who is danger cat?

Well, I can't tell you who danger cat is, but I, for one, am back from Reno.

I left work a bit early on Friday (yay for grad school!) to drive up to Reno with some friends. Friday night involved $0.8 shots at the CalNeva in Reno (how is that even possible?!), and taking note of how depressing the Reno casinos are. I don't recall seeing a single smiling face, aside from those of Heather, Kati, Will, and myself.

After 2 hours of sleep, we scraped ourselves out of bed to go to the Reno hot air balloon festival. It was, in a word, awesome. A few minutes before sunrise, the "dawn patrol" of 5 balloons rose up over the desert. After the sun came up, we spent a couple hours wandering around the field, where 100 other hot air balloons were being unfurled and inflated for take-off. Watching all 100 of them take to the skies within the next hour was pretty much awesome.

A post-ballooning nap was in order, followed by lunch, and a short drive up to Kati's cabin in Graeagle.

The afternoon and evening were filled with a short hike in the mountains followed by a BBQ, many beers, and some much-needed sleep.

I am excited to be back in the bay area where (surprise!) it's cold and cloudy. Today should be a fun day of sciencing: first up, install developper tools on my mac so I can compile some C libraries. Not as glamorous as you might hope, but that's how it goes sometimes.

Expect me to discuss some actual science (or academic stuff) in my next post.