The Myth & The Majesty

I've told you before of the trek to Harney Peak , one of the single most popular trails in the Hills. As it happens, it's also one of my favorites -- and the most likely to be the target of an organized hike. Which is also why I put it on a list of things I needed to do repeatedly this year. Hike one: March. Gorgeous. Perfect weather. Maybe a tad windy. Hike two: April. Snowy. Excellent crowd of people to hike with. Hike three: Today. Perfect weather. Great companions. And apparently I sat in almost the exact same place as in April.   Just a few more this year and I'll be in prime form...

IT'S SO GREEN.   It's also awesome.  

We've had our first day with summer staff and so far they rock.   After around 10 inches of rain in the last couple of weeks, it's getting really, really green outside.   This could be a particularly excellent summer.   But maybe best of all, the sun will come out tomorrow....

Fill this out. Report back. Original: Bracket Confession: I got to the end and couldn't make up my mind....

So I took the plunge a couple weeks ago and ordered something totally unnecessary. I'm an Amazon Prime member -- have been for over five years now -- and I am a walking advertisement for the service. Most of my Christmas and birthday shopping in that time has made use of the two-day shipping. I love the streaming music service. I absolutely adore my Paperwhite, which is easier to use with said membership. And as their video library grows, I've become a huge fan of Prime Instant Video. Which is why I eyed the Fire TV Stick for so long. It took some convincing. First that they'd worked out enough bugs (I rarely buy the first version of new tech because I don't enjoy being an unwitting guinea pig), then because I don't have subscriptions to all of the other services. The stick lets you link in Netflix, HuluPlus and HBO Go accounts, among other things, but since I have satellite access I  haven't felt the urge to sign up for those. Really, it w...

Look at that! A month from today, my baby brother is getting married! That's.... That's quite weird, actually. I may need a minute.

Tonight, I find myself thinking about the day I took this ... I blame the ongoing rain.

Yesterday I had an incident with a power cord ... and as a result, I'm limiting my laptop use until its replacement arrives. Minimal battery availability and all that.   Which means today I find myself grateful for technology and a fancy phone. I'm also more than a little alarmed at my apparent inability to go without the internet. Not aided by this post-every-day kick I'm on, but generally alarming aside from that. The rain isn't helping.  

Some time ago, I wrote about what you might expect if you were going to visit a retreat center (or send your kids to camp). A fairly large number of people have apparently read that post (it's #3 in my top ten list) and I've actually gotten some feedback from folks in person. Which is kind of bananas. Today, I'd like to address some of the questions and comments we get around here, including a bunch of them that annoy me. Why? Because I'd love to stop getting some of them and this is a chance to address them with a bit more honesty (and good nature, hopefully) than I can sometimes muster when they come up in person. I do feel it necessary to point out that all of these have come up more than once ... and that my opinion might not reflect anyone else's. Although it usually does. This is an old picture. I can tell because right now the creek is really more of a river... I had no idea you were open year round! It's true! We are! And the fact that...

I've been working my way through the Lord of the Rings trilogy this week, in audiobook form along with the movies. It's been an intense week. But I mention this specifically to add that I had forgotten just how fantastic the scores for the movies are. Just ... phenomenally excellent. If you've watched the movies and are at all curious about the books, I'll also recommend them in audio form. The unabridged version of the trilogy is about 60 hours in full, which is certainly not to be taken lightly. As it happens, though, that's roughly the time it takes to drive from western South Dakota to Niagara Falls and back. Great solo road trip material. On that note ... I gotta watch the end of this. Have a good night, all.

1. I find it intriguing that whenever we have grilled burgers, that's all I can smell for the rest of the evening. I walked into my house [note: solid distance from the grill and very much not where I ate today] and immediately thought, "Do I smell beef?" 2. Elon Musk is nuts. Also an undeniable genius. Perhaps a tad on the arrogant side, but you kind of want that in your protagonist. Er, humanity-altering genius. (Much more on this later.) 3. I pretty much thought all of those monthly subscription mystery boxes were a bit on the ridiculous side ... and then I tripped over Cairn and reconsidered. Still can't bring myself to do it, but I may have to give it a try at some point. Anyone want to get me a subscription? 4. We have pasque again. It's possible the snow has confused all of the foliage. 5. ... One week till summer. Eek. "I mean, it's the healthy amount of arrogance that separates the heroes from Daniel." -Michael Swaim, After Ho...

This was at 9AM today.     This was at 3PM today.     ... I'm kind of done with this snow thing.

