Life's a Happy Song

XOXOXO

"Whitney - apologies for the 'Xo' sign-off -- looks like I went on auto-pilot for a moment! haha." -a PR woman apologizes for the casual ending of her previous e-mail.

Rio Grande

"Night and day the river flows. If time is the mind of space, the river is the soul of the desert." -Edward Abbey, The Hidden Canyon.

Red Dot hike from White Rock.

Bruises?

Spotted on my walk to work.

The City Different

Post-Turkey Day

Co-op-themed snickerdoodle pie

"Let us remember that, as much has been given us, much will be expected from us, and that rue homage comes from the heart as well as from the lips, and shows itself in deeds." -Teddy Roosevelt

Happy Thanksgiving

"Enough is as good as a feast. . . I went inside the stock barn out of the wind and lay down on some oat sacks. Nature tells us to rest after meals and people who are too busy to heed that inner voice are often dead at the age of fifty years." -True Grit

Ouch

"You smashed the shit out of it." -Matt's orthopedic doctor gives him the update on his broken collarbone at his post-surgery follow-up appointment. Apparently, X-rays don't show everything.

C'est la vie

Shaken

"We basically have a 50-year-old science, compared with most other sciences, which are hundreds of years old." -a geologist explains our understanding of earthquakes. Read my little Outside articles Why Can't We Predict Earthquakes? and Why Can't We Drive Cars Equipped with Solar Panels?

Leo's To-Do List

"It is useful [to] constantly observe, note, and consider... Tell me...tell me whether...tell me how things are...tell me if there was ever." -Leonardo Da Vinci. A new book about him describes his to-do list (click to enlarge):

Read more at NPR.org.

Nerd Alert

Putting my history degree to good use... I won a book!

Deadline Crunch

--Story People

TGIF!

Wet Dogs

"Shake It! How Dogs, Cats, Even Hummingbirds Keep Dry." -great article and photos at NPR.org.

Cold Blooded

At Tent Rocks. Hopefully they're all hibernating now.

Power Button

"Does anybody touch a TV to turn it on any more?" -obnoxious lady in the surgery waiting room who interrupted my quiet writing session to watch the Packers game (after getting up -- what a struggle -- to turn on the television).

Clavicle Fracture

"Surgeons must be very careful when they take the knife! Underneath their fine incisions stirs the culprit -- life!" -Emily Dickinson.

Fixing this thing today!

Hard Work

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -Thomas Edison

TriShoes

"Just ignore they resemble water shoes." -my Zoot shoes review on OutdoorInformer.com.

Traction

"Kahtoola MicroSpikes revolutionized my life." -USSSA champ Laurie Lambert dishes about her favorite piece of gear.

Tears

Grammar Laughs

"6. The bar was walked into by the passive voice." -one of bar jokes involving grammar and punctuation. See the rest at McSweeney's.

Mountain Man

"If you're seeking the presidency but no one notices, are you still seeking the presidency?" -interesting read on former NM governor Gary Johnson. Also a good profile of him in Outside.

Snakes Alive

"'Unfortunately, I wasn't seeing things,' she says of the 15-inch prairie king snake that was glued to not only the mousetraps but also to the drawer." -one of several odd animal encounters mentioned in my latest Inside Columbia article.

Punctuation Perfect

The Most Interesting Man in the World.

My Darling

"Honey I ain't never had nobody like you." -M. Ward; 2009 (apparently I'm a little behind because I just heard this song for the first time yesterday).

LA, NM

"If it weren't for the National Laboratory, Los Alamos might be just another stagecoach stop in the desert." -Good ole Los Alamos tops Kiplinger's list of Where Millionaires Live.

FYI: the pond in the photo is called Ashley Pond, after a man named.... Ashley Pond (!), founder of the Los Alamos Ranch School. And that green grass is probably the reason NM is in the middle of a water crisis.

LACM

Vote for this video here!

In My Lunch Box

"...tastes like some kind of tangy dairy cud, but it's actually edible and kind of delicious." -The Office's Mindy Kaling, via NPR, talking about Siggi's Icelandic yogurt. She's totally right.

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