What A Laborous Day!

Well, as usual Labor Day weekend has turned into exactly what it is - LABOR! Oh sure, everyone says it is a day off of work, but it's actually the last chance to get things done before fall and winter set in. This weekend Laura and I got a lot of things done too. Saturday we cleaned up the house and relaxed most of the day. Sunday was the day that put the hurt on!

Sunday morning we woke up at 7:30 and packed a small lunch and out the door we went. Up until last year I went on an annual canoe trip down the Dismal River - I probably went on that trip 10-12 years straight. Once we arrived in Montana it was a little more difficult to make it back to Nebraska for the canoe trip, so we climbed a mountain last year. We decided a hike or climb was a good way to spend our day this year too. We arrived at the trailhead to the Rattlesnake Recreation area at 8:30 and started our hike. We went past an old abandoned cabin along the trail - that was pretty cool to see. When we canoe the Dismal there is an abandoned house along the river that is neat to see as well - what a coincidence. Well, long hike short, we did some geocaching but we only found 2 of the 4 we went after. We hiked to the wilderness boundary and turned around because it was getting hot - around 90 - and our feet were starting to bother us. We climbed 3 ridge lines along the hike, the first was over 1,000 feet and it was straight up - no switchbacks like on the M hill that is so popular in Missoula. Once you climb the ridge you have to go back down as well - I think that's worse than the climb - but we climbed about 5,000 vertical feet during the hike - then of course we had to go back down 5,000 feet as well - so there's 2 miles of hiking in itself. When we arrived back at the truck the GPS said 17.9 miles of hiking - add the 2 miles of vertical climbing and that's a 20 miler folks.!.!... Needless to say, even in the semi-decent shape we are in, we were hurting last night. Slow movements and slower reactions.

This morning we hit up Wal-Mart, one of the first times we have gone to Wal-Mart in the morning and we were there early enough to beat the crowds. Usually we head for Wal-Mart no earlier than 9:00 p.m. to avoid massive chaos. We made it home and put away the goodies and started cleaning out the garage. I was skeptical if we would actually attain much from the task, but we actually cleaned out A LOT of space! We rearranged a few things and around 3:00 we were finishing up. I might try to get some pictures of that - it's impressive!

Laura had some work to do at the labratory tonight, so I came with her. I was going to play some Ultimate Frisbee while she worked on her experiments, but no one was around when I went to play, so I came back to have a bite to eat with her and surf the internet - and blog! And that brings things up to now. We have cleaned up the lab office and I fixed some computers and set up a printer in the labratory for the experiment computers. It's approaching 9:00 p.m. and I am looking forward to heading home and having some ice cream and cake before hitting the hay. I have been looking at building a new computer lately. My computer at home is starting to become an older computer and I can only update so many things before it's not worth it any longer. So I am looking into building a new computer in the next several weeks. Perhaps I will keep everyone updated on the progress of the new blogging machine! Ha ha!

One last note, I am going to add a facebook 'badge' to my links menu on the right side of the page (maybe for some of you it's at the top of the page) but it has my profile picture, name, and recently added pictures linked with it. I think you can click on it to see my facebook profile - if you havn't heard of facebook before it is like myspace.com were people can meet and share pictures, facebook is based on school social networks though - I would be a member of University of Nebraska at Kearney, more specifically the alumni group. It's a hot item with college age kids these days.

Work tomorrow and Laura says we still have an hour left here at the school so I am really looking forward to that snack now! Until again

-=Nolan=-