Archive for November, 2007
links for 2007-11-30
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Crews extinguish brush fire on Catawba Mountain – Roanoke.com
A one-acre brush fire was extinguished near McAfee’s Knob
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Gold Medal Schools – US News and World Report
The high school I went to is #1 in the entire country! Speaking of high school, around Christmas time, I get to have a five member mini-reunion with the Class of ’93 – Alex, Brian, Christina, Stacy and me! It will dominate our 10 year reunion which sucked
links for 2007-11-27
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An online stopwatch with a count-down feature. I used this in my hotel room to see how many sit-ups I can do in two minutes. I wish I knew about this years ago. Back then I wrote a JavaScript page that beeped every 30 seconds so I knew to switch exercises
Unintentional Six State Challenge
A while back I posted about the Four State Challenge on the Appalachian Trail where hikers cover over 40 miles in a single day to step foot in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania.
Today, Larry, ZJ and I unintentionally did a Six State Challenge with the help of Northwest Airlines.
1) We left home in Virginia
2) We caught a flight in Greensboro, North Carolina
3) We landed in Memphis, Tennesee way too late to make our connecting flight.
4) We took a new flight to Indianapolis, Indiana
5) We took one more flight to Minneapolis, Minnesota
6) Larry got a warning for speeding in Minnesota before we made it over to Wisconsin.
Our journey took us 16 hours. I read about some hikers who did two states less than us in 15 hours. Those wussies. 🙂 Of course, my feet are in great shape, I got a free dinner and at the end of the day I was rewarded with a nice Soy Green Tea Latte from Starbucks and a very comfortable looking bed.
But, boy…I do think I can relate to the exhaustion (at least mentally) the Four State Challengers feel. It’s been quite a day!
Bye Bye Hair!
Now that Stacy’s wedding is over, I was free to make an appointment to chop off my hair. I did research the Wigs for Kids and Pantene’s Beautiful Length programs, but unfortunately they were more restrictive with colored-treated hair. As a quick cheat-sheet:
| Program | Minimum Donation Length | Colored Hair? |
| Locks of Love | 10″ | Acceptable (as long as it has not been bleached) |
| Wigs for Kids | 12″ | No perms, colors or highlighting |
| Pantene Beautiful Lengths | 8″ | Vegetable dyes, rinses and semi-permanent dyes acceptable. Bleached, permanently colored or chemically treated not acceptable |
And so Locks of Love it is! I was poised to take advantage of Sock Hat Season to conceal any disasters if I had to go too short. But it turns out I had more than enough hair. They took off about eleven inches and I still manage to look like a girl:
We’ll see how this new haircut fairs on hikes. I can’t imagine it will be worse than the long hair. Over the course of our three day Peters Mountain backpacking trip, my long ponytail collected a number of burrs and matted tangles. Once home, it took me quite some time (and the demise of one hairbrush) to get that resolved. Short hair has got to be simplier than that!
The Goatse Christmas Cookie
This year I got to participate in my family’s Black Friday tradition of decorating Christmas Cookies. As I’ve mentioned before, the results of our efforts aren’t your usual festive designs. In past years, we’ve had cookies that read “BEOTCH”, cookies that read “JACKASS” and tons of mangled cookies covered in blood.
This year started off innocently enough. Justin Girton, a first timer, was given the honor of cutting out the first cookie. He took some pause to review and select just the right cutter for the 2007 Kickoff.
The selections Justin got to choose from
It took some time, but Justin finally selected a donkey. He pushed the cutter into the sugar cookie dough and we were on our way!
Justin cuts the first cookie! (Photo by Aaron Evans)
It didn’t take long before the uh…creativity… in the room started to flow. This year, Carolyn brought along a special request from a friend. He wanted to have a “butt” cookie. As is a good idea with any design request, this cookie coveter provider a drawing of exactly what he wanted:
You should always draw out the type of cookie you want
And so our team did what we could, producing a number of butts. I believe Carolyn’s friend would be pleased with some of the results:
Finished project and original specifications (Photo AND cookie by Aaron Evans)
When it came to icing time, we were left with the question, “How does one decorate a butt cookie?” Welp, it turns out there isn’t one answer. We had icing tattoos, icing thongs and then some convenient chocolate icing made it easy to… well, make a mess.
Butt cookie with a red icing tattoo. (Photo AND cookie by Aaron Evans)
A butt cookie with a thin, white thong
A butt cookie decorated with… chocolate icing. (Photo by Aaron Evans)
It is safe to say 2007’s cookie decorating experience was already a little racy. Well, then someone (who wishes to remain nameless) took it much, much further (Click More to Continue):
links for 2007-11-21
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For every story of sharing Country Crock receives, they are donating a meal to Second Harvest.
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This activity marries two of my hobbies together– letter writing and geocaching! I can’t wait to try it out! Two guys from Minnesota I met through work will likely be my first recipients! (I don’t know many other cachers outside of Virginia)
Suck It, NC
I just received word that one of the great travesties regarding the Appalachian Trail is being addressed. Am I talking about invasive species? No. Shelter creep? No. Encroaching development? Wind farms disrupting mountain views? No, No.
I’m talking about THIS:
Appalachian Trail License Plate
What is wrong with that picture? It’s a beautiful, gorgeous Appalachian Trail license plate… but it is only available in North Carolina. North Carolina with its measley 88 miles. What about Virginia and our whopping 550 miles?!?! We home more Appalachain Trail miles than any other state. Where’s our pretty license plate?!?!
Welp, the Appalachian Trail Conference is working on it! It sounds like they will need 349 pre-paid applications for the plate (That’s 350 minus the “I’m-so-there” email I just sent along). Their effort is just getting started. Needlesstosay, I will watch with great interest as it unfolds.
And as I learn more, I’ll post propaganda details here.
links for 2007-11-20
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Wow, these two guys from WWI days (Arthur Mole and John Thomas) makes the VT Thanks You look like a grade school project. They made national emblems such as the Liberty Bell out of soldiers. Thanks to Robert Airaghi for introducing me to their work!
links for 2007-11-19
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You know, I wasn’t that smitten with this idea (I may be a little burnt out on 4/16 stuff). But now that I see the photographs, I can appreciate how darn cool it is.
Rollerblading – State #20!
And it is Illinois that has become the 20th State I’ve rollerbladed in! It took a while to find a suitable path, but the River Walk in Ottawa turned out to be perfect. It runs along the scenic Fox River and the pavement is quite smooth.
Thanks to a well placed picnic table and my camera’s self-timer, I was able to get a picture to document my 20th state:
Rollerblading State #20!!!
More pictures from my skate and Ottawa, Illinois can be found on my Flickr site.
TGAW 
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