spread any of it's poisonous elements by biting you.  Phew. We're in the clear.  No bug eating.

These aren't the kind of beetles Trev likes....

I was in the grocery store for the first time out here and was quietly  putting my food up on the conveyor belt while the person in front of me was checking out.  Once the cashier lady finished with him she cheerfully starts up a "How-do-you-do-ma'm?!!!!" conversation and I nearly soiled myself I was so startled and caught off guard by her super happy-go-lucky enthusiasm.

Side note: I might have mentioned this before but I loved our old grocery store checker-outer in Santa Barbara, this wild-eyed guy named Bennie.  Every time he checked us out he would look down at the receipt and say "Thank you Mr. and Mrs. Eckerson."  He always got it wrong.  Could never say Erickson, always Eckerson, not to mention he would always say Mr. and Mrs.  But we let both slide.   Well now at our new grocery store in Bozeman, our new favorite cashier, Gale, has now two out of two times referred to us as Mr. and Mrs.  Erckson or Erickason.  Love it.

The other day Trev and I were driving back to our place in Bear Canyon when I looked out the car window and saw a teenage girl holding a 3 foot long shotgun pointed at something in the distance.  Her dad was standing behind her obviously giving her a lesson.  My heart nearly stopped when I saw the gun.  We are not in Santa Barbara anymore.

 

We's in Montana