Climbing Up in The World

I think I have a new interest! No, not that kind; I’m still single. This one is rock climbing. Ever since REI’s flagship store was built in Seattle, their climbing Pinnacle has intrigued me. Friends who were interested as well have come and gone yet no one ever actually followed through with their promise that “we should go try it out.”

Well, enough on waiting for someone to do it with. I ventured out on my own and registered for the beginners class they offer; Climbing 101. This was Monday. What a fun activity. We learned how to tie the required knots, belaying, and other procedures as well.

Belaying is rather hard on the neck but pretty fun in and of itself. We paired off into groups of two and then one would climb while the other would belay. To give us “practice” and a feel for all aspects of belaying, the instructors had the climber intentionally fall so that the belayer could catch them. It was rather fun jumping without warning out into space halfway up the Pinnacle.

I was curious whether I’d have a problem with the height but I didn’t. While out on a mountain, I have no problem walking right up to the edge of a cliff and sitting down with my feet dangling over. However, when in the city, I would never be able to do that in a high rise… even floor to ceiling windows give me fits sometimes; very strange.

The next class is this coming Monday and will be Climbing 201. This will work on technique. I’m looking forward to it.

The Lost Bible Chapter

February 1997 Atlantic Monthly

by Ian Frazier

Laws Concerning Food and Drink; Household Principles; Lamentations of the Father

Of the beasts of the field, and of the fishes of the sea, and of all foods that are acceptable in my sight you may eat, but not in the living room. Of the hoofed animals, broiled or ground into burgers, you may eat, but not in the living room. Of the cloven-hoofed animal, plain or with cheese, you may eat, but not in the living room. Of the cereal grains, of the corn and of the wheat and of the oats, and of all the cereals that are of bright color and unknown provenance you may eat, but not in the living room. Of the quiescently frozen dessert and of all frozen after-meal treats you may eat, but absolutely not in the living room. Of the juices and other beverages, yes, even of those in sippy-cups, you may drink, but not in the living room, neither may you carry such therein. Indeed, when you reach the place where the living room carpet begins, of any food or beverage there you may not eat, neither may you drink.

But if you are sick, and are lying down and watching something, then may you eat in the living room.

And if you are seated in your high chair, or in a chair such as a greater person might use, keep your legs and feet below you as they were. Neither raise up your knees, nor place your feet upon the table, for that is an abomination to me. Yes, even when you have an interesting bandage to show, your feet upon the table are an abomination, and worthy of rebuke. Drink your milk as it is given you, neither use on it any utensils, nor fork, nor knife, nor spoon, for that is not what they are for; if you will dip your blocks in the milk, and lick it off, you will be sent away. When you have drunk, let the empty cup then remain upon the table, and do not bite it upon its edge and by your teeth hold it to your face in order to make noises in it sounding like a duck; for you will be sent away.

When you chew your food, keep your mouth closed until you have swallowed, and do not open it to show your brother or your sister what is within; I say to you, do not so, even if your brother or your sister has done the same to you. Eat your food only; do not eat that which is not food; neither seize the table between your jaws, nor use the raiment of the table to wipe your lips. I say again to you, do not touch it, but leave it as it is. And though your stick of carrot does indeed resemble a marker, draw not with it upon the table, even in pretend, for we do not do that, that is why. And though the pieces of broccoli are very like small trees, do not stand them upright to make a forest, because we do not do that, that is why. Sit just as I have told you, and do not lean to one side or the other, nor slide down until you are nearly slid away. Heed me; for if you sit like that, your hair will go into the syrup. And now behold, even as I have said, it has come to pass.

Laws Pertaining to Dessert

For we judge between the plate that is unclean and the plate that is clean, saying first, if the plate is clean, then you shall have dessert. But of the unclean plate, the laws are these: If you have eaten most of your meat, and two bites of your peas with each bite consisting of not less than three peas each, or in total six peas, eaten where I can see, and you have also eaten enough of your potatoes to fill two forks, both forkfuls eaten where I can see, then you shall have dessert. But if you eat a lesser number of peas, and yet you eat the potatoes, still you shall not have dessert; and if you eat the peas, yet leave the potatoes uneaten, you shall not have dessert, no, not even a small portion thereof. And if you try to deceive by moving the potatoes or peas around with a fork, that it may appear you have eaten what you have not, you will fall into iniquity. And I will know, and you shall have no dessert.

