Cross posted from Facebook because this is a link I want to be able to find again some day ( Read more... )

It's no secret that I've never exactly been proud to be an American. Lucky, sure, and when we do something right to make the world just a little bit better - like when we raise billions of dollars in a matter of hours to help victims of the many, many natural disasters that have struck around the world in recent years, or when an entire high ( Read more... )

My brother, Gus, came down from Superior today to visit my grandmother. She's out of the hospital and into a nursing home for recovery, so that is one big victory. After the botched surgery and sub-par care from the hospital, we weren't sure she was going to be strong enough to get out again, but luckily they were able to release her on Thursday ( Read more... )

So I see these people in stories and movies and on TV who lose themselves in their work, disappearing for hours (or in extreme cases, days) into an equation they're trying to figure out or a case they're trying to solve, and I think "Man, I wish I had something to lose myself in like that ( Read more... )

This might not make a whole lot of sense, and I know for a fact that it will get rambly because that is pretty much my default setting, especially when I'm tired. Just a FYI.

( On writing )

In an effort to get out of the office today, myself and one of my co-workers went up river to 55 Mile HMU - the last irrigated HMU Ice Harbor is responsible for. It's a bit of a drive to get up there - about an hour or so from the dam (farther if you're leaving from Tri Cities) and the entire drive is a whole lot of rolling, wheat covered hills ( Read more... )

Parents are headed back to Wisconsin tomorrow night. Right now I'm... okay... and more importantly, not freaking out - or at least I'm managing to stave off any freak-outs with blind determination. We'll see how I manage when I go to bed and have nothing better to occupy my brain ( Read more... )

( Nuramburg )

( Munich! )

( in which we climb up a mountain and visit a spiffy castle )