“Listen asshole…”

I punched him in the mouth. 

Never met him before:  just didn’t like his tone of voice.  I don’t remember if he was talking to a lady or starting to pick on some dude smaller than he, but I’d like to think it was probably one or the other.  Truth is, I really don’t remember the surrounding circumstances all that well. 

He didn’t go down like they do in the movies:  he needed help to get on his back.  The knuckle sandwich set him back a bit and, I suppose, put him off balance.  I shoved him hard in the chest, just as his eyes were beginning to widen, and kicked him in the shin of the leg that wasn’t planted.  In retrospect, I think I got lucky, as he was a lot bigger than me and I wasn’t really aiming for anything in particular.  His feet tangled up and his back hit the floor a second later.  To my eyes, this all happened very slowly.

I was on him as soon as he hit the deck.  I grabbed his adam’s apple with my left hand, squeezed like I was going to pull out his trachea – I think I was actually trying to – and slammed the heel of my right hand into his forehead a couple of times.  The back of his head hit the wood floor each time I did so.  Again, luck was on my side:  I think if the floor had been concrete I would have done some real damage.

Ha.  “Real damage.”  The guy was in the ICU when I woke up in the jail cell.  Turns out he was a cop.  In a small town.  The town where it happened.  How I ended up in the state police holding cell, I have no idea.  Just lucky, I guess. 

I was pretty banged up myself.  This blood on my shirt?  Yeah, I don’t know if it’s mine or someone else’s.  My side hurts real bad when I breathe – in or out – and I don’t even want to know what my face looks like.  I can feel holes in my mouth that my teeth occupied only hours ago.  I had a hard time getting together the manual dexterity to zip my fly after I pissed blood all over the toilet and the floor of the cell.

Don’t ask me why they let me go:  I don’t know. 

All I know is that the state bear who shoved me out the cruiser door onto this here stretch of highway told me that the cop’s buddies were already looking for me, and that the state police would start doing the same in the morning.

I really don’t remember much else.  Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.  I promise I won’t give you any trouble – I don’t think I could, even if I wanted to. 

Please, just let me ride with you until we get out of state. 

You will never know the world aright till the Sea floweth in your Veins, till you are Clothed with the Heavens and Crowned with the Stars; And perceive yourself to be the Sole Heir of the Whole World; And more then so, because Men are in it who are every one Sole Heirs, as well as you.  Till you are intimately Acquainted with that Shady Nothing out of which this World was made; Till your spirit filleth the whole World and the Stars are your Jewels; Till you love Men so as to Desire their Happiness with a thirst equal to the zeal of your own.

-Thomas Traherne

Hoo boy, do I have a long way to go.

No, I haven’t finally figured out how to post photos.  Below is Scott’s first guest-post.  At his request, I’ve corrected some spelling and punctuation – otherwise, it’s directly from Scott’s keyboard to your eyes:

Ok so I’m going to rant this is my first maybe my last rant on this here blog.  Why do I get to rant here ‘cause I asked.  Sure Ted was in the woods with me and my new razor sharp knife when I asked but I’m sure he would have said yes anyway. That’s what friends are for.

“I’m so fat” yes these three words bring my blood to a slow boil.  I hear it all the time from women yes lots of times beautiful women but when I hear “I’m so fat” a lot of that beauty goes out the window. I know the most appropriate response is “no you’re not”, but when I was a little younger and a lot bolder my response was “ya you are” if only in an attempt to stop this behavior.

So you’re fat big deal change it or get over it.  And news flash not everyone likes a skinny chick sure if you let the brain washing that goes on on tv do its job all girls should be skinny blond and have a fake orange tan.  Which to me is gross.  It’s only a meat suit people (yes my meat’s made of veggies). Not everyone likes what’s protrayed as sexy I for one like a woman.  I like curves and for the most part curves don’t come with the body of one who strives to look like a 13 year old boy.  Sure I know guys who like em real skinny disgustingly so in my eyes and I know guys who like em real big.  Me I like em all but prefer curves.  So no matter what you look like rock it.  ‘Cause all women can be sexy but confidence is a true trademark of a real woman.  So when you say I’m fat ur giving up a 1000 sexy points.

I myself have been 135 pounds and 240 pounds and always found someone to love me, but it was more important for me to realize it’s a meat suit I wear for a little while and that’s it, as long as I like me.

And what the hell is with all this plastic surgery the hand of God is steady and true maybe ur supposed to look like that.  I’ve never looked at a woman and said hey she should put some plastic in that chest and I’d like her more, not once.  I like women real women.  Never said “maybe if she pulled the skin on her face real tight and her eyeballs where jumping outta her skull” nope it ain’t me and if someone needs you to do that find someone else they are out there.

You ever see seemingly mismatched couples walking down the street, “I know everyday”.  Holy shit maybe she likes large men with pony tales or maybe he likes girls with bad teeth and I dig it, every ship has got multiple docks go pull into your fucking happy harbor.

If anything I have said offended you deal with it.  Unless you want to talk about it over some veggies then give me a call.  We are all fucking snowflakes deal with it but we are all made of the same fucking snow.

If you want to reach Scott, you can email him here.

“Just write.”  Is what the psychic told me this afternoon.  It’s been quite a while since I’ve had my cards read – I think the last time was in the summer of 2008 in Sedona. 

And I think that psychic told me to write as well.  The psychic in Sedona also talked about my “spirit guide” (that I should give my will over to him) and the psychic at the Ren Faire today told me to follow my “holy guardian angel(s)”.  Interesting.

But yeah, in my conversation with the psychic today – RozeLisa is her name (and I shall henceforth refer to her as such) – she said I should write.  I said, “Write what?  Like work stuff or fiction or what?”  And she said “I don’t know, just write.”  So yeah, here I am writing.

When I started this blog, I posted every day for about a year.  Then I started to take a few days off here and there, and eventually I got to where I’ve been for the last few weeks – probably averaging two posts per week.  Man, do I hate bloggers that post about blogging or their blog-habits – almost as much as I hate blog posts that start with things along the lines of  “sorry I haven’t posted in so long…”

So that’s enough situational reference for me.

Today was a good day.  I woke up, showered and hung out with my brother for about an hour before Katie and Scott arrived (in separate cars) at my house.  We shot the shit for a bit, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, and headed off to the Renaissance Faire.  We met Heather Rolland (yes, the famous author), her husband Tom Moeller, her daughter Maya and Maya’s friend Chelsea at the Cock ‘n Balls Bull just inside the gate, and headed out to explore for the day.  While we were at the knife-throwning show, Christine (Laila Jo’s mommy) and her b/f Ryan called me to say that they had arrived.  I wandered over to the Kissing Bridge to pick them up, waited a few minutes and recieved a text that they were at the stage where the knife-throwing show was.  So I sauntered back over that way.  By that time, our cousin Danny and his girlfriend Pauline had arrived.  I think.  Maybe they got there sooner.

After the show, we rolled out – 12 deep - to check out the rest of the Faire.  It was a good day.  As is commonly done with a group that large, we split up into smaller cells and did things separately, occasionally meeting up to discuss what booty we had gathered or things we’d seen. 

As we were wrapping up with the card reading, RozeLisa gave me her card and I gave her mine – pointing out this web address and stating that this is where I predominantly write.  She noticed that my card says Wyckoff on it and I explained that I live in Ridgewood.  RozeLisa then said that she’s opening up a shop in Ridgewood – about a block away from my dad’s store, as a matter of fact. 

I think I’m going to see RozeLisa again in a couple of months – I don’t think the Ren Faire is the place for me to get psychic readings anymore: it’s too busy; too many people.  Whether it’s taxing on a psychic, I couldn’t say, but I don’t see how that kind of a situation wouldn’t be.  Plus, I can’t imagine that the tarot cards have that much of an opportunity to be cleared of the last person’s energy and fully accept mine with such a high turnover rate of clients.

I think that next time I’ll ask RozeLisa if we can use her future-seeing cards, instead of the ones that read the recent past – most of the stuff that came through the cards had just happened to me in the past couple of weeks.

No real luck to speak of on the “will I find love” question (at least not from the cards).  I’ve sent out a couple of emails on okCupid in the last week (no responses, but that’s t be expected).  RozeLisa said that I should probably get out more, and that I should basically man-up and make my own decisions and be confident in them – that they’re the right ones.

I’m in a pretty good head-space right now:  I didn’t really have any particular questions in mind when I sat down to have my cards read (which probably explains the lack of granularity in the reading).  I’ve been making my own decisions and following through with them, and I feel comfortable that they’re the right ones.  Mercury is in retrograde for the next couple of weeks, so I’ll be careful with my communications and try not to misread anything.

I’m taking Wednesday, Thursday and Friday off from work this week and will spend that time in the Adirondacks, bagging peaks and sleeping in the woods.  Right now, it looks like it’s going to rain the whole time.  I’ll bring my raingear.  I’m looking forward to the time alone.  I’ll reflect and get centered.

November is National Novel Writing Month, so it looks like this is my year to get on that.  Any novel suggestions?

What’s that, you ask (dear reader)?  Why, the awesomeness, of course.  Neither my sister Katie nor I forgot to bring the awesomeness to the Apocalyptica show last night.  Which was very important, because whoever put the show together did just that.  Forget to bring the awesomeness, that is.

Oh, Apocalyptica rocked the house in a typically bodacious manner – starting off with covers of Master of Puppets and Seek and Destroy.  When Katie and I saw them last year, there were a helluva lot more people taking care of the James Hetfield parts of the song.  This year, it seemed like we were two of a very few who knew the words to these Metallica songs.  We were also in the minority insofar as we also own the new Apocalyptica album (7th Symphony), which was released yesterday.

After the two covers, they went right into the stuff from the new album – which is pretty good; I need another few listens, but I can say at this point with confidence that the album overall is worth listening to, and a couple of the songs thereon truly rock.  It’s not ridiculously different from their last album, but that’s not a bad thing – Worlds Collide is an excellent album.

But back to my point:  Apocalyptica played for just an hour – from 10:30 to 11:30 (doors were at 8).  The last time we saw them, they played for at least two hours (which, in my humble opinion, is about average for a headlining band).  I think what happened was that the opening act Dir En Grey stayed on the stage longer than they were supposed to.  They were a decent choice for an opener, but listening to them for two hours was not why I bought tickets.

Dir En Grey is a five “man” Japanese group – two guitars, drums, bass and lead singer.  I think they sung in Japanese and I’m not really sure that they played their own instruments.  Katie remarked that one of the guitarists was only in the band because of his pretty hair.  I can’t really say that I found any one of them to be particularly talented.  As a band, their music was relatively cohesive and I’d say they have a certain “rock star” quality to them, but the music was a bit disjointed for my tastes.  And having to watch them for two hours of it was bullshit.  Needless to say, I felt free to go pee and smoke a cigarette while they were on stage.

</rant>

Apocalyptica was pretty excellent, as usual.  For one of the last songs, they even brought up Adam Grontier of Three Days Grace to sing I Don’t Care (from Worlds Collide) – and he did a splendid enough job that I was prompted to spontaneously yell “don’t kill yourself, emo scum” after the song ended.  [Yes, I'm wondering if something spontaneous could be prompted too, dear reader.]  In any case, I really dig that song.

The other dude they had up on stage to sing two songs from 7th Symphony really needs that metal surgery – and I’m not talking about adamantium, dear reader:  I mean the kind where he actually gets some metal in his blood, like maybe mercury or something.  I had a hard time even throwing up short horns for that queer.  And now I feel bad for associating his wussy-ass with all my homosexual friends.  Please forgive me this transgression, but I’m pretty sure he likes it in the pooper.

Anyway, anybody like Flyleaf?  After hearing the chick on one of the 7th Symphony tracks, I’m thinking about picking up an album.  Any suggestions?

That’s right:  move along – move along, dear reader.

So, how’d your week go?  Mine went fairly well.  Tuesday’s weirdness petered out on Wednesday, Thursday was relatively uneventful, and Friday (today) was good & busy.  Overall, I’m a pretty happy camper.  I’m settling in pretty well at the new gig; the only thing I really need to worry about right now is figuring out how to take a few days off so that I can spend some time alone in the woods.

I was planning to take next Wednesday to Friday off, but I have a project due by the end of the week and I think I’ve also got some meetings starting to stack up toward the end of the week as well, so I’ll probably have to wait until the week after next.  That’s ok:  as long as I take some time off before Labor Day, I should be good to go.  Once the Tuesday after Labor Day hits, it’s going to be balls-to-the-wall at work.  My industry is closely tied to the finance industry, and once Labor Day happens, everyone’s back to work.  Summer’s over and it seems like everyone has a million things that need to be done yesterday (or should have been done by the end of summer).

