OK, this is kinda funny.  For my personal email, I use Google "gmail".  Gmail is very cool, and I highly recommend it.  Unlike many free email services, it does not flash random ads in all sorts of colors at you.  But they still need to make money, so instead they took an innovative approach - they take the text of the email you are reading, and use it (with some special artificial intelligence, or so they claim) to select several links (no pictures, just clickable links) for ads which are relevant to the email you just received.

Well, sometimes this works well, and sometimes it is rather amusing.  Take a note I received this morning:

Chuck,

You may be aware of this, but the formatting on the forum is all messed

up and I can't read your latest post.

Steve

And what ad did gmail think was "relevant"  for this?

 Put an End to Bedwetting    !

 

Just got back from an Adirondack trip yesterday.  Masha, a friend Elizabeth and I successfully climbed the combination of Algonquin and Iroquois peaks - the second and I think the 8th highest peaks in NY.  I have actually been up Algonquin three times before (all wonderful, BTW), but this was the first time on Iroquois.  This peak connects with Alg. along a ridge, which also passes through Boundary peak.  It is a "trailless" peak, although there was a well established herd path and even some yellow marks on the rocks.  But the news of the day here was that boggy MUD that one had to traverse to get there.  Actually, it was not mud, but rather a peat bog.  If you stepped in the wrong place, you were sunk up to your knees.  Luckily, I poked with a hiking stick, and never went in above my ankles.

Once we got there, it was worth it.  There was no one else, and the peak itself is "narrower", so you can see all around.  Very cool experience.

No injuries, although Elizabeth did have some non-trivial "toes are too wide for her boots" which caused here quite a bit of pain on the way down.  Overall the hike took 10 hours.  3.5 hours to scale up to the top of Algonquin (with several breaks), 1 hour at the top, 2 hours to/from Iroquios, and 3.5 hours down.  It was surprising that it seemed to take as long to go down as up - since it felt like it was much faster.  But the clock doesn't lie, I guess.  Strange.

Highly recommended.

Last night I was working in the front yard, and from the road I heard a "thump".  I didn't think much about it, but later heard several more - "thonk"........"thlump".....

Hmm.  Now this has my attention.  I watch the road, which is the general direction the sounds were coming from.  Wait a bit.  Swat at a mosquitoe.  Wait some more.  And then....THUNK!  A pinecone hits the pavement.  Well, we have some very tall pine trees that overhang the street, so I look in the top, probably 20 meters overhead and find a grey squirrel - we have lots of them.  He was busily chewing off the stems so the pinecones would drop!  Usually I thought that squirrels grab a cone and eat it in the tree,  but clearly this guy had a different idea.  How do I know?  Well, I looked out this morning, all of the pinecones were gone! :-)