Most definitely not carbon neutral

I've just booked my flights home for Christmas, and in doing so, was somewhat surprised to see just how close I was going to come to AAdvantage Gold membership. My current year to date "qualifying miles" total 10404, and with a trip to Seattle at Thanksgiving, and various adventures around Christmas I have 13286 miles outstanding this year. Leaving me only 1310 from 25000 miles in one year and the coveted Gold status.

There are two things which make this particularly galling. Firstly, I'll be flying from Seattle to Houston early in the New Year, plenty of miles to make up the difference, but AA's annoying "calendar year" clause ruins this. Secondly, I've additional flown 13,310 this year with United, many of which on expensed flights, where I carefully chose flights based not on airline, but on price, seeking to keep down the costs, when really, no-one would have cared.

Perhaps this serves me right for being so horribly polluting, or perhaps next year I'll just have to try and fly even more...

Some photographs

I've been rather slack about posting over the last couple of months, and I'm going to attempt now to blame this on a rather busy summer, as evidenced by the following photographs.

After the half marathon:


Meeting the Mariner's Moose:


and the friendliest chipmunks in the Northeast.


Perhaps that doesn't capture my whole summer, but either way, I'll be trying to write more frequently again from now.

At summer's end

And so, here it is, the end of another summer. The nights draw in, the lake looks less and less inviting, and worse of all... the undergraduates are back. I feel I'm pretty close to becoming much like an old-fogey university faculty - "Undergraduates? What are they for? They're just clogging up the corridors and pavements." Ug.