I just dreamt that Brad Pitt and I were chasing each other with ceramic military knives around a small town on a bay. I had killed AJ and he killed several of the ‘innocents’. I didn’t want to kill him, but I had to try. He was insane and I was evolving there too and not enjoying it. Even though I convinced the sand worm from Beetlejuice to attack him from beneath the bay, it didn’t work. We had run out of other weapons and were down to these two knives, which we kept throwing at each other. There were flashbacks to restaurants and tents in there too. Lots of jumping from the same windows over and over again. Acid-burnt bodies, cannibalism, creepy bathroom/kitchens, intrigue, sexual perversion of a PG-13 nature and lots of famous actors who are only famous in my mind – in short, probably the best chance of topping The Expendables. And I can’t remember what we were fighting about.

It’s 3:31AM and I’m going back to bed, knowing that tomorrow will not be as cool as the dream I just had.

Here’s submission #3 for #nycmidnight Flash Fiction Challenge 2011.  Prompts were open (genre), a physical rehabilitation center (place) and a poisonous [sic: venomous] snake (object).  I kind of shit the bed on this one, I think.  Not too worried about it, though.  I was pretty happy that I made the cut to get to the second round (there are three rounds total – scores are added from the two parts of the first round to determine who gets into the second round).

BRIEF SYNOPSIS:  Trapped in a broken body, a man tries to make contact with the world outside him and avoid going insane.

WINDOWS TO THE SOUL

“And a one, and a four, and a ching-chong potato!  Hahahaha, look at that retard,” giggled Kevin, pointing at me as the orderly wheeled him by me, his left leg sticking straight out, parallel to the floor with the Ilizarov apparatus encircling his shin.  A car accident six weeks ago left Kevin’s tibia and fibula broken in several places; well over a dozen stainless steel pins connected the circular frames at his knee and ankle to various points on those broken bones, holding his leg together as the bones knit.

Great.  Only another 14 weeks of Kevin’s genius to endure.  I remember when Kevin came in:  the painkillers he was on at first left him as much of a drooling mess as I am.  It’s been barely a week since he’s been able to feed himself.  The meds he’s taking now have his verbal diarrhea scale set at approximately that of a wasted college kid who’s one drink away from getting punched in the face or kicked out of the bar.  I’ve seen this happen before.  They’ll switch his meds again in another few weeks and he might get some social skills back, but it’s pretty obvious what kind of a guy he is, and that won’t change.

We get all kinds in this rehab.  Jimmy over there was bitten on the hand by a venomous snake and suffered nerve damage in his fingers.  He thought he was getting a baby ball python, but it turns out the pet shop made a pretty big mistake.  Jimmy’s only here on Saturdays, so that the doctors can keep tabs on his recovery and give him new exercises to do for the following week.  He’s usually nice to me; sometimes he’ll sit next to me and talk a bit about his other snakes while he does his finger-articulation exercises. His hand is recovering quickly, so I’ll probably only see him once or twice more.

I’ve met guys like Jimmy before, too.  He’ll probably stop by to say goodbye on his last day – give me a couple of words of encouragement and tell me to look him up when I get out, even though he wouldn’t have noticed any change in me over the course of spending 10 Saturdays here.  The doctors probably explained to him that they expect me to die in here, anyway.

I’m getting sharper every day.  Smarter, it seems.  I’m more attuned to the world now than I ever was when I could walk and talk and move.  I can smell Nurse Diane when she walks through the door behind me at the other end of the big common room, and I can play out a hundred games of chess to the end when I watch Darryl and Susan practice their finger agility two tables over.

By and large, the doctors think I’m a vegetable, though Dr. Kline seems to know there’s someone still alive in here:  besides the fact that he’s the only one to make eye contact with me, he actually looks into my eyes.  Every time he does, I stare back as hard as I can and focus all my will on blinking.  It hasn’t happened yet, but I’m getting closer.  The doctors say it’s physically impossible for me to be able to blink (or, for that matter, do anything) voluntarily, but I’m sure I’m close.  If I can do that, then maybe they’ll believe there’s a person inside this broken body of mine.

I’ve been here for twelve years.

My friends stopped visiting ten years ago, my family six.  Still, enough happens here that I haven’t lost my mind or started thinking about suicide (not that I could do anything about either at this point).  My only worry is that new things will stop happening:  that it’ll turn out that I’m stuck in some loop of Kevins and Jimmys and Darryls and Susans – the same people over and over again, just different faces.  The chess matches I’ve watched so far point to that realization happening just about any minute now, but I really try to avoid thinking like that.

Here’s submission #2 for #nycmidnight Flash Fiction Challenge 2011.  Prompts were ghost story (genre), steakhouse (place) and a taser gun (object).  I’m kind of ok with how it turned out, though I put it together in about an hour (just before the deadline, as usual), so there are a few places where a word or two could be interchanged.  I’d have preferred to finagle it to get the twist to be a bit more emotionally impactful for the main character, but whatever:  it’s done.

BRIEF SYNOPSIS:  Will killing his murderer’s descendant bring peace and closure to a troubled ghost?

THINNING OUT

I’ve been in the saloon for a long time now.  “Steakhouse,” I mean.  They call it a steakhouse now.  No matter.  It’s still the same to me:  a place where the booze flows in and out of the people as the people flow in and out of the doors.  I suppose there are worse places to haunt.

I’ve been here for about 120 years, I think.  Depends on what year this is, I guess.  I don’t pay much attention these days:  it seems I’m getting thinner quicker, though I suppose it’s possible that the time is just passing faster and I’m thinning out at whatever the usual rate is.  No idea.  This is my first go-round as a ghost.  Shade.  Whatever.

The only reason I know anything about my current condition is because there’s a paranormalist who’s been having dinner here once a month (strip steak, baked potato with garlic salt, green beans) for the last couple of years.  He’s trying to sell his book, which is about how ghosts like me reach peace through some kind of closure regarding the circumstances of their death.  Sometimes he’s here with friends or colleagues, practicing his pitch for the publishing companies or comparing notes.  On occasion (ok, most of the time), when he goes to the bathroom, I’ll make the lights flicker and do that “ooOOOooo” sound against the tiles, just to freak him out.  That’s the extent of my ability to touch the real world:  some barely audible sound and, if I concentrate really hard, I can affect things that deal in electricity.

Anyway, from listening to the paranormalist and his cohorts, I know that being a spirit means I’m just some sort of energistic impression on the fabric of the universe that was left behind when my body was murdered here all those years ago.  I’m not actually a soul or anything, more like an emotional stain on this particular location.  The moment of my death was like a flashbulb going off, and I’m the afterimage left on the retina of this place.  Strange that I remember things from both my life and my time haunting this saloon – I mean steakhouse.

I can still see the blood – my blood – pooling on the hardwood floor as it spilled out the bullet holes in my body.  My body’s not there anymore, but the blood keeps running into that puddle.  It never gets any bigger, even though the blood continues to flow.  I’ve lost myself for weeks at a time, just watching the blood rush into that spot.  From what I gather from the paranormalist, that’s my anchor to this world:  I always come back to it and I can never get very far from it.  None of the living have ever appeared to notice it, and I haven’t met any other shades here, so I assume I’m the only one who can see my perpetually flowing puddle of blood.

So here’s what happened:  I walked into this saloon one night back in 1897, needing a drink very badly.  I’d just been in a pretty big fight with my best friend and business partner at our office down the street.  Just as the barman was pouring my whisky, my best friend stormed in the front door and shouted my name.  I turned around from my place at the bar to see him walking quickly toward me with his hand raised.  A six-shooter was in his hand and he emptied it into me.

We’d been arguing because he’d knocked up my baby sister and didn’t plan on marrying her or even helping her take care of the kid when it came.  Just before I left the office, I told him he’d better reconsider and have the answer I wanted to hear in the morning or I’d kill him.  I threatened to murder my best friend, but he got to me first.  He skipped town and my sister died during childbirth.

About five years ago, a man walked into this steakhouse who was the spitting image of my best friend and all the feelings I’d had at the moment of my death came upon me at once.  I’d never seen this man before, but I knew instinctively it was him, my best friend and murderer.  I reached through the security guard blazer he wore and poured everything I had into the taser gun clipped to his belt.  The shock bounced him off his bar stool and onto one of the steak-carving carts.  The inside of his forearm was cut pretty bad by the big knife on the carving block and I watched him bleed out onto the floorboards.  In the same spot where I’d bled out all those years ago.  I couldn’t tell whether it was my blood or his in the ever-flowing pool that is my anchor to this place.

He died there.  The papers carried the story a couple of days later:  turns out he was the great-grandson of my best friend and sister.  He was also the last of his lineage.  My lineage, as it turns out.

According to that paranormalist, wiping my murderer’s line from the earth is exactly the sort of closure that should bring a ghost like me peace.  But I can tell you right now, I sure as hell don’t feel any peace.  And I’m still here.  Maybe that’s why I screw with the paranormalist whenever he comes in.

Still, it seems I’m getting thinner – fading away – a little more every day.

Ok, here’s my submission for the #nycmidnight Flash Fiction Challenge 2011. 1,000 word maximum (I’m at 999); the prompts were sci-fi (genre), a wig (object), a drug rehab (place).  Not the best piece I’ve ever written, but whatever:  it’s been a long time since I wrote anything, fiction or otherwise.

BRIEF SYNOPSIS:  In the real world, the survival rate for virtual reality addiction is 99%.  In the Vurt, the survival rate for glyph (the Vurt’s version of virtual reality) addiction is 1.61% – which would you choose?

FRICKED

Om.  That’s what I’m supposed to say.  Over and over again.  ‘Om.’  It’s supposed to make me relax or something.  Stop thinking about the itchy-scratchy parts that are like all over me.  All over.  Everywhere.  Every.  Where.  Itchy.  Scratchy.  Snakes and spiders.  That’s what they are when my eyes are closed:  snakes slithering up my legs, molting along the way; spiders in my hair, bursting from their egg sacs and scrittering down around my ears and into them and over my eyes, getting caught in my eyelashes like they’re spiderwebs and the world is simply made of irony, the ass-end of which is always pointed at me.

I can’t keep my eyes closed because whenever they are, the snakes and spiders come back.  When they’re open, I’m just itchy and I can sorta handle that, though I tend to get kinda finger-twitchy and foot-fidgety and my brain starts flowing heavily in the direction of WHEN THE FRICK IS MY NEXT BOOST?  Not an ideal situation either, I can assure you.

But this is a group thing and every time someone opens their eyes or says something besides ‘Om’ we have to start all over again.  Three ‘Oms,’ that’s all he’s looking for.  Him being the instructor or counselor or whatever.  Three ‘Oms’ together.  As a group.  So I keep my eyes closed, try to ignore the snakes and spiders and keep saying ‘Om.’

Eventually we all get three in a row.  “Good,” he says softly and smoothly into the microphone at the podium we’re all facing in our hard plastic chairs.  “Remember, this is a guided meditation, so just let everything go and hitch a ride on my voice.  Let me be your guide.”  Easy enough, I suppose.  The snakes and spiders don’t seem quite as insistent when I actually let go and pay attention to what he’s saying.

“Now just relax and concentrate on your breathing:  clean, energy-filled air enters your lungs with each inhalation and tension leaves your body with each exhalation.”

“Good.  Goooood.  Feel yourself getting cleaner with each breath.”

“Now, gently relax the muscles in your neck and begin to tilt your head back.  Slowly, very slowly.  Relax into it.  A-aaaand, as your head falls back, you slowly open your eyes and look up and around you . . .”

“YOU’RE IN A FRICKEN REHAB!” he yells into the microphone, making us all jump in our seats.

“WHERE DID YOU THINK YOU WERE GOING?  THE BLOODY FRICKEN CLOUD CITY RESORTS OF PHELINAS-6?  Sometime in the not-too-distant past, you got yourself hooked on hopi, trag, glyph, spoon or some other perception-altering drug, were picked up by the constabulary, and ended up here for the next six months.  This is not going to be a pleasant ride.  Withdrawal hurts and death is a real possibility, especially for you nutjob glyphers.  One in sixty-two – those are your chances.  My opinion?  You should’ve either spent your money right and boosted long enough to peacefully expire in that virtual glyph-world like everyone else does, or just jumped the consties when they caught you trying to get your fix – they’d’ve gladly given you a quick end.”

I rip the WIG (Worldwide Interfacing Galvanograph) off my hairless head and look down at my sweating, trembling, atrophied limbs.  The waste receptacles attached to my body have long since filled to bursting; I have no idea how long I’ve been lying in my own filth.

I don’t know what’s worse:  the addiction to the glyph I managed to develop in the Vurt or the addiction to the virtual reality itself.  I mean, I knew I had it bad for the Vurt.  Wasn’t too hard:  life’s just better in the Vurt.  I can be who I want, do what I want – as opposed to the Real, where I no longer have anything remotely resembling a life.  I’d spent the last of my credits on the expensive “Captain of Industry” model WIG for my last go-round.  One last hurrah:  I knew I wasn’t coming back this time.  Dying in the Real while living out my fantasy in the Vurt as a rich playboy of unlimited means should’ve been easy.  All I had to do was enjoy myself in the Vurt until my body in the real just kicked off.  How did I get hooked on glyph and bottom out so fast and so hard?  Did I really think the Vurt’s version of the Vurt would somehow give me more than I already had?  Why would I have carried my discontent into my fantasy?

One in sixty-two or a long, pretty horrible death in the Vurt of glyph withdrawal.  I look at the receptors on the inside of my WIG – the ones that form an overlaying neural lace and provide the stimulus that locks my brain into the Vurt – and contemplate my chances.  Good chance I’ll die ugly in the Vurt – which adds up to death in the Real.  Even if I manage to be the one of sixty-two, I’ll still die in the Real:  I doubt this malnourished, quivering puddle of jelly that is my body in the Real will survive six more months in the Vurt.

If I can manage to get to the door of this crappy little bolt-hole apartment I’m in, I’m sure I can flag down one of the omnipresent cops for a ride to the hospital.  The survival rate for Vurt addiction here in the Real is like 99%.

Frick.  Going back to the Vurt means guaranteed death in the Real, with only the snakes and spiders to keep me company.  Getting to the apartment door is going to be tough all by itself, and there’s no way life in the Real afterward is going to be anything but worse than it was before I boosted in for this last ride.

My head hurts.

Putting the WIG back on, I think to myself, “I need to give this some more thought.”

“. . . Ok everybody, let’s break into small groups.”

‘Tis a sad day indeed, dear reader, when I’m scraping one of Josh Allen’s websites for blog fodder.  Wait . . . no; not really:  would that I could pull it together enough (maybe read something about internet copyright law and whatnot) to set up a separate Josh Allen tribute site, but I’m not exactly sure how that would work anyway.  [Would I have to get fatter and hairier and even more self-conscious/critical?]

Aw, fuck.  Now I’m all wrapped up in the concept of “tribute site” when all I really wanted to do was pass this little ditty on to you:

Thanks a lot, internet, for getting my hopes up. I really appreciate it, internet. Oh you stupid internet. BITCHFACE INTERNET. Why do I keep forgetting that you are run by people who look to Lord of the Rings for political philosophy. (“Even the smallest hobbit can make a difference!!!!!”) Oh I am done with you, internet. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again next week when my “that sassy Alice waitress nude” google search turns up hot nothing — I am DONE.

OK yesterday I’m reminded that to be an American is to be both arrogant andincompetent (you’d think one would cancel out the other! so weird!), and the problem is then I come in to work at an ad agency. And if you’re already thinking “our country is fuckola’d,” the last place you want to walk into is an ad agency. The last thing you want to have to do is sit in a meeting and talk about how to coerce people into buying more processed cheese, because then it’s really hard to dodge the fact that you are The Problem. Yes I’m using second-person to distance myself from the horrible truth — it’s the magic of writing.

So I looked around for a new job, as I do every evening while unwinding with a paper sack and some floor tile adhesive, and I see Victoria’s Secret is looking for a copywriter, and all of a sudden I love our country again. There is hope, there is a way to improve your life and the lives of your fellow citizens. The dream is still alive.

-the house of wigs #55

So yeah, would the “tribute site” work kind of like a tribute band, and if so, how the frig would that work.  I mean, a tribute band is a bunch of cats or kittens who do their best to . . . wait, let me just scrape some more from somewhere else (here) on the interwebz:  A TRIBUTE band captures the true essence of the experience one might have if they were to attend a concert by said band in the here and now.  …the fan walks away feeling as if they had just seen their favorite band live…almost. Aaaaand blah, blah, blah:  I didn’t read the rest of the forum posts in the thread because I can say in my own words that a cover band just plays someone else’s songs – whether they’re trying to get as close as possible to the radio version or putting their own twist on the music (which, parenthetically, kind of pisses me off about the word “tribute” in the Metallica cover CDs I own:  they’re just a bunch of different bands doing a “tribute” to Metallica by covering Metallica’s songs in their own flavor).

So could a “tribute site” simply be as easy as scraping my favorite stuff by Josh Allen and posting it thereon?  You’d read my site and sure as hell walk away feeling as though you’d just read your favorite internet author’s words directly from his fingertips.  Which would, of course be true – but what if, instead of simply highlighting, Ctrl+C-ing and Ctrl+V-ing, I actually re-typed each of his posts? Then it would truly be just like a tribute band:  you’d get my own typos, lazy non-linkings and general fuckups and whatnot, so it would be wicked close to Josh Allen’s stuff, but you’d get that “…almost” feeling too.

I’m totally onto something.

However.

I have no intention of doing any of the above right now.

But.

I’ll give you a bunch of links to Josh’s stuff.  He’s funny as shit smeared on a baby (when they think it’s chocolate and it’s somebody else’s kid) and has been my favorite internet writer for quite some time now.  We’re also facebook friends, but not the kind that post on each other’s wall and send messages and stuff.  I secretly think I’m just one of those “trophy friends” for Josh – which I’m totally ok with because I feel the same way about him, except that I do in fact hope to meet him irl at some point before one of us dies a gruesome death at the hands of Big Brother’s Machine.

Anyway, here you go, a bunch of links to Josh’s stuff:

Fireland Twitter Feed

Fireland (on tumblr)

Ten Sexy Ladies (on tumblr)

Chokeville

Fireland (the site)

house of wigs

And that’s all I’m going to give you right now because it’s all I can come up with off the top of my head.  I think there’s some other stuff out there, but mostly places where he’s a contributing author.  If you think I missed something particularly cool, please let me know.  I fucking love this guy.

Hoo boy.  It’s been 84 days since my last post.  That’s exactly 12 weeks.  Whoops.  Sorry ’bout that, dear reader.

Ok, you’re over it.

Quixotic Jedi mind trick.

Seriously.

I’m at work right now and relatively bored.  Well, not bored exactly, just kind of doing that same old deer-in-the-headlights thing with the stuff I need to do.  Lots of little things that won’t necessarily bring me any particularly flavorful instant gratification.  Just the dull, got-that-done kind.

The Taiwan pr0xy season has basically drawn to a close:  I have two meetings left:  Wednesday and Friday.  Went from balls-to-the-wall to holding my dick, wondering what just happened.  Well, sort of.  I know exactly what just happened, but that’s kind of how it feels.

So I’m not currently crushed at work, but I do have to get back to studying for the NJ bar exam.  I didn’t pass the February exam, so I’m taking it again in July.  Hopefully, “fourth time’s the charm.”  So I now have about 5 weeks in which to study and hopefully learn the stuff I needed to learn in the first, second and third places.  My scaled score was a 130 – I needed a 133 to pass.  That’s like 1/2 a point on one of the essays:  maybe two more (correct) sentences written.

Busy couple of weeks, all told.  Went to the Yankee game last Wednesday; sat in some damned fine seats about 6 rows behind home plate.  John McEnroe and Paul Simon were within spitting distance, though I neither spat on them nor said hello.  Like them, I wasn’t much in the mood to be signing autographs:  I just wanted to watch the game and hang out with my friends.

This past weekend was MINIs on Top:  200-something MINI Coopers gather for weirdo activities and a drive up to the summit of Mount Washington (highest peak in the northeast).  Got to hang out with Brandy and Don, whom I haven’t seen since last year’s MOT.  Val and I drove up to their place in Bristol RI on Thursday night, crashed there, and we all caravanned up to MOT on Friday (we also shared a hotel room and basically spent the entire weekend together).  Pretty awesome.  Brandy and Don are really good peeps.

Anyway, even though I’m lacking in motivation today, the day’s almost over and I have a couple of reports that need to go out before I leave.  I think I’m getting out of here at 5PM so that I can pick Val up at the Secaucus train station, so that we can run home and get the laundry started before it gets too late.  Maybe I’ll clean off my desk and put together a nice to-do list tomorrow.

Where the frig did the winter go?  I spent a good portion of the last 3-season pining for the time when I could break my snowshoes back out, and that time’s nearly over.  Not that I can complain:  I probably snowshoed close to 200 miles this winter and bagged about 40 peaks along the way.  I made it up to the Catskills every Saturday and Sunday of every week with the exception of perhaps two days (only one that I can think of).  Definitely a good time, which, I suppose, is why it passed so quickly.

So what’s been up?  No idea where to start on the updating process.  AND it’s midnight now.

So yeah, lots of hiking, and even more planned for the upcoming 3-season.  I’m at 171/420 on the grid and have a shit ton of mountains to climb; I’d also like to get up to the Adirondacks and finish off that 46rs list (I’m at 16/46 on that one) – hopefully I can make a dent in it if we get up there once a month or so.

Katie’s got 17 or 18 out of her Catskill 39 and is right on schedule to finish this year – her plan, not mine.

Scott finished his winter 35 this year and Valerie just finished her regular 39.  Debbie finished her 39 back in January or February – I’m crappy with dates.  So Deb and Val will pick up their certificates at the 3500 Club dinner this weekend and I’ll probably grab Scott’s for him because he and Katie will be at the Yes concert in Atlantic City this weekend.

Oh, I activated the Groupon for the Gravity Vault (indoor rock gym) that Katie gave me back in December.  It’s basically a free one-month membership.  I did my belay certification course last Wednesday (where they teach you how to tie the knots and hold the rope to make sure whoever your climbing partner is doesn’t fall and die).  Val took the train out on Thursday night and we climbed together, which was wicked cool.  We’re going to visit her rock gym in Brooklyn on Sunday and I’ll get to meet her rock climbing peeps and hopefully not make an ass out of myself on the wall.  I’m psyched.  Hopefully I’ll get to climb this Tuesday and Thursday.  It’s a nice thing to fit into my schedule.

Work is going pretty well.  No real complaints (worth voicing) on that end.  The bar exam is done and the Taiwan trip has passed, so no more major points of stress upcoming.  I find out whether I passed the bar or not mid-May.  I’m totally 50/50 on that:  if I pass, I won’t be all that surprised; if I don’t I won’t be all that surprised either.

No biggie.  I’m currently reading The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis and am chomping at the bit to get to The Crippled God by Steven Erikson (the next installment of my favorite fantasy series EVAR).  I’ll probably bring that to work with me tomorrow.  I was hoping to start it tonight, but didn’t get to because I was busy barely making a dent in cleaning up the clusterfucked mass of clutter that is my apartment.

