My Grandpa. 

I love the Mountains

I was trying to explain to a friend today why I love going to the mountains for a week of my vacation.

I think it's a little important to do without the extras for a while, though. It's a reminder that, in some ways, our society is an artificial construct. For one thing, we are often distanced from our food these days. In the mountains, you are facing an environment in which living things feed off of other living things. Animals like ourselves have no choice but to feed on living creatures in order to survive. Even a vegetarian eats living things; sometimes just taking a part of the plant, and sometimes taking its life. That's the way it should be.

It's also interesting when you think about how we live in such elaborate homes, built by someone else. We have so many features in these homes, and rules about how a home should be built.

It's not so much that I think our society is wrong, but just that we should recognize that it is our construction, and not a thing in itself. Being "civilized" is an artificial standard, but one that has generally been accepted.

Just some thoughts I plan on pondering on while I'm taking a week in the mountains.

The only thing worse than feeling lonely when alone is feeling lonely when in a crowd.

Apologies for the atypically "down" post. It's just been one of those weekends where my emotions have been a bit off. No reason I can think of; it just happens sometimes.

Marcus Wesson is sick, to state the obvious.

The news has been shouting every detail of Michael Jackson's disturbed nature, but Marcus Wesson is far worse.

This man is just about as sick as they come. I just can't understand how the system failed to catch on to him sooner. He had multiple children with his own daughters and neices, even when they were underaged, then kills several of his kids when it looks like they might finally be taken away.

The other thing that is so utterly reprehensible is how some of his family is still sticking by him. I can understand if they don't believe that he killed the kids. What gets me is that they seem to have no problem with him treating the girls in his family like his own harem. When it's shown that he is father and grandfather to some of these children, how can they still condone it?

I don't really care if he actually is executed or not, Wesson just needs to be permanently kept away from his family.

Hilgard Meadow, at about 9,000 feet, I think. 

A shot of Rose Lake at 10,000 feet in the Sierra Nevadas. 

It has been a bit of a stressful week. I'm one of two people running the office, and the other has been on vacation for the past week and a half. Too many jobs to do and I frequently am forgetting something I was supposed to have done earlier. Only two more weeks until I leave for my two week vacation, though.