And now the first thing I am doing is postponing cooking at all until next week because I have too much ready-to-eat food in my fridge. Practically the definition of a First World problem, huh?

I am so in love with my sourdough it's ridiculous. High altitude definitely changes things - the guy at sourdoughhome.com is based in Colorado somewhere and I believe he discusses how to deal with altitude, but I am sea level or maybe below, so I don't have any idea. Though if your starter was just expanding out of its container, that's not necessarily a problem - just put it in a bigger container to start with: I keep a cup of starter in a pint jar, but I usually see keeping a cup of starter in a quart jar recommended. And if it explodes out of that, just clean off the excess and use what's still in the jar! You can compost the excess if you have to, though my near inexhaustible appetite for quickbreads means I never have to do that.

Now if it was developing civilizations and attaining sentience, that's more of a problem.