This weekend was really intense. I went backpacking in the Sierras and ended up throwing my life to the wind on a pretty regular basis. ("Oh, it's 4 o'clock, time to jump off a cliff!") The official name of the place we were at is Desolation Wilderness. Geez. It doesn't get any more hardcore than that. It was insanely beautiful.

The fun parts involved going into areas that the park rangers had explictly advised us not to go due to extreme conditions. The first day, we hiked a couple miles (some of them striaght up) and camped out on rocks in the snow. "Snow in late July in California?" Yeah, we were that high and it was that cold. That evening as the sun was setting, clouds came whistling over the ridge some mere 100 feet above us, twisting and contorting, looking exactly like I would imagine a curious or pissed off ghost would. Like the rest of the trip it was viscerally intense, cuttingly beautiful, and scared the boogers out of all of us. Our Turkish travelmate made a sacrificial offer of a carrot top to the mountain gods. This must have appeased them, because within about ten minutes the sun set and the scary clouds went away.

Most of the next day involved climbing up rock slides on 60 degree inclines with thousand foot dropoffs and rocks that started avalanches when you sneezed and other similarly wildly perilous adventures. But it was great to be out in the crazy wild open.

My book is progressing; I've officially signed my contract and have written most of the introduction, 1st, and 2nd chapters. So much left to do, though!

I got a new, crisp 17" monitor and a Voodoo3 2000. It was about time! I had been using a 5 year old 14" monitor. My eyes are already thanking me. =)

I'm seriously looking around for a car at this point, and I found an extremely funky 1955 street buggy, big enough for two: $2500! How much fun would that be?! I'm going to need to get my glasses and a license first, though.