Well, I back from my trip home to Pennsylvania for Christmas. Actually, I've been back for about three days, but once I'm in "vacation mode", I'm lucky if I can find the energy to roll off my couch to get potato chips in the kitchen much less typing lots of words into my computer. Anyway, before I forget, the picture at the top of the post is not one I took, it's the picture on Joe's and Leanne's (my brother and his wife) Christmas card. It shows their dog Beamish in front of the Christmas tree. As for my trip home, I obviously did make it out of Denver airport, but it was nightmarish. In fact, I vow to never ever fly out of Denver airport for a holiday trip again. If the only flight I can get out of Colorado Springs is $200 more expensive and has five connections, I'll take that flight. As I mentioned in my post just before Christmas, the Denver airport's website said to get to the airport 2 1/2 hours before your flight leaves. My flight left at 10:15; I parked my car at about 7:15, and got in line for baggage check at about 7:45. The line for baggage check was mind-boggling. It circled around the whole terminal; there might have been a 1000 people in the line, maybe even more. It took me about an hour-and-a-half to check my baggage, making it about 9:15 when I was heading down to security. Luckily, my flight had been delayed to 11:15 by this time, which was one of the few times I think anyone has ever been happy to have his/her flight delayed. The problem was that I was hearing a rumor that it would take 3 hours to get through the security line. I thought that there was no way that could be true. So, I took the escalator down to the security area. And I saw the line serpentining back and forth through the ropes of the security area, and the line kept on going out of the security area. So I followed it out, trying to find the end. It turned a corner through baggage claim, went all the way through baggage claim, and then turned a corner OUT of baggage claim, ending up on the other side of the security area. It took me 20 minutes to find the end, and I knew then that I would be lucky to get through it in 3 hours. But it turns out that I got super lucky thanks to the person standing in front of me in line. She asked me what time my flight left, and I told her it left at 11:15. She said her flight left at the same time, and she asked me if she thought we would make it. I said we would cut it close, although really I thought we had no chance to make it. It turns out that she was a student at Colorade State, and she was flying home to Hawaii. She was one of the people who was supposed to fly out on one of the days of the blizzard, and apparently her mom had been on the phone all day the day before getting a new flight for her. And she told me that we should see if we could move up in line. And the thing is that I hate to be even a little bit pushy, so I said let's give it about 20 minutes, until it's about an hour before our flight, and then let's see if we can move up. And she basically said heck with that, and she went off to talk to one of the TSA security guys. The awesome thing was that she said she would come back and get me if she could move up, even though I was being kind of lame about not wanting to make waves. She walked around once, but she couldn't find any TSA people to talk to. I think they were hiding because I imagine they were getting an earful from people about the ridiculous lines. But then she walked around again and came back and got me. One of the TSA people told her about some secret "45-minute line" for people whose flights were going to be leaving in 45 minutes or less. So she led me back to the main security area, and we had to cut through the crowd waiting in the real line to get to our line. And everyone was screaming "Hey no cutting!!!" and "Get back in line cutters!!!", and I thought oh my goodness we're going to start a riot. And that made it even more awesome that she came back to get me, because she could have just gotten in the secret line without me when she was up there in the first place and not had to endure any of that. So we got into this line off to the side that wasn't exactly a line but just a bunch of people kind of standing around. I asked her, by the way I found out afterwards that her name was Tiffany, I asked Tiffany is she was sure we were in the right line. And she said to ask one of the TSA people to make sure, which was only fair since she had been doing all of the talking to TSA people up till that point. So, I saw a TSA woman talking to a few people, and I walked up behind the people and waited for them to finish talking before I butted in with my question. But as soon as she was finished talking to them, the TSA woman sprinted back behind the security checkpoint. Obviously, most of the TSA people were trying to avoid "the public" since it was so crazy out there. Finally, I found a really nice TSA guy, and he told me that we were in the right line, and he also told me if he were in charge, he'd have more people out there telling everyone what was going on, so there wouldn't be such mass confusion. Anyway, we got through security and made it to our gates with about 25 minutes to spare. And I thanked Tiffany profusely for getting me through that security line hell when she didn't really have to help me out at all. As it turns out, my flight didn't end up leaving until after noon, so I had more time than I thought. But without Tiffany's help, I would have easily been stuck in that security line for 4-5 hours, and I still would have missed my flight by two hours. I talked to some flight attendants waiting at my gate, and they told me that half of the TSA guys called off that day, which I guess was one of the reasons that the lines were so backed up. Anyway, that's it for tonight. I'll try to post tomorrow about some of the Christmas gifts I got.

