My Shit

Palila has already posted the pictures on Flickr here.

The hike was fun. It was also very cold. It had been in the 70's in the ATL during the day, but 2 cold fronts and a couple thousand feet of elevation change really made a difference.

It was a good thing we brought a tent. While I could go into the details of some very rude deaf hikers -- I won't -- let's just say we were happy to have the tent. The tent trapped the body heat of me, Palila, and Angus. This kept us and our water from freezing at night. We can't say the same thing for the people who stayed in the shelters.

Other than the deaf hikers, we met quite a few people who were very interesting to talk to. That is one of the things I like most about the trail. Since we weren't on a death march like last time, we actually had time to stop and talk with some of these individuals.

I wish I had more time to write about the hike, but I can hear the whip crack of my school work. I really don't want to fail out of grad school, so I'd better get back to it. And there's so much laundry and cleaning of camping stuff left to do too! ... but it was damn fun and I'd do it again.

I don't really have a title for this post, nor a topic for that matter. My spring break began after class on Friday. I've already been to Indiana and back. The trip was difficult due to the nasty weather on the way back.

And I will generally have nasty weather to contend with over my entire spring break. I had a hike planned, and I think we are going to go ahead and do it, but it is going to be freaking cold. We'll have to hike just to keep warm.

I've got a ton of reading to do, and I'm not doing it well. My upstairs neighbor keeps beating on stuff. Now their running the vacuum cleaner. I don't think I should be able to hear every thing my upstairs neighbor does, but I do, and it really slows down the reading process since this junk is not easy.

Well, I'd better get back to that reading. I have three papers to finish writing in about 6 weeks, all based on the reading I'm doing now. Fun times.

I would love some sleep.

Two nights ago someone decided to unload a car off of a tow truck into the basement parking of my apartment building ... at 2am ... and not very quietly. I actually didn't know what was going on at first. We have had some break-ins and vandalism so I went down to check it out. Once I realized what was going on I confronted the individuals on how loud they were for 2am. They got a little short with me. I backed off (somehow), but reported them to the apartment manager, who was less than pleased. Needless to say, I was a little wound up and didn't get much sleep.

Now this morning the chainsaws started at 8am. I usually don't get up until 9 or 9:30am. Yeah, I know, poor me, I sleep in. I also work until about 11pm every day and take my personal break from 11pm to 1am or so.

Tomorrow morning my girlfriend wants to get up around 6am to go visit her dad.

Lack of sleep starts making me cranky. And these damn chainsaws still running at 11am with no sign of giving up are really starting to annoy the shit out of me. I AM TRYING TO WRITE A PAPER HERE!!

I am trying to plan two hiking trips.

One I want to do over my spring break and I hope I can get the planning down well enough such that my girlfriend can come along too.

The other I want to do at the beginning of summer. I want to hike from the GA NC state line all the way to Johnson City, TN.

The first hike will be 3-4 days (I'd rather do 4) and the second hike will be about 4 weeks. The girlfriend and I have decided to start doing day hikes on every other Sunday up on the A.T. While I walk around all day with a backpack, and I try to keep up with my back and shoulder exercises with my lifting, there is nothing that compares to lugging around a 50lb pack while hiking on uneven ground for hours on end.

I got me new tent and pack last night. Palila has already posted on some of our adventures from last night.

What a Monday:

1. The secretary left me off the department mailing list; I missed the monthly department meeting


2. One of my professors totally changed a meeting around so it lasted 30min, rather than an hour and 30min


3. My desktop computer at work quit printing while trying to print out my mid-term


4. I thought it was free to park on campus if you leave after 7pm, so after working on my mid-term until 8pm, I left and paid $10 in parking to find out that is just some kind of urban legend


5. Word for Windows and Word for Mac don't really get along, so when my computer quit printing it was not as simple as transferring the file to my laptop and printing the file from there


6. You can't make PDF's from Word in Windows like you can in Word for Mac so that was a frustrating 15min worth of wasted time


7. The oven timer randomly started going off at O'dark'thirty this morning for no reason what-so-ever and would not shut off easily

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