On Screaming

Do not scream; for it is as if you scream all the time. If you are given a plate on which two foods you do not wish to touch each other are touching each other, your voice rises up even to the ceiling, while you point to the offense with the finger of your right hand; but I say to you, scream not, only remonstrate gently with the server, that the server may correct the fault. Likewise if you receive a portion of fish from which every piece of herbal seasoning has not been scraped off, and the herbal seasoning is loathsome to you, and steeped in vileness, again I say, refrain from screaming. Though the vileness overwhelm you, and cause you a faint unto death, make not that sound from within your throat, neither cover your face, nor press your fingers to your nose. For even now I have made the fish as it should be; behold, I eat of it myself, yet do not die.

Concerning Face and Hands

Cast your countenance upward to the light, and lift your eyes to the hills, that I may more easily wash you off. For the stains are upon you; even to the very back of your head, there is rice thereon. And in the breast pocket of your garment, and upon the tie of your shoe, rice and other fragments are distributed in a manner wonderful to see. Only hold yourself still; hold still, I say. Give each finger in its turn for my examination thereof, and also each thumb. Lo, how iniquitous they appear. What I do is as it must be; and you shall not go hence until I have done.

Various Other Laws, Statutes, and Ordinances

Bite not, lest you be cast into quiet time. Neither drink of your own bath water, nor of bath water of any kind; nor rub your feet on bread, even if it be in the package; nor rub yourself against cars, nor against any building; nor eat sand.

Leave the cat alone, for what has the cat done, that you should so afflict it with tape? And hum not that humming in your nose as I read, nor stand between the light and the book. Indeed, you will drive me to madness. Nor forget what I said about the tape.

Complaints and Lamentations

O my children, you are disobedient. For when I tell you what you must do, you argue and dispute hotly even to the littlest detail; and when I do not accede, you cry out, and hit and kick. Yes, and even sometimes do you spit, and shout "stupid-head" and other blasphemies, and hit and kick the wall and the molding thereof when you are sent to the corner. And though the law teaches that no one shall be sent to the corner for more minutes than he has years of age, yet I would leave you there all day, so mighty am I in anger. But upon being sent to the corner you ask straightaway, "Can I come out?" and I reply, "No, you may not come out." And again you ask, and again I give the same reply. But when you ask again a third time, then you may come out.

Hear me, O my children, for the bills they kill me. I pay and pay again, even to the twelfth time in a year, and yet again they mount higher than before. For our health, that we may be covered, I give six hundred and twenty talents twelve times in a year; but even this covers not the fifteen hundred deductible for each member of the family within a calendar year. And yet for ordinary visits we still are not covered, nor for many medicines, nor for the teeth within our mouths. Guess not at what rage is in my mind, for surely you cannot know.

For I will come to you at the first of the month and at the fifteenth of the month with the bills and a great whining and moan. And when the month of taxes comes, I will decry the wrong and unfairness of it, and mourn with wine and ashtrays, and rend my receipts. And you shall remember that I am that I am: before, after, and until you are twenty-one. Hear me then, and avoid me in my wrath, O children of me.

World Machine 2

One of my many interests is cartography; I love maps. An offshoot of this is an interest in “designing” my own terrain from small valleys all the way up to entire worlds. I guess you could say I like playing god (okay, so I’m a megalomaniac).

There are many software packages out there that aid this design. One such program is called World Machine. This program uses complex algorithms to produce realistic terrain features. The author of this software is about to release his second version of it with greatly expanded features. I am excited to test this out since it looks like I’ll be able to more easily design multiple landscapes to the detail that my anal retentiveness requires and seamlessly combine them to make a realistic continent and even world.

I’ve been watching his progress for over a year and now the end is almost here. July 4th is his release date; this is going to be fantastic!

(Almost) Live From Mars

Now this is amazing! The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter snapped this lovely shot of the Phoenix Lander parachuting to the surface of Mars. Technology these days, very cool!

Check out the box in the lower left of the image, you can clearly make out the chute as well as the Lander underneath.

Source: Astonomy Picture of the Day

45 Second Hang Time

It's a bird!

It's a plane!

No! It's a... fish?

