A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.

Telluride, Colorado, aka retirement option 1A.

"Hello Derek, my name is the Weather, and I'm here to tell you that I'm colder than the freezing point of water. IN OCTOBER. HOPE YOU BROUGHT A SCARF. Later bro."Yes, that is an accurate account of a conversation I took part in yesterday, and by "took part in" I mean "listened to and said nothing." And yes, the Weather is apparently a bro. Go figure.

So Fall Break is happening right now. We get today and tomorrow off, which means I have all day to generate the most awesomeful (it's a word, trust me) post ever. Well, at least in theory. Speaking of theories, I came up with a pretty good one recently. It goes like this: Vermont is cold. DISPROVE THAT ONE, CREATIONISTS. Oh what's that? You can't? Sound familiar? Right.
I'm not sure why I decided to embark on a brief tirade like that, but I did, so DEAL WITH IT. I'm equally unsure as to why I'm yelling in such a Rich-esque manner today, but I have discovered something extraordinary because of it: When you yell via blog post, your throat doesn't get sore and you don't loose your voice. How awesome is that? AWESOME ENOUGH TO YELL ABOUT.

Are you looking up the mountain or down it?

I guess I should probably get to what I did this week. WHILE YELLING AT YOU.

Here's something you may or may not have known about me: I like to ski. Here's something else you may or may not have known about me: Every year, at about this time, I get into an oh-my-bujeezus-I-can't-wait-to-get-back-on-the-moutain-and-shred-some-gnarly-powdah kinda mood. So I spend hours (days?) pouring over my massive collection of trail maps. Which I keep in a cabinet by my bed. In my room. In Newport Beach. Three thousand miles away from (cold) Vermont. ACCIO TRAIL MAP COLLECTION! Ah yes, I almost forgot; I'm a muggle. Whatever. So I spent hours pouring over online trail maps. But that's okay, I didn't do my senior project on anything remotely related to that or anything. Whatever.
Okay, that was kinda a long and pointless digression, but here's the point: Uh, I don't really have a point. Oh well. Let's look at some pictures that make Derek weep but affect nobody else. (If you haven't noticed, that's what we've been doing since the top of this post.)

Steamboat Springs, Colorado, aka retirement option 1B.

Do I realize that between hockey and skiing I've been blogging about things that are A) completely unrelated to my college experience, which is the point of this blog, and B) utterly uninteresting to my formerly captive audience? Yes.
Do I care? Not really. But I suppose I'll get back to Middlebury now. That is, after all, sorta the point.

Roofin' it. (Yes, that's a hockey term. Deal with it.)

View from the roof to Le Château and Chipman Hill.

Presumably you've caught onto the fact that I like to explore. Likewise, you should also have caught onto the fact that I don't need to walk for more than a couple of minutes until I'm into what us 21st century suburbians would call "wilderness." Now, most of my exploring occurs while I'm running, and as such I don't have pictures from it, 'cause, well, have you ever carried a phone on a run? But I also go on walks quite a bit, usually by myself. Yesterday proved to be the exception when a number of people decided to go for a bit of a hike, and I decided to join them.
Our first stop was actually still on-campus. One of the buildings has a rather frighteningly rusty metal staircase that climbs the outside of it, so up we went onto the roof level. After stepping down from Mt. Scary Old Staircase, we headed over to Chipman Hill (the closer one on the left), but not before crossing Otter Creek by means of a covered bridge that was built while Jefferson was president. A quick note on Chipman: for our XC workouts, we start at the bottom and sprint to the top, then we jog down and do it four more times. And that's why I feel great about eating six full-size chocolate chip pancakes (not an exaggeration) with peanut butter and syrup this morning.
Back to the walk. While we were up on the hill, I got tired of waiting for everyone to catch up (I wasn't even running; they were just slow.) so I started climbing a tree, hence the title of this post, which, coincidentally (or not), I may have borrowed from a poet who we may have studied under the direction of someone who may be reading this.
When the pack eventually caught up, a couple other guys started climbing too. So that was fun.

Us in a tree. Credits to whoever took this picture. Duh.

View from Caras Galadhon.

This view's just from the tree.

I was trying to get a picture of them from the top but I couldn't see them, so this is from about halfway down.

So last night I'm finishing up watching the Ducks loose to the 'Yotes (depressing) when I get a text that goes something like this: "LotR. Mac's room. Right now." Luckily, the game only had a few (dismal) minutes left, so I headed over to Mac's (a cross country guy) room to watch me some LotR. 'Course, I stepped outside and this happened: (Skip to 1:00; it's only a few seconds long.)

I believe I forgot to mention one thing: Mac lives in Le Château. So I was watching a movie with castles in it while I was in a castle. WHOAH. What other anecdotes can I bore you with? Ah, yes. Let's talk about JWST. Winkler told us about this guest lecturer working on the James Webb Space Telescope who was coming by to talk, so I went to the presentation and got all learned up (that grammar are perfect) on Hubble's successor. Hopefully the project doesn't get canceled 'cause of budget cuts, but it might happen. Go wrinkle your brains people:

http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/

So there was something I knew I wanted to write about but I forgot what it was so I was angry BUT THEN I REMEMBERED AGAIN SO I'M A HAPPY PERSON WHO SCREAMS AT YOU BUT NEVER LOOSES HIS VOICE BECAUSE I'M NOT ACTUALLY SCREAMING BUT TYPING IN ALL CAPITALS BECAUSE I DON'T SEE A REASON NOT TO AND NOW I'M JUST BEING ANNOYING BUT I DON'T CARE! Anyways, before I tell you the brief tale that I just remembered I ought to give you some backstory.

Nicole has always been fond of telling me about her Harry Potter-related dreams, and she is even more fond of asking me if I ever have Harry Potter-related dreams and hearing me say that I've never had one that I can remember. Well guess what? I had one a couple nights ago. What follows is as accurate account as I can provide about my rather frightening but incredibly badass dream. I'm not making any of it up, and I certainly cannot explain what psychological factors could have led me to dream such a thing. So here we go.

"Terrible things are about to happen at Hogwarts."

I'm at Hogwarts, right? And, if I remember correctly, I'm in Charms class. I can't recall if Flitwick was there or not, so just bear with me. So anyways, Charms class. Everyone's doing their thing when one of the walls bulges, as if something's inside of it. The bulge moves along the wall, indicating that if there is indeed something inside of it, it's moving. And damn is it fast. So everybody's noticed this, and of course we're all like, "Merlin's beard, what's going on?" Now, the mûmakil in the room is that everyone knows what sort of thing moves through the walls of Hogwarts: a basilisk. So, even though nobody wants to admit it, we're all pretty damn scared. But we don't have to wait very long to find out the truth of things. Whatever was moving through the wall suddenly breaks out of the bricks and into the room, and we all find out very quickly that what we've got is no basilisk. In fact, it's no single thing at all. It's a pack. A big ole' pack of them. A pack of what, you ask? I'll tell you what. Velociraptors, that's what. An entire Jurassic Park-load of 'em. Pinker than Patrick Star. And pissed off. So we start running. And we don't stop running 'til we get eaten. And that's when the dream ends. EDIT: I forgot to say this, so I'm gonna say it now. My dad made me get Skype so I could talk to him, so I guess that means you could add me.