I had good intentions

This is what my new house looks like. A zoo.I painted it green and blue.

We have art on the walls, too.
It's nice to be in a place that is new.

I was going to be really good and not flakey at all when I started posting again in March. Then the internet went out. I was watching a movie on the Netflix when all of a sudden it stopped. Straight up no internet. So I tried to reset the modem, and I tried to get into the modem setup page. Nothing worked. That dork who came to fix our internet in February reset the password on the connection. But I wasn't home when he did it. So I didn't know what the new password was. Anyway through a stroke of luck I found an old link to the modem set up on my other computer. Did you follow that. Whatever, I'm online.

Quick update: the backpacking trip went off without a hitch. Actually, that's not true. It went off without any whining about the hitches we did encounter. It was hard to miss the giant plume of smoke as we pulled up to the park entrance. It was obvious to me that there was something big burning in the vicinity of the campsite we were headed to. I went into the ranger station to check in. The ranger pulled up my documents, asked me questions about group size and vehicles and proceeded to process my credit card. She didn't say anything about the Giant Ball of Smoke hanging over the park until I asked "So, is that big ol' fire going to hinder us in anyway, is it safe?" and she looked at me for a second and said "Well, I guess it will." Guess they don't pay extra for dispensing useful safety information. "They're burning the whole backcountry up to the campsite you're headed to, you'll have to walk in a different way" Ok. So we headed in to the backcountry a different way. I made a point to stop and explain to the kiddywinks that we were following orange blazes and how to navigate double blazes and such. Then we headed off, happy hikers into the smoke. I was in front. I missed the first double blaze not more than 50 yards into the trail. We got lost on a mountain bike trail and ended up doing some dizzying loops that probably added up to 2 extra miles before we made it back to the start again. The kids said "Let's pretend we just started!!!" Yeah!! Best. Scouts. Ever. After that everything else went better. We had to do a lot of road walking, but at least we saw alligators in the drainage ditches. The kids got tired toward the last mile, but so did I. We made it, we all had a good time and at least it didn't rain.

Oh, and I finished my quals today. Hope I pass.