camilla did her thing where she plans something to do which requires her to get a ride, and then informs her ride about an hour before the event.

guy was pissed, carolyn was pissed, and i managed to find someone (abie) who was going to the same event.

anyway, it left guy with nothing to do for the evening. so after work, we went back to the soda dam. that's 4 times in 3 days for me.

he let me drive out. driving his high-performance car on curvy mountain roads is a lot of fun.

i really hurt my ass on the waterfall. there's a big red welt about the size of a tennis ball on the top of my right cheek. ouch.

i almost worked up the courage to jump of the 10 meter cliff, but didn't. i settled for the 5 meter one. maybe next time.

we stopped off at home-run pizza on the way home, where they successfully made us a sausage, green pepper, and mushroom pizza when we asked for mushroom and black olive. interesting...

i went out for icecream with carolyn, and we noticed that there were really big thunderheads above sante fe. we drove out to the whiterock overlook and watched the lightning from afar. the weather was warm, and a hot breeze was blowing down the rio grande valley. the sky above was totally clear, and there was a full moon. the lightning in the distance was silent. great moment.

i totally walked in on guy and camilla having sex.

i went to the ultimate game at noon. it's always risky playing on the sunday games because they are poorly attended. that means that there is more running, and less substitutes.

we started playing 6 vs. 6 with no subs, but after a few points i was so washed up that i asked for 5 on 5 with subs. after that point, i spent a lot of time as the sub.

this was the first time i'd played a day game in the sun with my shirt off. i got a big sunburn. whoa. sock line. oh yeah.

i left early to get home by 2:00pm. guy, camilla, carolyn, and i were going to the soda dam today to do some cliff diving. carolyn had just gotten back from the sante fe pride march (which i skipped to brush up on ultimate before the upcoming tourney).

guy and camilla still hadn't gotten out of bed.

in typical guy & camilla fashion, they decided that they were going to drive to espanola "really quick" before going to the soda dam. of course, espanola is a 30 minute drive away in the wrong direction. this left carolyn sitting around with no car (hers had broken been dieing on the way back from the march) and nothing to do for a little over an hour.

they had to go eat because they hadn't eaten yet today. and for some reason they had to go to taco bell, which is in espanola.

so yeah that pissed me off.

i found some other people that wanted to go to the soda dam, matt from ultimate and sarah, and we just left without guy and camilla.

sarah and matt hadn't see the caldera yet, which they declared "unbelieveably gorgeous."

the soda dam was crowded when we got there at about 4:00pm. i did the waterfall a few times, and the low jump (~4 meters) a couple times. then we discovered the area behind the waterfall.

you could swim under or around the side of the waterfall to find a small ledge behind the curtain of water on which you can sit. it was great. from there, we jumped out through the waterfall, or stood up in the waterfall, wearing it like a cloak.

we left at about 6:00. guy and camilla still hadn't shown up. those two are the slowest fuckers i have ever met.

the four of us went into jemez springs for dinner at a place called 'the laughing lizard' which was recommended to me by one of the ultimate players.

it's a great place to eat. the outdoor patio tables look out at both of the red-rocked canyon walls and over the little jemez "river" which recently fell over the soda dam. the food is fancy and the service is funny.

but don't eat the corn and friend potatoe buritto. it has like three whole onions in it. the super-nachos are good though...

as we drove back home, past the soda dam, we saw guy's car there. after that, i felt asleep for the entire 45 minute drive.

got to sleep in late. went to chile works for breakfast burittos. bought some for guy and camilla as well, but they were so slow getting out of bed that i ate camillas. i had finished mine, i was still hungry, and they weren't making any progress towards getting downstairs. besides, i paid for all of them..

carolyn and i were going to go hiking on the mountain behind her house, but we decided instead to go driving and have a look at the caldera.

the initial portion of the drive was very beautiful. lots of pines and aspens, curvey windy road up the side of the jemez mountains. there were a couple of good views across the rio grande valley to santa fe.

eventually, we found a huge meadow in the heart of the mountains. it was probably 5 miles across the short way and at least 15 miles long. there were cows in what looked like a nearby portion of the field, but they were just little dots. this plain was much larger than it looked.

