OK, after looking through some 14ers guides and actually consulting a map, I see that Sherman and Quandary are not as close to Castle as I thought. So I've refrabulated. Castle is priority 1, and I will go there first. Drive up to Aspen on Friday night, camp at trailhead if I can ford the river with my ford. That afternoon, I'll move down one valley to the trailhead for Huron and Missouri. These are two separate peaks with independant trails starting from the same point but heading in opposite directions. It would be great if I was in wonderful shape and could do both in a day. But somehow I doubt that will happen. If it were to happen, and I still felt good the next day I'd move up the road a bit and do La Plata from the south. So that's what I'm doing for the holiday weekend. :)

Looking at the western CONUS radar, you will notice that there are basically no clouds over this half of the country. And there's a three-day weekend approaching. This means: I'm going to Colorado for some 14ers.

I'm not in great shape, so I'm going to grab some easy ones. I'll try to get Sherman and then Quandary (to finish off the Tenmile/Mosquito range peaks). After that, it all depends on how I'm feeling. Castle/Conundrum or Pike's are options. So is driving home. Regardless, the weather looks awesome and I'm really looking forward to it. Wooo!

NOTE: I wrote this on the 3rd, and waited to make it live until the 19th, when the Ranger would actually have been in my posession for exactly two years. Forgot about it until now; sorry. I know you've all been champing at the bit for more exciting DeadGuyMobile stats...

I bought my Ford Ranger (used) two years ago today. Here are some statistics, brought to you by MegaAnal, Inc

Some notes: The repairs/modifications budget is again rather high, but the vast bulk of this cost went to a single repair - replacing the clutch. The rest of it is just oil changes and a new battery.

In each of the past two years, there has been a single fillup where the measured volume of gasoline (18.060 and 18.005 gallons) was larger than the rated volume of my tank (18 gallons). Both instances took place during the winter, when the thermal expansion of the gasoline was at a minimum. Talk about running on fumes!

I only had to add a quart of oil to the truck 3 times this year, as opposed to 15 times last year. I attribute this to my discovery that the guys at the oil change place never tighten down the oil filter well enough.

The use pattern of the truck was dramatically different this year compared with last; mostly on account of my thesis work. During the early fall I went on several mountaineering trips to Colorado, but otherwise the long trip density was quite low. The bulk of the milage was accrued in town, which accounts for the lower MPG across the board.

Gas prices were substantially higher this year, and varied less. Thanks, OPEC, GW, et al.

My prediction from last year was: "In another year, I suspect I will have a much higher paying job and will either be saving up to buy a brand new truck or have alredy done so." ...and I was right. I now have a much higher paying job, and am saving up to buy a new vehicle. However, I suspect that I will buy another used pseudo-junker before moving on to a new or almost-new vehicle. In another year, I will be driving a different old vehicle and saving up for a nice newish one.

Just got paged for a search... am now awake... I'm the contact person for this one because I was the first to respond. So far no one has called.

Good thing I got permission to go on searches from Mike just before he left for Kazakhstan. :)

The search was concluded with a find. No more details available. ASAR didn't get a team in the field for this one.

The motherboard showed up today.... so there went my evening. Actually, I watched "Timeline" which is a movie rendition of a book I read a year or two ago. The book was moderate sci-fi/historical fiction; the movie is terrible. Don't bother.

But once the movie was over, it was all arcade parts, all the time. Got the computer assembled. Tested the D9200--works well, though the slow refresh causes significant flicker in the periphery of my vision.

I scored a cheap copy of Windows XP Pro SP2 from Dan, who is now a microsoft stooge. MS employees get all the MS stuff they can eat at really low prices (and are allowed to extend that benefit to friends and family), except of course the really (read: only) cool item in the catalog... the Xbox. But I did manage to pick up a couple optical mice and XP for less than half of the total price, so that's agreeable. The software shipped today, so in the meantime I went ahead and stole a copy from the internets. Thanks Dan, and in the meantime, Thanks Internet.

Hey, I wanted to mess with it now. Don't complain; I actually paid for a Microsoft product (first time ever, barring pre-installed OS's on computers I bought). And since I've already paid for a copy of XP, is it really stealing for me to be using it before it actually arrives at my house?

And yes, I will be wiping my "illegal" install when my "legal" copy arrives and I'll "love" every minute of it.