This was not a particularly relaxing summer for me, but whatever:  all I have is today anyway.

This weekend should be relatively relaxing.  Saturday I’ll be hiking in Minnewaska State Park Preserve with Scott and the White Sneaker Brigade.  I just (finally) bought a GPS unit for hiking, so at least I’ll be able to test that out a bit while we’re “hiking”.  This won’t be a particularly challenging hike, but that’s ok; hopefully the company will be fun.

On Sunday, Scott and I will be hiking Eagle and Balsam mountains with some Catskill 3500 Club aspirants – our friend Heather Rolland (yes, the famous author) is leading the hike for the club.  I’ve climbed both mountains a couple of times already, but not in August.  The weather report is calling for rain, so the hike should be extra-fun.  =)

And that’s about it for right now.  Back to work on Monday; what will be, will be.

Oh, and don’t forget to jump on over to WordFrolic! – your friend and mine (the famous blogger) Lauren Flax has set up this site for those of us who like to play with words.  I’ve had quite a bit of fun on it so far.

I think I need to meet with a psychic or spiritual healer.   I’ve got something going on with me that I can’t put my finger on to fix.  I mentioned a week or two ago that I’d been struggling with self-doubt.  Well, that hasn’t abated:  the struggle continues.  I don’t know why this is or where it’s coming from, but this is exactly the wrong time for me to be feeling like this.

I suppose it’s possible that I’m being guided towards caution, but I feel more like I’m running scared.  Not necessarily running towards something or away from something, so I don’t mean ‘running scared’ as in overly fearful – what I mean is closer to overly cautious.  Cautious to the point where it’s hampering.  It’s a fault, not an asset.  At least, that’s how I feel.

I’m in a relatively new situation at work – insofar as the players are the same and the circumstances have changed and/or the circumstances are the same but the players have changed – depending upon the circumstances and players I’m dealing with – if that makes any sense.  The situation isn’t entirely unfamiliar, even though it’s different from one I’ve been in before on many levels.  So, that said, I suppose I have good reason to be cautious.

In fact, I think that caution is definitely an asset right now.  But not this much caution.

So yeah, something weird is going on inside of me.  This is a time when I should be – figuratively speaking – taking the bull by the horns – both in my work situations and my outside-work situations.  But I’m not.  I’m dissembling.  I know I should be taking the bull by the horns, and I know how and where to grab those horns and from which direction I need to approach the bull so that I’m not gored, but it feels like I’m spending too much time evaluating the direction from which I’m coming, figuring out my hand placement and calculating the angles and forces involved, when what I really should be doing is letting go and simply acting.  Allowing myself to act and having the confidence that, even if I miss my initial grip, I’ll be able to adapt to the situation and turn it to my advantage.

But knowing the right thing and doing the right thing are two different animals.  Normally, I can snap myself out of these things, but this has been going on for a while.  Maybe I’m still coming down on the back end of feeling duplicitous about being at a job I knew I was going to leave.  But still, I’ve had enough breaks in the continuity of my mental reality that such a feeling shouldn’t still be lingering.

That’s basically why I feel that there’s something else going on.  Mercury isn’t in retrograde for another few weeks – and I’m not having communication issues anyway – and I don’t know enough about astrology to make another guess.  Any suggestions are, of course, welcome, if you’re an astrologer, dear reader.  There’s something that’s mucking up my internal energy flow.  I think it’s an internal thing, but my gut says it could very well be an external thing.

I’m going to spend some time cleansing the feng shui of my apartment tonight and see if that helps.  And then I’m going to get up tomorrow and face a new day and try all over again to get past whatever’s currently blocking me.  Hopefully my spirit guide will have some more definitive guidance for me soon.

Yes, yes, I know, dear reader:  it’s been quite a long time since my last post.

A lot’s been going on lately and I’ve mostly been keeping to myself.  Oh, I’ve been talking to people here and there about things, and it’s not that I didn’t feel comfortable talking to you about them, dear reader, but, well, I haven’t felt comfortable talking to you about them.

I quit my job on Thursday.  Scratch that – I ‘resigned’ on Thursday:  handed my boss my resignation letter at the end of the day.  I had to go into the office for a bit on Friday, I suppose to bring closure, though there wasn’t really anything for me to do.  Everything I’d been working on had been tied off or handed off in the past week or so.  I think my boss saw it coming, but I don’t think he was expecting it – if that makes sense.

I’m starting at a new firm soon.  It’s a start-up, and I’ll be in on the ground floor.  Several of my colleagues from the old firm are already there and I’m excited to work with them again – they’re the ones from the old firm who actually worked.

I’ve known for several weeks that I’d be moving firms, but couldn’t really tell anyone at the old place until I’d squared away all my stuff.  The last few weeks have been torturous for me:  I’ve not been sleeping well and my self-doubt has been at the forefront of my thinking.

After I resigned on Thursday night, and knowing that I’d have to go into the office on Friday and face everyone, I went to see Inception with my sister Katie.  It was pretty good, though I think it could have been much better.  At least it was entertaining and got me out of my head for those few hours before I went to bed.

And, it helped me realize that I’d been spending so much (too much) time in my head lately.  Mostly falling prey to my self-doubt and thinking along pessimistic lines.  I don’t mean to say that I’ve stopped all that and have reverted to a pollyannaish outlook, but rather that the movie helped me become aware of just how much time I’d spent concocting possible future scenarios in my imagination – and negative ones, at that.

Not blogging about my thoughts and feelings on the whole scenario was tough but necessary.  There are one or two people with whom I work who know about this site and I couldn’t risk letting any of my plans become public knowledge at work.

Special thanks to Jen, Heather, Anna and Didi for talking with me via email about what’s been going on in my head.

I’m still a bit nervous for the future, but I’m also confident that I can handle whatever comes.  I’m excited in a subdued fashion to see how things unfold over the next few weeks.  I just re-read Sun Tzu’s Art of War and am currently reading both Richard Branson’s Losing My Virginity and Bruce Lee’s The Tao of Jeet Kune Do.  I think I’m going to read a few books on military history, in order to have some practical examples to which I can relate the aphorisms from Art of War.

Game on.

So I’ve been writing all night, but not here.  If you’re interested in reading my trip reports for this weekend, you can follow these linqs:

Hunter & SW Hunter (Catskills) on Saturday

Tabletop & Phelps (Adirondacks) on Sunday

Maybe I’ll post the full text for tomorrow night or something, but I don’t feel like doing the copy/paste thing right now.

Last night included quite a bit of writing for me as well – but it was email correspondence that you’re not privy to, dear reader.  My apologies for that – you know you’re my favorite person to whom to write – but these emails needed to be sent, as they were to people I care about (just like you).

Anyway, things are still wicked icky at work.  Rumors abound, and peace, love and brotherhood are nowhere to be found.  I’m re-reading Sun Tzu’s Art of War and keeping my head down because I’m currently an indian in a tribe of chiefs.

I’ve not been sleeping all that well, but whatever.  I think the ghost in my apartment is picking up on my anxieties and f*cking with me for fun.  That’s fine; I’ll get it back when I’m feeling a bit more in control.  We have that kind of relationship.

This infographic is dedicated to my sister Katie, who loves bacon more than anyone I know.

Via: Online Schools

Work has been really weird lately.  Several key people have left in the last few weeks and everyone is pretty worried.  Nobody will meet anyone else’s eyes and everyone’s wondering who’ll be the next to quit.  It’s pretty messed up and overall, the vibes are wicked icky.  I went for a nice long run after work today, just to purge myself of the negative energy that seemed to be stuck all over me.  And I really don’t like running.

Though I should be doing more of it.  I have that Warrior Dash thing coming up in September.  I have about six weeks to get myself to the point where I can run for 3.5 miles.  I’m definitely not looking forward to training for this thing.  The race itself, however, should be loads of fun.

On the upside, I ran farther for longer today than I have before.  I’ve been reading a lot of posts by trail runners over at the ADKHP forum, so that’s providing some inspiration.

I was hoping to take Monday and Tuesday off next week and spend it in the Adirondacks bagging peaks, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen:  I’m handling a few of the accounts for the guy who quit today.  Too bad.

I will, however, be in the ‘dacks this Sunday.  On Saturday, Scott and I will head up to the Catskills, bag Hunter and SW Hunter and visit with our friends Heather, Tom, Iske and Lily while they’re guarding the Hunter Mountain fire tower and doing the ambassador thing.  Then we’ll swing up to the ‘dacks in the early afternoon, hopefully in time to camp before it gets dark.  We’ll climb a couple of mountains in the ‘dacks on Sunday and head back to NJ.  I’m looking forward to seeing Scott’s boner when he sees the majesty of the Adirondacks.  I don’t think that last sentence came out right.  =/

So yeah, work is pretty icky right now and I’m very glad my cube is kind of a pain in the ass to get to.  Rumors abound and I’m not looking forward to the next couple of weeks.  Work-wise, that is.

I am, however, looking forward to snowshoeing this winter with lots of new friends.  I think I’ll probably miss solo hiking a bit, but breaking trail by oneself really sucks the big one.

Yeah, it happens.  But it’s a total bitch.  For me, at least.

I’ve been struggling with self-doubt for the last couple of weeks or so.  I’m not sure where, when, how or why it started, but it seems like all of a sudden I just can’t make any decisions.  And for someone who prides himself on efficiency in all aspects of his life, this really sucks.

I feel like Hamlet – I’m sitting in this morass of indecision as life passes me by and my decisions are either made for me or my choices end up being curtailed by the passage of time.  I need to get back to acting decisively and following through all the way.

But how to do this?

Duh:  start acting decisively and following through.  ”But it’s so hard to get started,” he whines.

Yeah, well, sometimes I’m a pussy like that.

I recently posted a link to this speech on my facebook page, but I think the Andy Shepherd (Michael Douglas) speech from The American President is definitely something worth posting in its entirety. I scraped it from here, and if you follow that linq, I believe you can actually watch the video from the movie itself.  If you haven’t seen the movie, some of the references may not be as powerful.  The overall message, however, rarely fails to bring a tear to my eye.

Reporter: Robyn, will the President ever respond to Senator Rumson’s question about being a member of the American Civil Liberties Union?

President Shepherd: Yes, he will. Good morning. [Members of the White House Press Corps begin to rise] It’s alright. Please keep your seats. Good morning.

For the last couple of months, Senator Rumson has suggested that being President of this country was, to a certain extent, about character. And although I’ve not been willing to engage in his attacks on me, I have been here three years and three days, and I can tell you without hesitation: Being President of this country is entirely about character.

For the record, yes, I am a card-carrying member of the ACLU, but the more important question is “Why aren’t you, Bob?” Now this is an organization whose sole purpose is to defend the Bill of Rights, so it naturally begs the question, why would a senator, his party’s most powerful spokesman and a candidate for President, choose to reject upholding the constitution? Now if you can answer that question, folks, then you’re smarter than I am, because I didn’t understand it until a few hours ago.

America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You’ve gotta want it bad, ’cause it’s gonna put up a fight. It’s gonna say, “You want free speech? Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who’s standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.” You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country cannot just be a flag. The symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Now show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms.

Then you can stand up and sing about the land of the free.

I’ve known Bob Rumson for years. And I’ve been operating under the assumption that the reason Bob devotes so much time and energy to shouting at the rain was that he simply didn’t get it. Well, I was wrong. Bob’s problem isn’t that he doesn’t get it. Bob’s problem is that he can’t sell it!

We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things, and two things only: making you afraid of it, and telling you who’s to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. You gather a group of middle age, middle class, middle income voters who remember with longing an easier time, and you talk to them about family, and American values and character, and you wave an old photo of the President’s girlfriend and you scream about patriotism. You tell them she’s to blame for their lot in life. And you go on television and you call her a whore.

Sydney Ellen Wade has done nothing to you, Bob. She has done nothing but put herself through school, represent the interests of public school teachers, and lobby for the safety of our natural resources. You want a character debate, Bob? You better stick with me, ’cause Sydney Ellen Wade is way out of your league.

I’ve loved two women in my life. I lost one to cancer. And I lost the other ’cause I was so busy keeping my job, I forgot to do my job. Well, that ends right now.

Tomorrow morning the White House is sending a bill to Congress for it’s consideration. It’s White House Resolution 455, an energy bill requiring a twenty percent reduction of the emission of fossil fuels over the next ten years. It is by far the most aggressive stride ever taken in the fight to reverse the effects of global warming. The other piece of legislation is the crime bill. As of today, it no longer exists. I’m throwing it out. I’m throwing it out and writing a law that makes sense. You cannot address crime prevention without getting rid of assault weapons and hand guns. I consider them a threat to national security, and I will go door to door if I have to, but I’m gonna convince Americans that I’m right, and I’m gonna get the guns.

