It was another great day on Monday, and Christian and I took the dogs out for four hours on the Long Trail. I'm glad I got the chance, as it made me feel a lot better about the state of my affairs. It was a lot easier hiking without a kid on the back. Oakley is a little out of shape too, but Christian's dog Teddy is quite a beast, and raced back and forth up the hillside. We must have gotten almost 3 miles in (and up) before turning around. The trail is near Christian's house, and he had scouted a great pool in a steep mountain stream for the dog's to goof in (below).
The yanks got a game back last night, not that it really matters. Here's a great blog post from one of the sites on the right.

I've been doing some more reading recently. Here's a couple great books to check out if you're looking for something to pass the time. It took about 36 hours to read The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. It's a short and quick one, and I got engrossed and enjoyed it thoroughly. But even more fun of a read is The Last Season, by Eric Blehm, which I'm reading now. It's a biography/mystery of a ranger in the Sierra mountains who went missing in 1996. It's very well written and a great story, with great descriptions of the natural environment in the mountains. I hadn't heard of it before I saw it on the "staff recommendation" shelf at the local book store a month ago, but it got 5/5 stars in the Amazon reader reviews...