I'm waiting for a phone call that was either supposed to come an hour ago, or will happen in a half hour, depending upon whose time zone we were discussing, or maybe I was totally confused and it's scheduled for next week. At any rate, I keep glancing at the phone, willing it to ring, an activity I thought I'd left behind when I graduated from high school and I keep thinking "I got up early for this?"

Plus, I've had an entire pot of coffee on an empty stomach. It's not helping matters.

And then, while I'm reading coverage of the mine tragedy, I run across a very interesting piece of trivia: the second worst mining disaster in the history of the United States happened here in New Mexico. On Adam's birthday. In my paternal grandmother's hometown.

Really?

I've had an urge to go up and check out Dawson for a couple of years now, partly out of morbid curiosity: Phelps Dodge shuttered the town and razed it in 1950. The idea that from the time she was in her forties, my grandmother didn't have a hometown grabs my imagiation. Grandmother Ellen died when I was barely five years old and only barely knowing her has been a regret. I want to go to Dawson because I want to see where she came from.

Also, I want to visit the cemetery, one of the few landmarks that remains. The great uncle my father is named after is buried up there, along with another Upton who died in the October, 1913 disaster. Is that my great grandfather? I have no clue, because that side of the family's like the middle of Proust to me. I know the basic tea-soaked madeline premise (they came from New England because of the railroad and they had a ranch?), but the details elude me. Time to rectify that, I think.

Okay, so now I actually have a resolution for 2006. Find out about the family. Visit Dawson. Answer phone. Oh, shit. Phone.