Posted at 12:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (609) | TrackBacks (0)

I managed to get a couple pictures of the snowy landscape after the blizzard, but to avoid any falling-in-snow-and-losing-my-apartment-keys incidents, I just took pictures from the comfort of my apartment. The picture above shows my car as seen from my bedroom window. It turns out that I got really lucky that I left work when I did on Wednesday. The Academy was closed yesterday, but I went back to work today, and I talked to some of the other people who came in on Wednesday. One of the guys who left about 45 minutes after I did took 2 hours to make it home because of the traffic. Another of the guys didn't leave until after lunch, about 3 hours after I went home, and it took him 6 hours to get home. It only took me about 45 minutes to get home (it usually takes about 20 minutes), and most of that extra time was because it was really hard to see where I was going, not from the traffic. So it looks like I left just in time. I'm supposed to fly home to Pittsburgh tomorrow; I'm flying out of Denver airport. If you've been following the news, then you might have heard that they finally reopened the airport at noon today, but they're not going to fully operational for a few more days. The website says to get to the airport 2 1/2 hours before your flight if you want to check baggage because of the crowds. Anyway, so far my flight is not canceled and is supposed to leave on time, so I'll cross my fingers that it stays that way. I don't know if I'll have any more posts before Christmas, but here's a Christmas treat from YouTube, Linus's speech from A Charlie Brown Christmas:

Posted at 12:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (511) | TrackBacks (0)

In what is seeming like a monthly event, Colorado Springs was hit today with a blizzard which had winds of 40-60 mph and dropped 12 inches of snow. Even though it was windy overnight, snow didn't start falling until the morning, so the road conditions were reasonable for the morning commute. So, I did go into work in the morning. But by 10 AM, it was absolutely nasty outside. The Air Force Academy asked all non-essential personnel to go home early. I had my gloves in my car, and when I opened the door to get them out so that I could clean my windows, the snow was falling so quickly and the wind was blowing so hard that the entire interior of my car got coated with snow just from the 10 seconds I had the door open. I got home alright; the roads were manageable but the terrible visibility was the toughest thing to deal with it. After my experience with falling down a hill and losing my apartment key in the last blizzard, I decided not to take any pictures this time. Anyway, on to a different subject-- I went to see the Christopher Guest movie For Your Consideration on Saturday. Christopher Guest is semi-well-known for making funny quirky movies like Best in Show and Waiting for Guffman. He's most famous for writing (along with Michael McKean) and starring in This is Spinal Tap. Somehow I've never gotten around to seeing Spinal Tap, and in fact the only Christopher Guest movie I have seen before For Your Consideration is Waiting for Guffman. But that movie was enough to sour me to his style of filmmaking. His movies are basically improvs centered around scenes which are just little skits and having little in the way of plot. I just don't think any of it is very funny. The main source of humor seems to be in making fun of rube characters who say silly, nonsensical, illogical things. Though it's not quite the same thing, it reminds me of Monty Python humor, which I don't find very funny either. A lot of the attraction of both styles, the Monty Python style and the Christopher Guest style, seems to be the unpolished feel of everything. It looks like a bunch of clever, funny people got together one night and started performing some skits and someone happened to catch it on film. But the thing is, that's not what really happened. They work for a long time on these movies, as long people work on any other movies, so the unpolished look of the movies is just as phony as the slick look of a Hollywood blockbuster. I guess that's my main problem with the Guest/Python style of humor, it seems to rely on a certain sense of intellectual superiority. The movies are designed to make you feel like you're smart enough to be in on the whole thing while others aren't. We can laugh at the characters because they're not as sophisticated as us, and we can laugh at the amateur filmmaking because we're too smart to be suckered by slick Hollywood filmmaking. Anyway, judge for yourself. Below is the famous Black Knight skit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It didn't make me laugh once, but maybe I have no sense of humor.

