A Trend: Clearing Storms

It's been a busy week, and an especially long day that was all too frantic. Here's to staying up needlessly late for no other reason than that I really have no good reason to go to sleep early. Follow that? It's the start of a four day weekend and I'll be staying in town for all of it, hoorah!


I was driving home from San Clemente on Sunday afternoon as the tail end of a storm was passing through. I took my camera and, as I swerved down the 91 freeway from one side of my lane across to the other, snapped 35 pictures in about five minutes. Some through my windshield, some over my shoulder, some into the rear-view mirror. It just so happens that this one right here, my favorite, was the very first of the thirty-five.



I snagged this image from the Yosemite webcam earlier this week. Fresh snow on the valley floor in Yosemite. Another clearing storm leaving the darkest blue sky in its wake. I found out I'll be spending five or six days up in Yosemite early this summer after I graduate with the family. I'm hoping some friends find their way up there around the same time. Definitely something to look forward to.

Descartes and his Doubt

We have Rene Descartes, a brilliant French guy who excelled in just a few areas while he was alive: philosophy, math, science, writing; nothing too impressive if you ask me, except maybe the math part. He was called the "Father of Modern Philosophy" and if you've ever heard the phrase "I think, therefore I am," he coined it in writing his Meditations on Modern Philosophy. Here are some excerpts from On the Things in which we may Doubt, the first meditation from that work.

Picture Descartes, isolated in a one room log cabin with fresh snow falling outside, as he describes himself to be 'seated by the fire, clothed in a winter dressing gown, I hold in my hands this piece of paper.'

He begins the meditations,

SEVERAL years have now elapsed since I first became aware that I had accepted, even from my youth, many false opinions for true, and that consequently what I afterward based on such principles was highly doubtful; and from that time I was convinced of the necessity of undertaking once in my life to rid myself of all the opinions I had adopted, and of commencing anew the work of building from the foundation...

and he continues...

To-day, then, since I have opportunely freed my mind from all cares [and am happily disturbed by no passions], and since I am in the secure possession of leisure in a peaceable retirement, I will at length apply myself earnestly and freely to the general overthrow of all my former opinions.

It doesn't matter to me whether I agree on what he concludes at the end of his meditations or not, this mindset he begins with is rad and good and beneficial.

January.

At the turn of the New Year, I honestly wasn't too excited when speculating about my first half of 2009. So far, so wrong. Here's a little photo summary of January.

Happy Birthday Becky, in Idyllwild.

NZ Reunion (plus AJ) in Davis

Same crew of four as August, up in Mammoth.

A few highlights that stick out to me...
-Catching the last chair up 22 in Mammoth last weekend. Riding solo through the trees and fresh powder, stopping often to listen to the sound of nothing. There was a rare break in the storm that seemed to last all weekend, and the colors of the setting sun were briefly visible on the clouds and freshly covered mountains across the valley, stellar!
-Hiking up to the giant cement "C" that overlooks my school, spending an hour watching the sun set amidst the storm clouds from the day and the city lights as they began to brighten in the coming night, not to mention some good conversation to back it all up.
Uh, that's all that sticks out above the rest to me right now, onto February!