So that’s it for now.  I’m bringing my tax stuff with me to work tomorrow, so I can hopefully get started on that.  It’s time to re-evaluate my finances (again) – seems like I just did that, but whatever.

Off to bed.  Peace out, dear reader.  Don’t be a stranger.

Ok, so here I am on a plane again, bound for Taiwan.  It’s 5:30PM ET; the plane left at 11:10AM – we’re just about halfway to Tokyo Narita.  I should probably be (or have been) studying up on my presentation materials, but instead I’ve been watching movies.  The time has passed relatively quickly.  So far, I’ve watched Red (Bruce Willis flick about retired CIA peeps), Blades of Glory (Will Ferrell figure skating spoof) and Percy Jackson and the Olympians AND the fucking Lightning Thief (PG-13 YA lit flick).  I have David Foster Wallace’s book Infinite Jest sitting next to me, as well as The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie (a gift from one of my co-workers for the flight; fantasy novel), but I haven’t picked up either of them.  Which, I think, is just as well.  While I’d like to read DFW’s book because of the hipster cred I’ll achieve by finishing it, and I’d like to read the Abercrombie novel because I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to get lost in the story, I just don’t feel much like reading.  Heck, I’m really only writing right now to give my ears a break – they’re a little sore from having the headphones on for so long (lol).

So yeah, I don’t really have much to say right now:  nothing’s all that pressing that I’m dying to write about.  Life is good.  I’m a bit nervous for this trip, but only when I project into the future.  I’m pretty sure I’ll do fine, but I’m totally walking the tightrope without a net on this one.  The President of my firm is on the trip with me, but he’s not all that familiar with what we’ll be presenting – oh, he’s worked in Asia before in the same industry, but the specialized nature of my experience makes me the only one who really knows the services we’re selling.

I’m currently in direct competition with my old employer.  Shortly after I left the old firm, a few other guys left as well and the owner closed that branch of the business.  A couple of other departments at that firm ended up dissolving, and the owner sold what was left to another firm; he brought the portion of the business I was responsible for with him, so I’ll be back out in Taiwan selling my new firm (and my services) to the clients I used to service at the old firm (and I’ll be trying to pick up new clients).  The owner of the old firm will be in Taiwan in a couple of weeks, pitching to some of the same companies.  I don’t plan on badmouthing him or his firm, and I hope he doesn’t badmouth me, but this is business, so I almost expect it.  Matter of fact, I’m kind of nervous about talking about this stuff at all because one or two people from my old firm know about this blog (almost none of my co-workers know about this blog or are friends with me on facebook – or any other social media site, for that matter – my work and cyber egos are separate).  So hi Tom and Jen if you’re reading this.  I trust our friendship outweighs your loyalty to Ken and his business and that everybody in the industry isn’t reading this right now.

But if you are in my industry and you’re reading this, welcome, I guess.  It’s always nice to have new readers.  Say hello in the comments or shoot me an email if you like:  maybe we can network and help each other out.

So yeah:  tightrope without a net:

At the old place, I did all the work for these clients, but the owner of the company was the one who made the trips to Taiwan and did all the selling.  Now it’s all me.  I’ll be selling and servicing.  I have no doubts about my ability to service my clients well, and I’m probably the most qualified person in the industry (boutique though it might be) to provide the services we do.  Which is kind of a scary thought.  Not that I don’t know what I’m doing, but rather because I’m just used to there being someone else around who knows at least a little more than I do.  While there are certainly many many people who know more than I do about different aspects of things, I don’t think there’s anyone out there with the kind of comprehensive knowledge I have – thankfully, there are people I can learn from, but that learning means acquiring bits of others’ knowledge about aspects of the process which relate to what I do.  I know I’m being vague:  that’s partly because I don’t want any of the keywords to pop up in a Google search, but also partly because if I started throwing around esoteric concepts and phrases, I’d lose you right away.  Anyway, this stuff’s all me right now:  there’s nobody I can really turn to when I don’t have the answer.  Which is fine:  I don’t have any issues with saying “I don’t know”, and I’m pretty good about finding out the answer.  I mean shit, my title is Director of Research:  finding answers is what I do.

Switching gears:

I met a girl.

I mean, we’ve met before plenty of times, but our relationship has taken a romantic turn.  One that is pretty much indescribably wonderful.  I want to tell you all about it, but I really don’t know that I have the words to do so.  And fuck me, my vocabulary’s big.  I just don’t know that I can do it justice with mere words on a screen.  Plus, I almost want to keep it to myself – lolz, I’m still worried about jinxing it, even though that’s doubtfully even a remote possibility.  Still, I’d kind of rather not say too much.

Her name is Valerie and I’ve spoken of her before.  We met in the woods – well, we “met” on the Upper West Side of NYC when Scott and I picked her and Debbie up to go hiking back in October, but that was mostly a “hi howya doin’”; we didn’t really talk until we were on the trail (and probably 6 miles into the hike, at that).  She’s a fucken wood nymph.  More of a backpacker than a peakbagger, though she’d identify herself as simply a hiker.  She moves like a dancer through the forest and it’s a joy to watch.

After hiking together (in a group) a few times, we had a good date back in November (the Friday before I left for Taiwan the last time), and she sent me the “just friends” email that Saturday.  I headed off to Taiwan with my chin on my chest, wondering what went wrong and spent the next couple of weeks in relative discomfort, self-esteem-wise.  (That’s the opposite of hyperbole, btw.)  We both continued to flirt with each other on the trail and date other people, playing Scrabble on our iPhones with one another during the week.  She stayed over my house a couple of times before a hike and I cursed myself for a coward each time I didn’t make a move.

I finally did and it’s been goddamned fireworks ever since.  Truly.  We’ve spent the last three weekends together, Friday evening through Monday morning, and it’s been just fucking joyous.  Hiking during the days with our regular crew and some really nice Friday night dates, just the two of us.  I can’t wait to see her when I get back.  What a flip from my last trip to Taiwan.

So that’s 1,260 words for now and my ears aren’t nearly as tender as they were a few minutes ago.  I’m going to hit play on the X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie and zonk out for another couple of hours.  Maybe next time I choose my seats on a flight I’ll keep my neighbors in mind and book myself an aisle seat:  I’ve had to hop over the poor bastard sitting next to me three or four times now in order to go pee.  Too much coffee and water.  Well, not too much, but enough to make me a pain in this guy’s ass, I’m sure.

***

Ok:  two hours left till Tokyo.  It’s now 11:16 ET (the time my body is still on) and I haven’t slept yet.  I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to stay up for this whole trip, though that would be ideal.  So it’ll be about 1:15AM when we get to Narita; add another 4 hours for the layover and it’s 5AM tomorrow, plus the couple/three hours from Tokyo to Taipei.  Yeah, I’m not gonna make it.  I keep looking over at the galley, expecting them to come around with more food and maybe coffee, but no dice.  Damn, but a cup of coffee and a cigarette would be nice right now.

On the up side, Narita has a very nice smoking lounge – and I’m pretty sure there’ll be a Starbucks in the terminal.  Or at least a Mr. Brown’s – their coffee’s good as well.  Another couple of hours and I’ll get my fix, lol.

Watched the Wolverine movie, plus Due Date (Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galiflanakis) – which I thought would be MUCH better (some funny parts, but overall pretty meh.  Seriously.  I really expected it to be much better than that.  Galiflanakis had a real chance to shine and kind of didn’t – oh, he was funny, but I almost think his character should have been more of caricature than it was.  Downey did ok, but I think pretty much anybody could have played the asshole that the script set his character out to be.  He’s a good actor, but I’d rather see him ACT – not just play a run-of-the-mill character – I’m almost tempted to queue up Tropic Thunder just so I can watch him play a black dude for a little while.  That’s acting.  Oh, and I watched Surrogates after that (Bruce Willis flick – not sure if it ever made it to the theaters; not great, but it passed the time (90 mins)).

So here’s what I’ve been thinking, dear reader:

All I really have to do is the best I can.  That’s it.  I don’t have to get everything done:  I just need to do what I can.  I don’t have to do everything perfectly:  I just need to do do as best I can.  None of these things that are threatening to overwhelm me – studying for the bar exam next week, preparing for the Taiwan trip the week after, the regular-day tasks at work that keep flooding in – are things I have to do at all:  they’re things I GET to do.

When I spend my time worrying on what’s coming up and whether I’ll be prepared for it, I’m not in the moment and I won’t be prepared.  Staying in the moment is a joyful thing, because what I’m doing in this moment is *exactly* what I want to be doing.  My life is so incredibly charmed.

Nothing matters but this moment right now.  Because without this one, there can be no others.  If I’m not present here and now, I’m certainly not present there and then.

So yeah, enough of the abstract:  I’m taking care of what I can take care of at work today, a little bit of the short-term project stuff and a little bit of the longer-term project stuff.  Reports are being written, emails sent, numbers crunched, research performed, etc.  I’ve been studying in the cracks in my schedule and have a bar review lecture playing in the background now.  That’s really all I can do.  I’ll either pass the bar or I won’t – but if I spend my time between now and then simply freaking out instead of studying when I can, as much as I can, that’s me fucking up.  My trip to Taiwan will be successful or it won’t – but if I spend my time between now and then freaking out instead of doing as much as I can to prepare, that’s me fucking up.  I’m not fucking up by doing the best I can, because that’s really all I can do.

My life is indescribably wonderful right now, dear reader.  I’m going to just go right ahead and enjoy every moment of it, rather than wonder if I’m living up to it.

Hola, dear reader. Do you happen to live in South Carolina or Virginia and like dogs – or maybe know someone who does? We need some help transporting Brandy, an 8 month old Belgian Malinois:

Begging last 2 legs – PLEASE consider!!! Even if you can just take a portion of a leg it would help! We are offering fuel reimbursement on these legs. Brandy is in SC and headed to her foster home in NH. Sandy will join transport on Sunday morning and is headed to her foster home in NH, very close to where Brandy is going. All legs are flexible.

Please provide the following with all offers of transport: Sunday drivers must crate at least 1 Malinois.
Preferred email address:
Cell #:
Vehicle color/description:
Any preferred meet sites:

Contact Transport Coordinator Lin Karrels at linkarrels@wildblue.net

CROSS POSTING ENCOURAGED AND APPRECIATED.

Saturday, February 12, 2011
***********************
Leg #2 – NEEDED!
Santee SC to Florence SC
71 miles – 1 hour
Depart Santee 9:10 a.m.
Arrive Florence 10:10 a.m.

Leg #6 – NEEDED!
Emporia VA to Ashland VA
87 miles – 1 hour 15 minutes
Depart Emporia 2:20 p.m.
Arrive Ashland 3:35 p.m.

…with his whine?

I’m sitting in class right now.  The lecture is NJ Civil Procedure.  I couldn’t find any material in my bar review outline book, so I figured they’d be distributing something at the class.  They didn’t.  Turns out there is an outline in my book, but I just missed it.  The pages of my review book have all been ripped out and put into separate folders by subject, so my NJ Civ Pro outline is in one of my folders – I just don’t know which one.  It’s not one of the folders I have with me tonight, so that’s no help.  And on top of this, the professor is lecturing directly from the review outline – he’s basically reading it to us and commenting as he goes through.  So I’m doubly screwed.  He’s going too fast for me to be able to even keep up and take notes.

So I’ll talk to you for a bit, dear reader.  I might bounce in a little while.  Listening to the lecture can’t be anything but good for me, so hopefully I’ll stay for the full 3.5 hours.  Maybe I’ll end up convincing myself that I’d be better off at home, watching the lecture on my laptop and taking my notes into the outline.  Jeez, I hope not.  I also hope I can manage to keep this short.

So.  To the whining:

Three major things happening in my life right now:  studying for the bar (exam is in two weeks), working a full-time job (at which I have large long- and short-term projects coming due, plus daily tasks), and winter peakbagging (what I’d rather be thinking about and doing).  The bar prep class I’m taking is designed for someone who’s not working and has all day, every day to study.  I don’t.  It’s a lot of stuff to study.  I got 90/200 right on the practice test.  Very Scary.  It looks like I’m going to have to go to Taiwan again for work during the first week of March.  That’s immediately after the bar exam.  I will be sitting on panels and in (sales-y) meetings and basically have to remember everything about the nuances of s0liciting pr0xies in the T*iwan market by then.  I have to put together marketing materials and detailed descriptions of our service offerings.  Nobody else at my company does this or would even have a clue where to begin.  We’re doing a deal with another company for a partnership in Taiwan and I have to have those details hammered out like tomorrow.  I’m travelling to DC for lunch with the other company on Friday with the President of my company – he wants to finish negotiating at the lunch, the other company wants the details worked out in advance.  I’m in the middle and frankly kind of scared that someone else is going to fuck up and bring the whole house of cards crashing down (or just start our business relationship out on the wrong foot).  I’d rather be hiking.  Planning hikes.  The logistics of which mountains we’re climbing and who’s in what car and staying at whose house which night.  I’d rather be hiking.

I feel much better today, but I’ve been feeling pretty goddamned overwhelmed all week – persecuted, even.  Not that persecuted is necessarily the right word, but it’s close.  Kind of a mix of persecuted and oppressed, but without the necessary sentient being actually doing the persecution-cum-oppression.  But not like the world is out to get me.  Just overwhelmed.  Too much on my plate.  To the point where I’m like a raw nerve:  anything else added on top of all the (admittedly self-induced/initiated) stress seems HUGE.  The teeniest thing seems like the end of the world:  a simple question at work, an incoming phone call, remembering that it’s time to change the cat’s litter.  Anything.

What’s really happening is that I’m persecuting and oppressing myself.  I’ve taken on a lot and I expect myself to be perfect in all of these endeavors.  I’m mentally and emotionally kicking my own ass on a minute-by-minute basis for not being farther along than I am.  I am not loving myself.  There, I said it.  It’s all me.  There’s no other entity causing me to feel persecuted:  it’s ME.  I’m the oppressive, overbearing father screaming at his inner child “WHY AREN’T YOU PREPARED?  WHY HAVEN’T YOU STARTED?  WHY HAVEN’T YOU FINISHED?  WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?  YOU’RE NOT MY SON.”

Ok, this has nothing to do with my Oedipus Complex – I’ll tell you all about that another time.  This is just me setting the bar too high – and I’ll tell ya, dear reader, I don’t even want to publish that word ‘too’ because it feels like I’m admitting I can’t do something.  My expectations for myself are out of control.  AND, I’m adding the (real and perceived) expectations of others on top of my own, thereby making them heavier.  I told one of the girls at work that I was nervous about passing the bar and she said “but you’re like the smartest person in the world!  of course you’re going to pass.”  She also asked me if I was worried because the whole office – especially the President, it seemed to her – is pulling for me to pass the exam.  Jokes abound in the office about how much stuff I can handle – that of course they can give Ted one more thing to do:  if anybody can handle it, he can.

Holy fuck, dear reader I really don’t want to say I can’t handle it, because that would be an admission of weakness and I really don’t do things like that.  So please do me a favor and just read between the lines.

Any one of the aforementioned three things would be enough to fill my life by themselves.  And I think I can do them all at once.  AND, make them all look easy while I’m doing them.  Yeah, I’ll talk about my pride and ego another time.

I quit drinking coffee three weeks ago and only drink tea and water now.  I don’t feel ridiculously better, but neither do I feel as though I need coffee in order to get my day started.  Nor am I constantly battling dehydration.  I’d really like a cup of coffee, but for whatever reason, I’ve committed myself to this no-coffee-for-30-days thing.  I’m drinking apple cider vinegar and taking my vitamins and drinking kefir and trying to be as healthy as possible with what I put in my body.  But I’m full of knots and aches in strange places and all kinds of other manifestations of what I can only conclude must be stress trying to get out.

Anyway, that’s enough whining.  I’m happy with my decisions.  These are things I WANT to do and things I GET to do.  It’s just an awful lot right now.

Here’s what I need to do:

• Meditate more.
• Drink more water.
• Be proud of myself.
• Not beat myself up (regularly).
• Pick one thing and do it – don’t keep looking at the rest of the list.
• Laugh more.

There are probably more things I should add to the list, but right now I just want to publish this and go pee.

When I grow up and have nothing better to do than write weirdo stuff for my adoring public, I’m going to do it while listening to Led Zeppelin.  The writing, I mean:  not the growing up.  I’m currently reading The Sherriff of Yrnameer by Michael Rubens.  It’s funny as hell.  Light sci-fi; Vonnegut-ish with some Dick in there too.  My cousin gave it to me for xmas – he meant to give it to my brother and give me American Gods by Neil Gaiman, but I’d already read the latter, so he switched.  Which worked out well because I’d been telling John to read American Gods for a while now, and The Sherriff of Yrnameer is right up my alley (and not so much John’s).

Things are excellent, dear reader.  Extremely, wickedly busy, but excellent.  Adding the bar prep class on top of my regular work-day is kinda-sorta kicking my ass time-wise, but that’s ok.  I suppose it’s arguable that it’s keeping me out of trouble.  Maybe.  Still hiking both weekend days, which has been glorious, as usual/to be expected.  There have also been some interesting developments of a romantic nature – which I’m quite certain I’m jinxing just by mentioning it aloud, but whatever – which I’m not going to tell you about, dearest, dearest reader, because it would be inappropriate to do so.

I fired my acupuncturist.  Sent him an email on Monday morning stating that I wouldn’t be able to make it to my appointment that afternoon – that I’d had some things come up at work – but that I’d see him on Thursday and have been following all of his suggestions.  He responded with some stuff about his 24-hour cancellation policy and whatnot (people usually offer to pay for the session anyway) and I told him to cancel Thursday’s appointment as well – maybe we can re-connect when I can give his schedule a higher priority rating.  Maybe I’ll post the email exchange tomorrow.

I’m still following his suggestions:  drinking a pro-biotic, drinking apple cider vinegar and no coffee.  It’s been over a week since my last cup of coffee.  I passed the coffee section in Whole Foods this evening and took a big whiff – bad move.  It smelled SO good.  Maybe in a month I’ll start drinking coffee again.  I hope so:  I love coffee.  But for now, it’s tea.  Black tea.  In a similar fashion to my coffee requests, people look at me like I’m a weirdo when I say that I don’t want anything (milk, sugar) in my tea.  Strange.

Last week I had a hard time getting my brain to settle down:  it was like the wheels were spinning incredibly fast and not catching on anything – not linking up with the gears.  It was going a million miles a minute, but I couldn’t grab ahold of one thing and run with it.  Thoughts were whirling in and out, but they were fleeting and not staying put long enough for me to examine or do anything with them.  This week has been a little better:  I’ve been able to get the gears to catch and have had some really productive days at work.  I’ve at least made a start on a couple of the tasks that were sitting undone on my to-do list.

I ordered a Franklin Covey planner for my dad today and had it shipped to his office.  He loves Stephen Covey and a buddy of mine was regaling me about the productivity-adding aspects of the planning system (which, apparently, was developed by Ben Franklin).  So I figure I’ll photocopy a couple of the pages to get a feel for how the system works and incorporate some of it into my own life.  My dad can try the whole program.

I bought new snowshoes this week.  My old ones have probably 400 or so miles on them and I was really hoping they’d make it through the season, but I discovered a rip in the deck last week (which I was able to semi-repair) and they’ve been making funny noises, so I figured it would be safer to just get a new pair and have the old ones as a beater pair.

Speaking of beaters, I’m also looking for a beater car/SUV with four doors and decent clearance that I can use to shuttle people to and from the Catskills.  I’ve been doing a lot more hiking with other people lately and my two-seater just doesn’t cut it – I feel bad that we’ve been taking Scott’s Toyota Yaris (lol, “the big car”) up to the Cats every weekend.  Plus, having the truly bigger vehicle would satisfy my control issues.  And some safety issues:  Scott’s car ain’t exactly made for the snow.  I’ve been checking eBay; maybe I’ll explore other options as well.

So that’s about it.  I’m off to bed.  Maybe I’m wound down enough from the day and maybe I’m not.  It doesn’t really matter because I’ll be asleep five minutes after my head hits the pillow.  I remember a time when I had trouble falling asleep.  Hell, I still remember a time when I didn’t fall asleep, I just passed out; I never woke up, I just came to.  I do not remember that time fondly.

And so, dear reader, that’s all the verbal fondling you’ll get from me tonight.  Sleep well.  I love you, I want you, I need you – and three out of four ain’t bad, as the bard says.

*** *** ***

Alternate Scooby Doo Ending

And so, dear reader, that’s all the verbal fondling you’ll get from me tonight.  Sleep well.  Rye ruv roo, rye ront roo, rye reed roo – and three out of three is a perfect fucken score, so gimme those scooby-snacks or I’ll do more than just hump Velma’s leg while you and Freddie cry in the corner, knowing you’re next.

*** *** ***

Alternate Nondualist Ending

And so, dear reader, that’s all the verbal fondling you’ll get from me tonight.  Sleep well.  I love you, I want you, I need you because I am you.

*** *** ***

Alternate Fight Club Ending

And so, dear reader, that’s all the verbal fondling you’ll get from me tonight.  Sleep well.  I love you, I want you, I need you because I am you, and as soon as we get done fucking Helena Bonham Carter’s brains out, we’re gonna blow some shit up – especially if said shit happens to be cornflower blue.  Because we’re simply itching to destroy something beautiful.

Ok, ok, ok.  I know it’s been way too long.  Sheesh.  I’ve been busy.

Life is good, dear reader.  Busy, but very very good.

So here’s the skinny for the past couple of weeks or so:

I’ve been hiking (duh).  On the weekends.  Both days.  Lots of miles, lots of mountains.  Fifteen mountains and about 87 miles since the winter started.  My snowshoes *might* make it through this season.  I mean, they’ll make it, but I’m seriously considering getting a new pair.  I’ve already been at them with a file to re-work the grip on the outside, but even the new notches are quickly getting worn away.  I’m 150/420 for the Grid and have 11 mountains left to climb in the month of January.  I won’t get to all of them this January, but that’s cool:  9 for January of 2012 is totally doable.  I fucken love hiking . . . er, peakbagging.  Speaking of, check out this trip report from my friend Kevin – it’s a pretty nuts story (and very well written).

Work is going pretty well as well.  My nominal boss called me last Thursday while I was working from home, just to go over some ideas about “how to make Ted some crazy money.”  How cool is that?  Hopefully, we’ll be able to work something out in the very near future that will start netting me even bigger bucks than I’m already making.  I’m sure I’ve already mentioned it, but work is also paying for me to take a bar prep class so that I can take the NJ bar exam at the end of February.  Class is in Newark from 6-10PM, Monday through Friday.  It started a couple of weeks ago and continues through most of February.  It’s a real pain in the ass, but whatever:  I’d never find the time to study on my own and I’m learning a lot.

