Something got in a fight with a skunk outside the back door to my office. I think it lost, because it’s nearly unbearable in here.

The culinary delights for this evening include a quesadilla made with Jack cheese, a roasted Boldog paprika, and a roasted Anaheim chile; a Colorado peach; and anise-spiced eggplant.

Our first choir practice was tonight. We’re singing fairly English christmas music, but we’ve got some of my favorites, like the Glaucestershire Wassail Song, and we’re singing Personent Hodie, though not an edition I care for particularly much. Alita, the conductor, needs to chill out a bit — she is rather high-strung this time around, and spends more time explaining things than we do doing them. She’s always done this somewhat, but the beginning of the year is always worst.

And now, off to more delightful conversations in #RDFIG and #NBTSC.

Today started with the parade, which I did go to. It was fun, more candy than ever thrown. It became breakfast and lunch. I ended up at the Chipeta, talking about phones again and ended up spending the day making Josh’s fancy IP phone go. A rather productive day!

So I ended up having a Funky day.

I got up at 9, and decided to have coffee before breakfast, just in case Ethan and Eric were out for their usual Sunday morning. They were — and this turned rapidly into a two hour chat about everything from politics to the molecular got structure of microwaved food. Then came the invitation to go hiking, so we skipped by the farmers market, where the peppers are finally in — I finally got my favorites, the hungarian paprikas. Then we went to Ouray, Ethan showed me his studio/lab, as well as the guts to Audiorack, his station-automation software that he’s mixed together. Pretty nice user interface for Real Basic!

Afterward, we hiked Bear Creek Trail, then hung out for a bit, then went to the Buen Tiempo and had a couple pints of 1554, then came back (a bit too tipsy for my taste) and hung out at Eric’s, then ate curried cous-cous with roasted peppers. I’m home now, twelve hours after I left. I love unplanned days like this.

In other news, my phone hasn’t rung recently. That means my day off really is.

Some statistics. I’ve worked on 213 PLD packages in some way, making up 553 revisions. 124 of those packages are ones I added to the distribution. There are 7700 packages in total, and about 6000 of those are actually released for public consumption. And people ask me what I do in my free time.

Carrie just called!

They’ve been working on Lizard Head Pass outside of Telluride, so really close. Very cool.

I’ll have to try and visit her when she’s back in Durango and off on the 9th, 10th and part of the 11th.

I went to Sandy’s for breakfast, and had an egg and biscuit with coffee. I love simple things, you know? The best part, however, was running into the crew from SYC that I played frisbee with, and I sat with them.

Picture a blonde-haired, dread-headed but clean-cut Jake Matilsky. That would be Andrew, right down to looking at the food left by another patron when they left, and commenting on how he aught to just take it and eat that instead.

Now it’s rainy, about fifty degrees, and at least ten degrees wind-chill. It feels positively Olympic here, and that’s welcome by me. The garden (what survived the frost, which was most of it) is doing well and could use the moisture.

Hopefully, I can make today a productive coding day. I think the temperature and ambiance can’t do anything but help.

Envies: Sarah for flying. Tessa for being off at a spiffy college, and anyone who doesn’t have a permanent job for being free to travel.

Likes: coffee, late night walks, and things that are designed Right.

Dislikes: not knowing if there’s a skunk about, cars that don’t signal turns, and network connections that don’t.

I’m tired, and sore from frisbee. I didn’t come home until late, so I didn’t eat right. Silly me.

I played the most intense game of ultimate frisbee that I’ve ever seen. It was seven on seven, not three on three as usual. The Southwest Youth Corps crew that’s working on the river trail showed up, so we had a lot of young, able-bodied players.

I had an absolute blast. And now I’m going to bed, because I’m exhausted.

My first bottle of spiro arrived today. Feel the thrill of fear.

Today was day one of installing phones at the Chipeta. We’re replacing their maxed-out and very proprietary Panasonic phone system with an open-source SIP-and-Asterisk PBX. It looks like we’re going to have a relatively easy time of it, since someone ran 50-pair cable instead of the needed 24-pair, so there’s extra lines into the old room, and the phone lines run to both the current PBX system and the closet where the new one will live, meaning it’s just a simple re-punch, no dragging cables all over an ill-conceived but very artistic building, and no need to make anything new pretty.

We got the fax working, the bookkeeping phone working, and with a little more work, we can get the business office up and going. Then we start on the meat of the project, and put the DSL modems in all the rooms, and switch them over.

Work like this is fun!

I am sorely tempted to take my cello to work and play it during breaks.

Blah to feeling 100% un-beautiful today.

I saw Carrie off at nine this morning. It looks like a great program. (The director, upon her arrival said “Want a $1000 Americorps scholarship? Just fill this out…” That was the last I saw of her.

We had breakfast at a Swiss Bakery in downtown Durango. The food was mediocre and the coffee weak, but they did get the concept right on a mocha: no sugar!

Then a short hike near Andrews Lake, then drove home again. I made it short, sicne I’m sick with a cold. It was beautiful, though.

We had a heavy frost two nights ago, and a light one this morning. The tomatoes didn’t make it, though they are always a long shot anyway. The rest of the garden’s okay, but I’m sure it won’t last long. Oh, well.