Hey, random question for those of you who are nerds: I installed XP as an upgrade to Win2k (thanks, internet), and it sees my 320GB HDD as a 130GB HDD. The BIOS sees the correct size... so... what's up with that? Does NTFS have an address space issue or something? Do I need to go in there with DiskMolester and partition it sans windows for this to work?? Hopefully if I just nuke the disk and install directly to XP it'll work (indicating that this was a win2k issue that got held over during the upgrade). I want my other 190GB!!

And the upgrade to XP left that really irritating dual boot selector screen, allowing me to go into 2k if for some reason I wanted to, which I don't. If for some reason I get stuck with that thing when I re-install XPlegal, is there an easy fix for getting rid of the damn thing?

So I was just going to bed, down in the kitchen preparing the evening meal for the sugar gliders, when I heard a weird noise I couldn't identify coming from the front yard. I was walking over to the kitchen window to take a look when a very loud explosion occured. It sounded like an M80 or something at very close range. I assumed that the first sound I had heard was the fuse burning.

I go upstairs to feed the gliders, and as soon as I get up there, I see a car drive by out the window, and hear something land in the yard... and then another explosion. The car was heading away from the dead end of our street and by the time I could have gotten back outside it would have been long gone, so I didn't go flying after it. It was too dark to tell anything about the vehicle other than it was a sedan.

I went outside with a flashlight to find out what it was, and found Maria (other half of the duplex) out there with her daughter. We found two torn apart and very wet 1/2 liter water bottles. No other sign of disturbance, so presumably this was the old dry ice in a bottle, add water, cap, throw [fast] routine.

assholes.

Maria had called the police and a cop showed up about 5 minutes later, but of course there wasn't much he could do for us. He did say that he had heard both explosions from the police station, which isn't exactly next door. The fact that both bombs had arrived in Maria's side of the yard and that there didn't seem to be any other explosions happening anywhere else (apparently you can hear these things from over a mile away, and I've had my windows open all evening) leads me to believe that these are acquaintances of Maria's high school daughter. [grumble grumble]

Maybe the same winners that TP'd the shit out of Maria's tree earlier this spring.

yeah thanks.

Anyway now it's midnight and I've still got a bunch of adrenaline and my stomach is doing it's loud noises thing, which I love. ugh.

I seem to have neglected to mention what I did this past weekend, which was re-start two of my hobbies. I went to the orienteering meet on Saturday and ran my first red course. Unfortunately, the people who set it figured that [lots of unecessary vertical == difficulty] so what I ended up with was a relatively easy course aside from the 500m of vertical gain. It really worked me over pretty well, though none of the controls was difficult to find (aside from one that wasn't hung by the time I got there and one that was hung in the wrong place).

Then, on Sunday, I finally made it back to a Zia Spacemodelers rocket launch. I still seem to be their president, despite not having been to a launch since I was re-elected back in November. Anyway, I got to launch the Nerd Magnet XL and Oscar--both successfully. Drew has found an online supplier for composite propellant reloads and made several very large orders. He is selling the reloads for very reasonable prices so it's like having a motor store on site. This has inspired me to reignite a project that has been languishing for over a year--The GroganBuster¹.

To refresh your memories, the GroganBuster is a 7'8" tall fiber-wound fiberglass rocket that I'm almost done with. I haven't done a thing to it in over a year, and it really doesn't need much more work. So I'm going to throw down the cash for the last few components and unleash this thing on the world ASAP.

The body consists of five sections. From the top down: Nosecone, drogue tube, electronics compartment, main tube, and booster assembly. Three of those components are finished (booster, main tube, and drogue tube) aside from painting.

All the nosecone needs is to mount a bridle attachment inside the point. This is likely to come in the form of a long-shanked eyebold or U-bolt put through a thin G-10 disc that fits a ways down into the nosecone. This will then be epoxied in with great vigor. Or perhaps gusto.

The remaining part is the electronics enclosure. Considering how complicated this part is, it really is almost done. However, there is quite a bit left to do. It needs:

* an exhaust port so the electronics can sense the outside air pressure
* a hole drilled for the second launch rail button
* epoxy seals on the forward bulkhead
* devise some system to get the forward bulkhead on and off easier (too tight right now and the threaded rod holes don't quite align right)
* a mounting board for the electronics and batteries that slides onto the rods

Having done that, the only remaining task will be to buy the recovery system - parachutes, bridles, quick-links, swivels, and a dual-deploy altimeter. I'm thinking the PerfectFlite MiniAlt/WD will do nicely. It's small, has dual deployment, full data recording capability for 5 minutes at 20Hz, and is well built. Oh yeah and I need to find motors for it. Commonweath doesn't seem to be selling 54mm reloads, so I may have to chance it on an I motor first.