I get home kind of late and am missing out hardcore on the stuff I normally do in the evenings, but that’s cool – it’s only for a few more weeks.  I’m still working every day, but not nearly as much.  Same amount of work to do, but less time in which to do it.  Again, the people at work have been great about working with my schedule:  I’m usually in around 9/9:30 and out by 5.  The stuff that used to take me a day or so is now taking a couple of days and things are kinda sorta starting to pile up, but I don’t give a rat’s ass – which is (mentally) a really cool place for me to be.

As I mentioned, I took last Thursday off from work – I just had too many things of a non-work nature that needed to get done and I sure as hell wasn’t going to get them done in the office.  I took care of my laundry, house cleaning, and various other errands, and made appointments with the regular doctor for a check-up (“the works” is what I asked for), as well as an appointment with an acupuncturist.

That appointment was yesterday.  It was pretty interesting.  We sat down for a few minutes and discussed my lifestyle and general health-related habits.  I told the acupuncturist that I think I’m running at about 85-95% capacity/efficiency and that what I’m looking for is a tune-up:  I want to get to 95-98% capacity/efficiency.  I think he picked up what I was putting down, but we’ll see next week:  I have two more appointments (Monday and Thursday).  I’ll know better after Monday’s appointment if the acupuncture is working and whether I want to continue to see the guy.  White guy.  Irish guy.  Studied in China and a couple of other places in Asia.  He’s young, but I think he knows what he’s doing.  Again, we’ll see.  I’m reserving judgment at the moment.

After discussing my health/eating habits and whatnot, he told me to undress to my underwear and get on the table.  I was like “um, do you have a towel or anything, ’cause I’m one of those commando guys and I’m not really sure you want the whole show on the first date.”  So I ended up just stripping down to my suit pants and rolling up the legs.  It worked out fine.  He stuck a bunch of needles in my legs to start and attached wires to them to increase the flow of ions between the points.  Then he did this thing where he put these little silly putty cones (some kind of -wort) on my feet, lit them on fire, and pulled them off one at a time as they started to burn my feet.  Pretty cool.  I experimented with when I told him I could feel them and found that there was a second or two of lag time between when I felt them burn and when they actually did.  Which is to say that I’d say “ok” (meaning I could feel the burn), he’d pull the thingie off, and a second or two later I’d *really* feel the burn.  Pretty cool.  Er, hot.

After that, he stuck more needles in my legs and some in my arms and attached wires among them.  He said “it’s like conducting a symphony.”

Supposedly, I was to feel better/different when I walked out than when I walked in.  I can’t say that I really did, but again, I’m reserving judgment.  I figure if I were way out of shape or all kinds of fucked up (in a different way, I mean) that I’d've felt much different, but I’m in pretty good shape and wasn’t there for any kind of major overhaul:  just a tune-up.  Some fine-tuning of my meat suit.  I felt kind of the way I do when I get out of a particularly intense/meditative yoga class.  No great “heightened awareness” per se, but a little more open.

Following his advice, I picked up some apple cider vinegar, some kind of yogurty pro-biotic drink, herring and something else that I can’t remember, so that I can start getting some better molecule stuff into me.  We talked a bit about whether I was ready to quit smoking (he said he can help with that) and I said not really.  We also talked about quitting drinking coffee for about 30 days, after which I can have a cup once a month or once a week or something (I don’t remember).

So I didn’t have any coffee today.  Weird.  I really only drink two things:  coffee and water.  I’ve been drinking Gatorade more often after hiking to replenish my electrolytes and adding Nuun capsules to my water while I’m hiking for the same reason.  But normally, it’s just coffee and water.  Well, now it’s just tea and water.  I’m kind of surprised that I made the decision to follow his advice and quit drinking coffee so easily – I’d've thought it would have been more of a struggle for me.  I fucken love coffee.  I fucken love coffee.  So nice I had to say it twice.  Weird.  Again:  weird.  It’s pretty cool to know that I have that kind of willingness to change (ostensibly for the better).

I have an appointment with the regular doctor on Thursday.  Complete physical:  blood work and everything.  I hope “the works” doesn’t involve the finger-in-the-ass thing, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.  My doctor’s name is Cynthia (Cindy, I think) and she’s a nurse practitioner.  I haven’t seen her in a year or two, but from what I remember, she was kinda cute.  Maybe I can finagle her into buying me dinner before she sticks her finger up my butt.  =/  I’ll let you know.

I’m going to cross-reference both the regular meat suit doctor and the acupuncturist with one another:  tell them about each other and see what I can learn from both of them.  They might have suggestions for each other.  No threesomes, though, I think:  unless Cindy knows a cute GIRL acupuncturist, in which case it’ll totally be game on.  We can take the tuned-up meat suit out for a spin – burn some rubbers and all that.

Yeah, I think I’m going to dream about hot chick NPs in fishnets, stilettos and black latex sticking needles into me tonight.

Peace out, dear reader; if I were you, I’d be wishing I were me right about now.

I’m on a plane.  Again.  To Denver this time, for a conference-type thingie.  This big law firm has put together a three-panel presentation for its clients and attorneys tomorrow.  I’m sitting on the first two panels.  Should be interesting.  I suppose I’m a bit nervous – or rather, I think I should be nervous, but I’m not.  Not sure why:  I’ve done absolutely no prep for either of the panels – not even read the presentation slides yet – and I’m not so well-versed in current events in corporate governance that I can do this on the fly (at least, I don’t think so).  This will also be my first time sitting on a panel like this, so by all rights I should be nervous.  We also have an appointment with this huge mutual fund just after the plane lands – it’s a sales thing and I have no idea what I’m supposed to say.  My current plan for both is to sit quietly, make eye contact with everyone and look serious and smart.

I feel pretty good.  Took the day off yesterday because I had too many things to do to get ready for this trip; it would have been a nightmare to try to squeeze everything in between a full day’s work and bedtime.  Plus, I only had about 11 hours of sleep over the weekend (5.5 Friday night and 5.5 Saturday night).  I hiked about 24 miles between the two days, so calling out sick/WFH was a good way to catch up on the sleep I missed.  I’m not sick, but if I’d gone to work (on time) yesterday after 6 hours of sleep, I’d have been well on my way to being sick.  I got all my errands done yesterday, though I ended up squeezing a lot in at the end of the day and went to bed later than I wanted.

No matter:  I was up on time and am on the plane now, so I didn’t miss my flight.  Everything after that is gravy.  Make eye contact, look serious, look smart.  Speak with conviction, don’t let the voice waver, and remember:  if anyone gets in your face, there’s a real good chance you’ll kick their ass and anyway, you’re WAY cooler than a bunch of weenies getting together to talk about corporate governance hot topics.

The plane ride is 3.5/4 hours long.  I have no idea how long we’ve been in the air, but I’m certain that I’m in the window seat and have had to pee since before we boarded the plane.  We just made it.  The idiot sales guy who booked my seat (and who happens to be sitting in first class), booked me under “Ted Wallace” instead of Edward, apparently didn’t use my Continental OnePass number (yes, I know how snooty that sounds), and didn’t send me any of the flight confirmation details, so it took a few minutes to get me checked in while all this shite got sorted.  I’m about five rows up from the back of the plane, stuffed in like cattle, and if I pee in my suit it’ll probably soak the seat too, and I have to sit in both for the next couple of hours – and I’m only guessing at how long we’ve been in the air.  So I think I’ll hold it for now.  Shouldn’t have let them take my cup.  =/

On the upside, the commercials make the new Harry Potter movie (HP & the G of F) look pretty good – and there are only three commercials playing in a loop, so I get to see it again every couple of minutes or so.

I wonder if there’s like a club I can join that will give me a patch or a pin or something for the length of time I’ve gone without having sex.  SOMEone’s got to be impressed by it.  They have churches and Planned Parenthoods in Denver, right?  One of those places will know.

Yes, yes, dear reader, I know:  they probably also have massage parlors in Denver too.  But that’s not what I’m looking for.  The physical act, yes – definitely – but I want more (yes, yes, I know “beggars can’t be choosers”), I want fucking communion:  an emotional and physical experience.  Hookers aren’t really all that emotional.  I mean, so I’ve heard and not in the movies.  A spiritual sexual experience would also be nice, but I don’t want to get too picky.  Don’t get me wrong:  neither would I turn it down.

Why TF do I always end up blogging about my desire for sex on these plane rides?  Weird.

I kind of like travelling.  I ate the little packet of green olives that came with my $7 in-flight snack pack (the “Select Snack Box”), and I hate olives.  Food ceases to be a matter of taste for me and becomes entirely about the caloric intake.  And my awareness is usually heightened when I’m travelling (by which I mean I’m more “on my toes”, not that I’m more psychic or spiritually fit than usual), so I’m pretty sure the physical effect is energy expenditure and thus the need for more fuel.  So yeah, I’ll eat whatever’s put in front of me, and I’ll eat it ALL.  The guy next to me was eyeing the bag of mini pretzels on my lap and I had to lean over and tell him I’d cut his bitch ass to ribbons before he could say stewardess if he didn’t stop eye-fucking my goddamn pretzels.  He’s now gently weeping next to me and pretending to be asleep.  If one more sob escapes his throat, I’m going to have another little chat with him about how my hearing is an extension of my personal space.  I’m also eating his Azar Fruit & Nut Mix, which tastes all the sweeter because it came with his soul.

MotherFUCK there’re a lot of hotties on this plane.  I need to have a word with the dipshit sales guy as to why I’m not sitting next to any of them.  I’d much prefer to be blogging about the woman next to me:  the loveliness of the curve of the side of her breast and how it feels when it touches my arm as she leans over to look out the window, “Excuse me, Ted, I’m sorry to keep bumping you.  It’s been ever so nice to meet you and for the last time: no, I don’t want to trade seats with you, I’m fine with looking past your cheek and smelling your man musk.  Would it be ok if I just caressed your ear and neck with my tongue for another minute?  I promise I won’t bother you again for the rest of the flight.  *giggle*”

Yeah, I’m moving to fucking Denver.

And yeah, fuck the sales guy who booked me this shitty seat next two old men whose mixed scent of cowardice and arrogance make me want to eat them last.  Seriously, buddy?  Corona Light?

The clocks on my computer and my iPhone (in airplane mode) both say it’s about 1:30PM right now, so I figure we’re about halfway there.  We’re supposed to land in Denver at 1PM local time, which would be 3PM normal people time, aka “ET” or “EST” or “East Coast”.

If I get laid in Denver, does that mean I’m in the mile-high club, or is being in an airplane a requirement for that?

In the early pages of The Tao of Jeet Kune Do, Bruce Lee’s notes are quoted thus:

Understanding oneself happens through a process of relationships and not through isolation.

While I see some truth in that, I think I also need a balance of relationships and isolation.  Solitude is really what I mean:  I need times of solitude.  I never got why Superman needed a Fortress of Solitude, but something really clicked for me this morning:  remember the part in the most recent “gritty reboot” movie, where Superman takes Lois way up into the stratosphere and they can hear all the voices of the world crying for help and whatnot?  All of a sudden, the whole Fortress of Solitude thing really made sense:  it’s a place he can go where he can enjoy the silence – regroup, consolidate, become one with himself again.  Then he’s able to go back out and face the help-crying voices again.

I had a busy day yesterday, and some of that busy-ness overlapped the times during the day I routinely have to myself.  I met a mentor for lunch; normally I sit by myself in the cafeteria and read while I eat.  I had to run home to let Christine and the cat into my apartment because the door I had left open for the PSE&G guy was closed by said guy; I had just sat down to eat dinner and read at Whole Foods.  So I had to take my dinner to my next appointment and wolf it down there.  While I was eating, a friend of mine was leaning over into my face/food space, wondering what I was eating.  She got too close and I snapped at her like a starved dog, “get the fuck away from my food, woman.”  Whoa.  I apologized quickly, but the damage was done.

As I’m sure you know all too well, dear reader, I’ve been alone for quite some time now.  I know that I’ve come to enjoy it, but I what I did not realize (at least not so overtly) until last night was that I’ve come to depend upon solitude.  I need it.  If I don’t have at least short periods of being alone with myself, time to collect and regroup, I may as well be carrying kryptonite around in my pocket. 

I think it may be time for some sort of retreat for me.  Solo hiking or getting engrossed in a novel for a few hours are usually my preferred means of solitude:  maybe I’ll take a day off work next week and burn some miles and climb some mountains by myself.  This weekend is already booked with group hikes.

So yeah: 

Dear Bruce Lee,

Don’t go forgetting about balance.  It’s the yin that defines the yang – the solitude that defines the isolation. 

See also melissa’s Tao Te Ching reference in her comment to yesterday’s post.

Sincerely,

Ted

Tonight was spent in – in blessed solitude.  Had dinner with Scott (as per our usual Tuesday routine), but instead of going to the Starbucks on 17 and ogling the baristas or Campmor across the road and ogling the gear, I came home and took care of one or two things on my list.  I filed some grip back into my snowshoes:  they have a few hundred miles on them at this point and the notches around the outside that give them the 360° traction are pretty much worn smooth.  So I filed new notches in and now my right forearm is sore.  Haha – I know what you’re thinking, but that’s the left one.  If I keep the filing up, they’ll eventually start to match and I’ll have no snowshoes left.

Cleaned a bunch of stuff off my kitchen table – put it away or threw it away – and re-packed my winter pack so that I’m a bit more efficient in getting ready this weekend.  Sunday is still up in the air – probably something in the bushwack range; Saturday will be Fir and Big Indian with Scott and Debbie and her AMC backpacking group, then on to Eagle with Scott and out McKinley Hollow.  About 10 miles, so we should sleep well on Saturday night.

I cleaned a bunch of stuff off my desk the other night, so my horizontal surfaces are starting to look a bit clearer – I’m getting closer to my feng shui goal for the winter.

And that’s about it.  My laundry needs to be done, but I still have a clean undershirt for tomorrow, so it can wait.  I haven’t done shit at work in the last couple of days – hopefully tomorrow will be different.  We’ll see.  I need to stop effing with my peakbagging spreadsheet while I’m at work.  I’ve got a bunch of long-term projects that I really need to get moving on, and a couple of loose ends to take care of for my bar application.  Yeah, hopefully I’ll be more on my game tomorrow.

I’ve had the beginning of this quote in my head today:

The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men.  Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children.  And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy My brothers.  And you will know My name is the Lord when I lay My vengeance upon thee.

Here’s the clip, in case you don’t remember it:

The only part that’s been running on a loop in my head is the very first part, “The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides…”

By all kinds of shit.  Not just the stuff in (the fictional) Ezekiel 25:17.

I wonder if I’m a righteous man.  I wonder if the karma I’m accumulating in this life is good or not.

Righteousness is a good thing, I believe.  Self-righteousness isn’t.  When I’m looking at myself and wondering whether this adjective applies to me, I can’t tell if it’s righteousness or self-righteousness.  The definitions and etymology of the word suggest that in order to be righteous, one must be God-backed.  Either on a mission from god, or acting on his/her behalf.  So it kind of stands to reason that one can’t apply this adjective to oneself – only god can do it

I don’t really go in for all the god-stuff:  I’m agnostic.  But I still have misgivings about applying this word to me.  It implies being on the right side of judgment, and I really don’t go in for judgment either.  I’m a perspectivist:  things aren’t inherently valuable or valuable in an absolute sense; they’re only valuable from one or more specific points of view.  ”One man’s trash…”

All that aside, I still wonder if I’m a righteous man.  Not because I want god’s backing – probably just because I desire validation of my thoughts and actions.  Weird, huh?

THERE IS NO ABSOLUTE VALIDATION OF THOUGHTS OR ACTIONS.  Kind of scary and disheartening to think about, no?

Life is good, dear reader:  life is good.

And busy.  Hoo-boy, is it busy.  What a great weekend.  I climbed North Dome and Sherrill on Friday with Heather, Tom, Debbie, Doug (whom I sort of know from the forum but hadn’t actually met in person) and some dude named Ed.  After dinner and dropping Debbie off, I swung over to my aunt and uncle’s house to catch the tail-end of their NYE party.  Saturday was spent (barely) sleeping in, running a few errands and heading over to my friend Wendy’s house for a NYD get-together.  After that, I picked up Valerie at her sister’s place in Rutherford, met up with Scott for dinner and got up not-too early on Sunday to go hiking with Heather, Tom, Scott, Katie, Val and Mike (another guy I know from the forum but hadn’t met irl).  We climbed Roundtop and Kaaterskill High Peak.  It was a good day.

I’ve sort of cleaned off my desk at home –  I need to adjust my feng shui for the rest of the winter, which is apparently already planned out.  Anything not related to winter peakbagging or the bar exam has got to go.  Those are really the only two things I’ll be doing between now and the end of March.

The bar is at the end of February and my review class starts next week.  It’ll be in Newark from 6-10PM, M-F.  Weekends will be spent snowshoeing in the Catskills.  Anything that doesn’t involve bar review or gear repair/prep simply won’t qualify as important for the next three months.

Except for sex.  I’ll make room in my schedule for that.  Match.com has not been particularly kind to me thusfar, but that’s no biggie – it’s an internet dating site and I have a love/hate relationship with those f*ckers anyway.  I’m open-minded but cynical and jaded, which is really the perfect combination for attracting a girl online, right?  We’ll see.

I had a couple of dates with this Russian chick who was pretty cool, but I haven’t heard from her in a couple of weeks.  I dropped the ball, but I did so on purpose.  Sadly, the test came out negative:  it seems that she’s not particularly interested.  And by “test” I mean I left the ball in her court to be the next one to initiate contact.  And she hasn’t.  Win some, lose more.  No big deal; I’m not in it for the chase right now anyway.  I’m looking for the weak/disoriented one so I can separate her from the pack and pounce.

Not really, but sort of.  I think I’m attracted to girls that need “saving”.  I want to be the knight in shining armor, riding to the rescue.  Thing is, the chicks that need “saving” aren’t really what I’m looking for in a woman.  I’m looking for someone who’s got her shit together and is going somewhere – anywhere, I don’t care.  I don’t need unbridled ambition or blind monomaniacal-ness, just not someone who’s maintaining a semi-acceptable status quo.  If I don’t like something about me or my life, I change it.  Character building can really suck, but it offers great rewards.  So yeah, I’m looking for a chick with character.

Fuck me, the looking blows, though.  Needle in a haystack and I’m not even sure if I’m looking in the right stack.

Again, no biggie:  you’ll get no whining from me tonight, dear reader.  Life is good and I wouldn’t have it any other way because it’s NOT any other way.  It is the way it is and I’m cool with that.  For the purposes of this sentence, I’m trying to figure out what part of my life I’d trade for a girl right now, and I’m not coming up with anything.  So yeah, we’ll see what happens.  I’ll keep you posted.

Again, I’m not really in it for the chase right now.  I’m not going to pursue and attempt to make something out of nothing.  The Russian chick was pretty cool, but I need it to go both ways – communication and desire and whatnot, that is.

Anyway, today was a day of exhaustion for me.  I could tell you why, but it’s probably NSFW and you already know enough tidbits about my inner workings.  Possibly that I didn’t have an opportunity to use my light box for most of this weekend.  I doubt it’s dehydration or malnutrition.  And probably not lack of human contact, though I could use some more of the full-frontal-skin-touching-with-a-girl thing.  *sigh* hold me.

lol fag.  It might be time to watch 300 or Gladiator again and/or read some Hemingway.  Right.  ’Cause there’s nothing gay in that sentence.  ”Do you like gladiator movies, Timmy?”  ”Ever been in a Turkish prison?”  Man-up, Ted, and stop being so damned sensitive.

My priorities are more or less straight (by which I mean figured out).  I’m off to bed now; hopefully to wake up refreshed and to have a productive day tomorrow.

I have Apocalyptica playing in the background right now.  A very sad version of “Master of Puppets” is currently playing.  Or maybe it’s just sad because the last track was “Farewell”, which (imho) is a sad song.

I don’t know – have a listen and you tell me, dear reader.  I think I’ve posted that one before.  It always makes me think of love lost and things left unsaid.  Or un-done.

But I’m not too much in the mood to get into all that weepy shite right now.  Things are pretty good on my end, dear reader.  How about you?

Work is slow this week and I’ve been able to catch up on a handful of things that needed doing.  I finally paid my $1200 in back taxes and took care of my car’s registration renewal.  I need to get down to Annapolis to pay a traffic fine and get copies of the court records of it and then swing over to DC to show them proof that my fines are paid so they can un-suspend my DC driver’s license, so that I can get a copy of my DC driver’s abstract – all for my NJ Bar application.  My NJ license abstract should be in the mail.

I posted a trip report for this weekend’s hikes over at the forum today – I should probably dump that in before this post so I don’t lose that piece of writing.  Not that it’s necessarily worth the read, but because this site is basically my pile of writings, whatever the nature.  Except for work stuff.  I’ve written some damned good emails for work, but I doubt you’d be interested in reading those; nor do I particularly want to save them outside of my Outlook at work.  =/

I need to get back to writing fiction.  I mentioned a few posts ago that I have an idea for a novel – though it’s not necessarily a novel idea – well, I’ve got about six of those iPhone voice memos with ideas for the story, just sitting there waiting to be written.  We’ll see if I ever get to it.

I’m currently reading Matter by Iain M. Banks.  It’s ok.  I’m able to put it down and I’m not dying to pick it back up right now, which means it’s barely ok.  There are only a couple of hundred pages left and I’m not exactly sure where he’s going with it or how it will end – which would be a good thing if it were a bit more exciting a book.  I prefer fiction I can’t put down, but hey, that’s just me.

Has anybody out there read any David Foster Wallace?  Infinite Jest has been recommended to me a couple of times that I can remember – once more and it will be three and then I’ll have to read it.  And no, if you mention it in the comments, that won’t count as #3 – it needs to be random and unexpected.

So yeah, kinda boring, I know.  I’m just not feeling all that excited about anything in particular right now.  I have a handful of things running through my head, several of which are nunya and a couple of which aren’t worth the pixels.

Bearpen & Vly and WHP 12/11, 12/12/2010

Goodness the Catskills are boring! Or maybe it’s just the TR section of the forum.  Did anybody besides elkhiker hike this weekend?

I’ll keep this short because I know you don’t care (not that I care if you care or not, even if you did).  Saturday’s hike was Bearpen & Vly from Heisinger Road with debmonster (aka Baby Carrots), ValleyGirlHikes (aka Poison Ivy, Valtron), FatVegan and Vladimir (aka I have no idea but this guy’s a f*cken animal).  Here’s the tracklog over at my EveryTrail page.

After picking the girls up in NYC, we drove up to meet Vladimir at the Halcott PA on 42 and stuck him in the back of FV’s Toyota Yaris:

which is just about the size of that picture. Between the two of us, it’s “the big car.”

Then we drove over to Heisinger Road, parked, peed and headed up Bearpen. We hit the trail around 10:30 or so (fellow forum members on this hike, please correct me if I’m wrong).  A couple of hours later, we were at the summit of Bearpen, despite my initial boo-boo of taking us up the tongue on the left-hand (eastern) side of the brook, which actually turns out to be correct because it avoids the private land.  Mikie’s post (linq) would have been useful research, but I only do research for money.  Yes, I do other things for money too, but that’s not important in the context of this TR, so stop what you’re thinking right now, mister.  Pervert.