We’ve got serious problems, and we need serious people. And if you want to talk about character, Bob, you’d better come at me with more than a burning flag and a membership card. If you want to talk about character and American values, fine. Just tell me where and when, and I’ll show up. This a time for serious people, Bob, and your fifteen minutes are up.

My name is Andrew Shepherd, and I AM the President.

Shortly after the Pope had apologized to the Jewish People for the treatment of Jews by the Catholic Church over the years, Ariel Sharon sent a proposal to the College of Cardinals for a friendly game of golf to be played between the two leaders or their representatives to demonstrate the friendship and ecumenical spirit shared by the Catholics and the Jews. The Pope met with his College of Cardinals to discuss the proposal.

“Your Holiness,” said one of the Cardinals, “Mr. Sharon wants to challenge you to a game of golf to show that you are old and unable to compete. I am afraid that this would tarnish our image in the world.”

The Pope thought about this and, since he had never held a golf club in his life, asked, “Don’t we have a Cardinal to represent me?”

“None who plays golf very well,” a Cardinal replied. “But,” he added, “there is a man named Jack Nicklaus, an American golfer, who is a devout Catholic.  We can offer to make him a Cardinal, and then ask him to play Mr. Sharon as your personal representative.  In addition to showing our spirit of cooperation, we will also win the match.”

Everyone agreed that this was a great idea.  The call was made. Of course, Nicklaus was honored and he agreed to play as a representative of the Pope.

The day after the match, Nicklaus reported to the Vatican to inform the Pope of the result.  “This is Cardinal Nicklaus. I have some good news and some bad news, Holiness,” said the golfer.

“Tell me the good news, Cardinal Nicklaus,” said the Pope.

“Well, Your Holiness, I don’t like to brag, but even though I have played some pretty terrific rounds of golf in my life, this was the best I have ever played, by far.  I must have been inspired from above.  My drives were long and true, my irons were accurate and purposeful, and my putting was perfect.  With all due respect, my play was truly miraculous.”

“How can there be bad news?” the Pope asked.

Nicklaus sighed.  ”I lost by three strokes to Rabbi Tiger Woods.”

The old Jeep pulls to a stop at the end of our driveway, lets us out by our own faded Jeep and pulls a youie, Bill’s gnarled hand waving goodbye to us from where the window would be.  At the same time, Jen and I take a deep breath and smile broadly as we exhale.  We don’t say anything to each other, though we both know we’re thinking the same thing:  it’s good to be home; it smells different – better – here.

Jen jumps into the front seat and cranks up the old machine – it seems she can ALWAYS get it started on the first try – as I throw our packs into the back seat.  By the time I get to the driver’s side, Jen is already buckled up and ready to go.  It’s a beautifully sunny afternoon, but not hot enough for the dust from the road to stick to the dust that’s already covering our traveling-clothes.

“You sure you don’t want to drive?” I say.

“Nope.  It’s all you.  But let’s take it easy on the way up, hmm?  I won’t fall asleep on you, but it’d be cool to zone out for a bit.”

“Okie-dokie,” I say, and throw it in gear.  I give it some extra gas, slip the clutch and spray gravel from our driveway onto the highway as I fishtail it around a bit.  I can feel Jen looking at me.

“What?!” I protest, unsuccessfully suppressing a smile.  “There’s no way you had time to zone out already!”

Jen laughs and slugs me in the arm as I roll to a stop and put the Jeep in four wheel drive.  It hurts and I drive (more or less) carefully for the remaining 5.2 miles of dry dirt track leading up to our house.  I’m sorely tempted to play in the mud as we get up the hill and into the forest closer to the house, but Jen anticipates this and is looking right at me when I glance over to see if she’s paying attention.  I feign innocence.  Poorly.  And she laughs again.  God, I love to hear her laugh.

We pull up under the port cochère (which I am NOT allowed to call ‘the car tent’, even though I built it)  just as the front door opens.  Jackson, our eldest, saunters out with a dish rag over his bare shoulder like he owns the place.

“You look like you own the place,” I say with a smile as we trade grips and our daughter Meghan (thirteen this spring and two years younger than Jackson) bursts out the door and into Jen’s arms.

“I do,” he laughs, “Unless you and mom changed the will while you guys were in town?”

“No,” I reply, “you’re still slated to get everything when we go.”  I have no idea where or how this macabre joke got started, but I play along because, well, it’s our joke.  We don’t even have a will.

“Daddy!” Meg squeals, jumping into my arms and almost bowling me over in the process.  (I swear, I think she’s really trying to – and one of these days she’s going to succeed.)  But I saw her coming and was ready by the time she was two steps away.  I have no idea how much longer I have before she’s actually able to take me down, but I pretend she almost does and turn it into one of those twirl-arounds the military guy from the old movies always does when he comes back from the war and sees his girl for the first time.

I let Meg down as Jen walks to my side and encircles my waist with her arms.  I put one of mine over her shoulder and we both heave one of those same happy sighs as we look past the kids at our cabin, which hasn’t burnt down in the five days we’ve been gone.  The kids have grown like weeds out here.  Jackson is a couple of inches taller than me – and he hasn’t even had a real growth spurt yet – and Meg is just about her mother’s height (barefoot maybe three or four inches shorter than me).  I don’t know if it’s the fresh air and exercise or their mother’s midwestern genes.  Jen’s dad and my dad are both 6’4″ – maybe that’s where they get it.

“What’s for dinner Stoney?” I say to Jackson, reaching for the dish rag on his shoulder with my free hand as Jen nuzzles my neck.

Jackson’s been cooking since he was about eight, and after seven years of practice at every opportunity, he’s probably better at it than me or Jen.  And that woman can cook.  ‘Stoney’ is short for ‘Stonewall’ – yes, just like the Confederate General – I forget why we started calling him that; it just seemed natural.  Jen gives me a squeeze and I turn to her and we kiss.

“Trout,” he says, “I caught them a couple of hours ago.  With baby potatoes and garlic and . . . okay, oKAY!  Ten second rule!”

Jen and I both turn our eyes to him and break our kiss; she pulls me closer.

“We really need to change that rule,” I say, “you guys are getting old enough to handle it.”

“Ew, gross!” says Meg.  “I’m going inside!”  And she bounds off into the cabin I built before she was, presumably to get back to commandeering her mother’s reading nook and hogging every last scrap of bandwidth of the mountain’s only internet connection.

“C’mon inside; dinner’s almost ready.  How was your hike?” he says over his shoulder as he steps up onto the porch.

I kiss Jen on the forehead and grab our packs from the Jeep.  “It was pretty nice,” Jen calls to Jackson, who’s already inside.  “We bagged six peaks and your father almost got eaten by a bear.”

“Now wait just a minute,” I say.  “That was just a cub and she only chewed on my boot for a second before I told her to stop!”

“Yeah, but what does a bear cub chewing on your boot mean?” Jen retorts.  “It means she’s probably hungry and you know her momma couldn’t have been too far away.”

“What?!” I say, looking dejected.  “We were playing.  And it was only for a minute and we skedaddled like two seconds later.”

“Maybe.  But that’s not how I remember it.”  Jen gives me a wink.

I give her a look that says that I concede (as always) to her infinite wisdom and she socks me in the arm again – in the exact same place as last time (how does she do that?) – I’m pretty sure there’ll be a mark by the time we go to bed.

“Jesus!”  I exclaim as I carry our packs toward the porch.  “How the hell did you carry this all week?  What’s in here?”  I know full well that Jen packs light and, if anything, my pack is the one that’s usually on the heavy side.  I put the packs down.  She gives me that look that can freeze well water.

“You know perfectly well what’s in there:  that stupid dominatrix outfit you insisted I bring with us.”

“What?!” I say, sidling up to her and putting my arms around her shoulders.  “I just thought it might be particularly sexy to see you in your leather corset, fishnets and stilettos by the firelight.  C’mon, you gotta give me points for originality.”

“Points for originality, sure,” she says, “but you’re in the negative for practicality.”

“Whatever,” I say (again feigning dejection – hey c’mon, sometimes it works), “you’da looked wicked hot.”

“Hey pop!”  Jackson yells from the kitchen window.  I love it and hate it when he calls me that.

“Yo!”  I respond.

“Meg and I are going to go down to the south meadow tonight with the telescope so we can work on her astronomy project, ok?”

“Sure,” I say.  “Are you going to sleep out or are you planning on making a racket after your mom and I have gone to bed?”  Just like when I was younger and still courting Jen, my deja vu tells me I used to ask the same underlying question of her parents:  ‘am I guaranteed some alone time with this girl I’m in love with?’  Now the tables have turned and I’m the adult in the situation, but I’m still asking the same question, in a probably too-strident tone, to cover for my inner butterflies.

“No, we’re going to stay there tonight,” Jackson laughs as he pulls his head in from the window.  With a slight echo from inside, I can hear him say “Why would we hike back with that heavy telescope in the dark?”

I turn to Jen and give her my strongest knowing-slash-seductive look.  She socks me in the arm.  Again.  And smiles.  God, I love to see her smile.  “Maybe,” she says and starts to giggle.  “Maybe.”

That’s a yes.  But still, I wonder if maybe my smile was too wide and the eyebrow-waggling was a bit over the top. 

After all these years, why do I still wonder about that?

____________________________

This one’s for you, Jen.

Totally stolen because people on Digg like it.  No shame.

Infographic byWordStream Internet Marketing

As written by Hakuri Murakami in On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning (and unabashedly scraped from that linq).  This short story appears in Murakami’s The Elephant Vanishes.

Seriously:  this happens to me AT LEAST three times a week.

Haruki Murakami: On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning

One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo’s fashionable Harujuku neighborhood, I walked past the 100% perfect girl.

Tell you the truth, she’s not that good-looking. She doesn’t stand out in any way. Her clothes are nothing special. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep. She isn’t young, either – must be near thirty, not even close to a “girl,” properly speaking. But still, I know from fifty yards away: She’s the 100% perfect girl for me. The moment I see her, there’s a rumbling in my chest, and my mouth is as dry as a desert.

Maybe you have your own particular favorite type of girl – one with slim ankles, say, or big eyes, or graceful fingers, or you’re drawn for no good reason to girls who take their time with every meal. I have my own preferences, of course. Sometimes in a restaurant I’ll catch myself staring at the girl at the next table to mine because I like the shape of her nose.

But no one can insist that his 100% perfect girl correspond to some preconceived type. Much as I like noses, I can’t recall the shape of hers – or even if she had one. All I can remember for sure is that she was no great beauty. It’s weird.

“Yesterday on the street I passed the 100% girl,” I tell someone.

“Yeah?” he says. “Good-looking?”

“Not really.”

“Your favorite type, then?”

“I don’t know. I can’t seem to remember anything about her – the shape of her eyes or the size of her breasts.”

“Strange.”

“Yeah. Strange.”

“So anyhow,” he says, already bored, “what did you do? Talk to her? Follow her?”

“Nah. Just passed her on the street.”

She’s walking east to west, and I west to east. It’s a really nice April morning.

Wish I could talk to her. Half an hour would be plenty: just ask her about herself, tell her about myself, and – what I’d really like to do – explain to her the complexities of fate that have led to our passing each other on a side street in Harajuku on a beautiful April morning in 1981. This was something sure to be crammed full of warm secrets, like an antique clock build when peace filled the world.

After talking, we’d have lunch somewhere, maybe see a Woody Allen movie, stop by a hotel bar for cocktails. With any kind of luck, we might end up in bed.

Potentiality knocks on the door of my heart.

Now the distance between us has narrowed to fifteen yards.

How can I approach her? What should I say?

“Good morning, miss. Do you think you could spare half an hour for a little conversation?”

Ridiculous. I’d sound like an insurance salesman.

“Pardon me, but would you happen to know if there is an all-night cleaners in the neighborhood?”

No, this is just as ridiculous. I’m not carrying any laundry, for one thing. Who’s going to buy a line like that?

Maybe the simple truth would do. “Good morning. You are the 100% perfect girl for me.”

No, she wouldn’t believe it. Or even if she did, she might not want to talk to me. Sorry, she could say, I might be the 100% perfect girl for you, but you’re not the 100% boy for me. It could happen. And if I found myself in that situation, I’d probably go to pieces. I’d never recover from the shock. I’m thirty-two, and that’s what growing older is all about.

We pass in front of a flower shop. A small, warm air mass touches my skin. The asphalt is damp, and I catch the scent of roses. I can’t bring myself to speak to her. She wears a white sweater, and in her right hand she holds a crisp white envelope lacking only a stamp. So: She’s written somebody a letter, maybe spent the whole night writing, to judge from the sleepy look in her eyes. The envelope could contain every secret she’s ever had.