How much does your daily life change with the seasons? Realistically, it happens to most of us. Days are longer. Free time is outside. Inside-the-house projects get put on hold in favor of yardwork. Fresh veggies hit the table. Little things here and there, all of which add up to an entirely different lifestyle sometimes. As I stare down the gun barrel that is summer, I find myself thinking about this. Winter is characterized by long-range projects, scattered guests, and limited sunlight. My mid-week work days are much closer to the mythical 9-5. I tend to eat like a college student ... or a bachelor in his 20s. Sleep is markedly easier to come by. But already things are changing. Days are longer. Sleep is harder to come by. Guests are more frequent, meaning my day-to-day job is more varied. And I've started eating like a hobbit ... You know, first and second breakfast. Elevensies. Lunch. Afternoon tea. Et cetera. And I'm burning it off almost as...

Today, an old xkcd because the formatting for a different post is not going well. And also because I'm tired.    

As a general rule, I have been a fortunate traveler. Sure, there have been lots of flight delays over the years. I've ended up on standby when my flight was cancelled and I've waited out thunderstorms, blizzards, and bitter (as in "plane-won't-start") cold. I've stayed in awful hotel rooms. Gotten hopelessly lost. Tried to  break my leg on a couple of lakeshores . Had to fly through O'Hare. Thanks to some weirdly bad luck, I can now add rental car difficulties in the form of minor accidents and recall items rearing their ugly heads to the list. Seriously. I just shouldn't rent cars. The bottom line is that there will almost always be some form of trouble while you're on the road -- and even the minor things can be blown out of proportion very quickly when you're in strange places or running late for a flight. Most of all, many of the minor problems can be fixed or avoided with minimal preparation. A lot of this is common sense, but n...

This. Because this week is a week for reposting videos, apparently.

I don't care that it's Friday.   I know. It's practically blasphemy to say such a thing. But ... I don't. This is really just my second of about six Wednesdays in a row, because around here Friday doesn't mean a thing.   There's no waiting for a weekend.   There's no sliding out the door a few minutes early to make that weekend last longer.   Friday just means that the phone will stop ringing. Which is actually great because it's easier to get things done when the phone stops ringing so much.   Usually, it also means we have guests turning up, but in this particular case it means prep for an open house this weekend. And then for guests turning up. Yay May.   So before I get back to my not-Friday, I figure I can leave you with something much brighter and happier. Something I'm suddenly abnormally excited about...   

I'm still thinking about space. It all comes back to my post on Monday. Combining that with the upcoming release of a new Elon Musk biography (which I suspect strongly may turn up in my mailbox on Tuesday) and the fact that I follow Colonel Chris Hadfield on Facebook ... I have to share this. It's a video from Business Insider (namely, their BI Science YouTube) and ... yep.

  An xkcd post from last week that left me wondering what the chem major might say...  

As you may have noticed (or maybe not, if you only turned up here because you searched for one of the books from Friday's post) I am very much not a daily blogger. Clearly, because if I were that seven-week absence in March and April wouldn't have happened. Back when I started this thing ... good lord, twelve years ago ... blogging wasn't really a "thing" yet. I mean, it existed, but it existed in much the same way that many sites existed then. It was uncomplicated, it was unsophisticated, and none of the major forces in the world had yet picked it up. Now, every news site has blogs maintained by journalists, brands use them to put out daily content, and moms all over the place trade information through them. They are a force unto themselves and people have found ways to make a living off of them. I can say I have been at this longer than many ... but I am still not one of those bloggers. Daily blogging terrifies me. Plain and simple. The idea of coming...

  Well! Happy Mother's Day ... particularly to my own mother and grandmother, both of whom I was going to be joining for dinner today. Until this happened, that is.   That tree astonishes me every time we get snow.   Hey, guess what, guys? We made the national news!   That's right -- the snow from yesterday didn't let up overnight. What was six-ish inches last night kept building, and this morning...   Hmm.     This happened.       Hmm. Crap.   Apparently I need to invest in a yardstick.       The big catch with this particular storm is that under that foot of snow is another quarter inch of ice. (My deck is ... not safe.) The creek is actually running. It's already melting, given that it's "don't need a coat to walk to the office" warm outside.   I have seen a lot of snow here since I moved back in 2013 and I've learned that the right...

