Lurker check-in: Doing well this winter. Just concluded a little loop to San Diego County, California, to a mineral conference. Lovely weather (well except for the hurricane winds up on a mountainy mineral hunt), got to drive through some shards of remaining Old California at orange harvest time. Spent time swimming in mineral waters at Agua Caliente county park. Acquired yet another couple of boxes of specimens, and I have just got to get a home base, if only to stop rolling with 200 pounds of rocks.   

Quartzsite was the usual craziness, good to see old friends around campfires. This weekend I'll head east across the Tohono O'odham saguaro country, and on to Deming, New Mexico. Where the home base hunt resumes. I've found a few people I can sing and play with in real life who are living there, and real estate prices are not nuts. So we'll see. Probably in the next three days some corporate landlord will have snapped up what's available.