I take a few more strides and turn: She’s lost in the crowd.

Now, of course, I know exactly what I should have said to her. It would have been a long speech, though, far too long for me to have delivered it properly. The ideas I come up with are never very practical.

Oh, well. It would have started “Once upon a time” and ended “A sad story, don’t you think?”

Once upon a time, there lived a boy and a girl. The boy was eighteen and the girl sixteen. He was not unusually handsome, and she was not especially beautiful. They were just an ordinary lonely boy and an ordinary lonely girl, like all the others. But they believed with their whole hearts that somewhere in the world there lived the 100% perfect boy and the 100% perfect girl for them. Yes, they believed in a miracle. And that miracle actually happened.

One day the two came upon each other on the corner of a street.

“This is amazing,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you all my life. You may not believe this, but you’re the 100% perfect girl for me.”

“And you,” she said to him, “are the 100% perfect boy for me, exactly as I’d pictured you in every detail. It’s like a dream.”

They sat on a park bench, held hands, and told each other their stories hour after hour. They were not lonely anymore. They had found and been found by their 100% perfect other. What a wonderful thing it is to find and be found by your 100% perfect other. It’s a miracle, a cosmic miracle.

As they sat and talked, however, a tiny, tiny sliver of doubt took root in their hearts: Was it really all right for one’s dreams to come true so easily?

And so, when there came a momentary lull in their conversation, the boy said to the girl, “Let’s test ourselves – just once. If we really are each other’s 100% perfect lovers, then sometime, somewhere, we will meet again without fail. And when that happens, and we know that we are the 100% perfect ones, we’ll marry then and there. What do you think?”

“Yes,” she said, “that is exactly what we should do.”

And so they parted, she to the east, and he to the west.

The test they had agreed upon, however, was utterly unnecessary. They should never have undertaken it, because they really and truly were each other’s 100% perfect lovers, and it was a miracle that they had ever met. But it was impossible for them to know this, young as they were. The cold, indifferent waves of fate proceeded to toss them unmercifully.

One winter, both the boy and the girl came down with the season’s terrible inluenza, and after drifting for weeks between life and death they lost all memory of their earlier years. When they awoke, their heads were as empty as the young D. H. Lawrence’s piggy bank.

They were two bright, determined young people, however, and through their unremitting efforts they were able to acquire once again the knowledge and feeling that qualified them to return as full-fledged members of society. Heaven be praised, they became truly upstanding citizens who knew how to transfer from one subway line to another, who were fully capable of sending a special-delivery letter at the post office. Indeed, they even experienced love again, sometimes as much as 75% or even 85% love.

Time passed with shocking swiftness, and soon the boy was thirty-two, the girl thirty.

One beautiful April morning, in search of a cup of coffee to start the day, the boy was walking from west to east, while the girl, intending to send a special-delivery letter, was walking from east to west, but along the same narrow street in the Harajuku neighborhood of Tokyo. They passed each other in the very center of the street. The faintest gleam of their lost memories glimmered for the briefest moment in their hearts. Each felt a rumbling in their chest. And they knew:

She is the 100% perfect girl for me.

He is the 100% perfect boy for me.

But the glow of their memories was far too weak, and their thoughts no longer had the clarity of fouteen years earlier. Without a word, they passed each other, disappearing into the crowd. Forever.

A sad story, don’t you think?

Yes, that’s it, that is what I should have said to her.

I didn’t wake up until like 9AM today – didn’t get in to work until around 10:30 or so.  Today still being Monday for me, even though I’m technically 26 minutes into Tuesday.  The #2 guy in my department quit today.  Two weeks ago, the #1 guy from the other big department on the floor quit, and last week his #2 guy quit.  It’s kind of weird at work right now and I should probably be catching some Zs so that I can be (relatively) on time for work tomorrow (today):  I don’t know what time, but the owner will be making an appearance to (theoretically) talk to us about what’s going on.  Our department had a non-top-management meeting to discuss things and air our gripes.  I mostly kept my mouth shut (with the exception of a few unavoidable snide comments) and said that I’m really only interested in more money when they asked me what I thought about the situation.  The next few days/weeks should be interesting, to say the least.

It’s still the summer as far as I’m concerned, which means leisurely working on summer research projects and enjoying the fact that work isn’t busy as sh*t right now.  Things will pick back up in September, and I’d much rather get stressed when things get stressful.  A lot of people are pretty stressed out and worried right now, but for whatever reason, I’m not.  I kind of feel lazy – that I should be freaking out and doing something to secure my future, but it’s just not happening.  Oh well, we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

I spent most of my free evenings last week shopping for a seersucker suit (or a linen suit) for Saturday’s wedding, but returned each night empty-handed.  Too bad.  I ended up wearing my light khaki suit to the wedding, which worked out fine.  I looked relatively sharp and was happy with that.  It was a lovely wedding and I had quite a bit of fun.

Sunday morning, Scott made it to my house by 5:45 so that we could be on the road at 6 to meet a group from the forum at 8AM in the Catskills.  This was particularly impressive, as Scott and I had both been up until around 1:30 that morning (separately).  Scott was partying with Brian and a few chicks and I was reading.

We made it to Woodland Valley Campground on time (which was impressive because my car’s GPS wasn’t working), shuttled over to the Slide Mountain Parking Area, and headed up Slide Mountain (the highest in the Catskills) via the Step Trail.  Slide is a pretty popular destination and taking this route up meant we didn’t see anyone else until it intersected with the main trail.  I’ve been up Slide a few times, and this was by far the most beautiful route so far.  We then went over Cornell and Wittenberg mountains and ended back at Woodland Valley (and were shuttled back to my car at Slide PA).  Afterward, several of us went to dinner at a restaurant called Peekamoose on Route 28.  I thoroughly enjoyed my $13 hamburger and $8 brownie.

There were about 8 of us in the group and we moved much slower than Scott and I usually do, but it was an extremely pleasurable hike.  We bagged lots and lots of views and hung out with some really cool and knowledgeable people.  I was pretty psyched to hang out with Heather Rolland and her husband Tom – Heather and I have become buddies via facebook, but haven’t had a chance to hike together yet.  Because the pace was so relaxed and good conversation abounded, I hardly even noticed that we were climbing mountains.  Sure, I was sweating, but I wasn’t breathing particularly hard, nor was I wicked exhausted when we finished.  My legs were a bit tired today, but no big deal – it was a 9 mile hike, after all.

Tack three more mountains onto my grid list and I’m now 81/420 (8 for July).  Holy shiznit – I’ve done 81 climbs of the 35 highest mountains in the Catskills!  And that doesn’t count the 5 or more mountains I’ve climbed twice in the same month (the grid is each of the 35 peaks in each of the 12 months – 35×12=420).

So yeah:  busy weekend.  I’ll talk to you more during the week, dear reader; it’s off to catch those Zs for me now.

Via: Online Nursing Programs

On the ride up to RI at the beginning of my MINIs on Top trip, I popped into my CD player a series of CDs my friend Jason loaned to me two or three years ago:  it was a talk by Eckhart Tolle called The Flowering of Human Consciousness.  It was pretty good – both for the content and because it took my mind away from the traffic of the drive.

For my trip this past weekend, I bought Tolle’s first book The Power of Now on CD to listen to on the longer sections of the drive.  I got through about half of it and am looking forward to another long drive as an opportunity to finish it.

I’m not really one for books-on-tape (I prefer paper), but I don’t think I’d read Tolle’s book even if I bought it – or I’d probably put it down halfway through.  But Tolle has an interesting enough voice (he speaks the Queen’s English with a German accent), and I find this kind of material to be better transmitted through the spoken word than in print.

Tolle’s main thesis isn’t all that different (and, to his credit, he admits as much) from what various spiritual teachers have been saying for pretty much millennia:  that all we have is this moment – there is no past and no future, and thus no point in spending time living in either.  That we must be completely present in the now in order to live a complete and fulfilling life.

He talks about transcendence and enlightenment as well, but these are relatively foreign concepts to me and while they seem nice to think about as ideals, they’re not part of my everyday life.  I dig the fact that he brings an element of everyday life to his spiritual teachings.

I’m not going to go all starry-eyed for the guy, but I can get with many parts of what he says.  I think I most identify when he relates things to zen and yogic teachings.

Anyway, listening to this was an excellent set-up for my vacation:  it reminded me to stay in the moment.  I did so as much as possible and doing so played an integral role in the fulfillment I received while I was in the woods.

I have plenty more to say on this topic, but I think that’s enough for now.

The last five days passed like a dream.  I was really hoping for some kind of spiritual experience or battery recharge or something when I headed off to the woods last Wednesday.  And I got it.  Well, I got something.  Not entirely what I thought it would be, but something nonetheless.

I’ve been looking forward to spending a few days in the woods, hiking and camping, for the last few months (ever since just before the busy season started).  The last couple of weeks have been melancholy and frantic – in that rushing-to-do-everything-and-not-getting-anything-done kind of way.  I was hoping to walk out of the woods with a life-plan for the next few months laid out in my head.  What happened instead was that I waked out of the woods with a calmer and more peaceful mind, which is therefore more able to put together a life-plan for the next few months . . . maybe sometime this week – I’m really not all that worried about it right now.

So here’s a quick run-down before I head off to bed:

I left my house Wednesday morning and met my buddy SoloJoe Whalen at the Sloatsburg rest stop on 87N (about fifteen minutes or so from my house).  We then caravanned up to The Mountaineer in Keene Valley NY, so that Joe could pick up an air mattress and some other supplies.  We stopped briefly at a cabin called Random Scoots in Keene NY to visit with a couple of friends from the ADKHP forum.  Then we boogied back to the Northway, south one exit, and over to the Upper Works parking area.  The sun was just going down as we got there and we had decent light for the first mile or two.  Around 4.5 miles in (it was dark by this time), we bumped into the monument to the man for which the river we were following (Calamity Brook) got its name (his death was a calamity).  The monument was, however, a side trail, so after snapping a few photos, we booked it back onto the trail, happy in the knowledge that we only had to carry our heavy packs another .4 miles before we started passing lean-tos at which we might sleep.

Well, about two miles later, we hit a sign that read “High Water Bridge” – one which we found familiar.  We put our packs down, wiped the sweat off our faces and looked at each other in perplexity.  I pulled out my iPhone (upon which I was tracking our progress via my GPS app) and pronounced us to have backtracked.  We then said the F word a lot.  And then some more.  I laughed quite a bit at our predicament, as it meant we still had at least another three miles to walk that night and we were already exhausted from carrying those heavy packs.

By the way, when I say “it was dark”, I don’t mean the kind of dark you’re probably used to.  I mean the kind of dark wherein there is no visible light ANYWHERE.  If we switched off our headlamps, we could not see each other standing only a few feet away.  Starlight, yes.  Moonlight, not this evening.

Anyway, we finally made it into a lean-to close to 1AM, scaring the couple within it half to death.  Joe’s got great people skills, though, so he smoothed everything over pretty quickly.  I told them that we were bears, but they didn’t believe me.  Probably Joe with the whole talking-thing.  Joe and I decided not to eat, as that would prolong the already lengthy time we’d be keeping the nice couple awake.  Night comes early in the Adirondacks – about 9PM this season – so even if they had plenty of steamy sex in the lean-to before we arrived, they still must have been asleep for a couple of hours.  As we lay our heads down to rest, I could not, however, resist muttering to Joe “don’t make any moves on that guy, ok?  We just met and you hardly know him.”  I’m sure that was good for an extra couple of minutes of awake-time for the dude.

lolz

We woke up around 6AM on Thursday, had breakfast and were on the trail by 8:30AM.  The lean-to we stayed at was the third one we poked our heads into, and the only one not full.  As such, it was also .4 miles farther away from the trail upon which we would start our march.  It was kind of a long day.  Not in a bad way, but in terms of hours.  We hiked for around 10 hours, returning to the lean-to just before 7PM and covering probably between 12 and 15 miles.  We climbed Gray Peak and Mount Redfield (both “bushwhacks”), putting me at 9/46 for the Adirondack High Peaks and Joe at some ridiculous number beyond my meager 9.  I put ‘bushwhacks’ in quotes back there because the trailless peaks of the Adirondacks have very clear trails on them, but they’re just not marked with blazes or signage.  The bushwhacks in the Catskills are much tougher in a navigational sense, though I can’t imagine trying to get through the growth on the sides of the mountains in the Adirondacks – it’s wicked thick.

On the hike, Joe and I discussed literature, relationships, philosophy and other things sublime.  Come to think of it, I don’t think I said ‘boobs’ more than once or twice.