 Generally speaking, around March I usually point out that we still have "one more big snow left."   Now, unlike last year, I started to relax when May started. That one more big snow hadn't really happened and it was over 60 outside.   However, there's another rule of thumb around here ... Don't plant anything till after Mother's Day. Reaching May doesn't mean you're safe yet.   Enter today.       Right this moment, there are about seven inches of snow on my deck. And it's nowhere near done yet.     All the more impressive since the first two to three inches melted as fast as they fell. Our road is pure mud under the snow.     It's very pretty. It's just ... a bit out of season.   Just for fun -- this was taken ten years ago this weekend.   Go May.

I read awful things. When I say "awful," I'm not actually talking about the news (even though that might qualify). And I'll also say I don't make it far into awful books. In this case, I generally mean "about topics that are considered awful." I read a lot of books about cults and diseases and murders and wars because these are things that interest me and that I want to attempt to understand, to a degree. Which means a lot of my reading time is spent on topics that are ... less than cheerful. What really gets me in trouble, though, is the fact that I insist on reading these books in public places where people will ask about them. Oh well. That being said, here are a few of the awful things I've been reading this year. And one wonderful thing. The Emperor of All Maladies   This book is all about cancer.   What?   Okay, okay. This book is described as a "biography of cancer." It goes into the known history, the develop...

As my 31st birthday approaches, I've found myself thinking about the things that are making me feel old this year -- or simply reminding me that life now is not what I'd expected five years ago. So here we go. I started shopping around for eye creams not so long ago. And wow, do they make me feel poor. I refuse to part my hair in one direction because the greys show too much. I got reeeeeally excited about the bathroom remodel in our main hall because it meant the showers would be new. I will actually call my parents to just hang out. This happens regularly. A nap would be awesome right now. Or most times, really. I swear, it was the day after my thirtieth when my knees started aching every time I stood up. I'm pretty sure I flat-out demanded my mother get me shoes for my birthday and nothing else. I have remarkably strong opinions about the cost of groceries. The most exciting part of my day was when I found that there's a biography...

Just to be clear, I love sunshine.   ... But I really do love the looks of this as well.  

Rule #3 for life: Always talk to strangers. Okay, there are caveats. Like "as long as you're already a semi-responsible adult with some form of self-preservation and/or self-defense abilities, just in case." How about I back up a bit? When I was quite young, I was absolutely petrified of strangers. I didn't even talk to my elementary school teachers till at least a month of the school year had passed. Making friends was hard (although once made, I kept those friends for years). I didn't like people and that was all there was to it. Truth be told, with that bit of history the whole "engineer" thing makes a lot more sense. However, I am also a bit of a daddy's girl, and my dad is almost remarkably outgoing (especially considering that he, too, is an engineer). The man has never met a stranger. He runs into people he knows in random rest stops in other states. It's kind of amazing. At some point, I flipped a switch. I suddenly loved ta...

I've got three half-written posts that I just can't seem to finish. I'm thiiiis close to being done prepping things for summer staff. My house is a mess. (Of course.) So it seems only natural that instead of making progress on anything, I find myself wasting time on Youtube and catching up on every blog and comic I've ever paid any attention to. Time to revisit my procrastination habits, apparently.   Or maybe -- just maybe -- I should consider some sleep, since my opportunities to be well-rested are going to be getting thin very soon...   

I've been on a weird pop music kick the last few weeks, and in my Youtube binges I came across this ... It's a couple years old and I loved it when it first came out, so now I share this cover with you.   (Well, loved it minus the promo stuff at the end, which gets a bit silly. But hey! It's a fun video.)     Plus, bonus, these guys have some new music of their own out right now, and I tend to recommend Walk Off The Earth. They're fun and their music is generally happy -- perfect Sunday driving music.

1. We're on the cusp of crazy around here, and it's starting to feel like it. Not in the least because the weather is starting to feel summery, too. 2. Got Nepal on the mind? Want to donate? NPR has a pretty good article if you've not donated to an effort like this before, and most of the major well-known agencies are working on it. Do a little research and your help will go further. 3. I'm happy with how the Packers fared in the draft. Thanks, TT. [Look, from useful to vapid in one single bullet point!] 4. My day included an exchange that made my year: "... and then he ran off to California to become an avocado farmer."   "You're not actually too far off."   It was a theory about an errant guest that took a turn for the strange. More accurately, it was strange that the theory (which ended with him becoming an avocado farmer) was not out of the realm of possibility.   Okay, terrible story. Maybe you had to be there. 5. E...

Thanks to a conversation with a guest this morning, tonight I'm thinking about the day I took this...   And oh, how I want to go back...