I was a bit of slacker in posting last week while I was on vacation. Here's one of the spots we visited, the amazing Maroon Bells formation outside Aspen, Colo. My son led us on a hike to a nearby mountain pass about 12,500 feet in altitude, and believe me, the lungs of this flatlander were bursting. All I could think about was the description that Jon Krakauer provides in Into Thin Air about your brain expanding at high altitude, and brain cells dying off by the zillions. But it was worth the incredible view.

I also broke out of my reading slump -- nothing like a couple of cross-country flights to provide some solid reading time. I finished A Prayer for the Dying by Stewart O'Nan (a review to come later this week) and took a serious bite out of Homer & Langley, an E.L. Doctorow book that comes out next month. Also started the novel Tallgrass by Colorado author Sandra Dallas. It was, literally, a cool trip -- BWI last night at midnight was the hottest I had been in a week.

But now that I'm back in muggy, sea-level Baltimore (and my expanding brain has stabilized), I'll be posting more regularly again.