When we got back to the lean-to, we had something to eat while Joe packed his pack and got ready for the five-mile hump out of the woods.  I have no idea how that sonofabitch made it – I was completely exhausted.  But he did.  And then he drove 5.5 hours back to NJ, packed his stuff and was on a plane from Philly to Colorado by 8:30PM on Friday night.  Joe’s out there now, bagging 14,000 foot peaks.

I had the evening and the lean-to to myself, and I made good use of my time.  By which I mean, I walked down to the beach of the Flowed Lands reservoir (or whatever kind of body of water it is) and rinsed myself off in the cold mountain water.  I also rinsed out my shirt and socks and pumped some more drinking water from the spring.  I didn’t have a computer, so I couldn’t blog, but I made some notes in a notebook and read some of Haruki Murakami‘s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (thanks, Sara, for loaning it to me – it only got a little wet on the hump out of the woods and none of the pages are currently sticking together), which I am currently enjoying immensely.

I went to bed early Thursday night – maybe 10:30 or so – both out of pure exhaustion and lack of stuff to do when it’s black as pitch outside of the lean-to door (which is really the whole front of the place).

I woke up early on Friday morning, said “fuck-it” and dozed for a few hours.  I finally got moving around 10 or 10:30AM, just as the first raindrops began to patter on the lean-to roof.  I made and ate breakfast and arranged my gear so as to minimize the possibility of anything getting wet besides my raingear and my pack’s rain cover.  Then I humped the 5 miles back out of the woods to my car.  In the rain.  And when I say “rain”, I’m talking mountain lions and timber wolves.  It was effin pouring.  The trail wasn’t so much a trail as it was a series of rock-tops upon which to step, and small streams in which one might step without fear of the water coming above the tops of one’s boots.

Not that it mattered in any case; my boots were soaked by the time I got to the car.  I had on these goretex waterproof socks, though, which kept my feet and socks dry, despite the fact that my boots were soaked through.  I couldn’t believe how heavy my boots were when I took them off.  Nor could I believe that the next thing on my plate was to get down to the Cats to meet Scott and hump around all night and day in the woods in those heavy wet boots.

By the way, the hump out of the Adirondacks was simply splendid.  Even though it was raining, I had a great time.  The weather was warm enough that it really didn’t matter if I got all wet (not that I did – I was wearing raingear).  I kept a steady pace and it seemed by that point that my backpacking muscles had figured out what they were doing and gotten stretched out – they were not nearly as sore and painful as they were on Wednesday night.  On that hike, I thought about various hiking-related things, but mostly just enjoyed myself and my vacation.

I got to the car and headed down to the Cats to meet Scott.  Well, actually, I headed back north to Keene to get gas (should have done that Wednesday afternoon), and then south to the Catskills.  I toweled out my boots as best I could and put them in the passenger side footwell, under a blast of hot air.  My wet socks and shirt went on the dashboard, to be warmed and dried by the defogger.  Which created some fog, but not too much.

Believe it or not, by the time I got to the Cats, my socks and shirt were dry, and my boots were barely damp.  It took quite a bit of maneuvering on the drive to achieve this, but I’m glad I did.

I met Scott at the Alder Lake parking area at around 9:50PM on Friday night and we humped the 2.25 miles in to the Beaver Meadow Lean-to.  This night hike also involved some backtracking, though probably only about .5 miles-worth.  I wonder if there’s a patch for night-hike backtracking miles.

We hit the lean-to around midnight and ate, then slept in on Saturday morning and hiked a rather lazy six miles or so along Mill Brook Ridge, bagging the high point and the high point of Woodpecker Ridge (a quick bushwhack), while talking of recent events and things sublime.  That puts us at 47/102 for the Catskill Hundred Highest.

We then stopped back at the lean-to, gathered our heavy stuff and humped back out to our cars.

When we got home, I took a nice long hot shower and went to Steve’s Sizzlin’ for a big steak, then swung by Scott’s house to hang out for a bit.

Today was a lazy day, but I got all my errands run.  It was an excellent weekend and I’m currently walking the earth with a deep sense of peace in the background.  I’m pretty ok with going back to work in the morning, which means it was a successful vacation.

=)

Ok, I’m gone until Sunday.  I’m headed up to the Adirondacks Wednesday morning; I should get there early afternoon.  The plan is to park at Upper Works (a smidge to the east of Henderson Lake) and hike the 5-ish miles in to a lean-to at Flowed Lands (between Lake Colden and Livingston Pond.  If I arrive early enough on Wednesday, I’ll run up and down Mount Marshall (4360′ – maybe 4 or so miles round trip).

On Thursday, I hope to wake up early and climb Cliff Mountain (3944′), Mt. Redfield (4606′), Gray Peak (4840′), possibly Mt. Marcy (5344′ and the highest peak in the ‘dacks), and Mt. Skylight (4926′).  I may end up skipping Marcy and saving that for a traverse of the Great Range, similar to SoloJoe’s Mammoth Traverse from back in May.

Allen Mountain (4347′) is in that neighborhood, but it’s a long, long bushwhack away; I may try for that on Friday, or just bag Mount Colden (4715′) and boogie on back to the car.  It’s supposed to rain on Friday anyway.

I hope to be either back to the car or heading out from the lean-to between 4 and 6PM on Friday so that I can make it to the Catskills before dark.  I’ll hike into a lean-to (I’ll figure out which one sometime on Friday) and get my ass to sleep.  Scott will meet me on Saturday morning and we’ll bag a couple of CHH and/or grid peaks during the day on Saturday and head home.

Here’s the general area where I’ll be in the Adirondacks:

View Larger Map

Here’s another one from the infographics people – I suppose I should have seen this coming:

[Source: Online
PhD]

I’m taking a couple of vacation days – Wednesday to Friday.  I’ll be up in the Adirondacks, bagging peaks.  I leave Wednesday morning and will hopefully be able to climb a mountain that afternoon.  I’ll be staying at the lean-tos at Flowed Lands.  Feel free to send me a fax.

Thursday and Friday will be big peakbagging days for me – hopefully I’ll get four or five mountains climbed on Thursday and two or three on Friday.  Then it’s hike back out of the woods (about 5 miles or so) and into my car for a quick drive down to the Catskills, where I’ll crash at a lean-to until Scott wakes me up Saturday morning and we’ll bag a couple of CHH peaks.

More detailed itinerary to follow, once Scott & I figure out where we’re meeting.  I hope.

In case this is my last post until Sunday night (which will inevitably be a LONG one), take care, dear reader.  Enjoy your week and don’t stress too much.

Heather Rolland, if you’re reading this and haven’t already done so, please check out the blogs of my friends Lauren Flax and Jennifer Wesner.  They’re relatively dissimilar and make for wonderful daily (more-or-less) reading for me.

Jen, I still owe you an email; I will provide that tomorrow during the day or in the evening.  Lauren, I think I’ve done a decent enough job of avoiding lascivious and inappropriate comments on your facebook statuses for the last week or so; likewise, I will provide those tomorrow during the day or in the evening.

Please do not be fooled, dear reader:  linqs do not love make (though it sure is fun to shout-out one’s friends via one’s own cozy little corner of the interwebz).

Adieu.  For now.

Scraped from here, but discovered at WinterWarlock‘s facebook page:

The Men Who Don’t Fit In
by Robert W. Service

There’s a race of men that don’t fit in,
 A race that can’t stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
 And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
 And they climb the mountain’s crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
 And they don’t know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far;
 They are strong and brave and true;
But they’re always tired of the things that are,
 And they want the strange and new.
They say: “Could I find my proper groove,
 What a deep mark I would make!”
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
 Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs
 With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It’s the steady, quiet, plodding ones
 Who win in the lifelong race.
And each forgets that his youth has fled,
 Forgets that his prime is past,
Till he stands one day, with a hope that’s dead,
 In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;
 He has just done things by half.
Life’s been a jolly good joke on him,
 And now is the time to laugh.
Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;
 He was never meant to win;
He’s a rolling stone, and it’s bred in the bone;
 He’s a man who won’t fit in.

I think I might just go ahead and memorize this one: it definitely brought a swell to my heart and a tear to my eye.

So I’m still in a funk.  At least, I think I am.  Maybe I’m just exhausted from the weekend and today’s heat.  I got into my car at 17:30 today and the temperature gauge said 109.  The car was, however, sitting in full sun in the parking lot all day, and it quickly cooled to a balmy 104 as I drove home.  What a crappy day to be a smoker.  50-60 degrees in the office, 100-something outside.  Making the trips between the two temperatures was, to say the least, unpleasant.

I much prefer to blog when I’m in a happy mood and have fun things to talk about – how life is a bowl of cherries and all that shiz.  But someone (read:  sister Katie) has been giving me crap on facebook about not posting as often and/or posting infographics, so that’s why I’m writing now.

I can’t really say I don’t like it, but I just don’t have much to talk about.

This was, however, a good weekend:  Scott and I climbed Fir Mountain on Saturday and then Rocky and Lone Mountains on Monday.  Those were Scott’s last three mountains for the Catskill 3500 Club.  Congratulations, brother!

All three mountains were bushwhacks, and the last two were a 10-mile hike.  I’m pretty proud of Scott’s accomplishment.

Sunday was an off-day for hiking, so I just lazed about and got the usual errands done.  I finished Heather Rolland’s first novel Finders, Seekers, Losers, Keepers and started on her second one Honey Melon Fudge.  Book review(s) to follow shortly.  It’s been really cool to be able to correspond (via facebook) with the author of the book I’m currently reading.  =)

That’s it for now.  Work is slow as sh*t and I have pretty much ZERO motivation.  Maybe it’s the heat.  Maybe it’s dehydration.  Tomorrow will be a better day (not that today wasn’t a good day).  See you then.

Via: Medical Coding Certification

This’ll be short, because I have to go to bed in order to wake up early tomorrow morning.  Srsly.

Scott and I hiked Fir Mountain yesterday, and we’ll be hiking Lone and Rocky tomorrow (er, today).  Lone and Rocky are Scott’s last two mountains for the Catskill 3500 Club.  Here’s a link to the EveryTrail map of yesterday’s hike, and another link to the TR I filed in the forum.

I think my melancholia is slowly dissipating – getting some exercise yesterday definitely helped.  After hiking, Scott stopped by his sister’s barbecue and I headed over to my brother’s place to walk Clyde (his dog).  Then Scott and I met back up and had dinner at PF Chang’s.  Scott shared his tofu-and-styrofoam appetizer with me, and I enjoyed my Mongolian Beef People entree.  I spent some time practicing ‘mindful eating’ (you know, where you actually pay attention to what you’re doing, instead of simply inhaling fuel for the love machine).  That was really nice.  Hunger truly is the best sauce.  Though I suppose that truism isn’t all that applicable in this case, because the sauces at PF Chang’s are pretty good by themselves.

After that, we stopped by a barbecue at the home of one of Scott’s friends from high school.  Though I was certainly glad that the words ‘law school’ and ‘mensa’ were not brought up in the conversation, I didn’t feel all that out of place.  I mean, I know how to have conversations with strangers at parties.  Once upon a time, I would have felt like some sort of nerd or outcast when rubbing elbows with the ilk of this particular crowd.  Last night I didn’t, which was a good reminder to me that pretty much anytime I’m uncomfortable in a social situation, that discomfort comes from within me – not from without.

Today I slept in, did my laundry, washed the car and downloaded two Daft Punk albums.  Discovery is ok, but it doesn’t really have what I’m looking for – I think most of the tracks are either ripe for a remix or are begging for a phatty bass line to kick them up.  Alive 2007 is phenomenal.  It will be playing in my car (loudly) for the foreseeable future.

I’ve been feeling pretty melancholy lately.  I’m not really sure why that is – nothing’s really changed; things are still going well.  I suppose it’s related to my general malaise resulting from the end of the busy season at work.  Work is slow now, so I don’t really have a lot to do while I’m there.  I’ve mostly been cleaning up my Outlook and answering a few questions here and there from people.  I’m not complaining – I’m happy with the break from 12-16 hour days.

But I’m feeling directionless.  Rudderless, if you will.  I don’t so much mind drifting, but right now I feel as though I’m adrift without the proper supplies.  Oh, I have things to read and plenty of food and whatnot, but this seems like a time when I should be rowing – there’s no wind blowing.

But I don’t know in what direction to start heading:  there aren’t any islands nearby and I don’t particularly trust any of the mirages on the horizon that promise dry land.  Dryland’s a myth.

Climbing those 29 mountains in the Catskills this winter was a good direction for me to have, but I don’t know that that trick will work twice.  The next move is the Adirondack 46, but right now I’m waiting to hike Scott’s final 3 of the Catskill 35.  Hopefully, we’ll be able to get that done this weekend and then I can continue my ADK list in earnest.

Still, I don’t think that’s a panacea.