Posted at 12:44 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Substantive entries will resume tomorrow, but I just wanted to make a quick post to give two quick bits of news: (1) My home internet connection is fixed. Colorado Springs recently switched cable/internet providers from Adelphia to Comcast, and when the transfer was made something got screwed up in my cable modem, so they had to reprogram it. (2) I'm working on converting my Diary to Movable Type, which will add a number of new features including comments, permalinks to individual entries, and a search feature. Click here if you want to see the progress of the changeover.

Posted at 12:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (31) | TrackBacks (0)

I know I haven't been posting as much over the last month or so, but I was hoping to write a couple posts this past weekend. Among other things, I went to see the Cristopher Guest movie For Your Consideration. Also, I'm thinking about looking for some teaching opportunities outside the Air Force Academy since it's increasingly looking like I won't be able to teach at the Academy. Unfortunately, my home internet went out this weekend, so those posts are put on hold for now. I don't have much free time at work, so until I get my home internet back, which is supposed to happen tomorrow, you probably won't see anything new posted here.

Posted at 12:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (80) | TrackBacks (0)

This weekend, my friends John and Sheila and I tried to climb Mt. Sherman. I was a little bit worried because I had never tried to climb a 14er in winter weather, and it had been three months since I climbed any 14er at all. I got a little more worried when I found out that we were going to take a non-standard route up Sherman so that we could climb 3 other mountains on the same day. The other 3 mountains were all 13ers (between 13,000-13,999 feet in altitude), and they were all grouped around Sherman. Well it turns out that we were overly ambituous. Maybe because it was a non-standard route, the trail was covered with 3+ feet of snow everywhere. It was up to my thighs in all places and up to my waist in many places. When the snow is that high, the type of hiking you have to do is called "postholing" because of how you have to make a hole in the snow with every step you take. It's hard to describe just how exhausting postholing is. We postholed for about 3 miles towards the mountain. We kept on twisting and turning in our path trying to find high ground where the snow wasn't as deep. In retrospect, we would have been better off just walking straight towards the mountain, because the shallow snow never lasted for more than 3 or 4 steps before it got deep again. In addition to exhaustion, we had to deal with running out of time before nightfall. We started our hike at 7 AM, but we didn't reach the foot of the mountain until noon, and we still had 2000 feet to climb to the summit. By that time, we had given up doing four mountains in one day and were just trying to get to the top of Sherman. I was personally in trouble, because I wasn't planning on having to cross miles and miles of deep snow, so I had worn regular blue jeans instead of snow pants. The weather was pretty warm for Colorado in December. It was 35 degrees at the trailhead, but it was windy and in the 20s at the foot of the mountain. My pants were soaked from walking through deep snow, and they became frozen solid when we reached the mountain. I wasn't as cold as you'd think a person wearing frozen pants would be, but all the same it was worrisome, especially knowing that it would only get colder and windier the farther up the mountain we got. The thing that really got me worried though was that snow fell into the tops of my boots and was making my socks wet, and my feet were getting really cold. Luckily, I had an extra pair of socks, so I put those on at the foot of the mountain. But I told John and Sheila that if we had to cross any more snowfields, which would send more snow into my boots and make my dry socks wet again, I'd have to turn around. Sure enough, we barely started up the main climb up the mountain before we hit a snowfield. I crossed it, but then we hit another snowfield, and I said enough is enough, time to turn around. By this time, John said his feet were getting really cold. He was wearing waterproof pants and snow gaiters, so no snow had gotten in his boots, but just walking through the snow all day was enough to chill his feet through his boots. He wanted to turn around with me, but Sheila wanted to go on. We argued for a while, and Sheila decided to go up the mountain for a bit further and see if the climb got any easier. John and I were frigid, so we started back down the mountain to get out of the wind while Sheila went up. We had walked about a half-mile back when Sheila turned around. She said she crossed one more snowfield and saw a clear way up the mountain, but there was still a long climb to the top and it was getting late, so she decided not to chance it. We decided not to repeat the mistake of zigging and zagging on the way back trying to look for shallow snow, and we just accepted that we were going to have to slog through thigh-deep snow until we hit the mining road back to the car. The walk back through the deep snow was miserable, and the 2.5 mile walk down the mining road to the car seemed like it went on forever. It was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other without falling over. Luckily, the ice on my pants melted when I got to the lower altitude of the mining road, and the danger from frostbite went away. But I was never so glad to see a car as I was to see John's car at the end of that hike. I think I could be happy to live the rest of my life never having to see another inch of snow. The only other human beings we saw all day were a couple of nutty skiers who apparently thought it was worth 4 hours of walking to do 5 minutes of skiing. To each his own I guess.