Imelda, Green Lake's Queen of Shoes

Believe it or not, I actually got off my lazy ass and ran Green Lake both Saturday and Sunday. Admittedly, it was a difficult task to start both days but the bottom line is that I actually did it. There was one snag though, but it didn’t rear its ugly head until Sunday.

Saturday went quite well actually. It was sunny and warm enough to run just with shorts and a T-shirt (No, I’m in no shape to be running with my shirt off; too much Jell-O underneath still. Women would be screaming, children would be crying, and the guys would just plain laugh). Anyway, like I said, the sun was out so I got to wear my cool prescription sun glasses… and yes, I’m blind as a bat without my glasses.

The run went well and I finished it with a sprint to the end. Lukily, I got there just in time to go past a guy on a road bike. Nice looking chap with red and white biking shorts on; yum. Of course I didn’t turn and look [cruise] as I went by since I’m still somewhat of a closet case when it comes to public places other than Capitol Hill.

So, Sunday comes along without the sun. “Fine,” I say, “but you’re still doing the run!” Since the sun was not out, I didn’t wear the sun glasses and I hate exercising with my regular glasses on so I figured that I’d just do the run without eyewear at all. I looked rather funny trying to get my voice high enough for use in echolocation. Only an eighth of the way into the run was when I noticed that the Extensor Digitorum Longus Tendons* (shown here circled in blue) in my left foot were hurting. I managed to finish the run but still, the foot hurt. On top of that, I couldn’t see if there was any nice eye candy to view either.

Today I was doing some cardio at the gym and once again, my foot was killing me. I figure that my shoes are probably not the best for running so I think I need to buy yet another pair. I’m beginning to feel like Imelda Marcos.

*No, I'm not that smart. I looked up the tendons online.

The End… Again

All right, this is actually getting a little scary. Once again, I had a dream last night (yeah, I know, we all do… every night…). However, this was another end-of-days type dream.

This time, I was on a bus. Suddenly, there was a shared knowledge that the second coming was going to happen in 45 minutes. The bus finally reached its destination at about 10 minutes ‘till the end. Everyone got up to get off the bus but I stayed in my seat (similar to when an aircraft gets to the gate, everyone stands in the aisle waiting to get off but I stay in my seat until the line starts to move). Anyway, I let everyone get off before I stood up (there was one other guy who did the same).

Outside, we all stood looking at the point in the sky where the second coming was going to “happen” as if the sky was going to open up and allow what ever to come through. Part of me was wondering about what alien was manipulating us into thinking this was divine but the other part of me was actually considering the possibility that indeed, this was the second coming as spoken of in religious text; it still seemed fishy though. Either way, it was scary.

Anyway, the minutes ticked off all the while anticipation and dread of what was to come filled the crowd. One minute ‘til,… 30 seconds,… 10, 9,… "Here it comes" 6, 5,… and then I woke up.

I’m starting to wonder why this poor excuse for a brain is choosing to dream about the end. This is the second dream of similar topic in a month. Logically, the Christian god I was brainwashed into believing in as a kid does not (and cannot) exist; too many contradictions. Illogically, I still wonder sometimes.

There should be a law against fucking up kids at such a young age like that.

Competitive Success: VR

Saturday morning I found myself in a competition. This was a race to the finish line with some twists.

The race started in the mountainous terrain of the Himalayas from the low elevations up to the higher ones. I did rather well considering my past record of ability (or lack thereof) to run any distance without feeling it even at sea level. Anyway, by the time I got to the next portion of the race, I was third overall.

At this point, the race continued into a tower where we had to climb a ladder. I was unsure if I was to bring the tools I had with me or not so I asked. Luckily, I didn't have to take the pickaxe and shovel with me (they were heavy steel and that would have slowed me down). The race officials told me that I could put them in my car... yeah right, my car was at the bottom of the mountain so I just set them against the outside wall of the tower and ran back in to the ladder. While I was doing all this, I lost my position to another guy with black curly hair.

So I get back inside the tower and crawl into the compartment where the ladder was. This turned out to be some sort of piping/wiring trunk that went up to the next level some 100 feet up. I was fortunate that I still had enough energy so I climbed the entire distance just with my arms allowing my legs to rest limply underneath me. I think I did a personal best time on that climb as well.

The second level of the tower turned into a big warehouse space with boxes and stuff forming a sort of maze. By this time, I could see (but not see) two guys in front of me so I followed their trail making up time at a full run dodging through the course.

