Banff: more cliffs, less air.

Here I am in Banff. I spent a few hours this morning walking around the conference centre shooting photos and getting dive-bombed with mosquitos. I flushed a bunch of groundhogs Columbian Ground Squirrels, two deer (who didn't seem to care about humans either way), and a worker smoking a joint. He didn't seem so concerned, either.

The view is tremendous- I'm afraid to look at the photos I just took, because they won't compare at all with the real thing. These cliffs are huge. I want to take a hot-air balloon flight from here, just to get some sense of the scale. I saw a gondola/ski-lift running on one of the peaks; I might try to track it down this afternoon (and go up it with d., if he's interested).

I walked a bit around the campus, went swimming, and now I'm going to head to lunch. I'm feeling a bit short of breath due to the altitude (just 4000 feet). I wasn't too worried about taking deeper breaths than usual this morning, but now seems like a good idea, as now that I'm sitting down quietly I've got all the signs of not quite enough oxygen. Ah well.

How's your internet?

We were both relaxing in our room; me, at a desk at my laptop, and melted_snowball on the bed at his laptop. After a brief conversation, I said to him, "So, how's your internet?" He looked at me strangely.
And he kept looking at me strangely. What?

Is not internet like dinner?

Funniest conversation of the evening

melted_snowball and I were at dinner with one of his colleagues, who I'll call "G".

G: Isn't that X over there?
M (melted_snowball): I don't actually know X.
G: Oh, it's not him, it looks like him only ten years older.
G: ...
G: Damn. It is him; I haven't seen him in ten years.


I think one of the reasons I think this is funny is it's the sort of mistake I can see myself making...