The days tick down...

In two days, I'll be pulling into Maryland. In three days, I'll be eating dinner in Albuquerque. In four (four! FOUR DAYS! ah ah ah!) I will be dining in Santa Fe, and in five days I'll be camped on the south rim of the Grand Canyon, reconstituting some discount dehydrated backpacking meal or other on an alcohol stove.

Words can't really express how psyched I am right now. I haven't flown in far too long, or seen Maryland since the first weekend in February, or EVER been out in the mountains of the Southwest. My pack arrived on Helen's porch today at 1:30pm local time, according to UPS; I've got all the loose vital odds and ends (toothbrush, trial-sized purell, and oh yeah backcountry permit) waiting in my hat... just some packin' tomorrow and I'll be on my merry way come Friday. All four sets of camera batteries have been cycling this week on their chargers, and work has dragged on and on. I'm ready to go.

Migrated!

Straight from my GooglePages site, I've decided maybe I oughta toss something up here more conducive to interaction. Because of course the whole reason I'm doing this is to gauge reactions and solicit opinions.

...right.

Also, if anybody out there can find a stately yet unpretentious template, I'd be much obliged.

Anyway, here - in its entirety - is last night's rambling:

Google Page Creator, you are not very bright. When I hit backspace in the 'title' section, I do not intend for you to go all the way back to the beginning of the line, and I would think this to be intuitive. Thankfully, you are not doing so here in the body of the page. Minor props for behaving as expected some of the time, at least.

I need to find something to do with my weekends. I've spent the majority of this one in the house, and that just isn't right when it's 83° and beautiful, or even yesterday morning when it was 75° and rainy. I've been to Congaree Swamp, I've spent plenty of time on the Riverwalk... any of you local people got any other ideas for free outside stuff to do? uhm, any of you even reading this? I did get a few things done; some vital shopping yesterday morning, some delicious grilled chicken yesterday afternoon, and an excellent brass quintet rehearsal today. It's great playing with folks who are better than I am. It gives me no choice but to not suck.

At least next weekend and the weekend following will be highly interesting. Friday night I meet up with Amy in Burtonsville; Saturday morning I fly to Albuquerque for what seems like the one time a year I can chill with Helen; Monday morning we drive out to Grand Canyon National Park for a night on the rim and three hiking down in the backcountry. My pack and most vital gear has been UPS-shipped out there already, and as long as I can remember to bring that backcountry permit I'll be in good shape. I cannot WAIT to get out west... only other time I've spent on the opposite side of the Mississippi was in Vegas, and that doesn't count, being more Disneyworld-for-adults than anything else. Looks like Sunday we'll be having dinner somewhere in Santa Fe, and if there's anything for which I can unconditionally trust Helen it is good food.

Well, that's my little foray into mixing a blog (which I'm sure at some point I swore I'd never do) with Google Page Creator. More may or may not come depending on how bored I get at work. Maybe I'll even post some photos from next week's trip. We'll see!