May 2005 Archives

is not for them what can't appreciate subtlety.

okay, sometimes i'm not even being subtle. example:

a friend of a (girl)friend posted an autographed pic of Emilio Estevez without saying "this is Emelio Estevez". Here's the conversation that ensued:

PersonA : "who's that?"
PersonB : "emilio estevez, star of 'the breakfast club'"
me : "breakfast whatnow? i think you meant to say 'emilio estevez, star of "repoman"'"
PersonB : "'breakfast club', look it up"

siiiiiiiiiiiiigh.

It's Frobuary 1, YOMHC 08.

went to an "old fashioned barber shop" in PS. 12 bucks. the guy was maybe 900 years old. he asked if i wanted it "short and high" or "regular". i said "short on the sides, leave the top as long as it is". i got "short all over". sigh. i still look okay tho, i look nice with short hair.

i also broke down and shaved. bought "burma shave" brand soap and super-shitty-brush at longs for 7 bucks total, used one of my bro's sensor excel blades. the soap was super crappy, and the brush was worse -- as expected. but i got a decent shave and i really really really needed it. i certainly didn't enjoy it, tho.

i don't usually relax. i can't. too much shit on my mind. too much stuff to do, take care of, line up, prepare for, and finish up. and right now is not exacly a relaxing time in my life.

but i managed to relax today.

i intended to take the palm desert dog poop trail at a running pace this morning. it's about 2 miles with about 1000 feet of elevation gain. i'd done it at a 3-3.5mph walk (33 minutes total from bottom to top) on sunday (thus keeping intact my hike-a-week record) and felt like i could take it at a run.

i wasn't exactly correct.

got there about 9:45 and it wasn't too hot yet, only 85 or 90. i set off at a run with only my 1liter water bottle, car key, and clif bar. i didn't last long.

i couldn't run the whole thing. i ended up sprinting and walking until i got to the top. i probably took the same time to the top as when i walked it, but i had a couple of scary i-might-just-die-up-here moments on the way.

my sunscreen burns the skin on my face but it works. i had only taken one sip of water before i got to the top. but once i was there -- legs and face burning, panting, parched -- i located the only shade available at the top: a couple of sharp boulders perched on a hillside. there was just enough shade to keep me covered if i sat just right and kept my knees up.

i checked for snakes and spiders and then laid my head against the granite and drank my cold water. it had been icewater when i left the bottom no more than 30 minutes before. now it was just chilled water.

but it was good. behind me was a panoramic view of palm desert, rancho mirage, and the other desert cities. behind me. i was looking at the snow-capped san jacinto mountains, enjoying a refreshing breeze, watching horny hummingbirds and dragonflies chase one another, and trying to ignore the faint but distinctly depressing grumble of distant SUVs.

i was relaxing.

i can't relax at my parents house because they keep it around 79F and it's too hot.

here i was at 90+F (overheated internally) and more relaxed than i'd ever been.

i stayed as long as the shade lasted and made my way down. i ran back down pretty much the whole way. my joints will cry tonight, but it was worth it.

but she's all mine.

^
|
+--- i love her.

or, like "anakin skywalker", i'm "under stress".

i'm a dufus under stress.

i made assumptions and got worked up over the wrong stuff and... and the same as always. once i got confrontational and found out how wrong i was, i felt like a jerk.

sigh.

this is how it is:

it's been months since i've been able to be angry at her for more than a couple hours. i love my W and the way she makes me feel.

it keeps coming back to that. that's more important than any misunderstanding or argument, and we both know it. :-*

freakazoidal

"Ordinary people marvel at extraordinary things. Extraordinary people marvel at ordinary things." -Confucius

i'm staying. i'm keeping my desert headache, my sweaty back, my drymouth, my growing gross beard (can't bring razor blades on an airplane!) my growin gross gut and all the other benefits of fine desert living.

but i can't leave yet. they unplugged grandma. she's on o2 but nothing else. no drugs (except painkillers if she appears to need them), no feeding tube. her days are numbered, but nobody knows how numbered.

without her heart medication and her blood thinning meds, the number must be pretty small.

my plane tickets were bought in order to attend my brother's graduation. it was just a coincidence that g-ma happened to have her terminal stroke as i was on the way. i didn't come down to enjoy myself. i'm not staying to enjoy myself, but because it's the right thing to do.

there's other stuff going on, too.

things are changing quickly. i have a chance (maybe) to do some good in the world. trying to do the right thing is never easy, but it's worth the effort.

brother to me (while bringing stuff in from the car) : there's still more stuff in the car, dummy.

me : who you callin dummy? i'm the one sitting on the couch while you bring stuff in from the car, dummy.

i was thinking of posting an "i feel a-changes a-coming" post last night, on the occasion that my home theater receiver is on the fritz and i have returning-from-vacationitis. as it turns out, changes are coming, and they're not related to my stupid dvd system.

my grandma is probably going to die this weekend.

she had a bladder infection last week while i was visiting her. i talked with her, and held her hand, and she seemed groggy but not terminal. she met W and they smiled at one another. For many years, grandma hasn't had the ability to easily make new memories -- we could have the same conversation 5 times in an hour. But my mom says after I left, grandma talked a lot about how happy she was that I was now married and how pleased she was to have met my wife.

That's close enough.

