I have loved Michael Crichton novels since I was young. My father/grandparents introduced me to him via Terminal Man long ago. My father had read it back when it first came out and it was sitting at my grandparents thereafter. I picked it up one day while visiting and had most of it finished by the time we got home that night.

Ever since then I have read many of his other novels and after visiting Half Price Books‘ $1 discount racks, I have most of them in my collection now. That reminds me, Mom, if you can find Airframe (it should be on the shelves at your house) please put it aside for me ;)

We were in the airport at Atlanta waiting for our connecting flight on the way home from Orlando over Thanksgiving and I saw that they had a “new” book out by Crichton that I had not yet read. State of Fear is a novel about the environmental movement and how the media blows everything they say out of proportion about the *threat* of “Global Warming”.

“Global Warming”, in my uneducated opinion, is nothing more than simple bullshit to create funding points for science. This book, being well researched and referencing many journals, must really push some buttons for those that are really behind Global Warming. It basically says that it’s all horseshit, woohoo, but sadly it’s written by a fiction author ;)

I read most of the novel on the plane on the way home but finished it up on the couch today while trying to recoup from my latest cold :( I wanted to go caching in Wisconsin today with friends but figured 12 degrees and a cold wouldn’t mix well.

Anyway, while Kim was napping this afternoon, I set out to Target and Cub and did some grocery and Christmas shopping. I picked up a pair of jeans and another book for myself. Target has a bunch of books earmarked on a discount rack that they call being bookmarked. I picked up Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs. I had heard Augusten Burroughs speak about Running with Scissors on the University of Minnesota Coffman Bookstore Author Event Podcast here.

I thought he was hysterical and had no idea that the story was even close to being true when I listened to him but afterwards was dying to read the book and see the movie. Kim and I went to see the movie the day it came out in wide release and enjoyed it for the most part. I wanted to see the movie first because I’m sure I’ll enjoy the book far more and I didn’t want to ruin it for myself doing it the other way around — like I always do.

With this version of the book being $5.99 I snapped it up quickly and will let you know how it turns out :)

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I updated the banner image with my skill-less graphic editing abilities to something a little more winterized. I was really hoping to get some winter photos taken already but w/it just being fucking cold and not snowy, that hasn’t happened yet — which is a good thing ;)

Last summer Kim and I went to see Peter Dawkins give a talk at the University of Minnesota’s Coffman Bookstore on his book The Shakespeare Enigma. I had wanted to go to see more but with my new work schedule and the generally early times that they host these events, I haven’t found one that was interesting and that worked time-wise.

Anyway, so I was looking through their list to see if anything caught my eye for this fall and realized that they are now offering a podcast of the author events for everyone to listen to anytime.

Very, very, cool IMHO.

If you’re looking to hear some interesting stuff check out the Coffman Bookstore’s Author Events podcast.

I started with Steven Miles’ July 18th event on his book Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War. You can check that one out here.

Kim and I went down to Waverly, IA for the Ingawanis Geocache Outing this past weekend. Hosted by the Winnebago Council of the Boy Scouts of America and IGO, this three day event was one helluva good time.

Fees for the three days of camping were $5/person. That’s $10 total for three days. No parking fees, no addtional fees, and no hassles. I didn’t have to sell my soul to the DNR Devils, have a sticker on my windshield for eternity, and I didn’t have to deal with guitar playing douchebags at 2AM. The only downside to the entire thing was that they don’t allow dogs on BSA property. So all the savings we had for the camping was thrown down the shitter with Buddy’s $90 hotel stay at Castle Rock Kennels in Farmington, MN.

Kim and I both have half days on Fridays so we went home and got packing. I needed an oil change and some shopping to get done. After getting everything ready and the dog to the kennel, we were off at around 5:30. Camp Ingawanis was about 195 miles South of us and it took a little under three hours to get there. We arrived with a *tiny* bit of light left in the sky but set up the tent in the dark with the aid of our lantern. All that practice putting up our tent in the dark (or blindfolded) in Scouts paid off that night!

The next morning we rushed to get the screened in porch setup as the mosquitos were absolutely unreal! With seconds to spare before the morning rain storm started we had everything up and inside. We spent the morning hours watching the rain from inside our shelter while reading and eating.

Kim wasn’t going to this event for any geocaching so we did very little of that. I did stop at a few in the area on our trips to Walmart but other than that, we basically hung out at our campsite away from everyone and enjoyed ourselves.

I met some nice Iowa cachers including WindChill (one of the hosts), Sir Zman (of Twin Cities Geocaching Podcast fame) as well as many others including some I had met at events elsewhere in the country.

The Scout camp had plenty of activities to offer including horseback riding, archery, rifle, etc. Kim was big into the archery and we spent about an hour there on Saturday being shown up by plenty of young Iowans that apparently have archery as part of their PE classes at school……

Too many people packed up on Saturday or early Sunday and missed out on the cheap camping through Monday afternoon. Kim and I, along w/Sir Zman and a few others, stuck it out and made our way home on Monday.

Kim and I made a stop at Cabela’s in Southern MN for some stretching and lunch. I had a buffalo sandwich which could have been roast beef for all I knew. It was ok.

Anyway, all in all a great weekend. I have some mobile pictures up from the trip here, here, and here. I should have the camera pics up sometime this week when I get some time.