¹ - The name GroganBuster is a reference to this highly tasteless story which includes the phrase, "Yesterday evening I had ingested the pills and inserted the Grogan Buster^tm industrial strength stool liquefier." I think the idea, which was arrived at in a drunken stupor years ago and for which Dan is at least partially responsible, was that the rocket would be so big and loud and sweet that you would shit yourself if you saw it launch².

³ - Anus.

I was at work today for over 12 hours. The only reason I left is that the next two tasks required me to either be working on the outdoor detectors or using a PC for PCB layout. It was getting dark, so option 1 was out. And my work computers are both macs. Doing bizzarely long days is great when I'm there because I want to be. It's hard to articulate how much more I like this job than my graduate work.

In other news. the Cruftlabs h4rdc0rps are converting a 1967 Chevy Bel Air into a boat from which they intend to watch the Boston fireworks display this 4th of July. I miss that place...

Enchiladas de Bob. Bob showed me how to make my own red enchilada sauce, and we made some bitchin enchiladas to go with it. I photographed the process and made a little write-up. Try it yourself!

I know this isn't a picture of the final product... but there's nothing too exciting about the way finished enchiladas look. And I really like this picture of the boiling peppers.

Today saw the arrival of the hard drive and illuminator controller. I still need to concoct a power supply for the controller (it is designed for 3 AA batteries (4.5 volts) and get the LEDs, and I'm really still waiting for the mother board. Once it shows up I can start configuring the computer.

For those of you keeping score, filing for a multiple-entry visa to the Russian Federation is a huge pain in the ass.

My favorite part: they ask me to list all the countries I've been to in the last 10 years, along with the date I traveled there... in 40 characters. I've visited 18 foreign countries in the last decade, so that's going to be a tough one.

As discussed already, I received my video card for the arcade machine today along with some mounting hardware for the motherboard. In two subsequent shipments, I also received the power supply for the computer, the bezel, and the D9200 monitor. The D9200 is a monster. With the box, packing materials, and pallet it weighed in at 126 pounds. I'm not sure how much of that was the pallet, but the shipping guy was kind enough to take it as far as the middle of my driveway.

Yeah so I had this massive box sitting in the carport and I was the only person home. I ended up opening the box and just pulling out the 80+ pound monitor and carrying it in by itself, but it was sort of a herculean task. It looks great though. I can't wait for the remaining parts to arrive. These include the motherboard/CPU/RAM, hard drive, illuminator components, and the cabinet itself. The computer bits will probably show up tomorrow or Monday. The cabinet won't ship for a few weeks, sadly.

I was at home for lunch today, and Nina suggested that I make a BLT. This sounded good but my lack of standard ingredients turned it into the weirdest sandwich ever. For starters the only bread we have is some weird 9-grain nut loaf. The mayo we have expired in January. So that went to the trash post haste and I used fancy mustard instead. No lettuce... so I went with spinach leaves. We did have proper tomato, but I don't like tomato so I left that out. Finally, the only bacon we have is some weird turkey bacon that I bought to see what it tastes like. Turns out turkey bacon is a weird processed meat product that doesn't taste at all like bacon, though not entirely bad. The faux coloring to make it look more like bacon is a little disturbing, as is the fact that it retains its prefectly rectangular shape when cooked.

Anyway, my BLT became a Turkey-Spinach-Mustard-Nutloaf thing. Not bad, but far far removed from a BLT.

I recently ordered a bunch of parts for impending arcade machine goodness. One company I ordered from is Ultimarc, who makes various keyboard and mouse emulators as well as the only video card in existance that is made for working with 15kHz arcade monitors. I ordered the ArcadeVGA board and some PCB standoffs for attaching the computer motherboard to the inside wall of the cabinet.

Today, they arrived via DHL. DHL shipped them inside one of those non-rigid plastic bags. I opened the bag to find a small cardboard box which was no longer sealed. There was a piece of tape that should have kept the box together, but it had snapped, probably due to deformation of the box during shipping. Partially hanging out of the box were the PCB in an anti-static bag, the baggie of standoffs, and a CD sleeve with the driver CD in it.