She floored me by saying "let me cogitate on that" in response to something my mom said to her. I'd never heard anyone use that word in conversation, let alone someone who lived in an assisted living facility, as she does.

but a day or two after we left, grandma had what has now been identified as a stroke. she's had little ones before, but this one was bad. she hasn't been conscious for days, and the neurologist says "she's not there", and that someone who hasn't woken up after this amount of time will almost certainly end up on a feeding tube in a nursing home for the rest of their unpleasant life.

so that about wraps it up for grandma.

i said a while ago somewhere on this blog that i wouldn't be too sad when she went, because i thought she wanted it. but it's been a long time since i've heard her talk about being in "god's waiting room", and my brother's finally graduating college and i've finally got a girlfriend and everyone in grandma's life is approaching some modicum of happiness that she's waited so long to share in

and she wont

she's been through plenty, enough for anyone's lifetime, if we can really ever have enough. i honestly don't know, from my age. she's past 90, i can't comprehend that perspective.

but i know that everything in my own life happens at exactly the wrong time. it looks like that's happening to her, as well. in life, as far as i can tell, one weathers the tough parts in the hope that good times will lie ahead. she's seen more good times and bad times in just a blink of her time on earth than i've seen my whole life. but she was on an upswing.

she was happyish, as far as i could tell, as far as anyone -- especially in her condition -- can ever be. and though i never communicated well with her -- especially in her later years -- i finally had things i could talk with her about. the last half decade it's all been work. i can't talk to my grandma about computer programming. but i can talk to her about being in love, and share that happiness with her. i can talk to her about the things that i enjoy doing that existed back when she was my age : running, hiking, camping, being outdoors and around friends.

but i never really did, and now i cant.

my dad's parents and brother died within the last decade. they all lived far away and i had little contact with them. i've had little contact with grandma, since i moved away to college, but she helped raise me. she was always nearby, never remote or removed. and when my other grandparents died, i was a selfish, cold, unemotional, one-track-guy. it didn't hit me like this. grandma's not even gone, yet, and i'm already crying more than i did for the other set.

i don't know what that says about me. it just happened that way.

so changes are coming. big ones. a huge portion of my mom, dad, and brother's time has been allocated -- for the last decade and a half, at least -- to assisting grandma in the difficult business of carrying on living.

when she's gone, i can't predict how it will affect my family other than to know that it will have a very large, very noticable, and probably very immediate effect.

i've only seen my mother really, truly upset one time. and that was simply stress and frustration and disappointment. i can't imagine what this will be like. i've learned a thing or two about selflessness since my dad's family died, though. i will do what i can to help all of us through whatever lies ahead.

5 miles!

i ran 5 miles. and i did a good job of it. 48:48. less than 10 minutes per mile. when i felt tired, i walked for a minute, for a total of either 6 minutes or 7 minutes -- I lost count. The first mile was almost 8 minutes, until i realized i was a) about to run my first mile in 8 minutes 2) i'd never run 5 miles before and c) i'd never even run 4 miles all the way through.

so i slowed down and made it. the last mile was "easy" in the sense that i felt quite detached from my body and felt like it was "someone else" struggling through that last mile. i never would have done five if i hadn't been running with the coworkers and wearing my expensive glasses.

the run was on the foster city stinkway, 3 miles with the wind, 2 miles against it. i took out the arch-support insoles i'd been running with almost since day 1, and i think that actually helped. they may have been working against me.

folks were complaining about the heat a little, which didn't bother me, since i'd run 2.5 miles at 9am in 90 degree heat less than a week ago. this was cool compared to that.

over my vacation i got:

1) fat
2) weak

bench press is way down. bench press is always my most pathetic lift. my arms are getting soft and puny. i try to tell myself i don't mind because:

1) i'm lighter and that is good, because
2) i'm in good shape for actual outdoor/recreational activities like hiking, backpacking, running, and sex.

still, i don't want small, mushy arms. i had those before and they suck. i need to get back on a regular weights schedule (tough to do when traveling all over the place) and i've swung back to the point where i'm thinking seriously about getting back on the creatine.

bleh.

also, one of the following definitely irritates my digestive system:
1) lifting weights
2) drinking milk after lifting weights
3) protein powder

the obvious choices are #3 or #2 but i'm really not totally convinced of that. should be easy enough to test.

bleh.

i've got ants.

only a scattered two dozen so far, none in pairs.

but they'll soon be here in swarms. why? i dunno. i dont have any food lying around or anything. i didnt have them last year.

fuck. i hate ants.

the mars attacks! martians are landing in pahrump.

why's that funny?

if you don't know, i can't explain it to yous.

mars attacks has more stars in the cast than in the deep-space-shots

so far i've seen:

- pam grier
- glenn close
- rod steiger
- some redhead that i can't name
- natalie portman
- jack nicholson twice
- jack black!! looking svelte, too
- some redheaded chick in really tight orange pants... hey is that juliette lewis? christina applegate?
- sarah jessica parker
- that guy that plays james bond
- martin short!
- michael j. fox!

according to the credits, it's also got joe don baker. oh yes.

mars attacks has more stars in the cast than in the deep-space-shots

so far i've seen:

- pam grier
- glenn close
- rod steiger
- some redhead that i can't name
- natalie portman
- jack nicholson twice
- jack black!! looking svelte, too
- some redheaded chick in really tight orange pants... hey is that juliette lewis? christina applegate?
- sarah jessica parker
- that guy that plays james bond
- martin short!

according to the credits, it's also got joe don baker. oh yes.

i said that eloping is only eloping when you're running from your parents. and getting married. neither of which i have immediate plans to do.

but i knew that definition #1 was there.

and i'm still looking for a way to do it.

back from my vacation. W and i drove all over CA, from oakland to palm springs and many places in between.

we had many adventures, large and small: with each other, with other people, and within our own heads.

it was the longest amount of time i've ever spent with her, or pretty much with anybody since college. i expected that by the end of the week i'd be dying for some freedom, but that's not even close to how i feel. if she wasn't working to (past, more than likely) midnight and getting up before dawn, i'd be seeing her tonight for sure. but for the first time in more than a week, i'll have to try to get to sleep without her by my side, and wake up to the cold stare of the clock radio instead of the smiling face i long to see.

i'm really not looking forward to it.

other stuff:

- my face itches like a mofo, a combination of sunburn and razor burn and perhaps even the aftershave i used. arrrrrghhhh.

