I kept putting off posting here in the hopes that I would get around to pulling the images out of my camera and using them to spice up a post. But, alas, I have been extra-busy and it's not looking good for the next few days either, so I'm just going to tell you about what I've done over the last couple weeks.

I went to Colorado again the weekend after the last mountain climbing post, but this time it was to do some reasonably flat county highpoints with some of the highpointer nerds. No mountains were climbed. Probably the strangest thing I saw that day was the Air Force loading a missile into a missile silo in northern Colorado. We must have passed by a dozen silos that day, but one had the missile-mobile parked next to it and a bunch of Air Force goons milling about. Also went to a highpoint with a windfarm on it, and got to see the 15 ton turbine assembly up close. Yowzer. They will spin with as little as 7 mph of wind. How a 7 mph breeze can turn a 15 ton turbine escapes me. Then I ate a buffalo burger and petted a camel. My county highpointing completion map now has a big blue blob in the corner of Colorado. I need to climb one of the counties that connects that glob to my main glob. Because... these things are important.

Last weekend, Nina and I went to Las Cruces and watched some of the X Prize Cup. Her cousin (the same guy who used to be the Explorer's Club president) was a commentator for their live broadcast, and he got us some VIP passes. The rocket launch we saw (a triple-N motor cluster rocket) was impressive, as was the low-altitude F-18 supersonic flyby. John Carmack's little flying rocket vehicle that fell over and crashed was less exciting, though seeing Carmack flip out after the crash was worth it. He seems like a guy who could stand to enhance his calm.

For the past two weeks, I've been teaching a class on non-destructive assay of nuclear material to a delegation from China. They were a hoot, and I got a lot of practice using my long-lost Mandarin language skills. Wo bu zhi dao.

I have pictures of all this stuff, and maybe next week I'll have time in the evenings to upload some.

Speaking of which, I'll be in Knoxville all next week doing some work at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.