Note that there was no packing material (e.g. foam, bubble wrap, etc.) inside the box. Also, the CD sleeve wasn't sealed, so the CD was mostly out of the sleeve. The back panel plate of the PCB had gouged a big trench into the CD. The metal layer was flaking off the CD to the point where I was not willing to see if the necessary bits were still readable. Besides, due to the fact that the CD sleeve and box had both failed to contain the CD, and that the shipping bag was not hermetically sealed, there was lots of small scratches all over the CD from random shipping debris.

As far as I can tell, the ArcadeVGA board and standoffs are fine, but the CD is a total loss. I went to Ultimarc's website to download the drivers and it said to "just use the ones in the CD." Great.

Luckily, the guy behind Ultimarc kicks ass on customer service. He answered my bitchy email within 15 minutes and provided me with links to online versions of all of the content on the CD.

One other oddity... there is an RCA connector (2 conductor) on the ArcadeVGA that is labeled "S-Video." The S-Video video bus requires 2 signals and two grounds (you could probably share the grounds in a pinch, but that's still three conductors. Besides, all standard S-Video connectors have 4 pins plus the shield ground).

No.

Geebus.

When I started in N-1, I was given a small piece of a lab bench for my own work. I had to share my bench with one of the general use computers and a pile of hardware. Today, I was given an entire lab for myself. It's really sort of a cubicle, but two of the walls are real walls with full height and lots of outlets. It is bigger than my office, has a lockable door, tons of bench space, and even some leftover instruments from the previous owner. And it's all for my projects. WOo!

While we were waiting for the moon to set last night, Bob and I joined Mikki and James in watching the movie Kinsey. It was very well done and thought provoking, but by far my favorite part was the genious casting of Tim Curry as the "masturbation will make you go blind" guy. ROCKY!!

The sky was completely free of clouds all day so Bob and I decided to go up into the Valles Caldera and take some astrophotos. I piggybacked my new 300mm lens on his telescope and this was the best shot we managed:

The focus isn't perfect (I had autofocused on the half moon just before it set and then attempted to not touch the focus ring while mounting the camera), but it's reasonable. The Antares nebula shows up well. I'll have to look at my charts to see what some of this other stuff is.

I'm pretty sure the green UFO is a camera artifact. Something similar appeared just above Rigel in my Orion shot. Anyway, a great night for stargazing. Transparancy was relatively poor and the seeing was pretty bad, but no clouds, not much wind, and the temperature was agreeable.

Originally, I had planned to make an arcade cabinet that would have multiple control panels that were interchangeable. In order to save money, I kept the keyboard and mouse emulator electronics outside the control panel so that I could reuse the same hardware for all panels. This necessitated bring all 62 switch wires and 10 analog signal wires out the back of the control panel and to the electronics. These 72 wires were realized using 9 ethernet cables wire-tied together in a big bundle. The electronics sat (in leiu of an actual cabinet) on a 16" piece of 2x8. The whole thing was bulky and ugly, and the electronics were not protected from casual damage or cat attack. I spent a good portion of yesterday rectifying this problem.

I've decided that the likelihood of my actually creating a second control panel (or even a cabinet at this rate) are very small, so I went ahead and rewired the guts of the control panel to integrate the electronics inside. Now the only wires that come out the back are the PS2 keyboard cable, PS2 mouse cable, a PS2 keyboard passthru input, and a DB9 programming cable for the keyboard emulator. No board, no exposed electronics, much better. In the photo above I pulled back the 50pin ribbon cables that go from the keyboard emulator to the breakout boards so that you can see what is normally beneath them.

I still need to build the illuminator for the trackball, but now I have a 5V power source inside the panel and won't have to run another cable. I'm tempted to replace the grommetted hole in the back with panel-mount connections for the four cables, but there's no great need for this yet.

I've made the necessary plane and rental car reservations, so here is the plan:

Stage One: INMM conference, Phoenix, AZ
I fly out of Albuquerque on July 10 at 3:55pm, arriving in Phoenix at 4:10pm. I'll be giving a talk on the 13th concerning the Information Barrier System that we're designing here at work. I fly back on the 14th, leaving on 10:35am and arriving in Albuquerque at 12:40.