- i'm really having trouble "getting back into the swing of things". especially since i'll be getting right back out of the swing of things in just a couple more days. this always happens after a vacation. but this time, it's worse, and i know why: i just spent a (mostly) carefree week falling more in love, spending (mostly) every hour with the one person i'd choose to always be with, and now it's back to being away from her for most of the week, doing the boring crap that is so boring (and crappy (mostly)) that they have to pay me a large sum of money to do it.

this whole past week feels like an "alternative" in my mind. it's what i could be doing if the both of us weren't tied down by our jobs. i got over the "tied down" feeling long, long ago. i'm not stuck here by any means. i'm just stuck in a number of paradoxes and negative thought loops that prevent me from leaving.

boy, that's a whole other story. long story short: i wish i was still on vacation with W, not thinking remotely about work, and not wondering and worrying about when i'll be able to see her again.

- my grandma is not doing well, it seems. :(

- my brother is about to graduate from community college. way to go!

- i just had the most W week with W. did i mention that? i'm sad that it's over.

- i gained 5lbs on the trip. considering that i had only 1.5 hours of exercise (well, more if you count standing in line at magic mountain) the whole week, i guess that's not bad.

- i still have an unbroken chain of weekend hikes going back more than a month now. with a little bit of luck, it will remain unbroken even next week. i hiked up a 1mi bit of trail behind the PS desert museum in 90+ degree heat. drank 2.5liters of water in 1 hour. fun stuff. my running shoes suck for hiking.

- i miss W.

- i didn't go camping on my vacation. too damn hot.

- my solla SLO really is paradise, and nobody there ever has any troubles, at least very few. i wrote myself a note after the last visit: DONT LOSE MOMENTUM. i lost my momentum. i'm still here. but in addition to losing momentum, i gained an appreciation for where i am. so it goes.

- i have to go talk to the boss about what i need to do this week. yay.

in fact, i had a very very nice vacation which is not technically over yet.

"One of Those Among Us Is a Killer, and We Cannot Leave This (a) Isolated Country Estate, (b) Besieged Police Station, (c) Antarctic Research Outpost, (d) Haunted House, (e) Space Station (f) Rogue Planet or (g) Summer Camp until we find out who it is -- or until we all die. It is a most ancient and dependable formula, invariably surprising us with the identity of the killer, because the evidence is carefully rigged to point first to one suspect and then another, until they persuasively clear their names by getting murdered."

going backpacking this weekend, just barely. the hike to campsite is 1.5-1.75 miles. it's my first time so i picked an easy one -- in fact, i sorta stumbled across this, i was just planning to car camp again.

my packed bag weighed about 65lbs. there is no potable water at the campsite (finally picked a more "rugged" spot, although to be fair the site reportedly has a payphone :) so I was lugging 2 x 1liter nalgenes, 1 x 2liter camelbak + 1gal crystal geyser. The latter weighed about 10lbs. I removed it from my bag and replaced it with a 14oz water filter that I got just yesterday. down to about 55lbs.

that's way way way too much for a simple over nighter. the problem may be my backpack: it's a surplus A.L.I.C.E. pack, large size. probably weighs 7-10lbs all by itself. I need to weigh it when I get back...

Add in 6lbs of REI half-dome2 tent, 3lbs of Cat's Meow Long sleeping bag, 8lbs of water, 2.5lbs of bear vault, maybe 5lbs of kitchen gear, 4lbs of towel, spare shirt, fleece, raingear... um, that's... 35lbs or so. i'm missing 20lbs somehow... food, 5lbs. first aid, flashlights, candle lantern, 4lbs. toiletries 2lbs. still missing 10lbs. i'll figure it out next trip :)

my ipod mini skipped on a song yesterday. while i was sitting at work, not running or skiing or skydiving or anything.

bleh.

you heard me gush aboot the parkway.

at the end of the month they will be screening one of my favorite movies, which has become even more special to me as of last october.

dunno if W really liked the movie, but thank goodness for the DVD menus...

Whether it's finding caches, moving hitchhikers (or travel bugs), locating NGS benchmarks or more, Garmin has your unit.

you come here to find out what's hip and what's not, you rely on me to provide you with the information you need to make the important decisions in your life, you read this crap so you'll have some ideas what to do with all that spare time and money you've got. well, dear imaginary reader, i've got just what you need: something like 4 or 5 reviews in a single blog post! How exciting! Let's get started!

Review #1) ipod mini

I've had mine for a week.5 or so now. I got it "free" from citibank by letting them hold on to $1k for 12 months and using their website to pay my bills. I have several mp3 players already, the one that the ipod competes with is my iRiver ihp-120. Here's how the ipod mini stacks up.

Pros :
- it makes me look young and cool and hip because it's so goddamned stylish. man, it's sleek. if there were any chicks where i work, they'd be all over me because of this thing. it's mega 1337.
- it's small and light and the shape is nice. ihp is bigger and heavier
- 4GB seems to be enough for me, even though I somehow "ran out of space" on my 20GB ihp
- the wheely dingus is really nice, better than the joystick dingus on the ihp
- awesome battery life.
- games and stuff. backlight. nice.
- little apple touches, like pause-on-headphone-disconnect. iriver doesn't think of "nice touches" like that.

Cons :
- have to use itunes to put songs on it (though I may be able to hack up a better way to do it). itunes sucks.
- relies totally on id3 tags, which are not always correct for my mp3s. i hates it when the album name is misspelled in one track and that fuxors up playback. yes, i spose i could fix it with a playlist, but if ipod could deal with FILENAMES and TIMESTAMPS like my ihp, it wouldn't be a problem
- sound doesn't sound as nice as the ihp. maybe i need to play with EQ a bit more.
- ihp has an FM radio, ipod does not
- ipod doesn't display album name on playback screen
- ipod doesn't scroll album/song names in the selection screen! how the hell am i sposed to know "The Wall Part 1" from "The Wall Part 2" when they both show up as "The Wall Par..." ????

