Yesterday Paxton and I headed up to Red Top Mountain State Park on Lake Allatoona to try out the Iron Hill Loop. It's a multi-use trail, and the only one in the park accessible to bikes.

This is a really fun little trail. It's graveled for the entire length, so no mud (and no worries about going on it shortly after a rain). We ended up doing the loop in both directions, and the clockwise route (turn left on the loop from the parking lot) is definitely easier. After crossing over Iron Hill Cove Road the trail heads down into the old iron-mining area. The most obvious remnants are the huge piles of tailings (?) from the mines. There are numbered signposts in this area, but the ranger office was closed and I don't see any description on the website. Overall the trail is pretty flat: the GPS in my G1 says the net elevation change is only about 150 feet, with a total rise of about 750 feet. The uphills are gradual, and the downhills are speedy. Use caution on the turns, though, the gravel gets pretty loose!

Iron Hill is a Muddy Spokes trail.

Happy birthday, Evelyn!

I've finally posted the pictures from our Sedona trip: 88 out of the 350 we took! Not being able to leave well enough alone or do anything by hand, I've been struggling trying to get the captions that I added via Picasa out to be able to use with the qdig image gallery. Long story short: Picasa's EXIF tags and captions and exports are weird and slightly broken - python to the rescue! Long story long may be coming forthwith for the thousands of geeks who hang on my every word.

Well, he told all his friends, and lo and behold, crunchy Firefox delights are spreading!

¹ Does that make Dan my brother-in-law? Maybe a brother-in-law once removed? Or maybe he's a second brother-in-law, and my sister's husband is a brother-in-law once removed. Or maybe I'm just waaaay to caught up in this.

Odysseys are what vans should be. Almost 2 years ago, we moved up from a 97 Quest to a 2000 EX, and promptly started recommending one to all our friends. I have a 99 Accord, and the Odessey handles exactly like it. The disappearing third seat is to die for, it's not just marketing that one person can take out the middle seats, and oh my god I'm waxing lyrical about my minivan.

Last summer we drove it on The Great Eastern Seaboard Odessey (get it? Road trip? Odyssey? On board? Get it? Oh, never mind), 10 days and 2000 miles round trip from ATL to Charlotte to DC to Hershey PA to DC and back to ATL. Since the Odessey has a cargo space approximately the size of Kansas, we were able to put everything except one suitcase (including 2 bikes and 2 scooters) behind the third seat.

Just to put that into comparison, we had to get a rooftop carrier for the Quest for a week in Florida, and that was with only one kid.

Remember the joke about "if cars were like computers" or "if computers were like cars"? I want my software to be like my Odessey.

Except I want to skin it like a Ferrari.

That's one good thing about going to work. I don't have to be around when they poop.

Ginger's new birdhouse seems to have become quite the desirable location. We've had lots of goldfinches and purple finches and (yay!) the nice bluebird couple from down the street come to check it out. And they check it out by hovering around it, which my POS digital camera has completely failed to capture. Update: add the chickadees to the list of prospective tenants.

Birds in general have been swarming around this morning. We've also had pine siskins, blue jays, cardinals, and flickers. A hotspot of avain activity, if there was one; very cool but distracting too.

The Legend of the Magic Mantis

I found this bug in a tree. he said "I will grant you one wish". I said I would like to see haven. in a cloud of dust he had a three-damincheanall map of haven. Then in a cloud of smoke he was gone. where did he go? I did not know. I searched and searched but could never find him. that is the legend of the magic mantis. the end.

"Nobody gets Good Friday off," I say.

"Well, they should. They're going to let you out early, though, right?"

"Riiight."

Update (22 April 2004): Ginger correctly pointed out that they did indeed let us out early. She also claims that she doesn't think Valentine's Day should be a holiday. Her denial that Halloween should be a holiday was conspicuous by its absence.