I’m still procrastinating putting together a new inventory/priorities list – mostly because I’ve been over these things a million times in my head already.  I know that things will become a bit more lucid once they’re on paper, but I don’t trust that I’ll find an answer there.

It’s a total chicken/egg thing with me right now:  I’d put finding a mate at the top of the list, which means that I need to move.  Sure, seeing Brooklyn/Manhattan as the promised land of dateable chicks is probably fantasy on my part, but that’s the only thread I can grasp at the moment.  It makes no sense, however, for me to simply up-and-move to Brooklyn, though:  while I might technically be able to handle it financially, the commute from NYC to NJ every day for work is stupid and I’d be spread unnecessarily thin moneywise.  I have enough financial insecurity already that I don’t need to add that to the mix.

So dateable chicks = chicken and money = egg.  Or vice-versa:  however you want to look at it, dear reader – you always have options on this website.

So the money thing means looking at my job situation.  Sure I’ve been getting regular bonuses and raises since I’ve been working at my current occupation, but the raises have basically been 3-5% cost-of-living salary increases (which are effectively not an increase at all about halfway through the new year) and the bonuses have been barely enough to cover taxes and some extra loot for xmas shopping at the end of the year.  I need to be making about 50% more than I am right now, and those kind of raises really don’t happen.

So new job?  Yeah, I’m thinking about it.  “…the devil you know…” is, of course, not too far from these thoughts.

Maybe, now that I think about it, the chicken/egg analogy isn’t all that correct:  it only really goes one way, insofar as finding a mate won’t lead to more money.

Crap.  So it all comes down to finances.

F*ckit:  I’m going to bed.  I’ll be hiking this weekend and taking care of my brother’s dog Clyde.

Yeah, that’s the other thing I wanted to talk about:  while I should have more free time as a result of work not being so busy, I don’t.  The weeks fill right up, and when people talk about making plans for a couple of weeks or a month down the road, I balk.  I wonder where/when I’ll find any ‘me’ time.  I’ve been alone for long enough that I enjoy my solitude.  This is not inconsistent with finding a mate, by the way.  I’m not looking for someone to help me fill my free time – I’m looking for a mate in every sense of the word.  A meaningful relationship that’s worth my time.  Because time is my most precious commodity.

My computer is wicked slow.  This, in and of itself is enough to drive me nuts.  However, it’s also beginning to seriously inhibit my pr0n consumption – and that’s a problem.  My home computer, I mean:  the one at work is mens-a-mens speed-wise.

I’ve got about half a dozen different post topics running through my mind, any of which would be good for this evening, but I just can’t seem to pick one.  This is indicative/illustrative of my overall indecisiveness in life right now:  I have many options, but am having trouble choosing an initial direction.  “The longest journey begins with but a single step,” as the poet once said, and I’m shuffling around – not even doing circles or shuffling to a rhythm or beat, just getting my shoes dirty and generally being afraid of stubbing my toes.  And it’s pissing me off because I’m cognizant of it while I’m doing it.  And that’s not like me – the shuffling, not the cognizance (that’s very like me).

Here are some of the things I’d like to tell you about, dear reader:

• People telling me Laila Jo is “my cat”
• Updated inventory/priorities list
• Zen in my life
• Zen and the art of chili (a recipe for Emily)
• Impressions/vibes regarding MOT 2010 and my “friends from the internet”
• On being a night owl
• My overall frustrations with NNJ and the lack of date-able chicks herein
• My sex/relationship ideal
• The current/general state of my spiritual progress
  
• The Eckhart Tolle CDs I listened to on the way to and from RI

Any of these topics should be good for at least 500 words from yours truly, dear reader, but I can’t seem to stop dissembling.

In an attempt to do so this evening, I did my laundry and cleaned my apartment.  Last week I bought a new air conditioner, thinking that my old one wasn’t kicking out any cold air any more.  The new one wasn’t doing a very good job of cooling my apartment, and I realized that it’s producing approximately the same amount of cold air as the old one – which made me reconsider my diagnosis of the old one as broken.  In any case, I now have two air conditioning units going in my windows (right next to one another) and they seem to be getting the job done.  (My windows are small, so the units necessarily are as well.)  Can’t wait to see my effin PSE&G bill next month.

So I swept, vacuumed, did the dishes, re-installed the old AC and did a pretty thorough cleansing of my apartment with some white sage.  Oh, and I did my laundry as well.  I really need to buy some new sheets:  these autumn-leaves flannel ones really don’t give off a particularly summery vibe.

After cleaning and clearing, I did some standing meditation for a few minutes in an attempt to enjoy and further smooth out the feng shui of my living space.  Somewhere in all that, I also recorded the following minute of zen:

It took me several months to hang my wind chime, but tonight I was very glad I (eventually) did.

My desk is still a mess.  It’s totally fucking up the energy of both my apartment and me.  I’ve been meaning to clean it for several months now, but just haven’t.  On the upside, procrastinating cleaning my desk has led to many other projects getting done.

So whatever.  I’ll change when the pain gets great enough.  Let me know if any of the above (bulleted) topics appeal to you, dear reader:  that might help me out with this whole shit-or-get-off-the-pot thing.

Jesus, I need to learn how to upload photos to this damned site.  Not that I have any particularly phenomenal photos.  Other than this one, of course. Here’s the link to the full album from this weekend.  On the docket was MINIs on Top – a MINI Cooper rally up in New Hampshire.  After doing a whole bunch of cool shite, we drove the 8-mile auto road to the summit of Mount Washington, the highest peak in New England.  And maybe more, but I don’t feel like checking right now.

It was a pretty awesome time.  We didn’t see shit from the top of the mountain – the summit was covered in a cloud – but I hardly noticed, the company was that good.

I left work a bit early on Thursday and headed up to meet Brandy, Don and Alora at the Narragansett Cafe in Jamestown RI.  We watched The Shiny Lapel Trio play some kick-ass swing and then headed back to crash at Brandy and Don’s house so that we could leave early to meet up with a bunch of other MINIs in Boston for the drive up to NH.

Friday was a travel day – smurf, every day was a travel day – and I’d love to give you the run-down of every single road we took and place at which we stopped, but I really wasn’t paying much attention to any of that.  Alora was my navigator and Don was Brandy’s.  Don did most of the heavy lifting navigation-wise via Brandy’s iPad and I just detached my brain and followed.  It was awesome.

The roads up in NH were absolutely gorgeous – we were in the White Mountains and there were no cops around at all.  Everywhere we went, there were other MINIs (over 200 were at the rally), so no matter where the road took us, we were almost always in a caravan-of-sorts.  It was so much fun to play on those roads.  Brandy is an excellent driver and at times I almost had trouble keeping up with her.  It was wicked cool to have my A-game in full effect.

Friday night we did the trivia thing with the folks from the rally and our team (“The Candy Van”) came in third place.  In second place was “The Beach-Goers” – the other foursome at our table, with whom we colluded heavily.

Saturday we all converged at some big ski-mountain parking lot and checked out each others’ MINIs.  Then we had a few hours to kill, so we did one of the 80-something mile loops through the mountains.  Afterward, we all met at the base of Mt. Washington for dinner, raffles, prizes and other stuff.  Then we lined up and headed up the mountain.

This year’s weather was the worst it’s been in the 8 (or so) years of MOT.  The auto road closes at 6:30, but it was kept open for our group.  By the time we got to the top of the twisty-windy road, visibility was nil and the wind was blowing hard.  We had hot chocolate in the summit building and headed back down – well after the rest of the group had already left.  Brandy’s car was first, followed by mine, and finally Sam and Kylie’s – a couple from our table the prior night.  One of the park rangers followed us down.  We had to stay in first gear for almost the whole way down and even had to stop a couple of times to cool off our brakes, the road is that steep.  Visibility was about 15 feet and Brandy did a kick-ass job of being lead dog on the way down.

The only p’diddle I got the whole weekend was my own car when I recognized that one of my headlamps was out (which I quickly remedied by slapping it at one of the brake-cooling stops).  Other than that, Alora kicked my ass at that game.  =/

We went straight from the mountain to the cocktail/hors d’oeuvres hour (nothing left but crumbs) and watched a couple of slide shows from prior years.  We were all pretty exhausted (adrenaline was high for a good couple of hours on that drive), and soon headed back to bed.  Sunday was a leisurely drive (the long way, of course) to Boston to drop Don off for his flight to Pensacola, and then Brandy, Alora and I had salads and dessert in Providence RI before we split up to head home.

I met up with Scott at the diner on the way back and flopped into bed with enough time to make it to work good and late on Monday.

And I’m well on my way to being 2/2 this week on the work/late thing, so I’ll stop here.  I have plenty more to say, as I’m sure you can guess, but I’ll save it for future posts.

Thank you, Brandy, Don and Alora for a wonderful weekend.  Brandy especially, for setting the whole thing up and just being fantabulous in general.  =)

One of my two remaining (chemical) addictions:

Via: Homeowners Insurance

Here’s a truly heartwarming story about the bond formed between a little 5-year-old girl and some construction workers that makes you believe that we CAN make a difference when we give a child the gift of our time.

A young family moved into a house next door to a vacant lot. One day a construction crew turned up to start building a house on the empty lot.  The young family’s 5-year-old daughter naturally took an interest in all the activity going on next door and spent much of each day observing the workers.

Eventually the construction crew, all of them gems-in-the-rough, more or less adopted her as a kind of project mascot. They chatted with her, let her sit with them while they had coffee and lunch breaks, and gave her little jobs to do here and there to make her feel important.   At the end of the first week they even presented her with a pay envelope containing a couple of dollars.

The little girl took this home to her mother who said all the appropriate words of admiration and suggested that they take the two dollar “pay” she had received to the bank the next day to start a savings account.

When they got to the bank, the teller was equally impressed and asked the little girl how she had come by her very own pay check at such a young age. The  little girl proudly replied, “I worked last week with the crew building the house next door to us.

My goodness gracious,” said the teller, “and will you be working on the house again this week, too?”

The little girl replied, “I will if those assholes at Home Depot ever deliver the fucking sheet rock…”

Stories like this just bring a tear to your eye.

This was a helluva weekend, dear reader. 

Friday night I blew everyone off and read 150 pages of a new book.  Saturday morning, Scott and I hiked Doubletop and Graham.  Graham did not, this time, take a chunk out of my eye.  Yay.  Here’s the link to the full trip report on this site (which is, actually, the last post).

After the hike, we got home in time to shower and meet up with Jeanne and Heather and head down to Brighton Bar in Long Branch NJ to see four metal bands.  The headliners were Black Water Rising and Cycle of Pain.  Both played excellent shows, as did the two bands before them (KillCode & Diablo Royale). 

I danced around and headbanged like a maniac for all four bands – I must have sweat through my shirt at least three times.  I can’t believe I’m in good enough shape to do that after Saturday’s hike.  I spent as much time eating and drinking water as I could this weekend, and although I stayed tolerably/well hydrated, I don’t think I consumed anywhere near the number of calories I burned on Saturday.

Sunday was spent on the golf course (Apple Greens near New Paltz NY) with John, Katie and Dad.  Afterward we returned to mom & dad’s house for zuppa di pesce a la mom.  I got home around 8PM and promptly fell asleep.  Woke up around 11PM to turn the lights off, shower off the various chemicals sticking to me from the day, and go back to sleep.  I did not do laundry, bake a cake or clean ANY of my apartment this weekend.

Next weekend I’ll be at Minis On Top with a few friends from the internet (Brandy, Alora and Don the un-google-able), and I’m wicked glad that (fingers crossed) this week will be slow at work so that I can catch up on my prep for that and other general interwebz stuff.

I need to plan a retreat so that I can gather my thoughts (no jokes, please) before the summer is over.  I can’t believe how quickly 2010 is passing.

Ok, it was a busy weekend, but here’s the full trip report from Saturday’s hike:

Doubletop & Graham 6/19/2010

> Subject: Christmas This Year
> Date: Mon, 14 Sep 2009 17:25:56 -0400
> From: [Ted's Work Email]
> To: [Mom's Work Email]
>
>
>
> Dear Mom,
>
>
>
> If you’re planning to get me socks for Christmas this year, that will be fine. I love it when you get me socks. If you end up looking for something besides or in addition to socks, please consider a spotted hyena:
>
>
>
> <http://www.pieterhugo.com/selected-work/the-hyena-other-men/3.jpg/>
>
>
>
> They look really sweet and I’m sure would love to be rescued from Africa. (They live in a fucking desert.)
>
>
>
> Love,
>
>
>
> Ted

My blood type is B+ – do you know what yours is?

