The difficulty with living on the Joey sleep schedule as the year wanes is finding enough daylight to have a satisfying day.

The plan was to hike in the mountains, but my inbox said otherwise. Ugly new debhelper bugs. Looking at the hard one, I felt as if someone from 30 years ago was trying to take my day away. Why does make(1) not provide a way to discover which targets exist in a makefile? My hack to workaround that historical oversight was breaking, and make was nearly fork-bombing the system in the process. This seemed likely to eat my weekend -- I was very glad to find a quick, ugly workaround.

By then it was 2:00. I'd not get to the mountain pass til after 3:00, which was pushing it. Almost stayed home, but it was such a nice sunny day, perfect weather. So I headed out. Spent half an hour along the way talking with an old woman about a well (long story), but reached the Roan with nearly two hours of daylight.

And it was sublime.

I realized I'd never stayed up there for sunset, so I hunkered down on a rock, finished checking my email (left over from the earlier hurry), and then spent half an hour chatting on the phone with my dad, as the sun inched down a finger at a time. When it went behind the other peak, and mist crept up the valleys below, it got cold and I hurried down.

Reached the car in deep dusk, and coasted down the mountian while listening to a BBS nostalgia piece on the radio. On the way home, pulled in at the Ridgewood BBQ, and am sitting on the porch in the cold with about 50 other people, waiting for a seat (hopefully before it closes), and blogging.

I accomplished everything I wanted to today, including getting something significant done, hiking, and spending quiet time on top of the world. Though only just, and feeling I was running late the whole time. Nice thing about the Joey schedule though, is I will have seven more hours of quiet time before sleep.