Cliffs

More rain today, more predicted for tonight on our squishy, gooey lawns. Any more of this and I'm going to have to built that unassembled ark in the garage that I got at Ikea a few years ago.

It's always good when you can work cartoon characters into your articles. I filed a story yesterday that included this sentence, and it was published: "Warren Buffet, speaking with CNBC's Squawk Box on Monday, likened the U.S. economy to Wile E. Coyote, or at least to his propensity for falling from steep precipices."

Speaking of which, I've taken a break from reading the very long The Prize to pick up Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, an account of a bad day on Mt. Everest in 1996. Sudden storm, an unusually high number of climbers near the summit dying in a single day, including some of their highly skilled guides. It's a gripping read.

I can't say I believe there's any such thing as a mid-life crisis. Sounds too much like modern myth to me. But if there were such a thing, and I found myself having one, mountain climbing wouldn't be my activity of choice, even if I weren't hopelessly unfit for it. Frostbite, hypothermia, apoxia, high-altitude pulmonary edema, high-altitude cerebral edema, or simply falling to one's death -- no thanks.

But I wouldn't mind getting close enough to Everest, which would take some doing and considerable effort, to look up at its majestic heights and say, "Damn, I'm not going up there."