Vacation's Over

Back to work this morning, after about a week of vacation. Yosemite National Park is a really, really amazing place. This is a photo of Tuolomne Meadow, from Pothole Dome at its western end, looking toward Tioga Pass. I have to say that this vacation, even tacked on to a work trip, really "worked" in the sense that, even a day or two in, I was feeling more relaxed than I have in a long time. And that was even with some pretty vigorous hiking--we hiked to the top of Half Dome on Friday, which was about a 17-mile hike, with more than 4,000 feet of elevation gain. (Coming back down is the hard part, of course.)

Travel also provides the opportunity to read. Read Pelecanos's Sweet Forever, which is a classic crime novel, set in D.C. If you like that sort of thing, you should definitely read it. Then I read Michael Connelly's Angel's Flight, which was also really good--L.A. noir, in a more or less contemporary setting. On the return trip, read most of Everything's Eventual, a collection of Stephen King stories. As a collection, OK, but some of the stories are better than others. Speaking of which, one of the stories in the collection, "1408," was made into a movie, which is being released this week. I've seen the commercials for the moie (stars John Cusack), and I'm not sure how you film the story, at least not without elaboration. The story is kind of trippy, not to put too fine a point on it. (Neither the Reno nor Vegas airports have a good bookstore, which is not that surprising, I guess.)