Source: Phlebotomist

Ok, we’re live at The Red Fish (158 Bleecker St NY NY) – for those of you who speak French, that’s “Le Poisson Rouge”. Greg “Cosmo D” Heffernan of Smoothe Moose Lanoratories & Recordings fame is kicking it on his cello & Mac and a couple of DJs are mixing shit up on their Macs and . . . er, mix machines. The sound is overall pretty mixed.

I wish I had a real keyboard, but this is the price I must pay to be this effin mobile.

Greg’s off now and the DJs are getting more beers; they lef the volume up on a pretty decent beat. Now they’re back and messing around again. Every minute or two I think I can hear Justice or Daft Punk – yeah, that’s definitely DP’s “Human After All” they’re playing around with now. These guys should continue to play other people’s music.

There are four Macs on the table with sundry other equipment. I really gotta think one Mac could get the job done just as well.

Holy shit, did Daft Punk know what the fuck they were doing!

Two turntables and a Macintosh: I think the turnies are just there to support the Mac stand. And I don’t mean emotionally.

Dear reader, below please find the full trip report from Saturday’s night-hike of Eagle & Balsam Mountains.  It was fun.  <3 Ted

Eagle & Balsam 6/12/2010

Before you ask, yes:  I’m blogging from the office.  On a Sunday.  As I’m sure I’ve mentioned several times in the last couple of weeks, work is busy as sh*t and my clients are in Taiwan, which means that their Monday morning starts on my Sunday night.  By stopping by the office for a couple/few hours on Sunday afternoon/evening, I’m able to stay ahead of them and provide good client service.  It’s better than blowing sailors down by the docks or truckers in truck stop toilets. 

This weekend has been pretty fly.  I’ve got this kind of relaxed bubble of serenity all around me and I feel like the yogis say:  that I’m a being of light.  I don’t really go in too much for all the ‘eternal soul’ thing, but I feel right now as though my skin is just a layer of the overall bundle of energy that is me – and it’s currently not the outside layer.

Lots of exercise this weekend.  I left work on Friday around 3:30, got a haircut and stopped by my sister’s office to chill with her for a bit.  Then I went home and ran a couple of miles, in the hopes that it would get rid of some of the knots of stress that were pervading my very being.  I swear, I could hear the stress in my voice even when I wasn’t at work or talking about anything even remotely work-related.  Not stressed like anxiety-stressed, just that kind of wound tight intensity – you know, like in the movies where the guy is all yelling in a normal conversation?  The tone of my voice was off, and everything was black and white:  a decision to be made.  Situation:  you’re sad about something.  Decision:  get over it.  Situation:  you have a bunch of errands to do.  Decision:  why are you telling me about them?  Get moving.

Please note the ‘you’s in those last couple of sentences, dear reader – they indicate that my intensity was spilling out beyond my own head, which I didn’t like very much and which is why I went for a run on Friday afternoon. 

I felt pretty good afterward.  I don’t think the knots in my shoulders will ever go away (matter of fact, I’m kind of afraid my arms will fall off if they do), but at least some of the plaque got cleared out of my capillaries - especially the ones in my brain.

I took care of my regular Friday-evening things and had just about finished eating my dinner around 11:30 when Scott texted me “want to go hiking?”  I thought about my response for a moment, when the next text came through:  “I mean now.”  And I was like “I know what you mean.  I’m thinking.” 

So Scott and I left around midnight to head up to the Catskills and climb the mountains we had on the docket for Saturday morning.  We hit the trail around 2:30, climbed Eagle and Balsam mountains, and were back in the car around 7:30.  The first couple of miles were straight up hill and I gotta tell you, dear reader, I ate that motherfucker up.  I’m not saying I could necessarily have run up the mountain, but damn, was I flying.  We didn’t really get a feel for how long and steep the hill was until the way back down.

Friday night was a new moon, so it was inky-black dark when we turned our headlamps off (which we did a couple of times to enjoy the scenery).  I’m talking like squid ink – it got in our eyes and everything. 

Saturday morning I took a shower and was in bed by 10AM, to wake up around 6 or 7 and swing on by my brother’s place to take his dog for a walk (he was in the Catskills for a soccer tournament).  Then I showered again (yes, I do that a lot in the summer), and headed off to my friend Tara’s birthday party at Mavi Lounge in Fairfield, where I danced the night away with some damn-fine looking women.  Even gave one of them my card (*buffs nails on lapel*) – she was wicked interesting and I hope she calls.  I’d like to have a conversation that doesn’t involve yelling directly into one anothers’ ears.  Huh.  I wonder if I got the apostrophe right on that one.  Seriously, next time I got to a club I’m bringing tin cans and string.

The DJ was meh, but there were beats to be found in most of what he was playing.  I sweat my skinny white ass off dancing and loved every minute of it. 

Today I woke up around 10:30AM – which is pretty shocking and unlike me on a true day off – and rolled on back to John’s apartment to take Clyde’s fat white pit bull ass for a long walk.  And would you look at that?  It’s 5PM and now I have to go to my parents’ house to let their dogs out and feed them.

As much as I’d love to complain about how they’re not my dogs and it’s cutting into my me-time weekend hours, I love the shit out of those fucking animals, and it’s my fault everybody has dogs in the first place.  [Note to self:  blog about why I'm too selfish to have a dog at this point in my life.]  Clyde, Diesel and Radar were all DC rescues by yours truly from back in the day.  Riggs is Katie’s crackhead dog from Jamaica (Queens) – I take no responsibility for that one.

So off I go.  (Theoretical) tutoring appointment at 9:30 this evening, and I would still like to do some apartment cleaning and bake a cake before that.

Peace out, yo.

I’m a fucken MACHINE, dear reader.  Working my ass off like it’s going out of style.  Today was 12 hours and I felt like I was leaving early.  Part of me wants to take a minute and count the number of hours I’ve been at work this week – just for shits & giggles – and part of me doesn’t want to know.

The same part of me that doesn’t want to know is the smart one, I think.  Deja vu:

Back about five years ago I was living in SE DC – Anacostia, to be specific – and working in PG County MD.  I went out to visit my friends in Annapolis – we played golf in the summer heat and I forgot to eat.  But I didn’t forget to drink.  I think I was probably legally drunk by the time I got into the car to drive out to Annapolis in the morning.  Anyway, after not eating and only drinking all day long, I left around 10 or 11PM to make the drunk drive back to DC – one which I’d done many times before.

But getting out of Annapolis at night (ok, to be honest, during the day too) was impossible for me.  I always got lost.  I’d wander around until I finally bumped into 50 West.  Once I was on that road, my body could take me home while my brain worked to keep me from falling asleep.

That night, I didn’t make it out of Annapolis.  I got pulled over at midnight by the cops and was arrested for drunk driving.  It was bad.  Lots of lights and people yelling and there was NO way I was ever going to pass the field sobriety test.

Anyway, they towed my car and gave me a ride to the police station in the front seat of a cruiser with my hands cuffed behind my back.  That’s not particularly comfortable, but they didn’t care.  (Nor should they have.)  When we got to the station, I was chained to the wall while the officer wrote up his report.

At 6AM he asked me if I wanted to take a breathalyzer.  Part of me wanted to do so because I was curious to see how far past the legal limit I STILL was.  I had a pretty high tolerance in those days – my blood was (no joke) thick with Jim Beam on a regular basis.

Thankfully, the part of me that does not now want to know how many hours I’ve worked in the past five days (I started Sunday night) did not then think it was a very smart idea to take the breathalyzer, so I refused.  They let me out an hour or two later.

This puts me in mind of Edgar Allen Poe’s short story The Imp of the Perverse.  I read it when I was very young and it made quite an impression upon me.  Or rather, my level of identification with the story was what made the impression on me.

The next post (which is, technically, the previous post) is scraped from the above link.  You’re welcome to read it here or there, if you have the time to do so.

These are not my words, they are Poe’s.  I’ve scraped the below story from this site.

The Imp Of The Perverse
by
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

Bibliographic Notes:  First published in the 1845 July issue of Graham’s Lady’s And Gentleman’s Magazine, and republished, in slightly revised form, in various of Poe’s other collections in later years.

In the consideration of the faculties and impulses – of the prima mobilia of the human soul, the phrenologists have failed to make room for a propensity which, although obviously existing as a radical, primitive, irreducible sentiment, has been equally overlooked by all the moralists who have preceded them.  In the pure arrogance of the reason, we have all overlooked it.  We have suffered its existence to escape our senses solely through want of belief – of faith; – whether it be faith in Revelation, or faith in the Kabbala.  The idea of it has never occurred to us, simply because of its seeming supererogation.  We saw no need of the impulse – for the propensity.  We could not perceive its necessity.  We could not understand, that is to say, we could not have understood, had the notion of this primum mobile ever obtruded itself; – we could not have understood in what manner it might be made to further the objects of humanity, either temporal or eternal.  It cannot be denied that phrenology, and in great measure, all metaphysicianism, have been concocted à priori.  The intellectual or logical man, rather than the understanding or observant man, set himself to imagine designs – to dictate purposes to God.  Having thus fathomed to his satisfaction, the intentions of Jehovah, out of these intentions he built his innumerable systems of mind.  In the matter of phrenology, for example, we first determined, naturally enough, that it was the design of the Deity that man should eat.  We then assigned to man an organ of alimentiveness, and this organ is the scourge with which the Deity compels man, will-I nill-I, into eating.  Secondly, having settled it to be God’s will that man should continue his species, we discovered an organ of amativeness, forthwith.  And so with combativeness, with ideality, with causality, with constructiveness, – so, in short, with every organ, whether representing a propensity, a moral sentiment, or a faculty of the pure intellect.  And in these arrangements of the principia of human action, the Spurzheimites, whether right or wrong, in part, or upon the whole, have but followed, in principle, the footsteps of their predecessors; deducing and establishing everything from the preconceived destiny of man, and upon the ground of the objects of this Creator.

It would have been wiser, it would have been safer to classify, (if classify we must,) upon the basis of what man usually or occasionally did, and was always occasionally doing, rather than upon the basis of what we took it for granted the Deity intended him to do.  If we cannot comprehend God in his visible works, how then in his inconceivable thoughts, that call the works into being?  If we cannot understand him in his objective creatures, how then in his substantive moods and phases of creation?

Induction, à posteriori, would have brought phrenology to admit, as an innate and primitive principle of human action, a paradoxical something, which we may call perverseness, for want of a more characteristic term.  In the sense I intend, it is, in fact, a mobile without motive, a motive not motivirt.  Through its promptings we act without comprehensible object; or, if this shall be understood as a contradiction in terms, we may so far modify the proposition as to say, that through its promptings we act, for the reason that we should not.  In theory, no reason can be more unreasonable; but, in fact, there is none more strong.  With certain minds, under certain conditions, it becomes absolutely irresistible.  I am not more certain that I breathe, than that the assurance of the wrong or error of any action is often the one unconquerable force which impels us, and alone impels us to its prosecution.  Nor will this overwhelming tendency to do wrong for the wrong’s sake, admit of analysis, or resolution into ulterior elements.  It is a radical, a primitive impulse – elementary.  It will be said, I am aware, that when we persist in acts because we feel we should not persist in them, our conduct is but a modification of that which ordinarily springs from the combativeness of phrenology.  But a glance will show the fallacy of this idea.  The phrenological combativeness has for its essence, the necessity of self-defence.  It is our safeguard against injury.  Its principle regards our well-being; and thus the desire to be well, is excited simultaneously with its development.  It follows, that the desire to be well must be excited simultaneously with any principle which shall be merely a modification of combativeness, but in the case of that something which I term perverseness, the desire to be well is not only not aroused, but a strongly antagonistical sentiment exists.

An appeal to one’s own heart is, after all, the best reply to the sophistry just noticed.  No one who trustingly consults and thoroughly questions his own soul, will be disposed to deny the entire radicalness of the propensity in question.  It is not more incomprehensible than distinctive.  There lives no man who at some period, has not been tormented, for example, by an earnest desire to tantalize a listener by circumlocution.  The speaker is aware that he displeases; he has every intention to please; he is usually curt, precise, and clear; the most laconic and luminous language is struggling for utterance upon his tongue; it is only with difficulty that he restrains himself from giving it flow; he dreads and deprecates the anger of him whom he addresses; yet, the thought strikes him, that by certain involutions and parentheses, this anger may be engendered.  That single thought is enough.  The impulse increases to a wish, the wish to a desire, the desire to an uncontrollable longing, and the longing (to the deep regret and mortification of the speaker, and in defiance of all consequences,) is indulged.

