Your guide to the perilous waters of the internet

4-20-10

Great weekend with Sue in Leavenworth. We climbed at the pinnacles and planet of the eights. I led martian direct, gray whale, windward and windward direct. Saturday night we stayed with the trad class at 8 mile where we hung out with Dave D., Phil E., Ed and Mindy, Mark and Mary and a few others, including Christine and Ken from the gym who we met at the pinnacles.

I climbed with Phil, Fletch, Lisa and Vladi at the gym yesterday. I led a 9 coming out of the tunnel that had some huge lunges. You make a lunge, clip from a barn door stance, then lunge again. I finally managed to lead it clean, and I felt good about it afterward. But today, faced with a ton of scheduling paperwork and lesson plans I need to finish by tomorrow, the fact that I can lead a lunge fill gym 5.9 seems very hollow. I wish I had more time for writing, and maybe even some painting, but I've been so caught up in climbing and learning actionscript CS4 that there is no extra time. I know these are personal choices I've made, and painting loses out over climbing. Grandma used to always tell me not to ever stop painting, but now I have.

Painting seems like work to me. Each painting is judged on how well it might sell in a gallery, instead of how happy and fullfilled it made me feel to paint it. Climbing is all fun, and nothing can ever be sold out of a climbing trip, so it is totally pointless...but it is still more interesting than painting. Still, I've been thinking about how to make painting fun again. I need to climb every other weekend, so I can have some calm time in which to work around the house, and maybe go out painting.

4-6-10

more good, less bad....Had a great spring break at smith rocks with Dave D, a new friend introduced to me by Merica. We didn't do any remarkably hard routes, just had a lot of fun. I tried to climb New Testament but got spanked. I didn't trust my pro and started filling all the finger slots with gear, which made it really hard to climb. It was a rank beginner error, and I know better, but I just couldn't help myself. Got a good picture out of it though, thanks to Fletch who was above me and borrowed my camera.

Since returning I've started teaching again. I am teaching Web Principals, Dreamweaver, Flash 2 and Dreamweaver 2, which is all CSS. I have 33 students in my Monday and Tuesday classes, which makes for a challenging teaching environment, but I love it. It super fun to have a full room full of students, much better than just a dozen.

Dave turned out to be an awesome guitarist. We jammed every night around the campfire, slowly building our sound and coordinating our riffs. During the day we'd climb until we couldn't see the rock anymore, hike up by headlamp, cook dinner by the campfire in the frigid night air, crack open a beer and work on our sound. It was a win win vacation. If the climbing went bad, the music went good. If we were too tired to play good music, the climbing went well, the next day.

click here to go to the previous month.