They managed to finally pry me off the ridge. I’m back after spending some time in Colorado. A good time, but I sure missed the woods.

That’s shot at Mud Lake outside of Boulder.

When I flew in to Denver the plane banked and looking across the aisle out the window I realized, those aren’t clouds, those are mountains.

The realization can be pleasant. Just mountains in the distance.

We have a friend we have known since she was a child. Her grandfather used to bring her out to our place so she could see the tadpoles in spring. She had already crashed, metaphorically, into one mountain when she was a teenager and then another fell out of the sky and hit her. She found she has a medical condition where tumors grow in the fluid surrounding her brain and spinal cord. She had two successful surgeries, the first at 15 and the next about 5 years later. Because of Obamacare she could be carried on her mother’s insurance and wouldn’t be penalized because of her prior condition.

But she has reasons to worry. She lives in Seattle and it’s tough going it alone. Living almost from one MRI to the next. Trying to save enough to finish college. Not sure at what point in her life she won’t be able to walk or worse. Worried about medical expenses. And how to deal with this.

The most recent surgery this year was not successful. So she’s going again under the knife next week not knowing what will happen.

If we lived in a country that was civilized, had universal health care, the mountain would still be there, but maybe not quite so large.

Well, I was getting ready to post something else instead, but I see that Photobucket is no longer allowing me to hot link photos to Badrabbit. I could, but the subscription would be $400 a year, which is ridiculous. I’m in the process of setting up an alternative host for images, but until then I guess I’ll just have to use text.

One of the things the new post was going to talk about was how I’m revamping my personal website for optimal viewing on a cellphone. Sections are already this way but it’s a large site, thousands of files, well over 500 html pages, and revamping includes rescaling almost all of the many, many images on the site. Since the site goes back to 2000 finding the originals can be a challenge. The section I’m working on is about 200 pages and that’s being entirely rewritten and reorganized.

I’ll be a little slow on displaying images on existing pages, but actually the alternative host will be a lot easier for me to use so maybe more pictures in the future.

A couple of days later — I’ve started changing the image urls but it’s going to take a while. The most recent posts with images have been done.