Odds and Ends 008

At the risk of breaking topic -- topic being, of course, birthday wishes -- I would like to second the suggestion someone made yesterday that this community would be much better served by a discussion board format than by this comments section. In an ideal world the discussion board would be prominently linked from the blog, but in a completely different technological shell. The thread system not only means you can follow what you like and ignore what doesn't interest you, it also means you can find past threads easily (very important for new participants, folks interested in looking at old polls, and people with new thoughts to add to old conversations). It would of course eliminate the anomaly where the comments have no relationship to the blog post, as well as the one where comments at the end of a blog period (Monday night and Thursday night) tend to get lost by the community. Such a board could also, depending on where it was housed, get us out of the MSN censorship problem.

Oh, and before I forget: congrats on your milestone, Robert Christgau.

Did spring really come early enough to the northeast to allow you to sleep in the mountains in early April?

Yes and no. Nighttime temperatures dropped to the mid-20s, but my friend and I had anticipated this and brought along down sleeping bags from a company called Western Mountaineering. I mention them by name because, if you like to backpack, their bags are well worth checking out (although they aren't cheap). The bags we bought were rated to 20 degrees. They kept us toasty warm every night, even as we woke up to discover our water bottles frozen solid.