Most of my beefs are with the way it manages mp3s -- relying on itunes and id3 tags. I'm old and set in my ways, I've been listening to mp3s since 98 or 99 or whenever the hell they first came out. some of my mp3s date back to those days and hence are "sloppy" as far as id3 tags (i think some of my mp3s predate the invention of id3). if i was brand new to mp3s i'd have 0 complaints aboot ipod. well, okay, i'd still complain about the display problems. but overall, if someone were to give me another free ipod, i wouldn't kick him in the crotch for it.

Review #2) pyramid brewery in berkeley

Not bad. Not great. I had a porter and a chicken sangwich thingus. The porter was a bit disappointing. Not bad enough to spit out, but it wasn't rich and creamy and chocolatey like a good yummy porter should be. The menu was pretty standard brewery fare -- compare to Steelhead in burlingame. Or don't, cuz IMHO pyramid doesn't stack up. Back when I was a beer snob (doing twice-weekly written beer reviews, no less) I wasn't a big fan of pyramid. Maybe it's my fault for having a porter instead of their award winning hefeweizens, but dammit, i was in the mood for a porter. atmosphere was nice and staff was good. as a restaurant: no complaints. the beer: meh.

Review #3) Parkside Theater in oakland

Holy the crap this place rules! I wish I'd known about it sooner. It's a movie theater that charges five bucks for a ticket (and 2 for 1 on wednesdays!), serves wine and beer and pizza and salads and baked goods including brownies and lemon bars, and has comfy love seats instead of chairs for the first several rows in front of the screen! It's laid back and apparently owned by very cool people. If the above description doesn't convince you of that, the short "announcements" film made by the owners that plays before your movie will convince you. They joke about the crappy movies they get and they poke fun at the crappy movies they're getting soon, they ask folks to please stop bringing outside food on the Free Movie nights (!) and so on. You're not dealing with a mindless, faceless multinational movie conglomerate -- your money goes to keep a small band of middle aged movie-loving hippies off the streets and provide the public with an awesome place to enjoy a movie. They show Rocky Horror Picture Show every saturday at midnight, it seems. I've never seen it, maybe I'll go some time.

In short, the place rocked. I don't often "get vibes" from a place, but this place definitely had one: welcoming, laid back, personal. It's a happy place, and I don't mean that like "Disneyland is the Happiest Place on Earth (run by Nazis, we're watching you, some restrictions may apply, no cameras, outside food, or fun allowed)" kind of Happy Place, either.

Pros :
- beer!
- pizza!
- lemon bars!
- love seats!
- those urinals that go all the way to the floor so you have a very wide range of stream-altitude options!
- non-mainstream movies!
- your money goes to cool people instead of asshats like Jack Valenti (ok, JV still gets your money but the cool people get to touch it first)

Cons :
- none that I noticed

Review #3) Oldboy

Great movie. Bad subtitles (white with no outline, kinda hard to read against snow or white shirts or bright lights).

(Be careful now, past this point are very mild spoilers.)

A tale of revenge and paranoia and action and suspense where it's never clear who The Bad Guy is. Well acted, well directed, nice soundtrack, great plot, good themes. Some scenes of torture and violence and that kind of thing.

Compare to Sin City, another story sort of about revenge and torture and violence: SC was almost entirely gratuitous. SC had well-defined Bad Guys who were Just Plain Bad. In this movie, though, the bad guys are bad for reasons and it makes a tremendous difference in how the viewer relates to the characters. It's one thing to see the Good Guy righteously pound the brains out of The Totally Evil Bad Guy -- it's quite another thing to see The Good Guy plagued by remorse when he finds out why The Bad Guy is Bad. The former is watched with detached boredom -- just more violence and torture like we see on TV every day. The latter, though, involves the viewer and invites them to ponder what's going on: to think.

This is a movie about thinking, not just people getting killed and tortured.

And the fight scenes are realistic, too. In one scene, the protagonist takes on a gang. You don't know if the hero will come through all right, like in a Bruce Willis movie, because it's not that kind of movie. But you know he'll land a few good punches. Watch how the bad guys gang up on him instead of taking him on one at a time (Kung-Fu style). Watch how the gangsters react, fearfully, after he injures several of them. Even the stuntman punching bag people are real people: they start to wonder whether they should mess with this guy.

That kind of realism is absent from a film like SC (or even Die Hard!).

Another thing that I liked was the exploration of the Price of a human being. For enough money, Oldboy tells us, anyone can be purchased. Witness the loyalties of a character who has some dental work done. Where do his loyalties lie? Are you sure?

The movie is thoroughly involving and definitely one of the best I've seen this year.

Pros :
- emotionally involving
- great acting, direction, music, plot, fight choreography
- a real Thinker that also involves kickass action
- the octopus scene
- the movie doesn't wimp out and take the Happy Ending until the very very end.
- it's internally consistent. things don't happen Just Because. People don't just Do Random Shit (like in the awful h2g2 movie).

Cons :
- subtitles, gramatically correct for a change, are nonetheless hard to read
- couple of icky torture scenes. ew.
- the ending is a little weak, almost hollywood. up until that, however, it's great.

Go see it. See it at the parkside. It rocks.

on the other hand, i am very un-impressed by its total reliance on id3 tags.

i guess they designed it for people who rip all their music on their own computer using itunes.

malaysian food for lunch.

finished lunch at 1330.

now i'm hungry again.

nay, *really* hugry.

and i've started using it.

no longer do i call her "my girlfriend"; I call her by her given name.

I'm sure that means something.

37:08

that makes 9:17/mi

i didn't walk until about 2.25mi, and then i kept my walks at 1min and probably spent only 5min walking.

not bad, not bad. i tend (obviously, from my time) to run too fast when i'm running. well dammit, it was windy out (both ways, yes) and that makes me run faster (both ways, yes).

i cant do that, usually.

it was nice.

very nice.