Posted at 12:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This weekend, I went to see Darren Aronofsky's new movie The Fountain. My opinion about Aronofsky films is the opposite of most film buffs. I didn't like his first movie Pi (which was adored by critics), but I loved his second movie Requiem for a Dream (which got a lukewarm reception from critics). Requiem was released in 2000, and Aronofsky hasn't put out a movie since, which is usually a bad sign. Not making movies for an extended period of time means either a director has gone "Hollywood", enjoying the celebrity scene rather than worrying about filmmaking, or it means that the director is mired in some vanity project which has spun so far out of control that it has no connection to anything anyone would ever want to watch ever. Judging by this review, Aronofsky had fallen into the vanity project trap. He has been working on The Fountain since 2000, and the reviewer says that not only is the movie's plot beyond comprehension, but the ending is a celebration of the director's hubris. Well, I really liked Requiem, so I thought I'd at least give The Fountain a chance. And I admit that for the first hour of the movie, I was thinking "Oh man, this movie is really boring" and "Geez, this movie makes no sense". But I really got into the second half of the film. It's essentially three stories, one taking place in the sixteenth century, another taking place in the present, and the third taking place in some indeterminate future, and all of the stories are about a man's (Hugh Jackman in all three stories) search for the Tree of Life. The present-day story involves a researcher who is racing to find a cure for his wife's brain tumor. I think the other two stories are metaphorical illustrations of how the researcher copes with grief over his wife's death. I don't know that the end of the movie is so much a celebration of the director's hubris as a triumph over the hopelessness of grief. But there's lots of different ways it can be interpreted. Anyway, The Fountain is an artsy-fartsy movie, so I definitely wouldn't recommend it if you're not into those kinds of movies, but if you don't mind a little artsy-fartsiness, I don't think it's a bad movie.

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I went over to my friends' John's and Sheila's house (not sure where the apostrophe goes in there...) yesterday to watch football. Even though lived in non-mountainous Pennsylvania before they moved here, they're mountain climbers just like me. Actually, they've climbed more challenging mountains than I have, namely Mt. Rainier, which is probably the toughest or one of the toughest mountains to climb in the continental U.S. Anyway, they're climbing a 14er this upcoming weekend, and they asked me to come along, and I said yes. They said they'll probably do one of the easier 14ers, like Mt. Sherman. But like I said after I hiked up Pikes Peak, climbing 14ers in winter conditions is a whole different thing than climbing in summer. Although you probably don't have to worry about avalanches if you stay away from the steep mountains, you still have to deal with 2+ feet of snow which is not just hard to walk through but also hides the trail. And also the temperatures get pretty frigid as you ascend to high elevations. So we'll see how it goes. And also the days are a lot shorter, so you don't have time to lollygag. I'm a little bit nervous.

Posted at 12:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (601) | TrackBacks (0)