No, seriously:  stop it.

There were about 8 inches of fluffy snow on the ground (probably washed away at this point by the nor’easter), and though one or two of us mentioned that snowshoes would have been nice here and there, microspikes did the trick just fine.  When they didn’t fall off our feet because we can’t bear to part with old-friend microspikes and get new ones.  Debbie.  Finding the ro-ads depicted in de pictures in Mikie’s post were a special kind of joy.  I particularly enjoyed the steep parts and the fact that I was totally overdressed in long johns.  Sweating through them at different points during the day was simply delicious.

The summit was a winter wonderland, untouched by human feet.  We saw some bear tracks on the way up, but they were from a boy bear, so I didn’t follow them this time.  Once on the summit, we followed the snowmobile trails down and around an in and out and somehow ended at the hunter’s cabin, despite the best efforts of the snowmobile trails to get us lost and confused (which was too bad, because I was really kind of hoping to go all Lord of the Flies on FatVegan and Vladimir and keep the women for myself).  The NY/NJ TC maps have some of these trails on them and that was helpful as well.

We ate some lunch in the saddle, looking fondly at the smoke rising from the hunter’s cabin (and the ceiling fan on the inside).  FatVegan wanted to burn it down and eat the hunters (apparently, cannibalism is acceptable within veganism – not that it matters to me:  I’ll eat anything), but I said no.

Then we went up to the top of Vly, signed in at the canister and headed back down to the saddle and north on “Route 3″ – we chose to exercise our bail-out option because we only had a couple of extra hours of daylight left and we didn’t want to be ‘wacking in the cold dark snow over South Vly, Sleeping Lion and Hawkit.  That makes us smart hikers, you effin lurker no0bs.

Dinner and more belly-laughing at Brio’s, followed by a relatively uneventful (not) ride home.

We parked at the end of Heisinger Road, near the DEC signs, but still got a nasty note fingered into the scum on the back of FatVegan’s car from Mr. Heisinger stating “private property, [unprintable]“.  Just kidding, it was printable, but I don’t remember what it said.  Anybody know anything about any other issues parking at the end of this road?  We weren’t blocking any of the gates.  Maybe it was our route – it looks like Mikie made a left right out of the gate, while we went straight up and did in fact  step on some private land.  Good intentions/road to hell.

Debbie is now 37/39, with only Halcott and Blackhead-in-the-winter to go.  Vladimir has Graham, DT, BI, Fir and maybe one more to go, and ValleyGirlHikes has no idea how many she has left to go “but I’m sure it’s only a few.”  Right.

On Sunday I cliimbed WHP in the nor’easter with my sister Katie.  This was 5/39 for her and while I’m sure I’m not as good a guide/teacher with her as Woolybear is/was with his brother Karol, I’m pretty sure Katie’s better looking than Karol, so there.

Not much to say on that one.  We did it the “regular” route from Peck Road in Maplecrest.  Where there was snow and ice on the way up, there was mud, flowing water and ice on the way down.  And wind all around.  It was a great day to be out and though we both got a little wet here and there, we were both well outfitted with the proper gear and fairly floated up the mountain in a cloud of waterproof and goretex goodness.  Note the ‘and’: goretex is NOT waterproof AND breathable.

Katie led the way up and down the mountain and we did the 6 miles in just about 3 hours – 2 mph is not too bad, especially for her fourth time out hiking in the Cats.  She’s improving every hike and I’m blessed to be able to be there for it.  She’s 30, btw, and will shank you quicker than a lifer in prison, so don’t get any ideas fellas.  Seriously: they call her ‘icepick’ in Astoria.  Oh yeah, she’ll cut a b*tch.

Anyway, like I was saying: having the opportunity to watch my sister learn how to walk on- and off-trail up and down mountains in the woods has been a wonderful experience so far.  It’s been very good for our relationship overall.

Once upon a time, dear reader, I was an internet dating website addict.  I used to come home from work, turn on my computer and open up Internet Explorer.  My home pages were Yahoo! Personals, OkCupid, PlentyofFish, and eHarmony.  (Hell, I might have even had my IE in my startup folder.)  Then I’d spend the next few hours browsing profiles and sending emails to chicks that never emailed back.

I’d start with the most attractive profiles, but that would only cover about 3-5% of all of them, and soon I’d be out of chicks to email.  Then I’d go from “damn!  I’d effin marry her” to “maybe she’s more interesting in person – you never know” to “this one probably doesn’t get as many emails as the others – maybe she’ll email me back” to “she’s brand-new and probably hasn’t gotten that many emails yet” and finally to “fuckit, her self-esteem is probably low enough to go out with me”.  No shit.  I’d look at the same profiles over and over and over.  It was quite hypnotizing and frustrating.

And discouraging.

And a helluva waste of time.

Then one day I decided I spent way too much time on an obviously unproductive errand and deleted those sites from my home pages.  Having to actually type the URL in was an excellent deterrant to getting caught trolling the internet for chicks for hours at a time every night.

I’m halfway back to my old tricks.  The nice thing about this time is that I have a relatively been-there-done-that kind of feeling, so I don’t anticipate that I’ll be wiling away the rest of my winter staring at internet dating sites.  Not that I didn’t just spend an hour sending (to my mind) clever little emails out.

I think the key this time around is not to put my head on the pillow and say “please god, if *that* one will just email me back, I won’t ask for anything else ever again.”

Pfft.  Good luck with that, dickhead.

Hm.  No idea where to go with this.  Sometimes a blank screen can be positively disconcerting.

Suppose I tell you about the Grid, dear reader?  I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before.  The Grid is 420 mountain-climbs.  Mine is in Excel, so that’s kind of the way I think of it overall.  The row labels are the 35 highest peaks in the Catskills; the column labels are the months of the year.  35 x 12 = 420.  Each of the 35 mountains climbed in each of the months of the year.  I don’t know of anybody who’s done it in a year (climbed all 35 mountains in each of 12 consecutive months); it’ll probably take me another year – starting in August 2011 – to complete (ending in August 2012).

I’m currently at 123 of 420; I’ve climbed 11 of the 35 in December.  I doubt I’ll climb the other 24 mountains this December.  I have 4 left to go in November and 10 left to go in October.  I’m not sure about September:  I started keeping track probably back in June or so, but really only started making a concerted effort on this gargantuan list in September or October, I believe.  July and August have traditionally been light hiking months – in the Catskills, at least – for me.

The nice thing about having this particular list to work on is that I can use it as a means of narrowing down hike possibilities for the weekends.  For the last I’m-not-sure-how-long – hell, maybe the last couple of months – I’ve been hiking (or, to be more specific, peakbagging) both days of the weekend.  I wouldn’t say I’m in phenomenal shape right now, but I’m in pretty good shape.  If the Ted of early December 2009 were to hike with the Ted who’s writing this to you right now, dear reader, the former Ted would say that the latter Ted (this one, that is) is in phenomenal shape – there’s no way he’d be able to keep up with me right now.

For the last couple of months, I’ve been hiking one day of the weekend (generally Sundays) with other people, and the other day (generally Saturdays) solo.  I’ve been blowing my doors off on Saturdays and still doing decent-length/strain-level hikes on Sundays.  This weekend is the first in which I don’t have any particularly strenuous hike planned for Saturday.  Sunday I’ll be hiking with Katie, Scott and Debbie – we’ll be climbing Rusk Mountain (and possibly Hunter and SW Hunter, though I kind of doubt it).  I have no idea what to hike tomorrow (which will be today – Saturday, that is – in about 5 minutes); though that’s not entirely true:  I’m currently considering hiking the Burroughs Range (Slide, Cornell, the Wittenberg) tomorrow.

After last weekend (trip report below), my Achilles tendon was a bit sore.  Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  I don’t remember which foot was bothering me now, because it seems to have gone away.  I’m tempted to take the day off tomorrow – er, today – to allow it a bit more time to heal, but the thought of bagging down my December Grid by three peaks is very tempting.  Plus, I enjoy the solo time in the woods.

I’ve been wondering of late if I’m hiking too much.  While I could certainly use the day off tomorrow – I have plenty of errands to run and housekeeping tasks to take care of that just don’t seem to get done during the week – I’m fairly certain that I can take the short route for those three peaks and be done relatively early.  I’m pretty fast right now, dear reader:  especially on a trail.  Besides, if I took the day off, all I’d really do would be sleep until 11 or 1 and then futz around, wondering which task I should get started on, and wishing I’d woken up earlier.  And that’s a fact – there is no “just wake up early and get started on the errands” on a day off.  Not for me.  Days off are for sleeping in.  And I haven’t had one of those in a LONG time.

So yeah, I think I’m going to hit the sack now and wake up tomorrow to hike the Burroughs Range.  I hope my Achilles doesn’t fuck with me – I’d rather not have the soreness continue into Sunday and the rest of the week.

Oh, and I think I’ve got an idea for a novel.  I’ll need to start typing out an outline and such pretty soon, before the motivation leaves me.

Pleasant dreams, dear reader.  I look forward to seeing you soon irl.

How to Cheat the Devil’s Path

by Ted Wallace
Age 34

Step #1:  Do it in two days.  The Devil’s Path in a single day is for . . . well, I’m not going to tell you who it’s for right now.  Maybe when I’m a little older.

Step #2:  Don’t start from Prediger Road, start from the Long Path TH at the end of 16.  You can shave at least a couple of flat boring miles off.

Step #3:  Don’t sleep outside in late November.  Sleep somewhere warm and dry that offers hot showers.  And eat like royalty when you’re not on the trail (do so when ON the trail for an even more advanced move).

Step #4:  When planning the route, be as flexible as possible.  Euthanize, castrate or tranquilize any alpha route-planners in the party well in advance of the trip itself.

Step #5:  Do it with really cool people – you’ll never notice the miles go by.

Last Saturday (11/27) we did the eastern section of the DP.  ’We’ being yours ever truly, SSMonte288 (or whatever effin number I can’t remember; hereinafter referred to as “Bill”), Halia (of H&F; hereinafter “Heather” or “Heather The Famous Author”), debmonster (hereinafter “Debbie” or “the monster”), and Valerie (hereinafter “Valerie” or “Valtron”).

We slept at Bill’s house (well, it wasn’t really HIS house, but I’m not going to get into the whole story of how that worked – suffice to say that we all had warm beds and hot showers) on Friday and Saturday nights.  SAT question-worthy car spotting problems were solved and cars were spotted, un-spotted and re-spotted on Friday night, Saturday morning, and Sunday at some point but I don’t remember because Sunday was a long day.

Mudhook’s TR describing the trail conditions of the eastern section of the DP on Sunday were relatively close to what we experienced on Saturday: some ice (microspikes were used), not much mud (but it was there), and a general chill in the air.  Snow fell lightly and sparsely but steadily throughout the day on Saturday.  I lost my sunglasses while bushwacking up the first ledge on Indian Head, so if you find them, please return them.  Do not attempt to invoke the I Look Better in Them Than You rule because that’s frankly impossible.  As a matter of fact, please send your girlfriend to me with the sunglasses as well.

Sunday was much nicer because the sun was out.  Heather was on the KHP hike, so, being that she hasn’t yet figured out how to be in two places at once (amateur), she wasn’t on the western section of the DP with us on Sunday as well. Seriously, that’s like negative mom-cred, Heather. 

I don’t remember what time we started out from the Notch Lake PA on Sunday, but our timing was perfect, because by the time we got to the lookout on West Kill (Buck Ridge?), FatVegan (hereinafter “Scott” or “that a$hole” or “my f*cken hetero lifemate”) and my sister Katie (hereinafter “my sister Katie” or just “Katie”) had just arrived as well.  They hiked in from the western TH terminus of the DP on Spruceton Road (or, as daLunartik would say “Sprucetown Road”).  Then we all hiked out together (Bill, Katie, Scott, Debbie, Ted, Valerie).  <– Ted sandwiches are recommended.  I ran off and bagged Hunter and Leavitt while Bill, Debbie and Valerie walked a little slower to give me room to catch up.  Peakbagging might be a disease, but I can stop whenever I want.  Scott and I bagged St. Anne’s Peak on the way down as well.  What?! It’s on a list.

After finishing up at the DP SR TH (nobody wanted to bag North Dome & Sherrill and I’d already done them in November), we drove all over creation to pick up our respective cars and then headed to that restaurant called Hickory on 28 near the Thruway, where we all gorged ourselves on BBQ.  FatVegan had a salad and the owner came out and led the whole restaurant in a good round of pointing and laughing, which is always good for the soul.

I’m not going to tell you any more about the hike itself because it was a porn hike and I don’t feel like giving you no0bie lurkers an opportunity to fap-fap-fap away at your computer when we did all the work.  I’m not saying we did anything dirty in the woods (nor am I saying we didn’t), but were I to attempt to relate the reasons for our laughter that were involved over the 20-something miles of the DP last weekend, your head would probably explode.  Seriously:  it’s for your own good, nOob. The secret to ripped abs is lots and lots of laughing.

Here are the tracklogs on my EveryTrail page:

11/27/2010 DP East

11/28/2010 DP West

I’m sure I’m forgetting things.  Scott, Katie, Heather, Debbie, Bill (forum members): please add whatever you think might be relevant.  As I said probably a hundred times, it was wonderful to hike with you.

I feel like writing and I don’t feel like writing tonight, dear reader.  Physically, I feel like writing.  I wish I knew how to play the guitar or piano or some instrument with my fingers.  The only thing I can play is the goddamned QWERTY keyboard, and nobody wants to hear a recording of that.  But the way my fingers are moving across the keys right now is simply glorious.  One of the guys I was hiking with in Taiwan was talking to the hike leader about taking piano lessons (the leader teaches them and the guy has been playing for a decade or more – he was like 22 maybe) – his thing was that he had no problem memorizing the piece and playing it back for the teacher, but he had a “hard time with the interpretation part”.  That’s the part where you put some emotion into the notes.  Sure, the music sounds nice if you play the notes in the right order, each for the right amount of time, with the correct spacing in between.  But to really get across the feeling of the music – to elicit an emotional (or visceral) response in the witness, which is a defining characteristic of any art for me – means that the notes have to be played with both the left side of the brain and the right side of the brain.  The sequential and holistic, respectively.

That’s what I’m doing right now, dear reader.  Not necessarily making art, but flow-pecking away at my keyboard, putting thought and feeling into the words, the meanings behind them, and the actual striking of the keys.  Some strikes are soft and smooth and liquid; some are the cracks of my finger-hammers, adding emphasis to what I’m saying. 

So my friend Heather was once described as someone who was walking around with her hands out, palms up in offering.   In her hands she held her love and she went from person to person, offering it to them.  Offering them her love.  But nobody was accepting it from her, let alone exchanging it for theirs.  And Heather then flipped that analogy (metaphor?) around to describe me.  And she was right.  And that was a joyous occasion for me, to have such  wonderful description applied to me – because it fit so well and felt so fitting.  And it was a shitty feeling to have my feelings/vibes/emotions pinned down like that, a butterfly on the lepidopterist’s board. 

Because who really wants to be walking around, trying to give away their love to anyone who will take it, hoping that whoever does take it is worthy of it and will have a ≥ love to exchange for it?  That’s a crappy spot to be in.  Especially if one plays a lot of chess.  It’s like throwing capital pieces away in exchange for pawns that might actually be queens in disguise (which, as someone who plays a lot of chess can tell you, dear reader, doesn’t happen) or in exchange for better board position.  For what?  The pawns (years?  days?) that are getting slowly picked off with no capital pieces left to protect them?

Yay morbidity.  Cry me a river, you fucking emo punk.  It’s not emo if you’re not crying - Right.  Now.

So yeah, match.com is just another internet dating site, lol.  Nothing to report yet on that front, dear reader, though I hope for at least a funny story or two in the next six months for my hundred-twenty dollars.

Work is going pretty well.  I’ve got some kind of weird business pheromones going on right now:  all kinds of people want to meet with me.  Maybe to sell me things, maybe to just network.  They’re kind of coming out of the woodwork.  People are listening to my opinions and asking me if they can Ctrl+C & Ctrl+V some of the shit from my emails into their articles (and if it’s ok to give me a “thanks” in the article).  More niceguyted is slipping into my emails than I’m used to.  It feels weird – like I’m doing something wrong.  But people who know what the fuck they’re talking about because they’ve been in this business for fucking ever are nodding their heads when I’m expressing an opinion about how things are or should be or what’s coming down the pike.  I keep waiting to get the “what the fuck do you think you were doing when you said that??” email.  But it hasn’t come yet, and I’m getting just too busy to run every email by someone else to see if what I’m saying qualifies as a good line for the company to take.  Things come across my desk at the end of the day on the other side of the country that need an answer NOW, and everybody else has gone home to have their glass of wine while eating dinner with the wife and kids.

I have a lunch meeting tomorrow with an IR guy from the midwest I know from twitter, and will be training in this executive compensation modeling software on Thursday and Friday.  I’m looking forward to that:  I know what most of the words mean, but it’ll help to learn how to string them together into sentences and paragraphs.  By which I mean actually know what the fuck I’m talking about instead of kind of halfway faking it. 

My bar application is just about finished.  I’m going to mail it in tomorrow, so that I’m well ahead of the 12/15 due date.  There are a couple of things I need to get to complete the application, but that will require making a trip down to Annapolis and DC to straighten out some fines and get license abstracts and stuff.  I’ll take a day off next week and do that.  Meanwhile, I’m sending emails, editing documents, frigging around with spreadsheets, downloading stuff and all kinds of other things at work, while listening to bar prep lectures on constitutional law and criminal law and real property in the background.  I have no idea how much of that I’ll actually retain, but I figure it’s better than nothing.

So yeah, I’ve had enough AyePhone interruptions here at the Starbucks on 17 south that my finger-peck/flow groove is kind of gone.  Sort of.  I think I’ve just run out of things to say.  Mark your calendar, dear reader:  that’s a first.

Yes, yes, I know, dear reader:  it’s been far too long.  How’ve you been?

So.  The last two weeks.  Here’s a quick run-down of what I’ve been up to, then I’m off to read my book (The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks):

Got back from Taiwan and haven’t stopped moving.  Barely had time to do the laundry or a more than a cursory apartment cleaning.  That said, I don’t live in filth:  I have a place for (pretty much) everything, and (pretty much) everything is in its place.

Work is paying for me to take the NJ bar exam (and the $3k prep class), so that I can be the company’s General Counsel.  With the exception of (approximately) three things, I finished the application yesterday.  It needs to be in by 12/15.  I’ll have to send it in semi-incomplete:  driving records and the like will take some time to get (NJ and DC licenses, plus a 5-year old ticket in MD to pay for).  Pain in the ass, but it’s kind of forcing me to tie off a bunch of loose ends that have been hanging out for a while now.

I bought a bunch of new hiking gear and have been bagging peaks like a madman – 8 this past weekend alone.  The hikes on Saturday and Sunday were both awesome.  Katie’s also been coming hiking on Sundays, which has been particularly wonderful.  Everybody says she’s a natural, and I agree.

I joined Match.com tonight.  Not really sure why, except that it’s been a long time coming.  I’ll be happy to cross this one off of the sites I’ve tried.  Six month subscription – I’ll keep you posted as to how it goes.  Hopefully I’ll have some fun internet dating stories for y’all.  Obviously, falling in love would be the bestest, but I’ll be happy with a relatively intelligent and achingly beautiful make-out artist.  Shit, that’ll probably qualify as ‘love’ for me – I’m pretty shallow, you know.

Work is on/off crazy busy, but it’s all good stuff:  things I want to do.  I have an office with a window and a door and everything, which makes it MUCH easier to stay late.  Which I’ve been doing quite a bit.

I have three regular scrabble opponents on my iPhone app (all of whom I know) and three regular chess opponents on a separate iPhone app (none of whom I know).  And I’ve been devouring sci-fi novels like it’s Thanksgiving at the homeless shelter.  So, like it or not, I’m getting smarter and sharper every day.  Don’t be scared, I’m too busy (and slightly content) to become a tower-shooter just yet.

Slightly content.  Mostly content.  The winds of change are a-blowin’ – I felt that tonight as I was driving from somewhere to anotherwhere.  Not while I was signing up for Match – I’m pretty much just going through the motions on that one, not holding out for any kind of success.  I’m a shitty internet dater; I just don’t come off all that well in pixels.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  Happy Thanksgiving, if’n I don’t talk to you, dear reader.

Where did 2010 go?

Here’s the linq to the forum post if you want to read the comments.

BLM to McKinley Hollow: 5 Peak “Backpack” 11/20/2010

I’m a peakbagger, not a backpacker: there’s a difference.  On Saturday I combined the two – and made a bunch of mistakes.

The first one was not calling ahead to say that I’d be climbing Graham and Doubletop – which are on private land. Total n_o_O_b move.  I didn’t even remember it until I was halfway along Beaver Kill Road, and by then my cell phone had no service.

The second mistake (overall weekend planning-wise) was parking at the TH right next to Balsam Lake.  Sure, it made for an easy ascent to the lean-to on Friday night, but it also gave FatVegan and Katie an extra hour and a half in the car with my stinky ass on the way to get my car after climbing the Blackheads on Sunday.

In any case, the walk in was chilly – I wish I’d brought more than just Smartwool glove liners with me (and wish, and wish again the rest of the weekend), but I had decently warm gear for the rest of me besides my hands.  My 850-fill down codpiece is simplydivine.  I got to the LT around 11PM or so and set up my 15-degree bag.  The wind blew all night long and I can totally see how primitive man thought the gods might be angry with them.  Maybe for not calling ahead.  Watching me hang a bear bag for the first time ever was the eppy-tome of comedy, and a mouse named Smiley ate my midnight Clif bar snack while I was sleeping.  Caught the little focker, too, but he just snarled at me that he’d get his buddies if I didn’t roll back over and shut the ef up.  So I went with the whole better-part-of-valour thing, figuring I still had a nice weekend of hiking in front of me and how little fun that would be with broken legs.  Whatever, Smiley, I’ll be back with RedCloud and Molly and then you’ll be the one crying himself to sleep.

Saturday morning was cold, cold, cold and everything – I mean everything - was slate grey.  I had about a liter of water left in my bladder (the one in my pack, that is), so I decided to get my blood flowing and not pump from the spring beside the LT – I woke up at 9AM, so I was running later than expected anyway.  Mistakes #3 and 4, if you’re keeping count.  The mouse thing doesn’t count.

Summitted BLM pretty quickly, tapped the fire tower with one of my poles and smiled at the cabin on my way down the hill.  I passed two dudes on their way up the mountain who informed me that today (Saturday, that is) is (was?) the first day of shotgun season.  Blimey.  Then I took the easy way up Graham.

