everest

odd little coincidence: sir edmund hillary's death was announced on friday. i happened to start an audiobook version of jon krakauer's into thin air the same day; while it's primarily about the 1996 disaster on everest, it provides plenty of historical context by talking about previous expeditions.

between press coverage of the first and six hours on the road with the second, i've suddenly wandered into knowing a lot more about mt. everest than i really meant to. it's fascinating. and thinking about it too much makes me really cold.

oh, and speaking of fascinating... while snooping around nationalgeographic.com looking for everest-related stuff, i ran across a gallery on a dino-mummy. i think dinosaurs and mummies were simultaneously just about the coolest things in the world when i was seven or eight (i came to this conclusion by trying to remember which elementary school library was linked with kids books about them in my head... odd, i have a much clearer mental picture of all three elementary school libraries i went through than i do of any of the classrooms). twenty years later, combining the two ideas is still pretty freakin' awesome. especially the photo with some skin texture poking through soil.

(must not think too much about science as i knew it when i was that age, or i'll get worked up because we're not hanging out on mars yet. we were so supposed to be by now.)