"If to right, no can defense."

God, the Karate Kid is the best movie ever. I watched the second half of it on TV this weekend, and I swear I didn't cry at the end. I just got something in my eye.

Diana and I went for a walk that turned into an exploratory hike of our surrounding wilderness. We headed to the end of our usual path, and down into the steep gorge near our house to the little creek that runs down there. We hopped on some rocks and saw nature up close. Diana saw a Coke-can with claws that turned out to be a pretty big crayfish (I'd saw crawdad, but this ain't Nawlins). At one point, I was leaning against a tree, taking a little break, and Diana was all of a sudden startled and motioned me away from the tree. I turned and looked and there was a morning dove sitting in a nest in the crotch of the tree, about 6 inches from where my head was. Just sitting there, hoping we didn't see it. Pretty cool. We also saw two morning doves humping. I like the word "humping".

For those who know the gorge and creek that I'm talking about, would there be fish in there? I'm tempted to hike my fly-rod in...

We also hiked the same area the next day with Diana's parents, and stumbled upon a pretty good sized snake (couple feet long). When we got back I think I found that it was a California Kingsnake. I'm really glad that we have a place to walk nearby with the potential of seeing nature in action.

Vietnam occupied much of my thoughts this weekend as well. We watched "Platoon", which I'm not sure I'd seen all the way through. I liked it a lot, especially in context of my Battlefield Vietnam playing. We also did some more web searching about Diana's uncle, who died in Vietnam during the war. We were able to find out more about exactly how he died, and also found complimentary comments about what a good guy he was, which was nice. Apparently, about three choppers full of soliders went to land and do some operation. Turns out they landed smack in the middle of a NVA training camp, where the NVA were training for defending against helicopter landings. Oops. Diana's uncle's chopper landed (he was a Captain, which I think means was in command). He waved off the other two choppers, and was shot in the process. Probably saved quite a few lives while giving his own.

He was 30 years old (I turn 30 this year), and was only in Vietnam for two months before his death.

This is quite sobering.

*pause*

Ok. In other news, Diana and I did more thinking about thinking about starting to do a kitchen remodel. We went to Home Expo, and were almost immediately overwhelmed by the amount of options and stuff. We settled for buying a $15 book on tips and ideas for kitchen remodeling. I've only skimmed through it, but it already has lots of helpful tips.

That's about it for the updates. I'm going to Montana next weekend for half a week, and starting to look forward to that!