After Graham, I swung on down and up to Doubletop (Dear Graham/Doubletop col, I <3 you.  Sincerely, Ted), whereupon I considered eating lunch.  While at the can and looking hungrily at my map, in an effort to decide whether I was going to follow my original plan and head down Doubletop and ‘wack up Eagle from closer to Seager (mistake #5 – not the best route-planning: “it seemed like a good idea during the week” = famous last words) or take the land-bridge over to Big Indian, a hunter came upon me.  Luckily for me, he was hunting the summit at that point in the day, not NGTs.  The hunter’s name is Red and he was pretty much my angel for the day.  He’s also a 3500 Club member with a number in like the 300s.  Red confirmed that ‘wacking over to Big Indian would be quicker, told me that there’s a decent trail along the state line, and that I could feel free to backtrack him to the southern summit.  Thanks Red.

So, armed with this knowledge, I backtracked Red’s monster boot soles to the southern summit of Doubletop, took a bead on Big Indian, and headed downhill.  Passed by the plane wreckage.  Meh.  At least I know where it is now.  On the way down Doubletop, my inner wuss whispered tales of lonely death in my ear, but I ignored him because he’s stupid and hasn’t been right yet.

I hit the Pine Hill/West Branch Trail just east of the highway I mean herd path to the summit can.  I gave some serious thought to signing in at the can and officially bagging six peaks for the day – I mean seriously, what peakbagger gets that close to a summit and doesn’t stand on top of it? – but there was only a little light left in the day (it was around 4/4:30PM) and I climbed BI in November back in like aught-eight.  Peakbagging triage – gotta love it.

I pretty much hit my stride on the PH/WB bushwack I mean trail – “a mile eating lope”, if you will.  Up and over Eagle (it was dark at this point), Haynes (which doesn’t count for a single damned list), and down to the junction at the top of McKinley Hollow.  I dropped my pack there and jogged up to the top of Balsam (which I’d already done at night as well), sent a couple of texts, and swung on down to the LT in McKinley Hollow, wherein I set up my tent BECAUSE I WAS COLD AND DIDN’T GIVE A RAT’S ASS FOR THE RULES AT THAT POINT, and went to bed.  That was around 8 or 9PM – nobody else was in the LT and I was way in the corner anyway.  Mistake #6? Maybe, maybe not – I still slept cold, but not as cold as Friday night.  Just before I hit the LT, I pumped four liters of water and guzzled most of it while making dinner.  One liter of water is not enough for that hike.  My pee is still coming out like toothpaste.  Read a bit before bed.

Woke up on time and made it down to the TH at 8:30AM to meet FatVegan and Katie for our Sunday hike with Halia and Flammeus (and Iske, Lily & RedCloud).

Thank you, Monte Bell down jacket and pants: your downy goodness was perfectly glorious.  And thank you, Newports:  I smoked a pack of you and was truly alive with pleasure all day.  Most of the day was spent, btw, alternately humming Bach violin and cello concertos and singing Cake’s version of “I Will Survive” – Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” was in there as well (though I really only repeated two lines over and over again), because of the jingle-jangle of my microspikes against my pack when I wasn’t wearing them.  When not immersed in one of the foregoing, my thoughts often turned to scenarios in which I say to mudhook (irl) “yeah, but I make this look good“.  Thank you, FatVegan, for the birthday present of microspikes (I wore them almost all day long) and a new headlamp (I no longer have beam envy).

So, I’m not a backpacker, but I did this all with my “big” pack on – which isn’t quite as big as it used to be.  I’m going to guess it’s around 20/25 lbs (down from something like 40).  That’s a nice sense of accomplishment – getting the pack weight down, but also hiking strongly at around 11 or 12 miles with the heavy(ish) pack on and most of the steps behind me having been ‘wacked.   5 more for the grid on Saturday, plus 3 on Sunday puts me at 24/35 for November and only 304 to go. 

Here’s the tracklog over at my EveryTrail page.  The missing parts are where I teleported because I was bored and have a Garmin 60CSx, which allows for teleportation when one inputs the Konami Code.

Here’s the linq to the forum if you want to read the comments.

Rocky, Lone, Table, Peekamoose 11/13/2010

Ok, just so nobody thinks I’ve stopped hiking, I climbed those four mountains last Saturday with debmonster and Vladimir (a monster in his own right).  Here’s the tracklog over at my EveryTrail page.  Note the circuituous route between Rocky and Lone: we really didn’t have to deal with too much pine push-through (I know someone else was bemoaning the density of that particular section earlier this week on the forum).

The Denning PA wasn’t plowed, which was ok because there wasn’t any snow, and the Fisherman’s Path is much more evident than it was a couple of weeks ago after the flood.

We decided to get the boringness of the Fisherman’s Path out of the way first (rather than making it the way home), and I’m glad we did.  I think we only crossed tributaries of the Neversink while on the FP – we basically stayed to the right (southish) the whole time, which involved a little sidehilling and whatnot, but was probably better than six different crossings.

Just like in the title: up Rocky, over to Lone, then to Table, and a quick out & back to Peek before we headed back to Denning.  Found a BSA hiking stick by the can at Lone (and replaced the calling card of mine that mudhook stole from the next ex-Mrs. Wallace – the one that was in the canister).  As soon as life slows down, I’ll mail the hiking pole to the guy (sorry bro, I forgot your name).  We caught up on Monday on the 3500 Club Yahoo group.  Thanks, btw, for leaving the staff at the can: the laughter the three of us got on the way home that touched on (pun, and a good example of the forthcoming) all different scenarios involving “the boy scout’s pole” was priceless.

PS:  Molly, I know that DFH really means Dog From Heaven.  Can’t wait to meet you in the flesh, sweetheart.

I am come from the shores of Perelandra, where the soft honeyed fruits drip their nectar on my lips with naught but the slightest pressure from my fingertips.  It is the place called Elysium by some, and I speak now of ambrosia.  Others call it Venus, though I know not their word for its fruit.

“But Perelandra is an ocean world,” you say, “though there be fruits of flavour divine in that place, there are no shores.”

And I would say that you speak true, but that I still come from the shores, for the shores are where the seas end and I am not welcome there on Perelandra.  For there are but two who dwell in that place:  a King and a Queen and they are innocence personified.  They know neither clothing nor pain, wisdom nor shame; they are the untouched.  Vice does not exist on Perelandra, except that which dwelt within me; nor is virtue known in that place.

So come, sit:   your hearth is warm enough tonight to hold back the cold, the candles’ golden glow is enough to hold back the darkness – for a little while longer - and I’ve the time and inclination to spin for you a yarn. 

******   ******   ******

“Melt your fucken face, man, I’ll tell you what!”

“Huh?”

“This fucken squeeze, man, what’s it fucken called again?”

“What?”

“The drug, man, the drug we’ve been doing all night.  What’s it called??”

“No idea.”

“Well I’ll tell ya, it’s fucken good.  What were we talking about again?”

“Huh?”

“Dude, you were telling me about banging that chick – the one from Venus or wherever.  The dream you had.  She was hot.  A queen or something, and you were like totally raping her in front of her boyfriend.”

“The King?”

“Yeah, yeah, the king.  You were like fucking this queenie chick against her will in front of her king-man boyfriend and she was all like ‘ooh ooh, give it to me.’  Goddamn this is good shit.  What did you call it again?”

******   ******   ******

When I was a boy and just out of seminary school, I went to a Doors concert and heard Jim Morrison sing his song ‘Soft Parade’ – it changed my life.  I was raised to be a good Christian man and enrolled to become a priest just as I was hitting puberty.  I was uneasy with the thoughts and feelings I was having.  Maybe ‘uneasy’ isn’t a strong enough term.  The feelings, I just knew they were evil and I didn’t know what to do about them.  I prayed and prayed, but it just didn’t seem to be working.  I would kneel at the foot of my bed for hours, head bent and hands folded, my knees bruising on the hard wood beneath them, and pray as I had been taught.  I begged the Holy Father to remove the evilness growing inside and outside of me and try not to think about the gap between my mattress and box spring.  It was hard, I mean really hard to go to sleep some nights with the evilness that seemed to be raging everywhere.  I could barely sit through class and I can’t tell you how many pencils broke in my balled fist as I attempted to keep my eyes on my book or on the blackboard, instead of askance at my classmates.  After I had been studying for the priesthood for about three years, I left.  I told them that I was going to take a sabbatical, but the truth was that I was succumbing to the evil.  It never left me, even as I poured my tainted heart and soul into my studies, begging the Lord take it from me or to help me understand why the evil plagued me so.  But those answers never came, and I am but a man, full of weakness.  I wandered about for a while, eventually stopping at a gathering in Gold Creek Park, where I heard Morrison’s voice and words, forever changing me.  That was July 25, 1969:  the Seattle Pop Festival in Woodinville WA.  I took my first drink that night and did my first drug during that Doors show.  Shortly after I lost my virginity in front of more people than I can remember, Led Zeppelin took the stage and the rest of my life is but a footnote to that night. 

It’s 5:30-something in the morning.  And I didn’t just wake up.  My plane landed Sunday late in the afternoon; I was up until around 11 on Sunday night and slept the day away on Monday.  I got up Monday evening around 5:30 and did my laundry and ran some errands.  Stopped by Scott’s place to chill with his cat Poseidon (Scott’s in FL for his brother’s wedding), then came home and read Foundation and Empire, the second of Asimov’s Foundation series.  Maybe it’s the third, but my understanding is that Prelude to Foundation was written after the rest of the books in the series.

I’ve cleaned my apartment a bit, smoked a bunch of cigarettes, and put my work paperwork in some semblance of order for tomorrow.  My plan is to go in wicked early and hopefully leave early.  I didn’t sleep on the flight back from Taiwan, which made for a 20-something hour day on Sunday, followed by around 18 hours of sleep (give or take – DST has me kind of messed up, too), so I’m not really sure where I am in terms of sleep schedule or how to get back to normal.  I really don’t want to have anything to do with those hard-wakeups – the ones where I really don’t want to get out of bed, even though it’s time to do so.  But I suppose they’re inevitable.

I hadn’t really planned anything work- or life-wise past this Taiwan trip.  Work-wise, I need to spend some time at my desk, sending well-written follow-up emails to the contacts I made.  I also need to put my expense report together – that’s going to be a doozie:  about $2k just for the hotel and conference.  It’ll be a nice chunk of change coming back to me, and by the goddess, if anybody second-guesses anything on that report, I’m going to shit on their keyboard and rub it in with their face.  I was surely not extravagant in my expenditures.

I also have a handful of emails sitting in my inbox that need responses and a couple of small projects to complete that I was working on while in Taiwan.  Email is kind of fucked up – they moved from one server to another on Saturday, so I need to figure out what’s going on with that.  The only emails in my inbox on my work iPhone are the ones I’ve received since Saturday, and none of my folders are present.  The Outlook on my computer won’t sync with the server, and, from some of the emails in my iPhone inbox, it would seem as though my rules and alerts have been disabled.  I can’t get onto the webmail function either, so I don’t know which emails are on the server and which aren’t.  I’ll be pretty pissed if all the emails between 10/29 and 11/6 have been lost.  Email is pretty important at my gig.

So beyond getting to the office, figuring out what the fuck is up with the email system, sending out my nice-to-meet-yous, putting my expense report together and finding out why the fuck I haven’t been given a key to the office yet, I really don’t know what to do with myself.  If I had a key to the office, I’d have gone in tonight and sent out the n-t-m-ys and put my expense report together, but fuck me, I’m not driving all the way to Bloomfield in the hope that the side door is unlocked.

Plus, I think some of the guys in the office are expecting some sort of report for me on how things went.  I’m actually kind of anxious about that and feeling a bit like I should be able to get right back to work, jetlag issues aside.  Well fuck that.  I’m going to go into the office in a couple of hours, coffee and taylor ham egg and cheese on an everything bagel salt pepper ketchup in hand, do as many of the things I can before I’m too tired to do any more, and go the fuck home.  The jetlag will work itself out, I’m sure, but I’m sure as hell not going to bend over backwards any farther than I already have.  Those motherfuckers barely gave me any time to prepare for this trip, so they can damn well hang out until I’m good and ready to give them my report – whatever the fuck that’s supposed to look like.

Humility, Ted:  humility.  A ”worker among workers” and all that. 

Yeah, right.  I’m trying.  I’m a much better worker when I’m not hanging out waiting for someone to unlock the door or fix the email system.

No idea what I’m doing this weekend.  Friday is my birthday and that’s the last I’ll say on that.  I don’t do birthday celebrations.  Luckily, I was sick unto death on by birthday last year (and for the sandwiching days as well).  I’ll probably do dinner with my family on Friday night because my sister wants to (it’ll be a good excuse to bring my mother flowers), but that’s about it. 

Hiking.  Definitely hiking on Saturday and/or Sunday.  I have a whole bunch of mountains to climb for my November grid, so there’s that.  I’m considering going on this winter camping deathmarch in the first couple of days of December and I’ll need to get out and do some wicked long hard hikes if I want to get in shape for that.

I’m currently feeling a kind of violent and restless loneliness that comes over me from time to time.  The one where I don’t return phone calls or emails because they all seem to be just one more straw on this camel’s already burdened back.  It’s not an entirely unwelcome feeling; I just wish I had a direction in which to point myself.

I’ll sigh here, if you don’t mind, dear reader.

*sigh*

Holy shit, District 9 was fucking awesome.  Phenomenal movie:  I was on the edge of my seat with adrenaline pumping the whole time.  It’s been a LONG time since I’ve seen a movie that really kept me going from start to finish.  Fantastic.  Like they say in NYC:  fanTAS-tic.

We’re over the Aleutian Islands right now, 2827 miles into the trip back to the States (4158 miles to go).  Time is so weird.  Check this out:

I left the hotel this morning at 7:30, got to Taipei Tao Yuan Airport about 40 minutes later, and checked in for my 10:30 flight to Tokyo Narita Airport.  I guess the flight must have been close to four hours, though it sure didn’t seem like it.  I really want to say we were only in the air for a couple of hours.  The plane definitely didn’t take off until 10:30, and I think it was about 2:30 by the time I was off the plane in Tokyo.  I had about three hours to kill at NRT (I’d basically been reading during the time not spent doing getting-on-or-off-a-plane stuff) before we took off at 5:30.

The flight from NRT to EWR is about 11 hours long.  We’re landing in Newark at about 3:30PM (daylight savings time – fall back an hour).

As far as Sunday, November 7, 2010 goes, I will technically spend only 8 hours traveling (7:30AM to 3:30PM), even though I will have spent 21 hours in transit.  Weird, huh?

The clock on my computer says 8:44AM.  Whatever the fuck that means.  I think that’s the time on the east coast, which means my body thinks it’s almost 9PM.  Whatever the fuck THAT means.  I’m not sure if that’s bedtime or what, but I think it’s close.  I’d basically just started sleeping through the night, too.

No biggie.  I’m kind of looking forward to seeing my stuff again – sleeping in my own bed and stuff like that.  Which is not to say that I’ve been itching to get home or anything – I’m pretty sure I’d have no problem getting used to living out of a suitcase, but the fact of the matter is that I DON’T currently live out of a suitcase, so it’ll be nice to get home and hear some Bach from my stereo with the dodgy speaker.  I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m neither excited to get home, nor am I sad that my trip is over – or any extreme emotion in between.  The trip’s over, and that’s that.  I’m going back to routine (after a week or so of jetlag), and that’s that.

Before I started District 9, I finished House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds.  Great book.  Except for the end.  Very disappointing.  The bastard really shat the bed on this one.  I’m talking excellent idea, but horrible, horrible follow-through.  It’s an undisputable axiom of writing that “if you show the audience a gun in the first act, it HAS to go off in the third”.  Yes, there are certainly writers who break this rule, but you and I aren’t one of them, dear reader.  Well, I might be, but you’re certainly not.  Seriously:  best way to fuck up a book:  loose ends.  Plot threads that never get tied off.  Maybe it’s just a Mensa thing, but an author that leaves me wondering what happened to a character at the end of a story is rarely an author I will speak positively about.  Again, there are exceptions to this rule, but they only serve to prove them.  And Alastair Reynolds, you incredible genius of a fuckhead, YOU ARE NOT ONE OF THE EXCEPTIONS.

Dear Alastair’s editor/publisher/whatever:  you suck the big dirty dongus.  I’m talking moose cock.  Huge.  Gobble gobble, you fucking homo (I’m assuming you’re a dude – I don’t have the appropriate vocabulary words or metaphors if you’re a woman).  Get on the ball and make your boy write a fucking ending.  Are you even reading these books?  This guy could be one of the greats.  His concepts are completely original.  His ability to manipulate perspectives is something I’ve never come across before.  Ever.  And I’ve read a lot of books.  Apparently more than you, you fucking shit eater.

Seriously, dear reader:  the perspective manipulation thing is really awesome.  Nobody does it, and Reynolds does it so well. I think the only of Reynolds’ books I’ve left to read is Diamond Dogs, Turquiose Days, which I believe consists of two novellas.  I think most of his other books take place in the same basic universe, but this one (House of Suns) consists of completely different concepts.  It’s masterfully done, but THE ENDING FUCKING SUCKS.  I think there must have been another chapter that just didn’t get published.  Probably a handful of them that ended up in bin, but fuck, man, you could have picked one of them.  Ending the book on the note you did was like pissing in the meringue.  Or something.  What takes a long time to make and involves a lot of steps that have to be done just right in order for it to come out ok at all?  Not meringue, though that’s a nice image.  Your unborn child’s placenta?

By the way, dear reader, I have no idea how I’m going to find my car when I get to Newark.  I know I’m parked in one of the long-term lots – I think they’re 6 and 7 (I’m probably in 6 because it sounds closer), but I’m not entirely sure.  I left my ticket in the car, so as not to have to worry about losing it while I was away or trying to find it when I got back (smart thinking, no?), but I never wrote down (or even looked at) the lot/area identifiers where I parked.  I know generally where the car is in relation to one of the shuttle stops, but not much else.  I was wondering why I had that déjà vu/I’m forgetting something type of feeling when I got on the shuttle bus last week.  Oh well, at least it’ll be light outside when I get back and drive around in the shuttle bus for a while.

4517 miles in now; 2461 miles to go.  We’re technically over the Northwest Territories of Canada – just near the borders of British Columbia and Alberta.  I just watched the Bond flick Quantum of Solace.  It was ok; nothing special.  The chick with the Spanish accent was hot.  The clock on my computer says 11:28AM; it’s 1:28AM back in Asia, according to the trip info screen.  No idea how that works.  I suppose I could fall asleep right now, though I don’t really feel like doing so.  I don’t feel much like reading right now, either.  I have that book of Phil Dick’s short stories, but I think I’m going to just watch another movie.  4h 6mins to EWR.

Only a couple of hours left now.  1:52 to be exact.  5951 miles traveled; 1025 to go.  Yay for traveling halfway around the world.  Twice.  In a week.  I think.  I just watched Star Trek (the new one).  I saw it in the theaters when it came out – whenever that was.  Long enough ago that it was worth watching again (sort of), but not so long ago that I didn’t remember most of it.  I still don’t feel  like reading, so I suppose I’ll just go right ahead and watch Hero – or at least the beginning of it.  Jet Li rules.  There’s probably not enough time left in the trip to get all the way through it, so nobody should see me balling my eyes out at the end.

So that’s it.  I watched Hero and fell asleep for the last half-hour or so before the plane landed.  Back in NJ now.

Well, the conference is over.  I have a meeting with my contacts at Wistron Corp. tomorrow afternoon.  The rest of today is free, as is most of the day tomorrow.  I took the MRT (Taipei metro/subway) to the Zhonxiao-Dunhua station (the blue Bannan line from Taipei Main Station) and walked over to Eslite, which is a 24/7 bookstore on Dunhua Road South.  Decent bookstore; it’s about the third I’ve been to and the only one with English titles.  Not so many, but enough for me.  I picked up House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds (I’ve read just about everything else Reynolds has written and had to check to see that I hadn’t read this one) and a book of short stories by Philip K. Dick.  Though I was looking at them intently, I did not pick up two books by Peter F. Hamilton – as per his style, they were the first two of a trilogy, each book probably 1000 pages long.  I’d really only need the first book (it’s doubtful I’d read both before I return to the States), but I couldn’t bear to leave only the second book of a trilogy all by its lonesome among all those Chinese titles.  Who would want to pick up only the second of a trilogy?  Maybe I shouldn’t be putting myself in the place of the next English-only reader to wander into that bookstore, but I did.  Plus, it felt kind of weird to carry the extra weight around (thank you, ultralight hiker friends – I think).

So here I am, sitting at a Starbucks with my tall black coffee, ogling Asian chicks and smelling the smells of Taipei.  I’ve been telling myself that I wouldn’t just get coffee at Starbucks (this is the third I’ve been to so far) and try some of the other coffee shops, but I figured Starbucks would have wi-fi.  This one doesn’t, which is why I’m typing these words to you in Word, dear reader.  So I lost out on both accounts.  Although not really, because I’m still typing to you while drinking my delicious and familiar tall black coffee.  There’s a little poodle-dog in a stroller with a blue and white striped t-shirt and red overalls on, looking expectantly at me right now, as though I’m going to get up and get his mommy.  His haircut makes him look like a monkey.  I “what do you want, little monkey-dog?” in one of those baby-only voices, but I don’t think he spoke enough English to take offense.

Taipei isn’t much different from any other city.  Or maybe I should say “not much different from the Chinatown section” of any other city.  Except it’s all Chinatown here, Taipei being located in the Republic of China and all.  Not everything smells like Chinese food, but that’s really only on the main streets.  If I wander off into the side-street areas, everything smells like Chinese food.  Which is not a bad smell, but it’s certainly not going to be the determining factor in my decision to never leave Taiwan.

Did I mention how fucking gorgeous I find Asian women to be?  THAT might be a determining factor in my decision to never leave Taiwan.  Not ALL Asian women, of course – there are less-than-beautiful (on the outside) ones, just like in any other country.  But I really have to say that even the so-so looking Asian chicks (on an Asian-only scale) are fucking beautiful to me.  It’s like my bar has been lowered, though that simile is too much a negative one to be properly descriptive.  Anyway, there’s lots of eye-candy for this skinny honky here in Taipei.

November is National Novel Writing Month and although I’m signed up for NaNoWriMo, I haven’t written a single word of my novel – nor have I spent any time on the NaNoWriMo site.  As much as admitting it feels like weakness to me, I’m dealing with a bit of sensory overload right now.  I’m not sure how badly jetlagged I am, but I’ve only been getting a few hours of sleep at a time in the past few days.  Last night I went to bed around 11, woke up at 2, then again at 4:30, 6:30 and finally 7:30 to start the day.  There were probably a handful of other wakeups in among those, but they’re the ones I can remember.

So, as a result, I really don’t want to do much but hang out and read my book.  Getting to Eslite was an accomplishment; there are two temples I’d like to visit (and say some prayers): one for a warrior and one for a doctor (the temples, not the prayers – those will be for me).  I’m for whirled peas and blowjobs, but I really only pray for the latter.  And by blowjobs, I mean love in its purest sense. 

