Yellowstoned

As I briefly mentioned in a recent post, Andy and I are going to Yellowstone on Sunday.  If we hadn't planned and booked this trip a year in advance, there's no way it would be happening at this point, for obvious financial reasons.  That being said, I am absurdly excited for this trip.  It's obviously going to be awesome, but even if we were taking a trip to the barren plains of North Dakota, I would probably still be thrilled to get out of the house and go somewhere.  Having cabin fever in August is not a good sign of things to come.  Also, I am looking forward to hanging out with Andy's parents and the Dietrichs.  Good people.

However, I'm a little afraid of getting too excited about this trip.  Over the course of my life, I have discovered that the amount of excitement and anticipation I feel before an event is directly proportional to the disappointment or disastrous consequences I ultimately experience.  As a result, I have taken the position of remaining ambivalent towards things that would normally be very exciting.  I like to call this mode of thinking "defensive pessimism."  If I expect the worst, and experience the worst, at least I'm prepared.  If I expect the worst, and it's not that bad, it will seem good by contrast, and if by some chance whatever I'm about to experience is actually awesome, it seems epically amazing by my own low standards. 

Therefore, I've taken this outlook on the trip to Yellowstone:

If we come back, we will return on Thursday.  I say 'if' because I think there is an 85% chance that I will be eaten by a bear or trampled by a bison, or possibly taken hostage by the incestuous Bonnie and Clyde duo.

I am scheduling some blog posts to update automatically in my absence.  They will alternate back and forth between random topics of my choosing, and graphic depictions of how I think I might be harmed on this wilderness excursion.

In the meantime, I'm going to go pack my suitcase.

Pack my suitcase?  I don't know how to pack a suitcase.