Too Much Fun

Life has been so good lately, and it looks like the good times will not slow down for at least several months. Yesterday Rachel defended. She did a great job, I think her research is really interesting even though she seems to think it's boring. We celebrated in grand style last night. I went to dinner with her group at Stonehouse, then we went to the Rio. I had 1-1/2 margaritas, which apparently was more than enough. I guess my tolerance is not as high as I would like to think, because next we went to Elliots and I had 2 beers and was done. It was a pretty silly night. I didn't realize how geeky our conversation was until Chris pointed it out. For some reason he does not find talking about things like particle accelorators, derivatives, and non-linear vs. linear geophysics interesting. Geez. JK, I know I am a dork and am glad that he puts up with me! I am really happy for Rachel. Now all of my friends should be relatively stress free, at least for a little while. Yay for having a life again!

Tonight Chris and I talked about our trip to Utah and Arizona. We are leaving Friday night, so time is really short! We came up with a route through the Needles district of Canyonlands that will take 5 days and is around 50-60 miles. It sounds really incredible and I am pretty excited about it. I'm also a little anxious because this will probably be our biggest backpacking trip yet (minus my Outward Bound trip but I didn't have to do the planning for that!). But we have the whole week off so we might as well take advantage of it! The biggest concern to me is how heavy our packs will be with 5 days of food, plus the first two days we can't count on water so we will probably have about 16 pounds just for water. Yikes!!

We also finally started unpacking from last weekend's backpacking trip with Mollie and Rob in the Flat Tops. That trip was unbelievable. I should do a summary of the hike, I would definitely recommend it!! The highlight was hiking over the Devil's Causeway. It is a narrow ridge that is 4 feet across at the narrowest, very rocky, and has sheer drop-off's (maybe 100 feet?) on either side. I was very very scared, especially after Chris jokingly said, "Don't worry Anna, it's only certain death if you fall." For a while I wanted to just take my pack off and cry, I was so scared! But we all made is safely across and the views were well worth all the nerves.

Anyway, I should go to bed, but I am pretty excited about our trip. I'm also anxious and feel like we have A TON to do between now and Friday afternoon. I also have a lot of work to do. I feel bad for not doing any work tonight but it was a busy evening of cleaning and planning. It might be a late night tomorrow!! Thanks for stopping by!