Updates

I haven't blogged in the last few days. Why? I'm back in Colorado again. (Sing that last line to the tune of Aerosmith's Back in the Saddle if you could.) A family health issue called me back and I'm writing this post from a dingy motel room with a large no smoking sign that I find hilarious because the room reeks of smoke - but it was the only place with a room available not too far from the hospital. But hey, I'm in Colorado, so here's what I'm doing for fun:

• Trying all the Colorado beer - I'm currently having New Belgium Voodoo Ranger IPA in my dingy motel room; but I've recently had: Breckenridge Mango Mosaic Pale Ale; a flight at Ute Pass Brewing Company that included their Avery IPA, High Point Amber, Sir Williams English Ale, and Kickback Irish Red plus a tap guest of Boulder Chocolate Shake Porter; and an Oskar Blues Blue Dream IPA
• Listening to all the podcasts, including an excellent one about how beer works from Stuff You Should Know, as well as some of my favorite regular podcasts from Part-Time Genius, WaPo's Can He Do That?, FiveThirtyEight Politics, StarTalk, Overdue, and Linear Digressions
• Enjoying three new albums: Spoon's Hot Thoughts, Lorde's Melodrama, and Michelle Branch's (She's still making music! My college self is thrilled!) Hopeless Romantic
• Reading The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, which Daniel Kahneman said "changed my view of how the world works"; Kahneman, BTW, is a social psychologist with a Nobel Prize in Economics
• Also reading (because one can never have too many books) Sports Analytics and Data Science: Winning the Game with Methods and Models by Thomas W. Miller - because I've been trying to beef up my data science skills and thought doing it with data I really enjoy (i.e., sports data) would help motivate me
• Acquiring new skills such as hitching a fifth wheel (sadly I didn't discover or watch this video until long after hitching the fifth wheel), driving about 70 miles with said fifth wheel, and storing said fifth wheel - I'm considering adding these skills to my résumé

Tomorrow, I'm planning to spend a few hours checking out the Colorado Renaissance Festival. For now, here's a picture from the Garden of the Gods today: