You Head A Splode
So I'm back from Montana. I met my Dad and his friend Mark there, and we stayed in a kick-ass little cabin 10 thousand feet up the tallest mountain resort in all of Big Sky, Montana. We spent the time driving approximately 900 miles around in Yellowstone National Park (which, I have come to learn, is as big in area as the state of West Virginia). We saw buffalo, elk, bears, eagles, moose, fish, sulfuric geysers, spectacular panoramas, and countless numbers of fly fishing shops. Pictures to follow, as soon as I can find a place to post roughly 50 MB of high-quality images online.
The thin air at 10 thousand feet proved to be troublesome the first night. I fell asleep, only to be awakened every five minutes by my brain as it sent signals to my lungs to gasp for more oxygen. It took a few days to get used to that, and any physical exertion on my behalf was like an evil extradimensional presence sucking all the energy out of me. I guess my swimming 50 laps at the Seattle University pool a few times a week has yet to truly influence my cardiovascular system. I need to build a pool at 10 thousand feet and swim in that.
We travelled with my Dad's friend Mark, a wealthy Texan. If that doesn't speak volumes in and of itself, let me elaborate:
1) Most of the time we were there, he wore a cowboy hat.
2) He looks kinda like what our current President would look like if he were a surfer, and he dresses how I would imagine Jimmy Buffet would if he were to walk into a factory specializing in pastel fabrics, and that factory exploded. Oh, and the factory is in Hawaii.
3) He currently has a machine gun on order, but he's waiting until the ban on assault weapons expires in September to buy it, because the price is going to drop by half then (from, I think, $1200 to $600). However, I think I managed to talk him into getting a nicer digital camera instead.
The brief moment of anti-Japanese hysteria evoked by
thefreak 's posting about "nicotine acid" in Japanese energy drinks here has prompted me to read up on Nature's Forgotten B-12 Vitamin, niacin. As it turns out, niacin has potent anti-cholesterol powers, and trustworthy scientific tests have indicated that niacin taken alone is more effective in reducing cholesterol in the human body than a prescription cholesterol-reducing agent. My dad also told me that he read somewhere that if you take a small amount of cinnamon (maybe a quarter-teaspoon) a day, your cholesterol will be similarly affected. Thanks to my dark genetic legacy, I have elevated cholesterol, so I'm thinking of going all empirical and testing these crackpot theories out for myself.
OK, I have lotsa translation to do. I will be adding a few new paragraphs of the story in a few days, along with the link to the Montana pics.
Oh, and
_beal_ , Age of Mythology is the BEST RTS game out there. Get it. Live it.