We have a task before us which must be speedily performed.  We know that it will be ruinous to make delay.  The most important crisis of our life calls, trumpet-tongued, for immediate energy and action.  We glow, we are consumed with eagerness to commence the work, with the anticipation of whose glorious result our whole souls are on fire.  It must, it shall be undertaken to-day, and yet we put it off until to-morrow; and why?  There is no answer, except that we feel perverse, using the word with no comprehension of the principle.  To-morrow arrives, and with it a more impatient anxiety to do our duty, but with this very increase of anxiety arrives, also, a nameless, a positively fearful, because unfathomable, craving for delay.  This craving gathers strength as the moments fly.  The last hour for action is at hand.  We tremble with the violence of the conflict within us, – of the definite with the indefinite – of the substance with the shadow.  But, if the contest has proceeded thus far, it is the shadow which prevails, – we struggle in vain.  The clock strikes, and is the knell of our welfare.  At the same time, it is the chanticleer-note to the ghost that has so long over-awed us.  It flies – it disappears – we are free.  The old energy returns.  We will labour now.  Alas, it is too late!

We stand upon the brink of a precipice.  We peer into the abyss – we grow sick and dizzy.  Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger.  Unaccountably we remain.  By slow degrees our sickness, and dizziness, and horror, become merged in a cloud of unnameable feeling.  By gradations, still more imperceptible, this cloud assumes shape, as did the vapor from the bottle out of which arose the genius in the Arabian Nights.  But out of this our cloud upon the precipice’s edge, there grows into palpability, a shape, far more terrible than any genius, or any demon of a tale, and yet it is but a thought, although a fearful one, and one which chills the very marrow of our bones with the fierceness of the delight of its horror.  It is merely the idea of what would be our sensations during the sweeping precipitancy of a fall from such a height.  And this fall – this rushing annihilation – for the very reason that it involves that one most ghastly and loathsome of all the most ghastly and loathsome images of death and suffering which have ever presented themselves to our imagination – for this very cause do we now the most vividly desire it.  And because our reason violently deters us from the brink, therefore, do we the more impetuously approach it.  There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him, who shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a plunge.  To indulge for a moment, in any attempt at thought, is to be inevitably lost; for reflection but urges us to forbear, and therefore it is, I say, that we cannot.  If there be no friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backward from the abyss, we plunge, and are destroyed.

Examine these and similar actions as we will, we shall find them resulting solely from the spirit of the Perverse.  We perpetrate them merely because we feel that we should not.  Beyond or behind this, there is no intelligible principle.  And we might, indeed, deem this perverseness a direct instigation of the Arch-Fiend, were it not occasionally known to operate in furtherance of good.

I have said thus much, that in some measure I may answer your question, that I may explain to you why I am here, that I may assign to you something that shall have at least the faint aspect of a cause for my wearing these fetters, and for my tenanting this cell of the condemned.  Had I not been thus prolix, you might either have misunderstood me altogether; or with the rabble, you might have fancied me mad.  As it is, you will easily perceive that I am one of the many uncounted victims of the Imp of the Perverse.

It is impossible that any deed could have been wrought with a more thorough deliberation.  For weeks, for months, I pondered upon the means of the murder.  I rejected a thousand schemes, because their accomplishment involved a chance of detection.  At length, in reading some French Memoirs, I found an account of a nearly fatal illness that occurred to Madame Pilau, through the agency of a candle accidentally poisoned.  The idea struck my fancy at once.  I knew my victim’s habit of reading in bed.  I knew, too, that his apartment was narrow and ill ventilated.  But I need not vex you with impertinent details.  I need not describe the easy artifices by which I substituted, in his bed-room candlestand, a wax-light of my own making, for the one which I there found.  The next morning he was discovered dead in his bed, and the Coroner’s verdict was, ‘Death by the visitation of God’.

Having inherited his estate, all went well with me for years.  The idea of detection never once entered my brain.  Of the remains of the fatal taper, I had myself carefully disposed.  I had left no shadow of a clue by which it would be possible to convict, or even to suspect me of the crime.  It is inconceivable how rich a sentiment of satisfaction arose in my bosom as I reflected upon my absolute security.  For a very long period of time, I was accustomed to revel in this sentiment.  It afforded me more real delight than all the mere worldly advantages accruing from my sin.  But there arrived at length an epoch, from which the pleasurable feeling grew, by scarcely perceptible gradations, into a haunting and harassing thought.  It harassed because it haunted.  I could scarcely get rid of it for an instant.  It is quite a common thing to be thus annoyed with the ringing in our ears, or rather in our memories, of the burthen of some ordinary song, or some unimpressive snatches from an opera.  Nor will we be the less tormented if the song in itself be good, or the opera air meritorious.  In this manner, at last, I would perpetually catch myself pondering upon my security, and repeating, in a low, undertone, the phrase, “I am safe.”

One day, whilst sauntering along the streets, I arrested myself in the act of murmuring, half aloud, these customary syllables.  In a fit of petulance, I remodelled them thus: – “I am safe – I am safe – yes – if I be not fool enough to make open confession!”

No sooner had I spoken these words, than I felt an icy chill creep to my heart.  I had had some experience in these fits of perversity, whose nature I have been at some trouble to explain, and I remembered well, that in no instance, I had successfully resisted their attacks.  And now my own casual self-suggestion, that I might possibly be fool enough to confess the murder of which I had been guilty, confronted me, as if the very ghost of him whom I had murdered – and beckoned me on to death.

At first, I made an effort to shake off this nightmare of the soul.  I walked vigorously – faster – still faster – at length I ran.  I felt a maddening desire to shriek aloud.  Every succeeding wave of thought overwhelmed me with new terror, for, alas! I well, too well understood that, to think, in my situation, was to be lost.  I still quickened my pace.  I bounded like a madman through the crowded thoroughfares.  At length, the populace took the alarm, and pursued me.  I felt then the consummation of my fate.  Could I have torn out my tongue, I would have done it, but a rough voice resounded in my ears – a rougher grasp seized me by the shoulder.  I turned – I gasped for breath.  For a moment, I experienced all the pangs of suffocation; I became blind, and deaf, and giddy; and then, some invisible fiend, I thought, struck me with his broad palm upon the back.  The longimprisoned secret burst forth from my soul.

They say that I spoke with a distinct enunciation, but with marked emphasis, and passionate hurry, as if in dread of interruption before concluding the brief, but pregnant sentences that consigned me to the hangman, and to hell.

Having related all that was necessary for the fullest judicial conviction, I fell prostrate in a swoon.

But why shall I say more?  To-day I wear these chains, and am here!  To-morrow I shall be fetterless!  –  but where?

Mmmm…drugs.

Source: Online Colleges and Universities

Here’s the email exchange between Brian, Scott and me.  I’m mostly in the background, laughing mfao:

Brian:  Yo Ted – what’s up with the blog dogs?  I feel like I can’t get my morning started without reading some shit.  What’s up?  You been busy?

Scott:  That fool has been living at work get a newspaper read that

Brian:  Dude it’s not the same.  I have to read about how Ted’s love life sucks or how many mountains he climbed this weekend or at least a new infographic to learn about some stupid bullshit.

Scott:  Me and Scott The Fat Vegan hiked Rusk Mtn. this past Saturday it was a straight up bushwhack but we were ready for it.  It was only about 4 miles but seemed much further cause of the bushwhack part.  It was fun to watch Scotts fat ass just push through the thick pines knowing trees down and and almost breaking his neck every five feet he’s good for that.  We reached the summit around noon then headed over to East Rusk just in case it was part of the Catskill Hundred highest which it wasn’t I found out later that it was PUD (pointless up and down).  We got back to the car and headed home. 

On Sunday we took three guys from Union City out on a hike for our fresh air fund project.  We hiked about 4 miles inside palisades state park.  They only feel a couple times and made it out alive and we got back to the car right before it started pouring out.

Other than that I have been swamped at work this being the peak of the proxy season which also means no dating not that I would be on a date cause E Harmony sucks the big dirty dongus.  But if any of you want to get jiggy with it and are under a hundred pounds I’m open to that.  Well I’m off to bed morning comes early these days.

Brian:  Dude that’s hilarious.  Thanks for that.  Did you & Ted rape those Union guys in the woods?  I’m sure that’s part of the program.

Once again, I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Via: Online Nursing Programs

My apologies, dear reader, if you’re arriving at this page via the ADK High Peaks Forum:  I was pressed for time this evening and can only write so much; this is the same TR from which you just jumped.  Feel free to peruse the rest of the site – you may find something you like.  At the very least, you’ll leave smarter:  that’s a guarantee.

If you’re a regular here, dear reader, feel free to jump over to this post on the forum – the comments (if any) are generally pretty entertaining and informative.

KHP Sunrise Hike 5/31/2010

Once again, no comment:

Via: Online MBA

The weekend, not the post.  I don’t have all that much in me, and this weekend took a lot out of me.

Friday evening was spent tooling around Brooklyn looking for live music with my friend Jeanne.  After about an hour or so of driving (I thought I knew where I was going), we ended up just hanging out and shooting the shiz in a bar in Park Slope.

Got home around 2:30 or so and woke up around 7 to head off into the Catskills with Scott.  We climbed West Kill mountain – which was pretty easy:  a little under 6 miles in about two hours.  Here’s the trip over on my EveryTrail page.  It was humid and buggy, but we had no complaints.  We spent some time at Campmor and EMS afterwards looking at hiking gear and whatnot.  I picked up a sternum strap for my pack and a new pair of socks for hiking.

Showered and napped for a couple of hours, and then Scott and Van stopped by and we all went to sit outside the Starbucks in Ridgewood and sip hot beverages.  I found out that Van reads this blog just about every day.  It’s pretty cool to know one’s regular readers.  You’re one of the 20, Van.  Yes, I’m talking directly to you from the interwebz via your computer screen.  Take your hand out of your pants – this isn’t that kind of site and anyway I haven’t said anything remotely sexy.  “Kent, this is God:  stop touching yourself.”

We went to the diner afterward and it was good.

I woke up around 10 or 11 on Sunday; Scott and Brian met me at my house and we all headed over to my parents’ house for a barbecue with – you guessed it, my parents – and my brother and sister and Katie’s friend (and mine) Sara.  Sara recommended that I read Haruki Murakami and Katie told me that I don’t have a chance with any of her friends because I’m all kinds of creepy.  In vino veritas.  A good time was had by all.

Sara is also a regular blog reader, and she will mention my blog, my rugged handsomeness and my endearing and irresistible wit to all of her hot friends this week.

(QJ mind trick – it works, it really does.)

I think we left my parents’ place around 8.  I don’t remember what I did after that – probably just effed around on the internet without blogging – but Scott swung by my house at 1AM so that we could head up to the Catskills for a night hike (via the Stateline Diner).

We hit the trail around 3:30AM and summited Kaaterskill High Peak around 6 or so.  The sun was supposed to come up at 5:28, but it was early, so our pics ended up being from most of the way up the mountain.  That hike was pretty easy as well – it was the fourth time I climbed KHP, but I’d never taken that route before.  This was the route that everyone else takes, but which I did not do so previously because it was (a) the route that everyone else takes and (b) longer on the map than I felt the hike needed to be.  Here’s the hike over at my EveryTrail page.

Suffice to say that I’ll probably use that route from now on.

We got home around 9 or so; I took a shower and napped from 9:30 to 11:30, whenupon I had to pick up my friend Mike and drive him to Wendy’s barbecue.  Brian followed in his car and Scott decided to get some sleep.  Wuss.

Wendy’s barbecue was excellent.  Her son Nick was there with his friend Jess (a girl), to whom I was introduced from across the deck (I was way back in the corner behind a table full of people).  A minute or two later, Wendy came around the lawn to my side of the deck and said something along the lines of “you realize that Nick is trying to hook you up with that girl, right?”  To which I confessed my total obliviousity and promised to get right on that.

I later played badminton with Nick, Jess and alternately Wendy and Tara (Nick’s sister; Wendy’s daughter).  Afterward, as we were sitting around, discussing zen and yoga and barefoot running and fitness and general philosophy of life stuff, Nick was holding Jess’s hand and talking about how this particular barbecue was a decent place for him to take her to on their second date.

Luckily, my coyness and general non-aggressive nature in the woman-realm saved my ego’s ass in this case, because although I was trading smiles and lots of nice eye contact with Jess, I wasn’t all kinds of hitting on her.  So everything went smoothly.

Wendy later expressed her surprise, saying something along the lines of “what the fuck was that?” (in regards to the Nick-me-Jess thing).  I lol-ed with her about it for a bit, and I’m sure Nick and I will have a decent laugh the next time we see each other.

Then it was Monday night and I was exhausted.  I didn’t really think about work at all this weekend, and I was/am totally cool with that.  I sent out a handful of “I’ll get back to you tomorrow” emails when I got home and racked out.

Just like I’m going to do now.

No comment.

Via:
Medical Assistant
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