:x

i took W to see "the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy" last night.

we walked out, much later than we should have. i can't remember the last time I walked out of a movie (well, we walked out of "The Incredibles", but we walked back in as soon as the theater's power came back).

it sucked. hard.

i could tell W was bored. really really bored. and confused. as in "this is supposed to be funny so why isn't it?" confused.

some review i read said basically the following: those who have read the books or seen the BBC tv show or heard the BBC radio show will be disappointed, and those who have not will be lost.

dead on. i tried viewing it as though I had not read the book a million times, listened to the radio show dozens of times, and seen the TV series twice. in other words, I tried to put myself in W's shoes.

i couldn't understand what the actors were saying (hey, even in my own shoes it was tough to follow some of ford's lines) and when i could understand them, they weren't especially funny.

as a fan of the guide in its other incarnations, i found the following things bizarre and incomprehensible:

1) many of the best jokes were removed. among my favoite lines that were missing (paraphrased):
- the spaceships hung lazily in the sky, in exactly the way that bricks don't.
- arthur: "it's at times like this, when i'm about to be blown out an alien airlock to die in the vacuum space, that i wish i'd listened to what my mother told me when i was younger." ford: "why, what did she tell you?" arthur: "i don't know, i didn't listen"

2) many of the jokes that were left in got butchered. for example, the location of the plans for the demolition of arthur's house ("so were the stairs!")

3) disproportionality of characters. minor (and even miniscule!) book characters (trillian, that malkovich thingy) became major movie characters. why?? there was no love story angle before the movie.

4) compression of plots : some will argue that this is necessary when making a movie from a book, but i will point out that the 2 hour bbc tv series (um, or was it a 6 hour series? i dont recall) didn't mangle plotlines like this one did. and if the movie people didn't have the time to properly explain magrathea and the earth's history (cutting out majikthise and vroomfondel is criminal!) they should have cut out some of the pointless (and not-in-the-book) stuff on vogsphere and the crap with malkovich malkovich malkovich malkovich malkovich.

to anybody who a) reads my cheesy blog and b) is thinking of seeing the movie (i.e. nobody), i implore you: ask me for a copy of the radio series or come by and watch the tv series.

i would have asked for my money back if anyone had been manning the register. bleh.

i dont have enough time to do all the things i want to do.

and i certainly don't have the time to recover from them.

the trip, depending on whether one happens to be me, was either a fantastic (not fabulous, by any means) success, or a horrific failure. As fate would have it, I happen to be me, and as such, I am happy to report that the trip was a fantastic success.

There was a turning point that made all the difference, and in the interest of minimizing suspense, I'll let you in on what everyone who watches the weather channel already knows: it rained sunday morning. Because I'm me, I liked that.

I camped out in Big Basin Redwoods State Park. I didn't need a reservation because apparently nobody goes there this time of year. The line to register for a campsite was interminably long and the park ranger person was quite frazzled. Had to remind her to get my change and my map. But that's fine. She asked me how far I'd like to walk to my campsite, and I specified: "as far as possible". I got site #102, accessed from a parking lot that served 1-20 and 80-102 or something like that: a large number of campsites. However, 98-102 were vacant, and there were only about 5 cars in the whole lot.

I had a very large area all to myself.

The crapper and waterspout were all relatively far from the campsite, which was the farthest one out from the lot, up at the top of a hill. The mosquitos were awful: swarms and swarms. I had foolishly packed my repellant deep inside my pack (a mistake that I shall not repeat) so I literally ran around my tent while assembling it, in order to keep ahead of the bugs. They followed me in circles as I clipped on one pole-clip after the next, in a circular pattern, but they never caught me. Har.

After the tent was up and my mosquito spiral had driven off all the bugs, I extinguished the spiral and went out for a hike. The campsite was near trails to a waterfall (at which I discovered that my camera batteries were near death) and "slippery rock", near the bottom of which some conservationists camped in 190x and decided to start the California State Park system. "slippery rock" is a huge sheet of solid (possibly igneous, though I'm no geologist) rock that goes up a big hill. I climbed up the rock and kept my balance. Fun stuff.

After the short hikes, I came back and decided to get some firewood from the camp store. Next time I'm bringing my own. I failed for the second time to get a proper campfire, but next time I shall certainly succeed. I discovered that my "strike anywhere" matches are even crappier than I thought, though I was later to find that they were even crappier than I could have imagined.

They break. They don't light. For every one that lights I waste ten, They suck. Big time. They nearly ruined my trip, but at the same time, provided my moment of greatest triumph, as shall be seen.

Dinner was freeze dried REI lasagna, a pear, and mac and cheese. I realized -- too late -- that the mac + cheese wanted a strainer. It was watery and arful. The lasagna was delicious. I had wanted to cook a dinner but I never did come up with anything more gourmet than freeze dried food. As it happens, I think easily made dinners are best when camping, since they encourage one to hike-until-tired before dinner. At this point, I was a bit bummed by my failure to make a campfire (though it smouldered for hours until I poured my leftover-watery-mac-and-cheese upon it), tired from hiking and not sleeping well the night before, sweaty from the humidity and activity, and feeling a bit anxious about what i'd do after dinner: i wasn't tired enough to sleep and I had no plans. one of my last two camping trips went horribly wrong once I went to bed, and there was much nervousness that history would repeat itself.

The campsite had a food cupboard, just like at China Camp (though the ones at CC had 2 latches, this one had a single latch with a padlock hole). The ranger had told me not to put food in there because the local raccoons can open it. The cupboard itself had a sign saying the same thing.

But I didn't want to go to my car for breakfast. I was determined to keep my food at the campsite.

