Wherever you are, there you are

Sean is not the first person to comment that I moved from Hawaii to the Middle of Nowhere. Some local guy at a restaurant that my co-worker introduced me to (I think he's a councilman here) made the same comment.

And I said, "Well, wherever you are, there you are."

What the hell does that mean? It's amazing the senseless stuff people let you get away with saying because the guy just grinned and nodded enthusiastically and said, "That's true! That's true!"

Sometimes I just say something for the sake of saying it, repeat something I heard, something that sounded sage but I have no idea if it is, and for the most part people will grin and nod rather than be rude and say, "I have no idea what you're talking about."

Anyway, I think moving to The Middle of Nowhere, USA might be good for me because I always envisioned myself on a coastal city, not because the ocean is there but because most of the smart, intellectual people live on the coast. Uh, that's not quite right. I mean progressive, diverse, etc. But here I am here, battling my stereotypes of the heartland (are people here all racist?) and a queasy stomach (I'm so nervous!)

Yesterday I drove through this town called Aztec, technically it's a city even though the population is something like 2,000 people. Anyway, I drove through with Chris and we passed this 50-foot-tall cowboy hat with a huge sign that read, 'GOD BLESS AMERICA'. Later, oddly enough, I found out that Aztec is actually a pretty liberal city. Some people refer to it as the "hippie enclave."

Still, had it been snowing, I would have run out and made Chris take a picture of me next to the giant cowboy hat because that sums up my first impression of New Mexico. Snow in the dessert and cowboy hats.

Yesterday it rained, and that was the top story on all the television news stations here.