it didn't look like a volcano caldera to me, but it turns out that's what this is. it's now privately owned. probably some of the best land in america. lush grass, surrounded by green mountains, etc.

on the other side of the jemez mountains is a small stream called the jemez river and a town called jemez springs. we stopped by the ranger station and asked about the hot springs that we heard were in this area.

she gave us a couple of maps towards the two main ones. one was a 1.5 mile hike off the road, so we skipped it and went on to the one that was next to the road.

on our way, we passed a "natural recreational area" on the side of the road called the soda dam. It was a big rock formation, created by a hot spring, blocking the jemez river and forming a waterfall. the rock formatio has grown up over the waterfall, making a sort of tunnel-sluiceway and leaving a high rock ledge up above the waterfall basin pool. there were people jumping off the cliffs into the pool, which is apparently very deep. if carolyn and i had been wearing swimsuits, we'd have gone in. instead, we just climbed the cliffs and wandered around on the nearby dry land.

we drove on to the hot springs, which were about 5 miles up the road.

to get from the wayside to the springs required hiking down to the river, crossing it, then climbing back up to road-level on the other side of the valley. although the straight-line distance between one and the other is about 100 meters, the hike is about a kilometer.

we passed a sign that said "clothing optional beyond this point."

the springs are in several palces among some large boulders on the side of the mountain. the main one pours into a series of pools, each one cooler than the last. the pool into which the spring originally pours is about 104 F degrees. no one was in that pool.

the next pool was considerably cooler, and it was filled with older naked men.

the third pool was just barely warm and was full of younger clothed men and women.

we found a much larger warm pool off to the side, but it was also full of naked old people.

finally, we found a small pool to ourselves. we just sat in it for awhile. no one got naked, etc.

after driving back and taking a nap, camilla and guy appeared and i convinced them to go back to the soda dam with us - this time in suits.

not suit-and-tie, stupid. bathing suits.

we drove all the way back there (45 minutes) only to find that a storm was brewing over the mountains.

before the storm got too bad, we got into the water. the pool was very deep in the center. i couldn't touch the bottom with a surface dive. towards the edges, it got very shallow with big rocks near the surface. there were people jumping off the cliffs from a few different places. the low cliff was only about 4 meters tall. the high one was probably 10 meters. the really high one was 12 or 13 meters. people were also sliding down the waterfall-sluice like a waterslide.

i decided to try the waterfall. it was amazing. the actualy vertical fall of the waterfall isn't more than 2 meters, but there's a long steep slide down to that point perhaps 5 meters. the wide steam is compressed into a 2-foot wide channel as it turns through the rock. you can climb along the tunnel to a point next to the thinnest part of the flow. from there you lower your feet int the water, then slide your ass into the flow and it jets you away.

the acceleration is enugh to whip your body back into a laying position. you hydrofoil on top of the water, so nothing gets hurt on the rocks. about half-way down the slope, the water widens out again, turning your body sideways. now you're rolling down this slope at about 25 mph on top of the water. it is very disorienting. suddenly, the rock drops out from underneath you and you're falling.

it's not just regular falling, though. you start at high speed, and the water forces you down quicker. in an instant, you are plunged deep underwater and shot out from under the waterfall by the current. in a second, your head pokes up from the pool and you yell and hoot like an idiot.

i wouldn't shut up about how cool the waterfall ride was all night.

the storm forced us to leave before i could do anything else.

today was the second and final day of the security stand-down. we watched the presentations on realvideo from the comfort of our office. guy did less watching and more working on his business stuff, which he isn't supposed to do. i'm getting really frustrated with him.

he has a huge problem with authority.

the presentations were cool... all about super-spies, how russia got the bomb, how england spied on us too, computer hackers, stuff like that.

i went home early with guy because i wasn't feeling well. i fell asleep watching hard boiled in cantonese.

our room is such a pit. we have spent so little time in there during the last week that the entire place is now a disaster.