So I stowed it in the cupboard, put a carabiner clip through the loop, and used some electrical tape to wrap the clip part of the carabiner such that it could not be opened without unwrapping the tape. I then taped the whole assembly agaist the cupboard, took off my boots, and got into my tent to wait for morning and find out whether I'm smarter than a raccoon.

Once inside the tent, I proceeded to plant my knee square into the center of my ridiculously (though not absurdly) overpriced sunglasses. Catastrophe was avoided, however, since these are so superbly well made that the removable earpieces simply popped off rather. No damage. I thanked Jebus and put them in the tent's "attic" where they belogned.

Out came the flashlights and I read the first third of "Ender's Game" while waiting for it to get cold enugh to get into my sleeping bag.

I haven't read in ages. It was very nice.

I slept well. It did get cold, eventually cold enough that I was chilly in my boxers and my 20F sleeping bag. I was not so uncomfy as last time, the tent was set properly so my head was above my feet. The pad was comfy, though not precisely positioned : my feet got a bit clammy. I was awakened once in the night to the sounds of animals trying to get past my carabiner. It would have to wait until morning for me to check on their success: with the rainfly on, there's only one small window, and it faced the wrong way.

I was awakened from my restulf camp-sleep by a full bladder. I tried to ignore it and enjoyed some small success. The problem with a full bladder is that I'd have to put on my pants and boots to relieve it, and once up, I'm up. I can't go back to sleep, especially if I have to hike to the latrine. I decided to bring a bedpan next time.

So I snoozed a bit, from about 5am to sunrise. Sunrise brought a new treat: rain.

The light pitter-patter of drops impacting my rainfly was accompanied by a rushing sound as of a flood. I feared what I would find when I ventured out.

At this point I could sleep no longer; my curiousity brought me to full waketitude and I de-tented to see how bad the rain was and whether i had any food left and to take the whiz that had originily awakened me.

The rain was not bad. In fact, the towering redwoods (the same ones that made my GPS useless) reduced the full-on rain to a mild drizzle. Occasionally a bit of Red Something would land on my rain fly. It looked like blood to me -- maybe a bit of entrail stuck up in the branches above -- but it may have been Redwood Juice of some sort. It wasn't me.

My food was still safe and secure in its locker. Those millions of years of evolution paid off: I am smarter than a raccoon, or at the very least, smarter than the one(s) that tried to steal my food on Saturday night.

After my morning constitutional I decided to make breakfast. I had wanted to pack up first, but I was too hungry.

Whereas in the evening I wanted a quick and super-easy dinner, breakfast was another matter. My paw told me -- rightly so -- that camping is all about cooking. I intended to have me a fancy, feasty breakfast. The rain threatened to put a damper on my plans, but as it turned out, I had other things to worry about.

I had brought: a potato, an onion, some bacon, 2 eggs, oatmeal, milk, and -- of course -- coffee. My plan was to lube my pan by cooking the bacon, fry up the onions and spud, then scramble the eggs. While I was enjoying my delicious scramble I could cook the oatmeal and coffee.

So I went to light my stove. I couldn't get a match to light. Before I knew it, I was through the entire box. I had several more boxes of these worthless matches elsewhere in my gear, but I knew they wouldn't do any better. It was too humid to light these pieces of shit, and I faced the grim prospect of energy bars or an MRE for breakfast. Bleah.

Then I remembered: I had brought along my old boy scout flint. The very same one I used many years ago to set fire to my bedroom trash can and kick my mom into Fireman Mode. I set the gas on my stove to low and operated upon the flint with my knife. After a moment I had a flame.

That was the turning point. I had made fire without matches, in the rain. Breakfast could commence. I was camping. I had snatched victory from the jaws of the world's worst box of matches. I was a happy camper.

So I set my aluminium pan on the stove, covered it with another pan, and opened the package of bacon. I was looking forward to this -- I almost never eat bacon, and I can't even remember the last time I'd cooked it myself. Yum.

I removed the cover from the pan and discovered to my dismay that aluminium camp pans are not meant to be preheated -- there was a flame shooting through a hole burned through the center of my pan. Holy the crap!

So I did what any sensible person would do: I grabbed the pan with my bare hands and put it on the damp, wooden table. Ow! Shoulda used the pan handle. Next time. My fingers are still a bit discolored and burnt. Ah, learning.

The cheap mess kit came with another dingus that could be used as a fry-pan, so I used it. No preheating, this time. The bacon went straight in.

I had forgotten how greasy bacon is.

Too much grease.

And the spuds didn't cook fast enough, and the rain probably wasn't helping. The onions weren't really browning too nicely either. I was hungry and impatient so I put the eggs in a bit early and ended up with yummily cooked eggs blended with bacon fat (I had already picked out all the bacon meat and eaten it), onions, and undercooked potatoes. All in all, it was delicous camp food!

Hastily I made my coffee, using the cupboard to shield my beans from the rain. It was a mighty delicous cup of Yemen, though I skipped many coffee-snob steps and cut many corners. The oatmeal wasn't bad either, but not good enough to merit more than a sentence.

I disposed of my breakfast waste (including the destroyed and possibly toxic pan), rinsed, as best I could, the bacon grease off of everything, over which it was ickily spread, and engaged in activities too horrific to explicitly recount; the latter eventually led to the re-christening of my favorite knife as "the poo knife".

All this taken care of, I went back into the tent and packed up my stuff. I hoke down to the care with my gear and put it all in, then went back to take down the tent. There's probably a recommended method for taking down a tent in the rain. Whatever it is, I had forgotten. I took off the fly and dumped it on the table. Then I took down the tent "as quickly as possible" and got it under the cupboard and out of the rain. Next time I think I will just remove the poles, leaving the fly over the tent. There's probably no "good" way to do it.

One more trip down to the car and my campsite was clean. Time: 9:30am.