That’s not really true; I just like the way it sounds.  My prayers mostly take the form of requests for the ability to be virtuous (humility, etc.) and that the Universe continue on as it’s supposed to be – I guess there’s a hope/prayer in that latter one that an underlying characteristic of the Universe is that things work out for the best for all involved (in a relative sense, obviously).  Not sure if that makes much sense, and I don’t really know that I’m optimistic enough to believe that the Universe is inherently good, but I’m trying to be (hence the prayers).

But yeah, there are certainly a lot of things I’d like to do while I’m here in Taiwan, but I’m not sure that I feel like running around like a tourist right now.  I‘m enjoying just sitting here and soaking up the atmosphere.  Which is wicked sticky right now:  it’s been threatening to rain all day and it’s probably 75 degrees out.  Add that to the smog and you’ve got a great recipe for a sticky Ted.

Tuesday night (the night before the conference started) I went to the pre-conference dinner, which was in the Yakuza-feeling restaurant on the top (86^th) floor of Taipei 101 (a wicked tall building – the world’s tallest building from 2004 to 2010; surpassed by Burj Khalifa).  On the limobus ride there, we passed a Mountain Hardware store and another outdoorsy-type store in the same block.  I dropped a pin on the map of my (work) iPhone so that I could find them later.  Fortuitously, the pin is not far from where I am right now.  I’m going to head over that way in a few minutes to check the stores out – maybe someone there can give me a suggestion as to which mountains are nearby and climb-able.  That’s my plan for Saturday.

That’s it for now:  my coffee’s almost done and I should probably start looking for a place to pee.

And so ends the first day of the Asian Corporate Governance Association conference for me – almost.  Good lord, I’m exhausted.  I know it’s 6:20PM, but I think part of me still thinks it’s 6:20AM.  I was up at 4AM (local time) this morning – wide awake.  I manged to get my ass back to bed after moving around a bit, and was sleeping relatively soundly this morning.  My alarm went off at 6:30 and I was glad of it, but I still rolled back over and slept a bit more.  Got up at 7:35 and emailed my 7:30 breakfast appointment that I’d be late.  Breakfast at 8, the conference started at 9, and here I am at the end of the day.

It’s been a good day; I’ve learned a lot.  I’m kind of shy, so it’s tough for me to walk up to people and introduce myself.  Which I’m not really doing a whole lot.  A few people have started conversations with me and I’ve been successful at keeping them going – I think I’ve made good impressions on that front.  I’m not going to beat myself up too bad for not tapping everyone on the shoulder and introducing myself – I’ve done that a few times in the past, often with less-than-favorable results.  The key to doing that (in my opinion) is to not only have conversation-starters, but conversation-continuers.  Even so, some people simply don’t want to be approached.

I’m pretty self-sufficient, though, so standing alone isn’t all that hard.  I don’t get any kind of crazy anxiety (like I once used to) that I should be talking to every single person there and making all kinds of new friends.  Call it a cop out or an excuse, but I’m going with the “quality not quantity” approach.  I’d really like to meet more potential clients, but there simply are not that many here.  The guidebooks I’ve read about doing business in Taiwan suggest that the best way to find new clients is through a third party introduction.  I’m doing ok on that end – the people whose cards I’ve thusfar acquired will be in a position to introduce me to potential clients later on down the road.  The plan right now is to lay groundwork for future interactions and sales efforts.  I can’t expect to do it all this week (i.e. go back to the States with new clients and contracts).  Business isn’t done that way in Taiwan anyway – it’s a long process.

So yeah, I’m almost done for the day.  I’ve got to head back over to the other hotel now for the gala dinner from 7 to 9PM.  Should be interesting.  And, at the very least, the food here is superb.  More coffee, please.

We’re in the Great White North now, flying just over the Northeast corner of the Hudson Bay.  12:22 left in the flight – hours/minutes, that is.  34k feet, 1621 miles traveled so far.  We’ll be landing in Hong Kong (still 6640 miles away) at 7:14PM local time.  I’m not going to say that I want a cigarette right now because that will get me thinking about having a cigarette and I can’t have one for AT LEAST another 12 fucking hours.  I’m glad I haven’t gotten cranky yet.

I don’t really know what to say, dear reader.  It’s 7:01PM, according to my netbook and body clocks.  I’m in business/first class and the seats are pretty nice.  I’ve got the window seat and the woman in the aisle seat next to me seems pretty selfish.  That’s just a vibe, though.  She just ran to the bathroom and is taking some pills now, so I figure I’d better go take a leak soon, in case those are sleeping pills she’s taking.

[REDACTED]

My Polyanna gut says the door opened and closed so quickly because someone’s watching out for me – there’s something better in the works, and that any kind of relationship now would be me taking my eye off the ball.  And the total pessimist part of me says that THIS is the story of my life; THIS is what the psychic in Sedona didn’t want to tell me about – and why she was so sad for me:  that I’m going to spend my life looking for and being open to love and never find it.  Fuck me, if I’m the one who picked this fucking karma, I want to go back in time to that place wherever I was before I returned to the wheel and kick my own ass.  This fucking blows.  Can a honky get some love??  Just a little?  Not fucking hope “which springs eternal” – that shit’s for sissies and idiots who don’t know the difference.  For fuckers who’ll drink the sand.

And I’ll tell ya, dear reader, this morning in the shower I was begging out loud for an opportunity to drink the sand.  Hope.  Bah.  Bunch of care bear bullshit, if you ask me – and even if you didn’t:  I don’t care.  Hope is for pussies.  And I’m dying for it.  Me.

Sure, I know what I want.  But right now it feels like I’m in the middle of the desert a million years ago, talking to some bushman who doesn’t speak English, telling him that all I want in the world is a cherry red convertible 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz:  not only does the guy have no fucking clue what the words are that are coming out of my mouth, there’s really no way I’m going to find that particular Caddy in this particular desert at this particular time.  Like, it doesn’t exist, man.

Fuck, I’ll take a single-speed messenger bike, if it’ll love me back.

Those are probably shitty analogies.  I guess the way I feel (vis-à-vis finding love) right now is more akin to being in a shitty little local used car lot, looking for a particular make and model that’s only manufactured and distributed overseas.  “Yeah, Citröen – with an umlaut.  Over the ‘o’.  Yeah, an umlaut – like two little dots over top of the ‘o’.  Know what I’m talking about?  Do you have one?  In the back?  Yeah, cool, let’s go check it out. . . No. . . no, that’s a dog.  I’m looking for a car.  A Citröen.  Yeah the one with the dots.  Never mind.”  Even the short walk around to the back of the lot was enough to get my blood pumping in anticipation; the thought that maybe I’d found what I’ve been looking for, or at least might be getting closer.

6363 miles left to go.  To Hong Kong, that is.

About halfway there now.  It’s 10:34 in the AM in Hong Kong.  We’re over the arctic, it seems.  3534 miles into the flight.  Yeah, the little plane on the screen is totally enveloped in white – we’ve passed Alaska and the Bering Strait.  Another 8 hours and 37 minutes to go.  I can’t wait to have a cigarette in Hong Kong.

So yeah, if something went wrong at this point, even if we didn’t all die in the crash, we’d sure as hell freeze our asses off in about 5 minutes out there in the presence of Mother Nature.

I just finished reading William Gibson’s Virtual Light.  It was ok.  Nothing special.  It’s been forever since I read Neuromancer, but I remember really digging it.  Possibly because it was really the first cyberpunk book I’d ever picked up.  I finished Count Zero last night, which I thought was pretty good as well.  Much better than Virtual Light.  Gibson seems to be a bit hit-or-miss.  Not much to Virtual Light, in my opinion.  Gibson’s style cuts both ways – in this case, the choppy, disorienting way he writes didn’t serve to plant seeds of thought that there’s a deeper meaning behind each of his words:  I mean, that vibe was there, but for this book, after a while I just didn’t care what those deeper meanings might have  been.  That style really only works when the author actually explains some of the definitions of the terms of art he/she is using.  Maybe one out of five or ten would work; one out of three background stories hinted at.

We’re over Russia now.  It’s 1:30AM ET, 1:30PM HK time.  We’re supposed to land in Hong Kong at 7:12PM local time.  3144 miles left to go.  I started to watch The Last Airbender, but it was horrible.  Way too much of a kids movie for me.  The A-Team was ok.  A couple of parts where I had to stifle a lol.

I’m torn between staying up for another 6 hours – basically pulling an all-nighter – and trying to get a few hours of sleep.

[REDACTED]

597 miles to go.  6:05PM; still on schedule to arrive at HKG 7:15AM.  Breakfast was pretty good.  7710 miles traveled so far.  I’m on the right-hand side of the plane, and we’re basically coming South into Hong Kong right now, so I’m watching the sun set out of my window.  It looks like a sunrise.  The land below is in darkness – every once in a while, I see small clusters of lights, but my first impression was that we were flying over water, even though we’re well inland.  The cloud formations are beautiful and diverse.  There are a couple of fireworks shows going on below – I wonder why.  Heck, there’s a whole bunch of ‘em.

I think it’s about time I shut this thing down and pack my stuff up.  We’ll be landing in just about an hour.

“It’s okay,” she says.  ”It’s okay.  You were just dreaming.”

That’s how it starts.  Every time.

Then she tells me, “You were screaming.”

I don’t remember screaming.  But maybe I was.  Maybe that journey between sleep and waking is so much that I can’t help but scream.  Maybe it’s just that long.  I look up.

I’m lying down, my head is cradled in her lap.  She’s naked.  So am I.  I see her face, somehow rightside-up, even though that’s impossible from the way we’re positioned.  She smiles at me and pulls a lock of hair off my forehead in that tender way that only lovers can.  We’d recently made love, though I don’t remember it.

She has almost-black eyes and auburn hair and round brown nipples that are always taut – as though in anticipation.  I don’t know what color auburn is.  I just know that’s the word that comes to mind when I look at her hair.

She calls herself Mama Legba, and so does everyone else.  I call her Jane, because that’s her name.

The words are always the same, but the forms differ:  We’re not always in bed or at home.  Sometimes we’re in an apartment; sometimes a house; sometimes on a cabin porch.  But she always tells me that it’s going to be okay and that I was screaming just before I woke up.

That’s how I know I’m dreaming.

We sit at the breakfast table, still naked because it’s always that perfect in-between season here, freshly-made omelets, coffee and grapefruit juice in front of us.  I don’t remember her cooking, or even walking over to the table, for that matter.

But here we are, at home, just finished with breakfast.  I’m washing the dishes and placing them on the drying rack and she’s humming some Bach as she putters around, never far from me.  I don’t remember eating or even being hungry.  She can make the most exquisitely soft and dulcet sounds with her vocal cords.

“Jane,” I say.

“Hmmm?”  Still humming.  No break in the melody.

“Why don’t I remember eating breakfast?”

She stops humming.  Our eyes meet.

And I wake up.  Screaming.

Every time.

I’ve been to every damned headshrinker on the East Coast and a handful of psychics in Sedona and nobody can tell me why I always wake up screaming and why I’m never hungry.  So even if you think your explanation is crazy, doc, lay it on me.  I’ve heard ‘em all.

I’m headed off to Taiwan for work this Sunday.  I’ll be at a conference on Wednesday and Thursday in Taipei, and I have appointments set up with former clients of mine on Tuesday and Friday.  I hope to bring these clients with me to my new firm and make some connections so that I can bring in a few more clients over the next couple of years.

Mucho gratitude to my friend and regular international traveler Scott Ireland a.k.a. WinterWarlock for being so generous with his time and advice with me this morning.

I cleaned up my kitchen a bit this evening.  I started by doing the dishes that have been sitting in the sink for what seems like forever.  Funny thing, I felt much better the second I turned the water on and got my hands wet.  You see, I’ve been pretty stressed lately:  I have what seems like too many things to do and not enough time.  I’ve got half-started/half-completed lists all over the place, and it’s been exceedingly difficult to get started or stay working on any one particular project – I can’t seem to shake the feeling that I’m wasting time on the particular task upon which I’m working because there are so many more pressing and important tasks to be completed.  So I switch projects.  And the feeling doesn’t change.

I’m having business cards printed with English on one side and Mandarin on the other.  I’m using the traditional Chinese characters instead of the simplified characters because Taiwan is ROC, not PRC.  The printer and translator wanted to do the cards in simplified characters, but everything I’ve read makes me think that the traditional characters are the way to go.

I’m a stickler for being culturally correct.  I like the stress that Asian cultures put on honor and being polite (or at least that’s how it seems to me).  Being an avowed American and capitalist on the outside and an idealist and romantic on the inside, I kind of have the feeling that I’ll be very comfortable in the culture of Taiwan.  We’ll see; no need for me to spend so much time projecting.  I just have a thing for being proper and so (it seems) do they.

I’ve been working longer hours than usual and coming home to basically veg out with a book for a couple of hours before heading off to bed.  Here and there, I’ve been getting a handful of errands run before I get home, but once I’m back at my place, that’s it.  I’m done.  I’ve been turning my computer on only out of habit; turning it off unused a couple of hours later when I rack out.  The shorter daylight hours are starting to affect me, I think, so it’s probably time to get back in the habit of using my light box in the mornings.  I still can’t make it to work at 8:30 (not that that’s my starting time anymore), even at the new firm.

Things are going pretty well in the new gig.  I have an office.  Let me repeat that:  I have an office.  With a door.  That closes.  It’s fucking glorious.

The COO got his dander up a couple of weeks ago about our firm having a General Counsel.  And guess who’s on the docket (no pun)?  You betcha:  yours truly.  When I get back from Taiwan, I’m going to press the issue a bit more strongly.  The firm is going to pay for a bar exam review class (and the bar exam fees) and I’m going to get my license to practice law (probably just in NJ) and new business cards that say ‘General Counsel’.  Two years with that job title and I can do fucking anything.  Not that I can’t do fucking anything right now, but it’ll sure be a nice feather in my cap.

This past Sunday I did a 23 mile hike of the Escarpment Trail with Debbie Melita, Valerie Accardi, Ronnie Cusmano and Bill Winterbottom.  It was pretty sweet.  I was a bit nervous because I hadn’t strung together that many miles in quite a while, but I made out ok.  I stayed towards the rear of the group for the first two-thirds or so, and got out in front to keep our blistering pace going for the last 5 miles or so.  We were really cooking the whole time.  My feet were a bit sore at the end, but that would have been remedied easily enough by taking my boots off and letting them air out once or twice more.  It was really more moisture than anything else.   We completed the hike in about 11.25 hours, starting off with headlamps and ending before the sun went down.  What a gorgeous day!  And believe you me, dear reader, the company was to die for.

So my fitness level has been constantly on the rise over the past few months.  I hope to get some hiking done in Taiwan while I’m there.  I wanted to climb the tallest peak (of course) Yushan, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.  One needs a permit (which are only given by lottery) and a minimum hiking party of three.  I have no problem driving by myself in the HOV lane, but I kind of think this is different.  Plus, it looks to be WAY too far from where I’ll be staying in Taipei to make for a doable day hike.

November is National Novel Writing Month and I need to get my ass in gear for NaNoWriMo as well.  wtf.

So that’s it for now.  942 words is all you get from me tonight.  I’m off to bed.

On my hike last weekend I bumped into a bear.  I was moving pretty quickly and didn’t see him.  He turned around and shoved me.  ”Watch where you’re going, dickbag,” he said.  I thought it was a bit weird that a bear was talking to me, but I excused myself politely and, stepping aside, attempted to pass him on the trail.  He stood up, stepped in front of me and called me some unmentionable names, not letting me pass, despite my apologies.

Then he put his paws on my chest and shoved me again and I thought that this was just plain uncalled for, so I drew my knife.  The big one.  A couple of coyotes were cris-crossing behind the bear in a semi-circle, yapping encouragement to him.  ”Fuck ‘im up, the little tramp!”  ”Fucken ‘ikers, ai can’t stand ‘em.  Let’s eat ‘is bones.”  Strange that they’d be speaking Cockney – and a drunken version at that – I thought in the back of my mind, but kept my eyes on the bear and his overlong fingernails.  Claws, I guess.

I spread my legs a bit, with my right foot just a bit behind the left, and pointed my forehead – my third eye chakra – at the bear.  ”Let me pass,” I said steadily.  ”It was an honest mistake and I’ve no wish to fight you.”  My left hand was loose and my right gripped the handle of my knife, its point toward the ground.

Wrong thing to say to a bear – don’t ever be the first one to mention a fight.  Especially not –

“Fight!  We’ve got a fight!” shouted the referee off to my right.

Referee?  Seriously?

“Really?”  I said.  ”A referee?  In the woods?”

“Yup,” said the fucker, “it’s on like Donkey Kong; you just fucked with the wrong bear on the wrong trail, and I’m the one who’s going to make sure this is a fair fight,” continued the referee, “so drop the knife.”

Without taking my eyes off the bear, I turned my head toward the referee, then quickly flicked my eyes across its countenance.  A fucken panda bear.

Of course.

“I’ll do no such thing,” I said.  ”Look at the size of him.  And besides, I’ve admitted my wrong and already begged his pardon.  He’s been nothing but rude from the get-go and I just want to get by.”

At this point, the git coyotes jumped me from behind.  One grabbed my left shoulder with his mouth and the other my right wrist.  Instead of fighting it, I used their momentum, allowing the inertia to bring me down to my right knee (which landed sharply on my trekking pole – should’ve dropped those).  I crossed my right hand across my chest, aiming the point of my knife just above my shoulder, and let the weight of me and my pack fall as hard as possible on the ribs of the coyote latched onto my right wrist.

The point of my knife missed the coyote on my left shoulder, but it gave him enough of a fright that he let go of me, and so did the one on my right wrist.  I heard a couple of that one’s ribs snap as I landed atop him, the one on my left now standing on me.  I lunged at him and buried my knife in his bony chest, just to the left of his sternum.  He jumped back off the knife with a yelp and ran the fuck away.  I doubt he made it.  The other one sure didn’t, because I reversed my grip on the knife and probably stabbed him fifteen times before I got some blood in my eye and jerked back.

“Whoa,” said the bear with an astonished look.  ”You’re gonna fucken get it now, sissy-boy.”

And he came at me, while I was sitting on my ass, breathing hard and bleeding in two places.

I glanced over at the referree, but he was messing around with his iPad.

I scrambled back a bit and found my feet after untangling them from my trekking poles.  Really should have dropped those when this all started.  The bear lunged at me with his teeth and I just barely dodged to the left to avoid getting something bitten off.  He probably went another ten yards behind me before skidding to a halt, at which point, I was already high-tailing it down the trail, running as if my life depended upon it (which it did).

Then the goddamned panda referee came out of nowhere and shoulder blocked me into a big-ass pile of rocks along the trail.

At least, it seemed like a pile of rocks.

The pile shuddered and growled.  ”Watch what you’re doing, fuckhead!” it said in the deepest and gratey-est voice I’ve ever heard.  I looked up and yeah, it was a fucken dragon, pissed off with a forked tongue and smoke coming out of its nostrils and everything.

“Shit.”  I said.

Which was the wrong thing to say – dragons don’t like profanity, unless it’s them using it (they think they’ve got some sort of verbal monopoly on cuss words).

“What did you say?” the dragon rumbled.  I stammered something incoherent as the dragon’s eyes flicked over my shoulder at the two bears.  ”Yo!  Rufus!  James!  Que pasa, fuckheads?”

I turned around and the bears bowed politely.  ”Just taking care of some business, Nic,” they said.

***   ***   ****

So yeah, Saint Peter:  that’s how I got here.  Pretty fucked up, don’t ya think?  Anyway, I’ll just be on my way now – I’ve got to get to work on Monday and I’m supposed to hike with Heather and Tom tomorrow.  So yeah, the halo and wings are nice and all, but you can have them back:  I just bought these hiking boots and they’ve been doing me just fine so far.  No, I don’t think I’ll be back anytime soon – most of my friends have appointments downstairs anyway.  Peace out, bruvva.

So I’ve been re-reading Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged for the last couple of weeks.  I’ve been reading John Galt’s speech to the world for the past few days – it’s like forever long, just like I remember it.  I think the book would be much better if it were maybe 20% as long as it is.  Well over 50 pages, I think.

Anyway, I had a conversation with my coworker this afternoon that could have been part of the book:

For the last six weeks or so, Kerry and I have been working from some rented office space in Lyndhurst (next door to the firm at which we used to work, which is kind of ironic).  The space we’re renting is in the offices of a small-time staffing agency:  their main client is the call center at our old firm.  The agency doesn’t deal with high-class staffing projects; they basically just supply warm bodies.  The agency has two full-time employees and I think they both make a decent living.  Yesterday and today they held a “job fair” (advertised on craigslist) and the calibre of applicants has been characteristically low.

Kerry turned to me and said something along the lines of “I feel really bad for the middle-aged people who come in to interview for such crappy jobs, don’t you?”  And I replied, “yeah, I suppose, but not really.”  Kerry then told me I’m a heartless robot, which I took as a compliment, given the nature of the message of the book I’m currently reading.  The successful entrepreneurs and captains of industry in Atlas Shrugged are described almost word-for-word in the same manner by the looters.

I’m not calling Kerry a looter by any stretch – she’s a hard worker and doesn’t ask for any favors, which I appreciate (and is the main reason why I enjoy working with her).

My feeling on the unfortunate situation of the overqualified middle-agers applying for $13/hour call center jobs is certainly one of empathy, but it’s a short-lived empathy:  there’s nothing I can do about it, so I don’t see any reason to feel it more than in passing.  The feelings that matter to me are the actionable ones:  feelings I can do something about.  There’s nothing I can do to help those people.  And, on the flip side of the Golden Rule coin, were I in their shoes, I wouldn’t expect anything in particular from me.

***   ***   ***

My dreams last night were strange.  In the first one (that I can remember), I was at my parents’ house and they were moving away – joining a cult or something.  My brother was going with them and I think my sister was on the fence.  I was all over their house and property, trying to convince them that they had things of value that they couldn’t just leave behind.  They were like “take anything you want; we’re outta here.”  There was a HUGE old sailboat of dramatically strange and appropriately surreal proportions that my sister and I discussed using to get away from whatever evil it was that had taken over my family (and the rest of the families on the block – probably even the whole town/county/area as well).

I remember going back and forth between trying to convince my family that they were making a mistake  and digging through their stuff, looking for a stash of gold or something that I could take.  So I was halfway hopeful and halfway resigned to them leaving on their fatal fool’s errand.

I don’t really remember what happened, only that I had this profound sense of evil – enough so that I eventually woke myself up to get away from the feeling (I more or less knew I was dreaming the whole time).  I spent the next few minutes awake in my bed, partly waiting for the feeling to pass and partly trying to let enough time go by so that I wouldn’t re-enter that particular dream.

My ex-wife was in another dream later that night/morning.  I saw her across the stage:  she was walking towards me and greeting me as though we were old friends who hadn’t seen each other in a long time.  It was very strange.  I think I reluctantly observed the forms, but I knew that her whole comportment was a facade.  This is not to say that she was concealing any enmity towards me:  the facade merely covered blankness.

