I am not making this up

My favorite quote overheard at the company Halloween party this afternoon:

"Hey Sam! That dog is wearing the same dress as you!"

Yup, pretty much sums it up.

Oooooh . . . nifty

I love maps. The idea that one person can represent space on paper and as a result, share info about that space with someone who's never been there is, I think, one of the neatest of all time. During my crazy roadtrip days, I read maps the way I read novels: to see what else was out there, to get ideas for what might be next, and to pass the time (if you don't think you can read a map to pass the time, either you don't have a good enough map or you're not reading carefully enough! A good map should point out random things like fake Dutch windmills build purely to attract tourists driving through Minnesota. Really.).

So I think Mapbuilder is one of the neatest websites out there. Not only do you get to look at maps, you get to write on them!!! Wow. Cool. I haven't tried it yet, so I can't report on ease of use and so on, but soon I will. Soon!

Road trips kick *!&@!!!

My guy has just left his Horrible Lawfirm Job and taken an in-house position at yet another of the Valley's Big Tech Companies. To celebrate, we went back to our roots & took a roadtrip - which I happily announced to co-workers as "I'm driving to Canada!"

Isn't the Oregon high desert just the coolest thing you've ever seen?

From Pacific North...

Check out how you can see our car's shadow in the photo - yes, this was shot out the window on highway 97, a few miles off I-5 heading north to Klamath Falls.

Road trip poetry means 297 miles to the border, a semi dipping its headlights at you at 2 am as you pass at 90 miles an hour, the sudden shock of dark volcanic rocks through the headlining clouds. The telephone poles blur and the lanes narrow from eight to two at the turnoff in the aptly named town of Weed. I remember driving I-5 with chains last New Year's, and I'm grateful for the October heat and fall leaves this time instead.