Stage Two: Road Trip - Los Alamos, NM to Middletown, CT
July 15: I pick up a rental car at the Los Alamos airport and drive north into Colorado. Not sure where I'll go or end up on this day.
July 16: Stop by the NE highpoint and then drive east to Lincoln, spending the night at Aaron's place.
July 17: Stop by the IA highpoint and drive northeast to St. Paul, spending the night at my parent's house.
July 18: Stay in MSP for the day, visiting with Brent, Brooke, and assorted others.
July 19: Drive south to Cedar Rapids, visit Chris and Doc. Not sure where I'll spend the night.
July 20: Drive east to Chicago, spend the night at Jen's place.
July 21: Stop by the IN and OH highpoints and drive east. Not sure where to spend the night.
July 22: Drive east to Middletown, CT. Must drop off car in Hardford by noon on the 23rd.

Stage Three: Camping trip w/ Nina
Less structured schedule; would like to climb Katahdin, possibly drive up Mt. Washington, maybe visit Acadia. I fly back to Albuquerque on the afternoon of July 31 (Sunday).

UPDATE: Illinois state highpoint is only open on the first weekend of the month; so it's out.

Curried mushrooms on rice and a small pepper-crust steak. The mushroom recipe came from a new Indian cookbook I bought, and the steak is a modified version of Robin's Moose Steak Pepper-O-Rama. Good stuff.

I had been planning an experiment where I was going to cook something new for every meal, every day for a month. This fell through on account of impracticality. Recipes are always for multiple servings and I don't always feel comfortable changing the quantities of dishes that I am unfamiliar with. I rarely have anyone to cook for, so I ended up with massive quantities of leftovers. Instead, I'm just going to cook whenever I can and post pictures and/or recipes here to keep me honest.

Went to the Pajarito Astronomers' star party in White Rock last night with Bob. It was a really clear night with very little wind. Had we been at El Rito, it would have been a great night for photography. The sky glow from Santa Fe and Albuquerque is too strong at White Rock. Hopefully next Friday's El Rito star party will also be clear.

In other news, Canon has announced that they are releasing the 20Da astrophotography camera to the world market. No concrete date or price point yet, but I'm excited. Mmmm... live focus. Basically this means that I could have perfect focus for every shot, and with very little time spent focusing. Well worth it, particuarly if El Rito gets their camera mount gear ordered. I sense a summer of many nights at the observatory.

Tuesday: Didn't do much; Nina had to work during the day. A bunch of her friends and I went to see Star Wars III in the evening.

Wednesday: Nina had to a bunch of work during the day, so her friend Anne and I went birding at the Audubon Society Center in Glastonbury. Anne is a much more accomplished birder than I and was able to identify lots of stuff just by call. In two and a half hours, we racked up the following finds: Song Sparrows (2), Grackles (numerous), House Sparrows (numerous), Downy Woodpecker (1), Red-bellied Woodpecker (1), Baltimore Oriole (1), Catbird (3), Tree Swallow (1), Cardinal (1), American Robin (numerous), yellow-shafted Northern Flicker (1), and the prize find of the day was a small group of male Scarlet Tanagers. Unfortuantely, the tanagers were never well lit for photography. All of the links above are photos from this trip.

Thursday: Breakfast at ghetto diner. Walk in cemetary. Before driving me to the airport in Providence, Nina and I went down to Griswold Point for a bit more birding. Saw a few barn swallows, a bunch of cormorants, many seagulls and red-winged blackbirds, and some sort of wading shore bird that I can't identify.

My review of the 1974 Sean Connery film Zardoz:

For a more complete review, see this. I'd warn you that there's spoilers, but it doesn't really matter. It's worth reading, if only because it contains the sentence, "Erections sound like guitars."

Flew to Providence, RI, via MSP on Northwest. Flew right over my parent's house and could see it clearly. The baggage people have torn one of the handles off of the new suitcase I bought as a result of the old one being destroyed... by the baggage people... on my last trip. Clearly, they don't want me to have a suitcase in good shape.

Anyway, Nina and I drove up and had dinner with Nina's parents in Brookline, MA. We ate at a nice Indian place and I ordered the chicken vindaloo that I always order at Indian places... and there was a great fiasco involving whether or not I really wanted it as hot as they could make it--"Indian Hot." Numerous references were made by the waiter to my impending tears, etc. It was one of the least-hot vindaloos I've ever had; considerably less hot than the ones I make at home. Pansy New Englanders...

After dinner Nina and I headed north and spent the night in a crappy motel in Lebanon, NH. They only had one room left when we got there (Memorial Day weekend... lots of tourists in BFE, NH?) so we took it. I can't quite get used to how small these states are. We were only about half an hour away from our destination but didn't realize it.

