To save Dan Jordan's aching fingers:

Madelaine- internal view

Madelaine- external view:

Alright, now that I've posted pictures, Jordana has to, too.

Wes, stop lurking!!! I know you're there!

Anyone know where Dax is?

It's a beautiful day

To find out that we are having a

Girl :-)

Hmmm.... 4 days in the wilderness with Peter and family.... sounds like fun. Unfortunately now that I'm married there's not enough vacation time to spend with the Jordan and McCunn sides of my family let alone hang out with Peter. Sorry, I'm going to have to pass. Also I'm not in good enough shape to go 40 miles. Hiking up East Rock is about all I can manage these days (the rock alluded to in my last post, see the image above). It's about a 20 minute walk one way from our house to the top, but it gives a nice view of downtown New Haven and parts of Yale, so it's a nice "hike" when there's not enough time to do any real hike.

By the way, East Rock gets it's name from the fact that it is east of West Rock. The settlers of the New Haven area weren't very original with naming towns and places, which is why if you go north from New Haven you reach North Haven, if you go east you go to East Haven, and if you go west you end up in West Haven. Just below East Rock is the East Rock neighborhood (what else would it be called?) aka the "Grad Student Ghetto" because grad students (and the Jordans) live there in comfortable apartments. Just one more bad name choice in New Haven.

Open invitation to anyone who wants to go backpacking in June: my uncle & I and a couple couple of other people are planning to hike part of the AT in Southwestern VA--from Mount Rogers into Damascus. The distance is 41 miles plus or minus; we'll probably take 4 to 5 days. No, we haven't fixed on a firm date yet; probably we'd start on a Thursday or Friday of whatever week. Anyways, all of us who are going right now will be driving up from Knoxville (about 2 hours away) in some way, shape, or form, and we all carry enough trail mix to satisfy even the most desperate of chocolate cravings.

Mount Rogers is the most beautiful part of the Appalachians that I know of. The trail gentle slopes across open meadows and weaves through rock outcroppings. Though it's several thousand feet too low, the whole place has an alpine feel. There are also herds of wild horses (or ponies, since they're all shorter than me) which come skittishly begging for food. And since we're hiking down from there, it shouldn't be all that difficult of a walk.

Happy Birthday, Jordana!

(Sorry I don't wish everyone a happy birthday when appropriate. This is the only birthday I remember, as it is also the Death Day of my beloved appendix. And I'm just not intent on removing any other internal organs to aid my memory.)

Hi Everybody!!! Dan Jordan in the hizzouse. I haven't heard from most of you in a long, long time and no doubt many of you lie awake at night thinking "What are Dan and his lovely wife Laura doing these days?" Well, prepare to have a good night sleep because 1) your question will be answered and 2) the answer is pretty dull. Laura is a postdoc at Yale (or is a postdoc at Yale, I'm not sure if "postdoc" describes the position or the person). I am in the secondary-ticket market (or "scalping") business. I am a "marketing analyst" (I got to pick my own job title! I decided to keep a modest one instead of "Senior VP of Coolness" because that's the sort of guy I am--modest) at a company that sells concert, theatre, and sports tickets online (check out the website I manage BuyBetterTickets.com). We're living in an apartment which is actually the third floor of an old house--it's pretty sweet. We like the New Haven area; we live near a big rock (it's nicer than it sounds; I'll put up some pictures some time). If anyone is ever in the area and needs a place to stay we have a second bedroom and we'd love to see any of you (even Wes!) so please stop by. I'm looking forward to checking out everyone else's posts and maybe even responding to Laura's torture question

Does using a microwave (to cook food) leach food of its nutrients?

This is a question that has been batted around by my coworkers on and off for years. Some customers say yes. Then again, other customers say that we're supposed to eat to balance our pH, or according to our blood type, that eggs are evil and we shouldn't sell them, that High Fructose Corn Syrup can kill you (not "it's bad for you," no, it can kill you), that the laser scanners at our registers zap the "energy" out of food ... so we don't know what to think.

Some of you out there, however, might posess the kind of educational background to actually give an informed answer.