I've been doing a bunch more photographying than usual lately.  (Sorry.)

I've started to figure out how not to suck as bad at taking long exposures.  I usually start by doing a bunch of test shots at 6400 ISO to make sure it's going to be in focus and composed correctly and all that.  Once I figure out which shutter speed makes a "correct" exposure at 6400 ISO, I just figure that at 100 ISO it needs to be about 40 times as long with the same aperture.  So a 30 second exposure that looks about right at 6400 ISO has to be about 20 minutes long at 100 ISO (I keep the ISO as low as possible when I have a tripod).  Then I have to wait another 20 minutes (or however long the exposure was; I've noticed it's usually the exact same amount of time) for the camera to do the noise reduction, and then just hopefully it looks okay.  So far I haven't had any trouble (that I've noticed) with long exposure noise.  UPDATE:  It turns out I should actually use ISO 200 since that's my camera's "native" ISO and I'll get a much higher dynamic range that way, how about that.

Did you know that you don't get nearly as much long exposure noise in low temperatures because it's caused by the camera's sensor heating up?  Well I didn't even know that until a while ago.  I guess it's good that I do most shooting in winter.  Except your battery runs out a lot quicker in the cold.  So.

I somehow accidentally left my speedlight up on the mountain yesterday.  I was up there taking pictures for a couple of hours but I wasn't using it.  I drove home and then noticed my camera bag was noticeably lighter, so I started looking all over my car and house for it, because I couldn't even remember if I'd brought it up there or not.  I was even about to give up and go to bed but then I decided to drive clear back up there at 11:30 at night to make sure, just for peace of mind.  It was laying in the snow in the little trail head parking area off the side of the road where I had been parked.  Apparently it just slipped out when I was getting my camera out or whatever, and fell out of the car without me noticing.  Luckily it was in its case, and didn't appear to have been run over when I left, and it still works fine.  But, yeah.  So I need to take better care of my photography belongings and stuff, I guess.