The following morning we drove to Stowe, VT. Noticed the Ben & Jerry's factory which we vowed to tour, and drove past our hotel (The Mountaineer) on our way to Mount Mansfield. I was feeling somewhat jetlagged and the weather was looking iffy, so we opted to drive up to the Nose and take the 1.5 mile hike over to the Chin, rather than hike from the bottom to the Chin (4 miles).

The hike was great; will upload pictures when I return home. We were well-equipped for possible poor weather and looked somewhat out of place amidst the other tourists who were wildly out of shape, ill-equipped, and numerous. The view from the top was good, though the weather was very hazy due to recent rain so we couldn't see beyond Lake Champlain and couldn't see the White Mountains at all. Nina taught an impromptu geology lesson to one of the summit volunteers and I took pictures of a junco.

This was my 25th state highpoint, and a very pleasant one. I've completed half of the states now, and most of the remaining ones are challenges (almost all of the remaining trivial ones I will check off during my road trip in July). We took a brief detour to get a neighboring county highpoint, which invovled dropping about 350' off the nose on very steep, wet, class 3 rock. This was probably the most fun part of the trip; If you climb Mansfield, go to the Adam's Apple just for kicks even if you give a rat's ass about county highpointing.

By the time we made our way back to the car, it had started to rain so we made our way down and back to the Mountaineer to check in. This is a ski lodge during the winter, and as Stowe is packed with such ski lodges, they have an over-abundance of lodging during the summer when there is very little draw to this place. I find it humorous that the crap-o-rama motel in Lebanon (30 minutes away) was completely full and completely lame, while this place had only two or three rooms full and was amazing (and was only marginally more expensive this time of year). It features a giant hot tub (comfortably seating ~20 people), an indoor pool, sauna, private decks for each room and a view looking out over an exansive lawn with a big stream flowing through it. A very pleasant place, and the people who run it are great. If you find yourself in Stowe, give the Mountaineer a try.

Lunch was at The Shed, in Stowe. Also very nice, though probably one of the cheaper alternatives in town. After lunch we went to Ben and Jerry's for a tour. I took this tour when I lived in Vermont in 1988 and remembered liking it a lot. Since then, I am sorry to report, Ben and Jerry's have sold out big time. They were purchased by Unilever and B&J both quit. The tour is really sad... they show a video about how B&J wanted to change the face of business by going against corporate culture and doing everything grass roots, etc. Then the Unilever guy comes on and talks abut how Unilever is incorporating the vision of B&J into their core teams to add value to their dynamic workforce or some crap. The tour guide indicates that the view of the factory floor is "the only part of the tour where you can't take pictures." Which means you can take pictures... during the movie, or while having a free sample of ice cream. The view from the mezzanine is the tour. So no pictures. However, there were paintings of animals on the walls in the stairway and the cat was labeled "Mouser." I got a picture of that. The sample ice cream was very good too. But yeah.... Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream: sellouts. The video says it plainly, "Ben and Jerry have left the company to pursue other interests." No elaboration.

Anyway, we're cheap bastards so we only spent one night at the Mountaineer. We went for a swim in the pool, tried out the hot tub and sauna, and took a walk around the yard. The following day we drove back to Middletown via small back-country roads. I.. uh... accidentally did another county highpoint on the way. Nina bought a pie from an orchard. Yum. We stopped by Greenfield, MA, to see her friends Jeremy and Towner and their new son, who's name is currently escaping me. Jeremy is a tattoo artist and was working on someone's arm when we arrived. The kid was really cute and well behaved.

Day 3: Nina had to work, so I stole her car and... did another county highpoint. I'm such a loser. I actually drove back up to Massachusetts to get Worcester County's highest point, Wachusett Mountain. This one was particuarly annoying in that I had tried to get it twice before--and it's a drive up! Both times I went previously I was not equipped for hiking to the summit (due to darkness and/or weather) and the road was closed. This time, the road was open and I drove right to the top... only to find myself in a cloud. No view at all. Ugh. But whatever; that big red spot on my map is gone. And that's what's really important, isn't it?

Returning to Middletown, Nina and I went on a short trip to a local interesting landform called "Mount Higby." It was basically a big rise with a sharp cliff on one side overlooking a suburb. Nina likes it a lot. Hi Nina. That night we went out with some of her housemates and friends to a sushi place. Mmmm... Crusty Roll.