This reminds me of my week on the river. I'm sure wherever he is, Claire is blaming me for breaking the shitter.

There's a volcano on my nose. Not a pokey-outie kind like Mount Vesuvius or Mount St. Helens. No. Mine is like the one that lives underneath Yellowstone that threatens to devour the entire center of North America.

Yesterday, there was some seismic activity. Several fissures appeared in the crust of the earth near, but not exactly on the epicenter. These tremors make me look like I lost a hockey fight.

Except no one would ever believe that I was playing hockey. Unless you know Stephen Hawking or Paul Reubens, I am the least athletic person you know.

Donna has become very interested in whales lately.

"That's a humpback whale", she proudly announced. An advertisement on TV had just flashed a quick shot of a tail rising briefly from the water.

"Cool. How can you tell?"

"We will never get a man into space. This earth is man's sphere and it was never intended that he should get away from it... The moon is a superior planet to the earth and it was never intended that man should go there. You can write it down in your books that this will never happen." - May 14,1961

— Joseph Fielding Smith, Jr

Even if the Liahona were real, which it isn't, it still wouldn't be as useful as my analog watch for finding which way is is which.

In the northern hemisphere, when the hour hand of an analog watch is pointed towards the sun, south will be halfway between the hour hand and 12 o'clock.

That is, at 9AM the sun is in the southeast. Pointing the hour hand (that's the little one) at the sun (southeast at this point) will orient 12 o'clock at southwest. Due south will be halfway between the hour hand (SE) and 12 (SW).

The vacation this past weekend included a day trip to Fossil Butte National Monument. Fossil Butte is a 50-million year old lake bed. The Visitors' Center has hundreds of fossils on display. It also has an impressive exhibit showing the timeline of the Earth.

The Earth is 4500 million years old, according to their information. Life began 700 million years ago. The fossil record within this one National Monument shows advanced life on this planet 50 million years old.

We are able to know the age of these fossils with unprecedented accuracy in this location because of a wide array of age-indicators. Carbon dating is of course used. But there are also volcanic markers in the now-exposed layers of the Earth's crust. These markers allow a given layer of fossil evidence to be dated in comparison to known volcanic activity in the area.