I finally come to a room that was at one side of the warehouse and could hear the scramble of the guys on the metal roof overhead. The trail, a white extension cord, led to a window so I jumped out and scrambled up to the roof with ease. The metal was pretty slippery and one misstep would have seen me slide off and fall the long distance to the ground. I navigated it superbly and made it to the top of the curved roof in no time flat.

The two guys were nowhere to be seen but I notice that there was an open skylight a ways off so I ran over and jumped through it. This put me back near the ladder that I had climbed up earlier. Great, I lost the trail. I start to look around for a direction to run and come to a room with monitors, computers, and people in it.

I walk up to Pamela Landy but before I can speak, she hands me a PLR-16 Pistol. Don’t ask me how I knew what it was since I’ve never seen that in real life; kinda scary actually that my subconscious knew though, and yes, it looked just like that in the dream (if you hadn't figured it out by now, this is a recount of a dream I had Saturday morning). Anyway, she hands the pistol to me and tells me that I am number two behind Mr. Architecture guy. It turns out that the room I happened upon was the start of the next stage of the competition and only the first two competitors to find it would move on to the final phase.

On the monitors were live and recorded camera feeds of some members of the mob. I was to locate Mr. Architecture guy and team up with him. The two of us would then hunt down and take out those members. How this was to result in one winner I don’t know because it’s at this point that I woke up (3:38 AM PST).

Now that was one exciting dream where I actually had an abundance of energy. Usually, I can barely run and stay ahead of danger but this time, I actively sought it out.

Fucked Up!

Here we are again! Frankly I’m starting to get a little pissed off about the whole thing. The weather is starting to turn around; hey, they are even predicting 71° tomorrow (that’s Fahrenheit not Celsius), I’m getting damn close to five days at the gym again, I even have a cool new Fossil watch to wear out and about, but what does this cheep knock off of a brain that rents out the space between my ears do? get down and depressed. BASTARD! KNOCK IT OFF!

It seems that the cycles are getting shorter and shorter where not a week goes by without feeling melancholy now. Summer is just around the corner and I cannot afford to get sick (depressed) again.

I was thinking of a way I could use this to my advantage. Normally, when I get down, I just sit at home and turn inwards… maybe I should “punish” myself with a long run every time I get down. At that rate, I’d be running almost everyday.

Unfortunately, the fitness issues are not the root cause and taking care of them is just treating the symptoms and not the disease. I still have not figured out what the disease is though.

Signs and Portents

This morning I experienced an unusual set of dreams; something I really don't recall having before. They started out as your run-of-the-mill dream but then moved into more of an Armageddon style. I'll pick it up there.

The setting was a city or town laid out similar to some European towns with steep narrow streets... we were at a gas station in some sort of SUV/mini van type car. My sister pointed out an interesting cloud formation so we all looked up. It was in the shape of a skeletal hand. Soon, more shapes appeared in the form of skulls. At first, we thought it was just a coincidental act of nature but then noticed that new puffs of cloud were being created as we watched (similar to when someone takes a drag on a cigarette and then blows out the smoke).

Anxiety starts to take hold of everyone just as a new form appears. This time, it was streams of smoke that divided into multiple branches, each one ending in a blue spark similar to a small firework. This started repeating itself all over the sky with the skulls continuing to appear in the background. Pretty weird eh?

Anyway, being the realist that I am, I get on my cell phone and start chatting with a friend analyzing what we were seeing and how it was really being done; in other words scientific, not spiritual. The only solution I can remember that we talked about was that it was holographic. All the while, I'm walking down one of the steep streets in the town with lots of other people in market booths, in doorways, or just milling about talking about the sky.

I finally come to a square that seemed to be at the edge of town with a view of Mt St Helens. It's then that I notice the volcano was about to erupt since its crater was entirely filled in as if a bubble of magma had pushed up the crater floor to its original, pre-1980 eruption height. Soon the bubble burst and flung rocks, lava, and ash into the sky.

I knew I was dead since we were too close and rocks were falling all around us so I just stood and watched debating on whether I should film it with my cell phone camera. It's then that I noticed some of the rocks were alive and had loosely formed monstrous humanoid shapes, all walking around...

...beep, beep, beep went my alarm clock.