carolyn and i watched the big lebowski then she cut my hair. guy and camilla showed up and he was upset with me for having watched the movie without him (there was never any agreement that i was going to watch it with him, so i don't know what his deal is...).

we decided to make an effort to clean the place up. i threw away some old food in the fridge and took the garbage out on the way to the grocery to buy more. guy was going to clean the dishes.

as we were returning from the grocery, i said the carolyn, "i bet when we get in there, guy will be watching a DVD and the dishes will still be in the sink." carolyn told me i should have more faith in guy.

so we walk in the door, there's guy and camilla watching the big lebowski, and the dishes are still in the sink. i rest my case.

tonight was the first clear night in los alamos in a week or two. this is the first day that there hasn't been any lightning. what a relief!

we went out to look at stars, take advantage of the clear sky. unfortuantely, the moon is now a waxing gibbous so it's to bright to see satellites. no shooting stars either.

we went to chili-works for breakfast only to find that they are only open for business tuesday-saturday. newman!

so i tried a mcdonalds breakfast burritto instead. el-yucko.

the security stand-down started today. the director of the DOE mandated that all DOE employees at LANL, LLNL, and SNL will undergo a series of presentations on national security and how they are a part of it.

so no one is allowed to work today. this makes molvig very angry, who is still in boston and very anxious for us to get something done. i still don't have a working compiler on my machine.

the plan was for carolyn, guy, camilla, and i to all go to gabriel's for dinner, but camilla (in typical camilla fashion) was so late that we left without her.

gabriels is rumored to have the best guacamole in santa fe, so we got that. they make it fresh at your table. a guy comes over with a cart, cuts up some avacados, then dumps in some tomatoes, onions, cillantro, and peppers. then he mixes it all up and serves it to you.

guac is good with salsa. yum.

we went to best buy with guy's dad so that he could pick out some software for guy to buy for father's day.

a long time ago (last summer) i got invited to a wedding of an old high school friend, marissa anderson. i got her a $50 gift certificate to best buy, but it ended up that the wedding was during my time in portugal, and i never ended up getting the gift to her. so here i've been for a year with this thing in my pocket. i blew it all today.

i got some DVDs. john woo's hard boiled, which comes with a student-film made by woo, trailers for 11 of his old hong kong gangster and kung-fu movies, and a load of other special feature stuff. bruce lee's enter the dragon, which also has a ton of special features. the coen brother's the big lebowski, "careful, man! there's a beverage here!"

we packed up our stuff and were ready to take off, but a couple of guys friends from when he did a semester at the air force academy stopped by randomly.

they talked for about an hour about what kind of jets they were flying (T1s?) and their training (7G centrifuge??).

then it was time to head on back. we said goodbye to the family, they gave us some food (8 2-litre bottles of soda, and about 30 cherry snack pie thingies). and off we went.

guy made a wrong turn somewhere and we ended up in oaklahoma. i wanted to take an oaklahoma route anyway because i had never been there. we decided to take the short way and skip it, but this wrong turn put me in oaklahoma for about as long as i cared to stay (20 minutes).

now i've been to 47 states (never been to florida, you can guess the other two).

i saw an armadillo on the road! they are my favorite animal. it's a shame it was cut in half and smeared all over the highway.

i drove as far as amarillo, and guy did the rest. i thought my driving at 85 was risky...

guy averaged about 100mph. he was going 125mph in places. i was scared for my life. but he's gotta show off, ya know.

at one point, doing about 110mph, the radar detector went off full-blast and guy was really worried. but no one ever came after us. it was weird.

after tucumcari we entered a bad storm and i started flipping out. lots of big lightning. we made the 287 stretch in record time.

after getting slightly lost in santa fe, we made it home after 10.5 hours of driving.

as we reached los alamos, guy started being a real jerk for some reason. at one point, i told him i was going to call carolyn and camilla and he said, "i don't know if i want you to call them..." to which i should have immediately been pissed. but i was so flaberghasted that anyone would say such a jerky thing that all i could say was "wha?"

"well, you'll be like 'hi how are you guys? are you tired? ok we'll see you tomorrow." that's what he said to me.

god damn that guy can be an asshole sometimes.