Why, oh Muse, did I ever abandon you? Or this blog?

The more things change, the more they stay the same. A lot can change in a 18 months, and just as much is same as it ever was.

After a couple months going the FSBO route, through mid-August of 2003, I learned that a friend of a friend was opening a scratch-kitchen Italian restaurant in a lodge overlooking tranquil Lake Hebgen, 15 miles west of West Yellowstone, Montana. The question was put to me: Did I want to come out to the mountains to

• Wait tables a few nights a week for killer cash?
  
• Be in charge of building a winning wine list?
  
• Spend my off days mountain biking in the 12 million acres of Gallatin National Forest, hiking in Big Sky, and soaking in the hot springs west of Bozeman?
  
  

Hell, yeah.

And so a day later, I signed a deal with a local realtor (owned in part, it turns out, by the same Liffrig schmuck who lost the senate race to Byron Dorgan) to promote the house, heaved my clothes and my cats into the Ford product, and headed west.

The last phone call I received before locking the house was from Nicole Flournoy. Why am I abandoning her and Randy? They really, really, REALLY want the house! Hey, toots, if it ain't sold by the time I get back, you can make me an offer.

[to be continued]