I found a new way to hurt my eyes last night! I downloaded a program that lets me put eBooks on my iPod; I think it's called iStrain. WooHoo! Blinding headaches await!

Woo! My brother's bachelor party was last weekend and a good time was had by all and NOTHING SINFUL HAPPENED.

It's the anniversary of the Mt. St. Hellens eruption. My family was at the Fairchild air force base air show that day, and when we went to see the SR-71 the wing-wipers were prepping it for take off. My dad asked what was up, and we were told of the eruption. Apparently they had to get the thing out of there before the ash hit. We headed home, and since we were among first ones at the show to hear about the eruption, the roads were clear leading away from the airbase. The entrance road had a huge line of cars waiting to get in, so they were screwed once the word got out.

We lived way out in Spokane valley at the time, so we had quite a drive home. After a few minutes we saw a darkening in the sky far to the west, but as we drove it got closer and closer. The ash was just beginning to fall as we got home (we would have beat it home, but we stopped and got an ice cream cake at Baskin Robins on the way. Hey, it was a volcano, how many we gonna see? It deserved a bit of celebration.). It went from a bright day to a dark night while we watched. Dad started up our sprinkler system and that kept the ash from building up on out lawn. I remember in the weeks that followed that if you drove down our street you would see only one spot of color amid the gray landscape; our bright green lawn.

Washington really blew it with the state quarter design. We went with Mt. Rainier and a salmon. Weee. There was a perfect opportunity to have a little fun with it by putting the state seal on the back, and since out state seal is an engraving of George Washington, we would have created a two headed coin. That would have been sweet.