Your guide to the perilous waters of the internet

3-31-09

Tomorrow is the last day of my spring break. I had an awesome trip to smith rocks near Bend, Oregon. I drove down with Richard and we climbed for two days before another dozen people from the gym showed up on the weekend including Christine, Vladi, Tyler, Kyle, Ken, Jon, Brianna, Melissa T., Lisa G., Merica, Mike, Kimi, Celio and Jo Jo. Outside of the Mountaineers back in the late seventies, I have never had that many climbing friends show up at one time. Everyone of them is a gem, not a bad apple in the bunch.

I feel so fortunate to know so many friendly people who I can honestly call my friends. Richard and I climbed some easy stuff the first day including "phone call from satan", and cinnamon toast (not easy, but at least under 5.10) and lions jaw. The next day Richard got on a 12b that blew me away. The man has superhuman strength and I was humbled. Ken, Kyle and Jon showed up that day and I tried one of their hard 10a's before walking off with Kyle to do some easy eights.

That was Thursday and Friday. On Saturday Kyle and I continued marching through the easy stuff. I led Jute and a couple others before hooking up with Christine to do Pack Animal (10a start) and Karate. That was my best climb of Karate ever. I'm not sure why I did so well. It helped that she backed off after 3 pieces and I was only finishing her lead. It also helped that I trust her more than anyone else but Sue. My life is safe in her capable belay hands. Plus, she's fun to climb with because, being a girl, I naturally climb a little bolder with her there...macho b.s. no doubt but it's all good.

Also during the Karate lead, Ken, JoJo and Jon were there, with Ken using my camera to take pictures. The 3 of them are all hard core sport climbers capable of climbing hard elevens, but none of them were willing to follow Karate in the biting cold. Only Christine was willing to follow it. She did great too, despite only getting 5 hours of sleep she soldiered through the stiff unrelenting handjams. The girl has steel inside and climbs hard.

We had another stupid argument afterward. Whenever I climb with her now I always seem to stick my foot in my mouth and piss her off. I never mean to hurt her feelings but it seems to happen anyway. This time it was an offhand remark about how I thought she looked thinner. She had said she was trying to lose weight so there would be less to lose when she got pregnant. I said that yes, I thought she did look thinner. And that the little tummy she had was mostly gone.

She blew up at me over that, telling me that you should never tell a woman that she had a tummy, even if she did. I should say, no, no, you look great, you don't need to lose weight. Anyway, it went downhill after that. During the blowup I was in hysterics laughing about the whole thing, and I thought she thought it was funny too, but I was wrong. She put on her pack and huffed up the trail, not saying a word to me.

Then later she told everyone that I told her she was fat...sigh. I don't know why we always fight so much. When we are on the cliff we get along perfectly. We support each other, we never push each other beyond our comfort zone, we are both anal about safety: double checking everything. We laugh and joke, and give each other high fives.

But as soon as the climbing is over, it's not long before we are arguing. She is the only person I do this with too. With everyone else I get along great. Very strange. Hopefully we'll get through this and be normal partners again. She is the best, most reliable and fun partner I've had in ten years, maybe since Sue stopped climbing regularly.

Anyway, with all the new people I'm meeting at the gym I should have lots of friends to climb with this spring. Clint was over tonight and seemed interested in climbing as soon as it warms up. That would be awesome to climb with him.

3-22-09

Skied at Paradise yesterday with Sue and Lisa. On the way down I kept falling and they left me in the dust. I got pretty mad as every time I fell I had to get back up. The snow was so deep it was very painful levering myself up with my poles. What I didn't realize was that my backpack waist belt broke on the way down. Because the load was swinging around on my back I had no balance.

I may have to break down and buy a new backpack. The damn thing is older than my son, so I shouldn't complain. I have 46 finals to grade. I can't afford to spend a leisurely Sunday morning writing witty things here in my journal. I've been spending a lot of time on Facebook. Whenever I have a break or lunch at work I log into to facebook and see what my friends are up to. It's a cool utility...and it's written in PHP.

It's kind of like your standard internet forum except these are people I actually know in the flesh, and we all log in from time to time and write brief notes about what is going on in our lives. The facebook programming shows you what your selected friends have written, and presents thumbnails of any new photos they have posted, as well as any notes or comments your friends have made on those photos. It's a very impressive application for keeping in touch with friends, and sharing photos.

Even David Palzer is on there, who is recovering from a stroke back east. I've posted a new slideshow of photos about climbing shot with my new canon 50d and wide angle lens. A lot of my friends seem to think I'm becoming a good photographer. I've even heard the word "artist" used, though I think that may be an exaggeration. Fun stuff though. I have some excellent tools. I think this new camera should last me a good 5 years, if not more. I see no reason to need anything better.

3-16-09

So I've not written in over half a month. The freelance work I've taken on has drained all my energy for journaling. I played a bit hard this last weekend and I am paying the price today. Fletch, Kimi, Celio, Merica, Mike and I drove over to Vantage in Mike's Toyota Dolphin motorhome.

The climbing was great, the camaraderie was awesome, and the weather was...well, "never boring" is about all I can say about the weather. We had hail, high winds, frigid temperature and blazing sun all in one day. Fletch even had his shirt off for one climb. I have 8 gigs of pictures to sort through. My new Canon 50d, and sigma 10-20 zoom seem to be doing an awesome job.

There have been more layoffs at work. Now the radio and three other programs are on the cutting block. I'm hoping my work on the college websites will make me more valuable, and less likely to end up on the block...but there are no guarantees. If I do get laid off, at least it will be in the spring. The last time I got laid off in 1997 it was in the fall. I tried to paint full time but quickly ran into winter and had to fall back into printing.

Not that anyone is buying paintings these days. If I got laid off now I'd hit the books on php. I just heard from one of our star students who got hired at www.sitecrafting.com last August. He is swamped with work and said his boss just hired 2 more programmers. Good news for web designers/programmers! I tried to get some of my students hired here to help me with overflow work, and they are all so busy they turned me down. Well, one was able to help, but my boss told me the state hiring freeze made that a moot issue anyway.

 

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