I arrived back at Park HQ in 5 or so minutes and picked out a hike. I had planned to do a 6-miler, but I didn't feel like comitting to that in the rain and with little sleep and with W waiting for me to get home. The 3-miler turned out to be largely uphill, and I think I missed a turn and made it into maybe 4 miles. I was out for aboot an hour.

The scenery was incredible. Giant redwoods, groves, clearings, lizards, haze, fog, drizzle, streams, pools. I looked up and could barely see the tops of the trees for their height and the haze. Real foresty stuff. I won't describe it in depth: come see it yourself.

The hike was good. I was tired and energized when I returned to my car : it felt like I'd been camping.

I'm learning much each time and getting better each time. I've only been twice but I want to go each night. A new enthusiastic hobby -- who would have thought I'd have time? Though I don't know how much she means it, W seems to enjoy camping, which rocks my socks.

Shared interests are good.

I once thought we didn't have any.

Once I arrived back home, W informed me -- though I already knew it -- that I was stinky. I took a shower and we went out to engage in more shared interests.

'Twere a good day.

there once was a time when i hated my past
the decisions i'd made
the mistakes i'd chosen
the opportunities that i'd let slide
i hated that i'd been lazy
i hated that i'd been blind
i hated that i'd been scared
i hated that i'd missed so much because i didn't go outside
i hated that all my mistakes and all the world and all the things
that i couldn't touch
had put me where i was
and had me in their teeth
but all that changed when i met you
the past was past
the past was gone
the past, though sad and dull and tragic and drab
was my fate
my preparation
my necessity
because without it all
the good, the bad, the nice, the awful
i'd never have met you
because without it all
i may have met you
and not known what i'd found

i used to be alone all the time.

mostly because i didnt have the kind of friends that hang out together after work and i didn't have a girlfriend. now i've got a girlfriend but still no after-work friends.

so i used to be alone. whether i liked being alone or merely tolerated it is debateable -- i would say then and now that i liked it, but quite honestly, that may have been self-delusion then and mis-remembrance now.

it doesn't matter.

now, though, i don't seem to like being alone. i used to come home and read, i don't want to do that now. i want to be with people doing... stuff. i want to be around people and i feel kind of nervous that i'm alone.

it's a strange feeling.

i'm going camping by myself this weekend. i'm a bit nervous about that: i suspect i may freak out out there, all alone (sorta -- i reckon the campsite will be somewhat crowded) and in the dark (sorta -- i have plenty of flashlights and i'm damn well gonna make a campfire this time). i freaked out camping with a paly-wal the second to last time i went camping. funny as hell the day after, but not so pleasant the night of.

the point: i'd rather be camping with than without -- something i never would have guessed a year ago.

plus, today i got an ipod mini and i like it a fargen lot. i'm even beginning to kinda like itunes once i arrange my HDD in a way that it is happy.

i'm all weird and stuff.

one thing that's becoming popular: web based forms.

that's good.

what's bad: in the "your name" field, using a dropdown list that queries LDAP to grab ALL the names of ALL the people that work here.

Please.

I don't know how to spell my own name? I need to select me from a drop down list (hours of scrolling, gets longer each time we acquire a new company)? Your stupid web designer wants to show what a badass he is?

Just let me type my own freaking name into the list. I can do it, really! I do it all the time.

(okay, I think I guessed the reason they have this: some people are in the email system as, for example, " Lee" but call themselves "Bruce Lee". Or vice versa: "Bruce Lee" in email but call themselves " Lee". The dropdown is so you only enter your email name. fine. geez.)

i've always been fascinated by faces.

i used to study them and categorize them. i still find that many faces can be placed into categories, and not just obvious ones like "duh, he's asian" or "she's black" and so forth. One common face that I found was the "skinny, blondish freckled face with short, stringy, dirty blond hair". i know personally several people who fit this type, though now that i've moved to the bay it's a bit more rare :)

another thing that fascinates me is how rubbery and posable a face can be. just when you think you've seen every expression a face can make, you see a new one. a new variation on a smile, a slightly different grin, a new twist on the frown. the same face seen from different angles -- especially apparent in photograps -- can appear to be totally different people.

of course, this entire blah-blah-blah has been a buildup to a punchline:

a while back i asked W to guess which of her many faces was my favorite. after several guesses, when I told her it was her "oh-face", i got the expected smack and back. then, when i clarified what i meant (not "oh-face" in the "office space" sense of the word, but rather the face that she makes when she says "oh" in a particular way) i got treated to an example of the very "oh-face" that so delights me.

har. i be funny.

another unrestful night. i thought i'd sleep well after my first 4mi run, but i didn't. i was plagued by a weird dream, and i'd like to plague you with the same, dear reader.

it was my birthday. i was having a star wars-themed party, although there were no decorations or costumes to indicate such. i was standing near a drainage or irrigation ditch, filled with running water. the guests arrived. there was only one: a combined being of Jeff Goldblum and Ray Romano. You know, 2-in-1, like Jesus-as-man and Jesus-as-divinity or Clark Kent/Superman. we partied for a while and i know there were some events that transpired but i can't remember them. after a while, Goldblum/Romano died and was carried off. He floated, dead, down the irrigation canal. Then I was in a movie theater, a small one, with no walls. On my right was W, on my left me paw, and down in front were a happy young couple. Some crap-o movie was playing, and the young couple got a bit frisky. Pretty soon one-eyed-willie made an appearance, judging from their projection-booth-silhouette. It came at the feminie half of the happy couple from an impossible angle, and she performed upon it acts not mentionable in this family forum. Me paw, disgusted that such things would be going on in a theater with no walls or ceiling, got up to contact the manager. The lights came on and the movie went off, and the manager threw out a big blue tarp from the back row to the front. The tarp bordered the happy couple on the left side and presumable ceased their activities at the same time that it sanitized the seats.

