Flying W Things

Much has happened recently. I will try to sum up. Many photos in this post.

One of the benefits of having a window office on the 18th floor - here's a picture I took from my office window:

It's neat to see this guy cruising around looking for food. I haven't seen him power-dive after a wood dove yet, but I'm sure it will happen sooner or later. Let's face it - birds of prey are cool.

Ok, onward.

We spent President's Day weekend in Mammoth - some friends of ours have a place there and invited us for the weekend. We tried to exhibit some restraint in accepting the invititation - I think we managed to "consider it" for about .03 seconds - but Katy and I were both excited about the chance to spend some time in the snow with the kids.

The five-hour drive on Friday went well - hurrah! - and Saturday morning found us playing in the snow. Here's Claire tossing a snowball (well, ok, snowchunk) at Katy:

Cameron is considering similar mischief, with me as the target this time:

Saturday night brought 3 or 4 inches of fresh, dry snow - great for sledding but not so hot for building snowmen. We focused our efforts on creating a good saucer sled run. Claire and Cameron were a little reluctant to fly solo at first but quickly got the hang of it.

Here's Claire after a good run:

And our little speed demon Cameron:

We all had a great weekend - good company, nice place, good weather, and best of all, two highly successful 5 hour drives. Woo Hoo!

Anyway, here are a few more pictures from the weekend.

Ok, on to topic number three:

Today at work somebody forwarded a link to an essay titled "Why Nerds Are Unpopular." I found it interesting, as I suspect many high-school social misfits would. If you'd like to read it, here is the essay in question.

My favorite quote from the essay: "Kids are sent off to spend six years memorizing meaningless facts in a world ruled by a caste of giants who run after an oblong brown ball, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. And if they balk at this surreal cocktail, they're called misfits."

A few observations before you go read that - first, it's quite long. Even longer than this weblog entry. Second, I think it panders a bit to the nerd crowd. I wouldn't dismiss it just on those grounds, however. Read away and let me know what you think.

(One last thing - I'm sure this clever entry title is already in use somewhere, but it came to me as I thought about all the stuff I had to write up. Oh well. I've already decided that there are few original thoughts to be had as it is.)