This second part is relatively easy to interpret:  the possibility of contact with my ex-wife came up in an email conversation (with someone else) last week, and I was looking at some pictures on facebook of a friend we have in common (also last week) – I declined to comment on the pics because of the possibility of accidental contact with my ex-wife.

Now, I don’t have any particular ex-wife fear-of-contact issues, but I’m certainly not going to go out of my way to set the stage for the possibility.  I have no desire to see her or speak to her again – which is not to say that it will never happen.  So that’s that for that part of the weirdo dreams.

The thing with my family is also not-so out of the blue:  everyone works together at the family business and business isn’t all that great.  My younger brother and sister are both adults, but they’re also the children in that extended multi-person relationship, so decisions are being made for them that they really should be making themselves, and that’s perfectly natural for the overall relationship.  The thing is, I don’t think that this is right – I don’t think it should be perfectly natural for the overall relationship.  I don’t think it’s particularly healthy.  I won’t get into the specifics here, but that’s the evil that I felt bubbling up from within me during the dream.

So, to bring this full-circle:  it’s pretty easy for me to let the unactionable empathy I feel for the overqualified middle-agers pass quickly by, but when my heart goes out to my family members, it’s a bit harder to let go.  My empathy is only relatively unactionable:  I can take my sister out to eat or to a concert or something, but I can’t give her a higher paying job.  Nor can I buy her a house or pay off the note on her car.  But still, I feel like I should be able to, and that’s the frustrating part – the feeling that I can’t (or won’t) let pass over and through me.

I suppose I’ll have to dwell on this some more – because thinking solves problems, right?

A month or more ago, a friend of mine said to me “hey, I checked out your blog.”  Cool.  “But I don’t really think it’s for me – I mean, unless you’re a hardcore hiker, it seems kind of tough to relate to.”

 I was like, “wtf!  I don’t ONLY write about hiking, and I’m not even that hardcore!”  (My voice rose in pitch, stressing that last word in an expression of incredulity.)

There are hikers out there who are much more hardcore than me.  A lot of them.  And I write about all kinds of stuff here besides hiking – don’t I?

Well, maybe not tonight.  I know it’s been a while, dear reader; I’ve missed you too.  Work is crazy busy.  I think I’m over my puppy craze/fetish, though I’m still getting daily emails from petfinder with cute pics of pit bull puppies – nearly all of which I’d like to adopt immediately so that I can run around town and the woods with a cute fuzzy little pack.  Maybe next year.

Last weekend was a good weekend.  I hiked both Saturday and Sunday and called out of work sick on Monday.  I really was sick – it started on Sunday morning with a sore throat when I got out of bed at 5AM.  I’ve had an abundance of snot all week long.  It’s been glorious.  I think I’m just about over it, though.  I’m trying to figure out what to hike this weekend.  Monday is Columbus Day, but I don’t have the day off, so an extended trip is probably out of the question.  Still, I’m running out of degrees on the thermometer at night – pretty soon it’ll be too cold for this skinny honky to be doing much sleeping in the woods – so I should probably get out there for those full-weekend trips while I still can.

Saturday I hiked with SoloJoe Whalen and his buddy Patrick Monaghan.  [Apologies to Patrick if I just butchered his last name.]  We climbed Balsam Lake Mountain and then bushwacked over to Graham and Doubletop, finishing at the Seager parking area.  The whole hike was about 10 miles and a lot of fun.  I don’t think a whole lot of people take that route and string those three mountains together.  Here’s the tracklog over at EveryTrail. 

BLM, Graham, Doubletop 10-2-2010

We all had a pretty good time.  These three mountains made 6/39 for Patrick’s 3500 Club patch, and I think he’s definitely been bit by the hiking bug.  I posted the trip report from the forum before this post, so you can scroll down and skim through it if you like.  Here’s the linq to the forum post, if you want to read the comment thread.

Sunday morning Scott got to my house around 5:30 and we headed off to the Upper West Side to pick up Debbie Melita and Valerie Accardi and head up to the Cats to meet our furry friends Iske and Lily, who brough Heather Rolland and her husband Tom Moeller because they have opposable thumbs and can drive a car.  I dropped Scott and the girls off at the base of Friday Mountain on Moon Haw Road and drove over to Woodland Valley Campground to meet Heather and Tom, leave the SUV I rented there, and drive back to Moon Haw with them and the pups.

We headed up Friday (one of the tougher bushwacks in the Catskills), had lunch at the summit under wary eye of the cansiter and then bushwacked over the Dink and picked up the trail near the summit of Cornell Mountain.  Then it was up and over Cornell, up and over the Wittenberg and down to Woodland Valley.  We made it out just as dark was falling.  Here’s a linq to the tracklog over at EveryTrail.  And here’s a linq to Heather’s trip report over at the forum.

Friday Cornell Wittenberg 10-3-2010

Friday is always a tough bushwack:  there are all kinds of cliffs and ledges that must either be skirted or climbed.  We had to boost the dogs over a few of them, which was kind of scary for me at points.  Rather early on in the hike up Friday, Scott blew his shoulder out – like snap, crackle, pop, omg-did-you-hear-that kind of a blowout.  He soldiered on for the rest of the day, but is still in a lot of pain and probably out of the hiking game for this weekend.

The bushwack from Friday to Cornell is a route that most people don’t take.  Heather and I spent quite a bit of time planning it (which consisted of looking at the map and saying “yeah, it totally looks doable – if the pines are really thick, though, it’s gonna suck”), with Heather doing what internet research she could – she really didn’t find a whole lot.  Mostly people saying “yeah, it’s really thick in there.”  So making it through that section was a pretty cool accomplishment.  If you’re looking at the map above, you can see the red line at the bottom where we went up the lady of the mountain’s right leg, then banged a right to skirt across the area just above her vagina, went over three bumps, and then started going down.  Well, the section just after the right turn (north) was the tough part:  the next bump is the Dink (her belly button), the bump after that is Cornell (her left hip) and the third one is the Wittenberg (her left hand?).  I need to touch her boobies (Slide Mountain) this month for my October grid.

Anyway, it was a very fulfilling day.  As always, hiking with Heather and Tom and the pups was a treat, and it was great to meet and get friendly with Debbie and Valerie in the woods.  They’re both hardcore backpackers – Debbie has about 1,200 miles of the AT done and Valerie has about 900 done.  Debbie has a few articles in Backpacker magazine, so she’s relatively famous.  I didn’t find that out until about halfway up Friday. 

Overall, the Debbie and Valerie story is a feel-good one:  they were both in the same area of the Adirondacks that I was about a month ago – Debbie commented on one of my facebook pics.  We’d been fb-friends for a while (once upon a time (and back when facebook let you do this), I friended all the chicks who were fans of the NY/NJ Trail Conference), but didn’t really connect until about a month ago.  Debbie sent me a message last week inviting me to go on a hike of the Escarpment Trail, which I had to decline because I was already booked for the weekend.  We ended up exchanging emails for the rest of the week and I invited her to come on our Friday-Dink-Cornell-Wittenberg hike.  It couldn’t have worked out better.  I’m looking forward to the next opportunity to hike with Debbie and Valerie.

So anyway, that’s what I was up to this weekend.  It was a good one.

I’m kind of torn as to what to hike this weekend.  Maybe I’ll buy that 20 degree bag I’ve had my eye on and sleep in the woods this weekend – but which woods?  I have 20 mountains left to climb in the Cat35 in October for my grid, but I’d also really like to keep moving on my ADK46 list (30 to go).  We’ll see; I have all day tomorrow to figure it out. 

It’s bedtime for me soon.  Hopefully I can sleep away the rest of this cold and be fresh for the woods this weekend.

BLM, Graham, Doubletop 10/2/2010

We met at Seager at around 8:30, left my car and took Patrick’s car to the PA on Mill Brook Road and headed south on the red-blazed Dry Brook Ridge Trail, banging a right onto the (also red-blazed) BLM Trail.  We spent a few minutes up at the fire tower; Patrick and Joe went to the top, while I was content with taking a picture of the Blackhead Range (or is it the Black Dome range?) from between the treads about three levels up.  I’m afraid of heights.

We also spent a few minutes in the fire tower cabin, chatting with the day’s tender Doug, who also happens to be Laurie Rankin’s cousin.  He was extremely friendly and I commented to Joe and Patrick on the way back down the trail that when the zombie apocalypse hits, I definitely want Doug in my army.  Then I thought about how much food it would take to keep him happy and was nervous for a second, but figured that from the woodland camo he had poking out under his khaki shirt, Doug can probably feed himself in the woods.  And me too.  So (as long as it’s ok with you, Laurie), DIBS ON DOUG.

We found the turnoff for the old woods trail to Graham and took it (thx again, Doug, for the good directions).  I’d never been up Graham this way (always via Seager), and thought that the trail used to be a road, so I was expecting it to be wider.  Not that I’m complaining, because it was certainly a breeze getting to the summit of Graham.  Just shy of the summit, I found a .22 bullet with the nose-piece worn off, so I spent a few minutes at the summit banging it with a rock in an attempt to put a hole in the old radio tower while Joe and Patrick ate their lunch.  The bullet didn’t go off, so I figure it must have been a dud (which was probably why it’s previous owner discarded it).  It’s now suspended above the (lit) balsam-scented candle on my desk next to my laptop, but still han’t gone off.  =/  Weird.

When we headed off the summit of Graham, we followed the southwestern spur for a bit and ended up losing elevation a bit too far to the north (NB: when the dude with no sense of direction (yours truly) says “hey! I’ve been here before; let’s go this way,” check your compass first.  No big deal; we basically just worked our way around to the left and went across the flattish area around 3100-3200 feet and headed down Graham with Doubletop in view most of the way.  Patrick had never been bushwacking before, so we all had a good time messing around and finding routes down the little ledges of Graham.  I really dig coming up that side of the mountain.

We hit the notch between Graham and DT pretty much perfectly and followed whatever that line is that goes between the two summits and shows up on my gps.  Maybe it used to be a trail or something?  Joe and Patrick mentioned a couple of times that this particular bushwacking trip felt as though we were on a herd path for most of the way, and I had the humility not to mention what an excellent bushwacker I am.  A few hundred yards from the summit, we turned over the nav to Patrick and he took us like a hound dog right to the can.  That made 6/35 for Patrick.  Congrats, brother.

On the way down from the northern summit of Doubletop, we were all surprised at how far the herd path led – I’m going to guess around 300 yards or so.  We played a bit of hide-and-seek with it, mind you, but luckily the bushwacking on Doubletop isn’t the hide-and-go-f*ck-yourself kind.

Our plan was to basically follow that northern spur down to the intersection of the yellow-blazed Seager-Big Indian Trail and the woods road (by the bridge), but we ended up wandering off that spur to the right and hitting the woods road farther up (south) the Dry Brook.  We followed the woods road for a bit and were stopped by the height and speed of the water where the road crosses the Dry Brook at the junction of the Shandaken Brook.  We had to head back upstream and cross the Dry Brook first and then the Shandaken before we could get back onto the woods road.  It was an impressive piece of stream-crossing (with very little foot-wetting), if I do say so myself.

The other three water crossings along the trail back to Seager were relatively uneventful – for one of them, I think we used the same downed tree that I used back in March when SoloJoe took those chippendale pics of me. Yes, ladies, I’m single.

So that’s it.  Three more for the grid for Joe and I and Patrick is three more peaks closer to his 35R patch.  It was a beautiful day and hiking with these two gentlemen was a really great way to spend it.

35R #1819/733W
CHH: 41/102
Grid: 95/420 (15/35 for October)
ADK: 16/46

Normally, I like to save the pages from my Zen-a-Day calendar to which I’m particularly attracted.  However, in tearing off the page two Thursdays ago, I accidentally tore the page in half.  It’s been sitting on my dresser in two pieces for a while now and I’ve thusfar been able to resist the urge to just throw it away.  I’m going to do so now.  But, by way of closure (and so I don’t actually lose the words), here it is:

Behind a temple was a vine with many squashes growing on it.  One day a fight broke out among them, and the squashes split up into angry groups, making a big racket.  Hearing the uproar, the head priest went outside, saw the quarreling, and scolded them:  “Hey!  Squashes!  why are you fighting?  Now – everybody do zazen.”

The priest taught them how, showing them how to fold their legs and sit up straight, and as the squashes began to follow the priest’s instructions, they calmed down and stopped fighting.

“Now,” the priest said, “everyone put your hand on top of your head.”

When the squashes felt the top of their heads, they found something attached there, which turned out to be the vine that connected them all together.

“What a mistake!” the squashes said, realizing their predicament.  “We’re actually all tied together, living just one life!”  From that moment on the squashes never again fought.

Scraped from College Humor.

Ok, so I’m sorta tired, but not necessarily in the physical sense.   If you’re just tuning in, I posted the trip report from Saturday’s night hike below.   You can also find it here at the forum, if you want to read the comment thread of chop-busting.

I’ve been thinking about getting a puppy lately.  A pit bull puppy, because pits are the kind of dogs I like to rescue.  The ones that really need rescuing are 1-3 years old, but I’ve done that before and don’t know that I have the time or inclination to teach an old(er) dog new tricks.  I’m still boarding Laila Jo Connolly as well, so I don’t need the added stress of a dog that might not be cat-friendly.  A puppy, I believe, would be ok with the cat – or at least learn how to be after a couple of claw-swipes on the nose.

I’ve never raised a puppy before, so every dog I’ve ever had has always been someone else’s dog first – and if they became my dog, chances are that person didn’t treat the dog particularly well beforehand, because the only dogs I’ve ever had have been rescues (mostly pits).

I posted a few weeks ago that I was thinking about getting a dog.  I mentioned this in conversation to my friend Laurie, who later emailed me (during the course of our separate email conversation) a link to the Ramapo-Bergen Animal Refuge with the name of a dog she had been considering adopting.

Now, I never look at “dog porn” because I always end up wanting to adopt pretty much every damned dog I see.  But I couldn’t exactly be like “yeah Laurie, that’s a cute dog” without actually looking at the picture.  Well, I ended up stumbling upon the cutest little pit bull puppy EVAR (named Ripley) and figured he was perfect.  So, before doing anything rash like calling the shelter at 1AM, I emailed my sister a link and asked her for her opinion.  Katie responded that he’s the cutest thing evar and that I should definitely adopt him – so I told her that I was serious and not to f*ck with me on this one.  Katie responded that she doesn’t joke about sh*t like dog adoptions and that I really should look into adopting Ripley.  I called that afternoon, but he had already been adopted.

So I then spent too much time looking at dog porn at work, emailing links back and forth with Katie and Kerry (a girl who works in my office and will one day be my work spoose).  So now I’m all dog porned-out and really don’t know what to do.

I won’t get into all the messy details of the cute little puppies I’ve been looking at – you can go to petfinder.com yourself and cry your eyes out too, if you’re into emotional masochism – like I am, apparently.  I’m torn.  I’d really like to get a puppy – one that will grow up to be a big strong dog who can come hiking with me and share in all the fun I have – but I’m not sure if it’s the best idea or not.  And my mind is so mobius-twisted about the whole thing that I don’t know up from down, straight from crooked.

I’m sure that I’d be a good human to a dog – I’ve had dogs before and know how to take care of them (I’m going to leave the sappy emotional stuff out of this post – you can read between the lines for that – because this is a manly-man’s blog where everyone has Y chromosomes except for my readers); I know how much responsibility is entailed in adopting a dog – especially a puppy.  The thing I’m torn about – and this (if you promise not to call it melodrama) goes to the very core of my existence – is that I don’t know if I want to add that particular element of responsibility to my current life or not.

Getting a dog means I place it before work on the priority-scale.  That means I have to be home at more regular hours than I usually am – I have to touch base regularly to take the dog out.  I have no doubt that I can do this, but I’m not sure if it’s the best idea for me work-wise right now.  Rationally, getting a dog probably isn’t the best idea.  Right now I’m extremely mobile and my schedule is incredibly flexible.  If I need to stay in the office from 8AM to midnight, I can do that.  But is this really a good thing for me?  Would having that particular type of responsibility in my life put things more in perspective, work-wise?

My new gig is a good one and I’m making a lot more money than I did at the last one – which means that if I do things right, I’ll be able to pay off my student loans quicker than before.  And I’m all about unloading this debt.  Do I think that having choosing to adopt a dog will ruin this in one fell swoop?  No.  But I do think it’s a slippery slope:  what’s next on the list of things I’ll place before work on my priority-scale?

Thinking non-rationally for a moment, having a dog is an immense source of joy in one’s life.  And, as much as I am loathe to admit it, I’ve been pretty lonely for the last few years.  Rationally, the answer is (seemingly quite obviously) to just put more effort into internet dating – join Match.com, send more emails out on the sites to which I already belong, go to new grocery stores and laundromats and hit on chicks there.  But I’ve not done a very good job of any of these things so far, have I?

Another thought would be that if having a dog would make me happy, I should do that because I’m more likely to be successful if I’m happy than if I’m lonely.

There are plenty of other non-rational arguments – such as I’d really like to have a dog – but I’m not used to giving much weight to non-rational arguments.  So I’m in a total quandry; a pickle, if you will.

Any thoughts?

Night Hike: The Black Dome Range

I received a text from FatVegan Friday morning that said “I feel a night hike coming on. I know you do too.”  I was like “no . . . I feel like working to pay for my hiking gear is bullsh*t and that I want to go back to bed.”  I said this in my head – not via text, because the place at which I work as satellites in the sky that track what I text, but not what I think – at least, not when I’m wearing my tin foil brain-wave dampener, which I never remove.  Not even during sex.

But, being the gracious hiking partner I am, I finally assented to a night hike – after effing with Scott’s head for as long as possible about whether I would or would not go.  Truth be told, the deciding factor for me was this trip report.

We left the jerz around 10PM and signed in at the register at the end of Big Hollow Road around midnight.  We then proceeded up the red-blazed Black Dome Range Trail for about fifty yards, turned back around to be sure we were going the right way because we really thought we should be on a yellow-blazed trail, realized that we’re idiots and do this every time we leave from Big Hollow Road, reset the GPS so that no one would know we’d backtracked because we’re held in such high regard as infallible expert hikers on this forum, and began our ascent a few minutes later.

I wanted to head south on the red BDR trail and bang a louie (that’s slang for ‘left’, no0bie lurkers) onto the yellow-blazed Batavia Kill Trail and climb Blackhead first so that (a) the tracklog would show the two (trailed) approaches to Blackhead from BHR and (b) so that we could see if there were any naked chicks at the lean-to.  But we didn’t end up doing that. We took note of the sign as we passed it, but didn’t take the turnoff and ended up heading up the red BDR trail between Black Dome and Blackhead.

So we climbed Black Dome first, headed over to Thomas Cole, then back over Black Dome and up to the summit of Blackhead. Scott’s dumbass did most of this hike with his headlamp off. It was a gorgeous night – the moon was just waning from full and the clouds were passing swiftly across it.  It was an on/off clear night – I think the little bit of cloud cover actually helped reflect some additional light onto the countryside.  We were able to pick out Acra Point, Burnt Knob and WHP, as well as the silhouette of the Devil’s Path in the distance.  We saw some UFOs and had a brief encounter with the Visitors, but I won’t bore you with recounting our time-travelling adventures and how we (yet again) saved the universe as we know it from certain destruction at the hands of evil energy-beings bent upon the destruction of freedom and the american way.

The air was still and warm at the lower elevations, but we caught a cool breeze around 3200′, which grew into a decent blow once we hit the summits.  I really love the sound of the wind at the top of a mountain.

We took the yellow-blazed Batavia Kill trail down Blackhead and linked up with the BDR trail after passing the lean-to.  Alas, there were no naked chicks in the lean-to, but we were sure to make bear noises as we passed it, just in case.  We were back to the car at around 5AM and back in the jerz around 7:30.

Here’s the trip over at EveryTrail.

So that’s it.  Three more for the grid.  I think that also makes 11 after dark for me, though I’ll have to check on that.

Listen to me, n0obie lurkers (you know who you are):  Don’t try this at home.  I know you don’t have the Black Dome Range at home, but you know what I mean.  Night hiking should only be attempted by dashing handsome gentlemen with more experience in the woods than you have.  It helps if you have a goonish vegan hiking partner, but if you’re not dashing, handsome and a gentleman with more woods and navigational experience than you currently have, DON’T DO IT.

Saturday was the Warrior Dash on the ski slopes of Windham.  I participated.  My apologies if you jumped to this site after reading the post over at the forum, but I haven’t had a chance to write much else since then.  If you’re not here from the forum, then you might not know that the ski slopes of Windham are actually on two mountains called Cave and West Cave – not Windham High Peak.  Here’s the post over at the forum, if you want to read the other members busting my chops in the comment thread.

Cave & W. Cave 9/18/2010

My heat/wave/whatever was at 1PM. I arrived around 10:30 or so, picked up my packet, wandered around for a bit and sat in the adirondack chairs next to some slightly toasted dude who didn’t shut up for the fifteen minutes I was there. M*sshole – go figure. The whole setup was as much a festival as it was a race. Actually, probably more so. There was a big stage with a band and a bungee jumping thingee and giant turkey legs and weirdos in costumes and all kinds of other cool stuff designed to make a drunk college kid wet himself in public.

So anyway, I watched a couple of waves go out ahead of me (on the half-hour from 8AM to 5PM) and decided that I definitely did NOT want to start in the middle of the pack (and people started lining up in the “chute” just after the last heat left). So at 12:15 I took a jog down to the bottom of the parking lot and back (because I wanted to be sweating at the starting line) and headed into the chute, threading myself up toward the front.

When the fireballs flew to send our wave off up the mountain, I hit it at a brisk pace – for the first 1/4 to 1/2 mile or so, I was probably the number 4 or 5 guy up there (there were chicks racing too, but they hadn’t started to pass me yet). The first mile and a half is up the ski slope. I think my jog only lasted for about 1/2 a mile (and yes, I might be embellishing right now, but I’m allowed to do this, as it’s MY TR ) before my chest simply couldn’t contain the awesome power of my lungs as they bellowed in and out in an effort to provide my meat suit with enough oxygen to not expire.

So yeah, I hiked the rest of the uphill part. BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT I DO (hike) AND I’M AWESOME AT IT. Maybe 15 or so people passed me on my hike. It was actually kind of nice, because I pretended (in my head) that I was old like mudhook and Halia & Flammeus and called everyone ‘whippersnappers’ (in my head) as they went by. Of course, because I’m such an awesome hiker (way awesomer than manofaltitude, btw), not that many people passed me, and I even passed one or two people who were ‘running’ up the hill.

The first obstacle was the tire run: maybe a dozen or fifteen tires by a dozen or fifteen tires (bungeed together). I ran over the top of them. I learned back in HS how bad that high-stepping crap sucks, so I wasn’t about to do it here. After that, it was a bit more uphill and we had to jump over a couple of wooden barriers that were about chest high (for me). Easy enough. Then we went uphill some more (shocker) before we had to crawl through these big plastic tubes. Nothing special.