At this point I was a little glum, having had a pretty crappy birthday party so far, but my spirits were raised when, out of the distance and alongside the irrigation ditch, who should come marching up with a merry band of dwarves and munchkins, but our very own presumably-deceased Jeff Goldblum/Ray Romano! Oh, happy day! He grinned and was happy to see me. We chatted some, and I think there was some activity that had something to do with a cupboard full of teacups. I'm not sure.

Presently I woke up and found W, who also smiled and was happy to see me.

Huzzah.

by "infected mushroom" is perhaps the happiest song i have ever heard.

okay, well, it doesn't beat the ode to joy, but it's still pretty happy.

wheeeeeeeeeeeee.

thought up some good drug names this morning. stop me if you've heard these:

damitol
fuckitol

um.

those are the only two i remembered.

i was in a crappy mood this morning, but i took my damitol and it cleared right up!

did my first 4-mile run today.

well, maybe 2.75 miles of running and 1.25 miles of walking. but it added up to 4 miles and i managed about 11 minutes per mile.

i probably would have done better had i not deadlifted the day before, and not slept well for 3 nights, and not gone on a short hill sprint on saturday and and and...

i used to be a weightlifting specialist. not "specialist" in the sense that i was any good at it, but "specialist" in the sense that it was my primary sports activity and i let nothing interfere with its progress.

that's all changed now.

my primary sports activity is now "do as much as possible and rest when i'm dead". i thought, when i was done, that i was too tired to do anything tomorrow, but i will probably change my mind by morning.

i may be a "cross trainer" now, though i never really understood what that meant.

the unfortunate truth, though, is that being a generalist means i won't make much progress in any particular activity. you know, it's like when your wizard reaches level 9 and you decide to dual-class to a wizard/cleric. your character will never be a powerful wizard or a powerful cleric. i'll never be a great lifter and a great runner and a great hiker and a great biker and skater and coder all at once. but i can be pretty good at all of them, or good enough at most of them.

it's frustrating, though, to know that i *should* rest, but dammit, I *want* to run or lift or bike or slide up a hill -- and what am i supposed to do with this extra energy if not use it?

so i use it and then have less of it the next day. oh well.

now that i've done 4 i have no excuse to do less. oh well again.

(09:35) [bigboote] harharhar
(09:35) [bigboote] harry blackmun
(09:35) [bigboote] my favorite supreme court justice ever

here's mine.

i used to be able to get a good night's sleep.

now i rarely can, even when i'm really tired and really need it.

bleh.

i'm still a good person, right?

brought to you by REI.

illegal choke-hold not endorsed by REI

rarely have i slept so poorly. better luck next time.

they say "life's too short for bad coffee". i brewed turkish : the world's most entertaining and portable method for making horrible coffee. i won't make that mistake again, especially with such exceptional beans.

hah, here i had my first (successful) camping trip in years and i'm talking about coffee?

we "roughed" it, i reckon. no fire (cause I couldn't get one going, how un-manly); no marshmallows -- tho we did have hot chocolate courtesy of my pocket rocket. MREs for dinner and entertainment. lots of fart jokes, as are required at any good camping trip. i plan to give it another shot this weekend, tho the fart jokes will be less entertaining as i'll be all on my own.

W was disappointed that i didn't pick up the "backpacker's chili" from REI -- but clearly that would have been unecessary.

lesson : shake shake shake, shake shake shake, shake your milkshake.

i said shake shake shake, shake shake shake, shake your milkshake. otherwise it'll come out lumpy and chunky and powdery and gross and i'll have to drink it for you.

i'm watching The Wall for the first time in ages -- i really dig the way Pink grooms his hair and eyebrows. i'm up for a shave tomorrow, maybe i'll do the same.

camping, right. cooked up some eggs in the morning. as me paw remarked just this evening: "it's not camping if you don't cook." damn right, skippy! i was planning on freeze dried backpacking crud for this weekend, but now i've changed me mind. bacon, flapjacks, and eggs. all on a single burner, yo! that's the plan, at least.

ah. floyd. the wall. slow noodling on the echo-chamber guitar. ethereal. ephemeral. sublime.

camping : communication is key. my tent's got a rainfly and this newfangled thing called a "footprint", which is a very expensive tarp cut to the exact size of the tent's bottom, attached via the poles. i also had a regular old plastic tarp which we decided to put under the tent -- though we didn't agree whether it would go under the footprint or over it (and hence under the tent bottom). after minutes of wondering what the tarp had caught, we discovered our error. heh.

good thing i picked up that extra pad for W. don't think she would have snored so loud without it.

didnt do much the morning after. the purpose of this trip -- as i've stated repeatedly to anyone who will listen and especially to those who wouldn't -- was to find out what needs to be done when camping. i'm outta practice. i took notes. now i know: have a plan. wanna hike? plan to hike. pick the trails ahead o time. wake up on time to do it. want to fish? swim? um... what else is there to do? not much else, really (until my inevitable foray into trail running, maybe a couple months hence). anyhow. next time (i.e. this weekend) i'll have a plan.

let's see... what else?

W mentioned to me that when she told her boss's boss aboot her hiking sustained leg injury (from last week), he said (jokingly, but only somewhat) : "you're a video gamer, you're not supposed to go outside". for too long i let that be my excuse (well, programmer, not gamer). my folks tried to pound into my skull the outdoorsy bug and i enjoyed it while i could. then i found computers and gained 100lbs and got all pasty and landed the sweet gig i've got now that allows me to afford REI gear and expensive running shoes and the power booth that stripped off those extra lbs. isn't that deliciously ironic?

so i'm returning to my youth, is that it? or creating one i deliberately skipped.

and i'm bringing W with me. hope it's a fun ride.

hey, how did this turn into another "me me me" blah-blah-blog entry? i thought it was sposed to be aboot camping!

oh

my.

CC bills are in.

/me dies.

spending freeze, starting.... now.

um. now.

now.

okay, tomorrow.

thursday?