Then began the downhill. I was pretty happy with the pair of trailrunners I bought for this occasion: they really held the ground well. And the ground was mainly wet grass, mud and wet rocks. I bought a pair of the Montrail Masochist model. I asked the girl at Campmor if they had the Sadist model too, but she just looked at me funny and asked for my number. We have a date at the goth club in Newark on Thursday night. I passed quite a few nervous-looking people on the downhill sections. I also credit the long hours I’ve spent in the Catskills, trying to keep up with FatVegan’s nutjob way of flying down the mountains like sticks and stones won’t break his bones. Passing those effers really felt good.

More running after that. Did I mention that running sucks? And then we had to wade through this 20-yard long pool of freezing cold water. My testicles STILL won’t talk to me. I think they’re going to be nestled among my small intestine for the rest of the winter. The water was waist-high, then chest-high, then I couldn’t touch the bottom. Freaky. I took a couple of breast-strokes (not that kind, pervert) and frog-kicked a few times, but swimming this thing really wasn’t an option. So I did that floaty-hop thing to the side, where the water was only as deep as a little bit over my waist. I did the rest of it that way. It was about 75/80 degrees outside that day and I was kind of down on myself for wearing the Under Armour cold weather spandex stuff (top and bottom), but when I got out of that water, I realized (once again) that I might possibly be the smartest human being in this miserable little solar system of yours.

After that it was more running (downhill, thankfully) and guess what – they gave us cups of water after that. Belie-dat-sh*t. I drank two. Parenthetically, and relating back to the earlier self-wetting remark, I remember thinking that either the water section or the part just after would be the perfect time to pee myself, but I didn’t really have to go and I don’t know that I could anyway, because I was running. Making it harder to pee yourself: yet another reason why running sucks.

So after that, there was a sh*tload of sidehilling (which ALSO sucks) and a couple of other obstacles not really worth mentioning – we ran over some planks across a ditch (easier than a log across a stream) and up and down some stuff. I took the short way up and down the cargo net thing because it’s a RACE, not recess. At the very end, we slid (face first) down this big slip ‘n slide, ran a couple more yards downhill, jumped over two rows of duraflames (this is where our pics got taken, so I hammed it up for the cameras I couldn’t see, per my drunk Bostonian friend’s suggestion), and then we crawled in the mud under barbed wire for 20 or so yards. There was definitely mud there, but I didn’t see any damned barbed wire – and there was no tracer fire over our heads or marines getting their heads blown off next to me, so I was nonplussed overall with this particular obstacle.

Anyway, at this point we were deemed muddy enough and only had to run another fifteen or so steps to the finish line where they handed out ‘finisher’ medals. I think I lost mine. It’s probably in my car somewhere. They gave us free water and bananas afterward, of which I partook.

My time was 36:26.10 (that’s an 11 minute mile, folks), and I placed #836 overall (out of 6,202), 139/753 in my age bracket (men 30-34), and 725/3677 of all the men competing.

Definitely not a stellar time, but I also hate running. Because it sucks. I’m happy with my performance, though. I did what I set out to do, which was burn it as hard as I could from beginning to end. I also think I managed the course pretty well, which was due in large part to my hiking experiences and the support of you good people here on the forum, without whom I never would have looked longingly at Cave and West Cave mountains and think how badass I would be if I were to climb those after having run this race.

Sadly, that was not to happen, as I got a wicked bad cramp in my left calf (which subsequently turned into a muscle pull) about 20 minutes after the whole thing was done. Still, I would have loved to have climbed those mountains on Saturday. Oh well, another time.

So yeah, running still sucks. You don’t have to go out and do the R&D – I’ve already done it for you.

Here’s the trip over at EveryTrail.

35R #1819/733W
CHH: 41/102
Grid: 86/420 (3/35 for September)
ADK: 16/46

Heartfelt thanks to everyone who will be helping transport RedCloud up to Heather this weekend.  I’ll be taking care of the NJ legs and am looking forward to having a dog ride shotgun again (if only for the day and unless he decides to sleep in the back).  Thanks especially to Chris Shammel and Shannon Baranoski, who emailed/facebooked me with offers to help.

Tomorrow (technically today) is the Warrior Dash up at the Windham ski area – a 3.2 mile race up and down the mountain with 9 obstacles and lots of mud.  I think I signed up for the 1PM heat, but it might have been the 11AM one (can’t find the initial confirmation email and they never sent me another), so I need to get my ass in bed like NOW.

Work is busy.  Life is good.

Peace out.

Who lives on the East Coast and wants to help with an underground railroad dog rescue?

RedCloud is a Belgian Malinois who needs help being transported from Jacksonville FL to Olivebridge NY this Saturday and Sunday.  The Jersey and DC legs of the trip have been filled, but we need help getting him through the deep south (Saturday).  If you’re a dog person (or know someone who is) and can help, please contact me at QuixoticJedi[at]gmail[dot]com (or facebook me or whatever) and I’ll put you in touch with the transport coordinator.  Here’s what’s open right now:

Naked before me, she bore her soul upon a string
And handed it to me, requesting innocently that I carry it and care for it for all time.

“But it’s a string,” I said.
Won’t it break?

“Don’t worry,” she said.  ”It’s enchanted.”

And I believed her.

So yeah, this week’s shaping up to be a busy one.  Plenty of stuff going on at work, and given the fact that the new firm is basically a start-up, that’s a really good thing.  I sort of have some issues with having to deal with cleaning up other people’s messes, but I won’t bore you with that right now.  I don’t really want to re-hash that stuff anyway.

I went to Barnes & Noble last night and bought three books, because I’ve been dying for some good fiction.  I ended up just leaving them on my banister and pulling Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged off the bookshelf at home.  Sure, I’ve read it before and I remember quite a bit of it, but it’s been a while – probably 10 years or more since I last read it.

If you haven’t read Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead, you don’t know what you’re missing.  Duh.  I mean, how could you know what you’re missing if you haven’t read them?  I may not be the king of tautologies, but I should probably check in every now and again on foursquare – I might at least make mayor.

Both books are feel-good reads for the capitalist or individualist in you.  Or, at least, they are for me.  Reading even a few pages makes me want to get up and go to work in the morning and kick some ass.

So that’s what I’m going to try to do tomorrow.  Well, get in a bit earlier than 9:30, at least.  =)

Here’s my trip report from Saturday’s hike.   I don’t want you to think I haven’t been writing, dear reader.   I just haven’t been writing very much here.  Lots of email correspondence of late.  I normally write for an hour or two each night – yup, you guessed it:  right before I go to bed.  So sometimes you don’t get to see my words.  I’m sure you’re surviving without them.

Alien Landing & Anaconda Sighting on SW Hunter 9/11/2010

This weekend I decided to make my cat, Laila Jo Connolly, jealous and hang out with Iske & Lily in the Catskills. This naturally entailed spending some time with Halia & Flammeus. Flammeus was laid-up with a Level II Ankle Sprain, so FatVegan & I hiked with the eagle but not the owl.

We met at the Becker Hollow TH’s PA at 8:15AM. Parenthetically, I’d like to announce the FKT from Ridgewood NJ to said TH: 1:34:03.14159 – I’ve checked both VFTT and Wikipedia and have not been able to find a faster documented time. If any of you lurker n0obs belong to the NY State Police force, I am, of course, just kidding.

We signed in at the TH – Scott and I using our real names, as our trail names for one another tend to be somewhat vulgar – and headed up the blue-blazed Becker Hollow Trail, passing beneath the still-hanging widowmaker and giving it a good shove for luck and no rain. Instead of turning right onto the yellow-blazed Hunter Mountain Trail (which leads to the fire tower), we continued on to the west-facing ledge and to bag the view. It was glorious. Halia (hereinafter “Heather”) pointed out some of the viewable peaks – Peek and Table, Panther and Giant Ledge, Roundtop and KHP and Hurricane Ledge, the Burroughs Range, etc., and explained that three of the peaks form a constellation that looks exactly like a woman in repose: one being the side of her hip and the other two being her headlights. I found this to be a pretty exciting revelation and asked Heather and Scott to continue on while I “took some pictures” with my iPhone. They obliged and I now have the nagging sensation (not unlike that feeling of forgetting something) that I should be keeping my iPhone under my mattress. I’m sure it will pass.

I caught up to Scott and Heather as they headed south on the yellow-blazed Hunter Mountain Trail, and we all turned the corner onto the red-blazed Devil’s Path together. We made a right and stopped to put out the embers in the fire pit at Devil’s Acre lean-to (again – it seems that Scott and I are honorary sometime-weekend fire putter-outers at this particular LT. The LT is in sore need of a broom. Maybe the Catskill 4000 Club can donate one?

We continued on to make a left at the unblazed but very clearly defined (by cairn at the TH) and well-maintained Leavitt Mountain Trail along the old railbed. Scott and I were tired from the navigation-intense hike and, being ardent feminists, suggested that Heather lead us to the cansiter. She did a bang-up job of leading the bushwack and we all signed in to the canister a few minutes later.

We retraced our steps on the way out and had a nice conversation with a couple of fellow hikers back at the DALT, who were enjoying a couple of Coors tallboys in the shade of the LT. None of us said anything about their Timbos and Keds, because we’re Stewards of the Catskills and have to act the part. Besides, the dude was wearing a Yankee jacket and we’re damned Yankees too.

Realizing that Heather was going to be late for work, we kept the conversation short and boogied on up to the fire tower. On the way, with Scott and the dogs in the lead, we passed a massive anaconda that tried to bite my head off with its jaws of evil death. The dogs being oblivious and Scott being vegan, they walked right over it, but when Heather spotted it, she bravely (and properly, to her woods cred), yelled “Snake!” and shoved me into the underbrush before it was able to wrap its deadly coils around me. As I lay cowering in the dirt, she spoke Indian to it in a firm tone (like Native American Indian, not subcontinent Indian) and it slithered off the trail. At this point, Scott had rushed back and was able to place a vegan curse upon its back with his fingers. He says it will bond with the nearest tree and become completely non-violent within a fortnight.

When I finally stopped shaking and had managed to clean most of the poo from my Louis Vuitton hiking pants with my biodegradable trail money, Heather explained that it was, in fact, just a little garter snake. I thought it had markings more akin to a timber rattler, but Heather explained that garter snakes aren’t just black-and-yellow, but rather that god paints them in many colors, because Allah loves wondrous variety.

And so, with a strident cry of “To the trees!” we headed off to complete our journey to the fire tower.

There were a handful of people there when we arrived and Scott and I got busy opening the windows and such in the cabin, while Heather opened the fire tower itself and did her interpreter-thing. We spent the next several hours at the summit. Scott and I deputized ourselves deputy tenders, which basically entailed telling people that it was ok to walk into the cabin (when they were tentatively poking their heads in), as long as they don’t try to make soup. We brandished also brandished our big knives when unnecessary or when someone asked a question that wasn’t answered in either Heather’s training or in the interpreter’s handbook. Nobody reported seeing any fires, so we figure we did a pretty good job.

I only heard one person say “OMG! YOU’RE Heather Rolland – like, the author! I thought you’d be taller.” (and they literally said ‘OMG’, not ‘oh my god’ – I have no idea how they got the hyperlink into the statement), but my bionic hearing was on the fritz that day, so it’s possible that it happened more than just that one time.

At this point, I’d like to take the time to publicly thank the Catskill 400 Club for donating the toilet seat in the privy at the summit of Hunter Mountain. It was incredibly warm and clean when I availed myself of it. No reading material, but that’s ok because I’m a fast pooper.

Scott took a nice long nap and Heather and I pored over the VO map hanging on the wall of the cabin, trying to come up with hikes that would be painful enough to cause us to find another pastime. We think we have a few good ones for the winter, so don’t quit the forum yet.

On the summit, I also spent some time flipping through the menu items on my brand-new Garmin 60CSX, trying to figure out how on god’s green and beautiful earth the data fields were reading an average speed of 500-something mph and that we had traveled well over 3,000 miles so far. I have come to the tentative conclusion that Iske and Lily were sent by an ancient alien race to study humans, and that at some point during the hike they used their alien magic on us to put us to sleep and transport us to another dimension – about 2,994 miles away – where they would be better able to observe us. Putting together the facts from the movie “Earth Girls Are Easy” and the prodigious amount of time Iske spent making out with me on the summit (don’t hate), I am confident enough in my hypothesis to announce it publicly and willing enough to back it up in a duel with laser swords.

We headed back down around 4:30 or so and met Flammeus (who we simply call “Tom”) and Maya and Caitlin at Brio’s in Phoenicia for dinner. We noticed Snickers’ car in the parking lot and were delighted to see Cindy and Brian in the restaurant – freshly showered, as always – so we plunked our stinky asses into chairs at their table (well, we’re pretty sure Tom’s, Maya’s and Caitlin’s weren’t stinky as they appeared to be recently showered as well). We all had a lovely dinner together, at which Cindy extolled the virtues of the BLM fire tower and suggested that Scott and I might like to volunteer to become fire tower tenders as well. We responded that we’re still researching the topic (Red Hill and Tremper have already made very generous offers and Overlook as been courting us for some time now, but we will, of course give preferential treatment to forum members and 3500 Club compatriots).

So yeah, that was our day. Two more for the grid and a wonderful time spent with other 3500 Club members and random visitors to the fire tower. Scott didn’t get to consecrate the fire tower in the name of Lord Shiva the Destroyer, but that’s only because I forgot to bring the salt and entrails. =/

Oh, and Laila Jo wasn’t the least bit jealous when I got home. Here’s the trip over at EveryTrail, btw.

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about getting a dog.  I don’t think I will; my lifestyle isn’t really conducive to having a dog – I’m usually away from the apartment for 12-14 hours in a row each day.  I mostly just sleep here and spend some time on the internet or reading just before doing that.  When I was married and lived in DC, we did pit bull rescue – at one point, we had six dogs in our two bedroom apartment.  I’m not thinking about six dogs – just one or two.  Puppies would be nice:  I’d like to watch them grow, and I like dogs in pairs – they can be friends and entertain each other by taking turns chewing or peeing on my stuff while I’m not there.  Puppies would probably go well with Laila Jo (my resident cat-ward) – she’d be large and in charge.  Older dogs (especially terriers) would probably make her life a living hell, and being a dude who’s walked in the front door to a dead cat (killed by one of the dogs), I’d rather not repeat that experience.

[On a brief karma note, a couple of days after coming home to the dead cat, I came home to a dead dog - the same one that killed the cat was killed by one of the other dogs, who happened to be a very close friend of the cat.  Kinda shitty memories, those.]

I saw that video on YouTube today of the merengue dog and it just about brought a tear to my eye.  I really wanted to scratch and hug that dog and give it all kinds of love for about fifteen minutes in a row after watching it do that dance.  The smile on his/her face during the dance was awesome!

My friend Heather Rolland is getting a new dog to grow up with her current dogs Iske and Lily.  I’m not necessarily jealous, but I sort of wish I were getting a new dog too.  My parents have three dogs:  Diesel, Radar and Riggs.  Diesel and Radar were rescues of mine from DC – they’re both mutts.  Diesel’s a big guy - well over 100 lbs – with that telltale pit bull blockhead and radar is some kind of weirdo terrier.  He probably weighs about 80 lbs.  Radar was the dog at the shelter that they couldn’t give away – hell I couldn’t give him away.  After my ex-wife and I had him for a while, we fostered him out to this old man, who brought him back to us after like two weeks.  He’s a sweetheart that I guess only we are able to love.  Both are my parents’ dogs now – they haven’t been with me in a good long time.  They’re still happy to see me when I visit, though.

Riggs is my sister’s dog – a little black terrier who tips the scales at maybe 40 lbs.  He’s a total asshole but everyone loves him anyway.  He lives with my parents as well, though my sister recently moved back home for a bit, so he probably qualifies as her dog again.  My brother lives with his dog Clyde:  an all-white pit bull of the purest and most badass-looking kind.  John’s not a particularly good human for his dog, so instead of being the incredibly handsome specimen he was when I rescued him, Clyde’s now a fat sack of shit with cysts all over him.  He’s still a sweetheart, but – much like my brother – is literally a bull in a china shop:  he’s absolutely not an asshole and has decent manners, but he’s not well trained at all.  A 100-something ball of fat and muscle is no fun to take on a walk – especially not when it involves going down a flight of stairs.

I’ve read a bunch of posts on the hiking forum about people hiking with their dogs, and I love meeting dogs on the trail.  Hell, I love hiking with dogs too.  Another reason why I’ve been thinking about dogs lately.

I mostly like big dogs – pit bulls and mastiffs.  I’m a big fan of mutts and I believe wholeheartedly in dog rescue.  I’m not a big fan of pure-bred anything, the first statement of this paragraph notwithstanding.  Labs are ok, but everybody loves them – I’d rather be human to a dog that needs the love.  Little dogs kind of piss me off.  I like the look of blue heelers, but shepherd-bred dogs (especially cattle dogs) can be a pain in the ass around other dogs. 

So anyway, we’ll see.  I’m not really planning on getting a dog right now; I’m just saying that the thought’s been crossing my mind lately.

Marcy, Haystack, Basin, Saddleback, Yard, Big Slide

Linqs: Thursday, Friday.

I can’t believe it’s Thursday night and I’m just now sitting down to write a TR about hikes from last Thursday and Friday. I’ll keep this short – not because I can’t remember back that far (accident with some chemicals in college), but because I’m tired and want to go to bed (where I can dream of my pretty, pretty lists).

I took last W-F off from work and headed up to the Adirondacks to get some fresh air and clear my head and find some peace in the world via silence and maybe some physical pain. And mountains. I love those.

Drove up from NNJ on Wednesday, parked at Garden, and hiked in about 3.4 or so miles to the Wm. G. Howard lean-to, arriving around 5:30PM. I knew I was in the right place when I saw this:

I mean this:

I packed about three days of food, as I was not sure when I’d be coming out of the closet I mean woods. There were already two bedrolls in the lean-to when I arrived, so I shoved them into a corner and claimed the rest of the lean-to for myself by peeing out a big rectangle around my territory. At about 9PM, I saw some headlamps coming down the trail – I figured they were either my bunkies or that Yellow-Yellow et al. had finally figured out the flashlight thing. I put on my camo greasepaint, pulled out my flat black KA-BAR and lay in wait for them while smoking a cigarette where the fire pit used to be.

They turned out not to be bears, so I had to talk English for a while, which was a bummer because I’d been practicing my Canadian all week long. The two who came up the trail were none other than Wally and Annette, whom I’d never met before and who are also not members of this forum, so they don’t have cool handles like the rest of us. They were pretty cool people, though, and we stayed up for a while and told bear and hiking stories (I stayed silent for the bear part because I don’t yet have any of those and I don’t like to tell fibs to strangers – ok, that’s a lie).

Thursday morning I hit the trail around 7AM and was on the summit of Marcy by 10:30. I had the summit all to myself, so I took a few pictures and vids. I didn’t think to strip down naked and run around the summit with a rubber glove on my head yelling “I’m a squid! I’m a squid!” until I was about halfway back down the mountain, but I did call my sister Katie to say hi. I was somewhat disappointed that I didn’t meet a summit steward =( as I really wanted to ask how to get to Roostercomb and Hegehog.

On the way up Marcy, I took care of some much needed trail maintenance by removing all of the spiderwebs with my face. No, there’s no need to thank me, that’s just what I do. I see it as my contribution to the hiking community.

I went back down the way I came up Marcy and headed up the trail to Haystack (via Little Haystack), stopping briefly to put some moleskin on a hotspot on one of my feet. Again, I had the summit to myself, and again, I stayed clothed. I also descended this mountain via the way I ascended, prompting me to think that everyone who’s ever said they did a “Great Range Traverse” wasn’t really traversing at all, but rather doing a series of out&backs.

Yes, my goal for that day was a full “traverse” and, no, I did not complete it – opting instead simply for a tough hike and some friendly conversation along the way (as well as the general relaxing feeling of having nowhere to go and all day to get there). Betwen Haystack and Basin, I stopped at the Haystack Brook to refill my water receptacles. Aside from the Johns Brook, that was really the only water worth pumping I saw all day – and if I hadn’t bumped into this guy named Dan from Brooklyn-via-DC, I probably would have passed right by it: the brook was barely ankle deep and maybe a foot or two across at the most. I hear we’ve been having a dry summer.

I chatted with Dan for a bit and headed up Basin with him. This was his first time in the ‘dacks and he was hiking with a full pack. I thought he did admirably well on his ascent of Basin. At the summit, we met a guy named Dennis, who was staying at JBL, and whom I had passed that morning on the veranda of said L on my way to Marcy. I chatted with Dennis for a bit at the summit of Basin and headed off to Saddleback.

There’s one section of Saddleback just before the summit that entails some hands-and-feet climbing that really scared the crap out of me. It was well marked and I didn’t see another way up the rocks, but I felt like I was in some twisted game of Twister, trying to figure out where to put my hands and feet. I was sorely tempted to go back and tell Dan not to attempt it with his big pack.

After Saddleback, I headed down the trail between that and Gothics, passing Ore Bed LT on the way, and then to my LT. I was sore and tired; it was a good day. I must have sweated out all the caffeine in my system, because I had a very strange headache for the last couple of miles that was only cured by a cup of coffee at the LT. Addiction can be rough sometimes.

I talked into the night with Wally and Annette – Wally’s been hiking in the ‘dacks for well over 20 years and we traded lots of stories. He told me that our talk made him feel like old times – that something’s different about the LTs without the fire pits; people don’t seem to be as friendly or ready to converse – and that made me feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside.

I slept in on Friday morning and made my way up Yard and Big Slide, starting around 10:30AM – still sore from the day before. On the way up Yard, I met a nice threesome of long distance runners, so I of course felt pressured to display my woods cred and stay ahead of them. I arrived at the summit of Big Slide about half an hour before they did (we all snuck off the trail to tag the true summit of Yard), so everyone here in the forum can be proud of me for showing their n00bie *sses how real hikers do it. Hard, fast and uphill in the woods. At the summit, I pointed out several of the visible peaks that I recognized and made up the rest. They were very impressed and I told them all about the wealth of knowledge on this forum. =) I also said it was ok for them to just lurk and not actually post – I hope that’s cool with everyone here. We all walked down Big Slide together; I turned off at my LT to pack up my big pack and head out, and they went straight for Garden.

On the way out, I met a cute forest ranger named Grace and we chatted for a bit. Thankfully, she was too slow with the bow saw to actually bring the large branch she was cutting down on my head, and I even managed to slip her my number while she wasn’t looking (I’m also a ninja, btw). I dropped all the names of forest rangers that Wally had mentioned to me in our previous conversations, so that I could be sure that Grace would be duly impressed with my impressive woods cred. She hasn’t called yet, but I figure she’s just being coy – which I find to be wicked sexy. Had we but world enough and time, I’d continue this TR and regale you with my adventures on the hike back to the PA, but I don’t want to scare anyone away from hiking in the Adirondacks.

So, to end on an up-note: I’m still single and all you ladies reading this can tell your girlfriends that I’m rich too.

35R #1819/733W
CHH: 41/102
Grid: 84/420 (?/35 for September)
ADK: 17/46