The Fort Mudge Memorial Dump

We found the Everett rock gym last night, not without a couple of detours. I think that place should be in the dictionary under "out of the way". All I have to say on the subject of climbing itself is that the spirit is willing, and the technique is still there somewhere, but the muscles just aren't up to much. However, for the first time in ages, my back wasn't complaining when I woke up. In fact, it didn't hurt anywhere. I guess if I can't stand on my hands and sort everything out, I can hang most of my weight off my hands and sort it out that way. (The Everett gym is sadly lacking good inside corners, though. I wanted to play around with an inside corner last night, and couldn't find one that looked like anything.)

Hm. Given that Monday and Tuesday are mostly occupied, and Friday is my goofing-off evening, that leaves Wednesday and Thursday if I want to start going swimming on a semi-regular basis. Exercise breeds exercise, I guess...now I'm all excited about getting into better climbing shape, where I couldn't get excited about getting into better shape in general.

I still think I should've taken Friday off, but one of my co-workers already is, so I can't. Oh well, I'm going to New Orleans on Nov 1, so there. Which reminds me, I have to come up with business cards and resumes for the ATA job marketplace, for which I signed up now that I'm not a student any more. They don't let students sign up for it.

I think I could probably have stood to sleep for a little while longer than I did last night. My brain keeps asking me if I'm sure it's not naptime yet, and I have to keep disappointing it.

[ETA: I found the only really unhappy arm muscle just now. It's in the front of my right shoulder, and it did NOT like my reaching around to scratch my back. Probably because I spent so much time last night reaching around into my chalk bag.]

Time to buy beer again. This week I've had every anxiety dream I've ever had, except the one I used to have as a teenager about falling off a bridge in a car. (At least, having exhausted them, I dreamed last night about a family party involving live squid. Don't ask me where I got that from.)

I discovered yesterday that the version of MultiTerm I did all that work with last spring doesn't exist any more, and the new version looks nothing like the old one. I did finally figure out how to set it up so I got the term, definition, context and source all in the right places, but I still don't know how, or if, I can do some of the neat stuff I could do with the previous version. Sometimes I think progress is overrated.

Speaking of progress, I went bouldering last night. The KSU climbing wall is more like actual rock than anyplace else I've been climbing indoors. Of course, being artificial rock, it's not as hard and not as cold as the real stuff. They really need to put up some decent top-roping routes, though. What good is a 45-foot wall if you can only use the bottom 15 feet of it?

I really have to remember to go see how much it's going to cost me to get Photoshop on this computer again. Last semester somebody told me I could get the entire Adobe Creative Suite for $175 because I'm a student. I hope that's still true. We shall see, though.

I should come up with something to do during my tutoring hours today. Without internet access in there, I'm somewhat limited in the classwork I can get done.

[EDIT: Five minutes before the end of my tutoring session, one of my Spanish classmates showed up in search of an American female reader for a piece of his case study. So I spent half an hour going over that with him. At least I was useful today.]

I went climbing last night. Going climbing on the Tuesday after the Saturday when you help somebody move is maybe not the brightest idea ever, but what there was of it was good. I cut it off short because (a) my arms hurt, and (b) I didn't trust myself to belay any more. No accidents, this time, but this was still the first time I'd been climbing after The Accident, and I was nervous. I also don't have any calluses on my right hand any more, because where I used to have calluses, I had blisters, and now that the blisters have healed, I have nothing.

I'm finally getting used to having my room in a different place, although I'm starting to hate where the overhead light switch is (right smack over the middle of the head of my bed). Some day I may put the doorknob back on the door that's currently blocked off and block off the other door instead. I'm not that ambitious this week.

I caught myself getting back into the habit of drinking coffee at work, so I'm not having any today. I really wish I wasn't so susceptible to caffeine, but it seems that I am. I have to be careful about drinking soda with dinner if I want to get any sleep before midnight. When you have to be at work at 8:30, that becomes a bit of a problem.


This weekend, Arisia. Next weekend, we go adopt cats. Somewhere in there, I buy a digital camera. I'm sick of putting that off, and if I have to live on macaroni for a while as a result, so be it.

It's been a pretty productive week, and only some of that productivity is work-related. I ordered new contact lenses and made an appointment to get my teeth cleaned on Monday and made a doctor's appointment for January and cleaned out my inbox and my six other "keep this somewhere" boxes and filed a very large amount of miscellaneous papers. I think at one point yesterday I had about 20" of binders stacked up on the floor waiting for things to be filed in them, and some day I'll figure out how to get the tray out of the hole punch without getting confetti all over the floor. Usually I just turn the whole thing upside down over the trash can and shake vigorously, which works pretty well for not getting confetti all over the floor, but if the tray wasn't meant to come out, why is it the only plastic part in the entirely-metal assemblage?

I seem to have taken care of most of the plague of flies. Random ones show up every so often, but it's nowhere near as bad as it was. Now I need to take care of the plague of dishes. I was thinking the other day that since I sing while I do the dishes, the neighbors can probably hear me. I decided I don't care, since (a) I hear enough things from various neighbors (one of whom has a conch shell or a horn or something), and (b) I can carry a tune without a covered bushel basket with handles.

Speaking of handles, I went climbing on Wednesday night and it kicked my ass all over the place. Yesterday, despite Advil, I pretty much hurt every time I moved. Today I'm better. I don't think I climbed any set routes under 5.6 all night on Wednesday. I wonder what it works out to when I give up on a set route and use whatever holds present themselves? At one point the people on the route next to me were speaking French, and I asked them, in French, what they called the sport. So now I know that the French word for rock climbing is "l'escalade" and I know I can still speak understandable French. Heh.

Friday!

Why is it that I can't sleep past 8:30 on weekends, and yet on weekdays I just want to stay in bed for another two or three hours when the alarm goes off? (These days, the answer is easy; it's warm in bed.)

On Wednesday night I went climbing, and proved conclusively that I can too climb overhanging walls if I want to. It's definitely indoor climbing season again, though; the gym was absolutely packed, even to having people climbing around on the ceiling. Therefore, I didn't get to climb the new variation on George of the Jungle until after I'd already trashed my arms. By the end of the night, it hurt to raise my arms above my shoulders. Washing my hair was, um, interesting. I didn't exactly hurt the next morning, but all of my muscles felt tired.

It's supposed to rain tomorrow. That figures. I think we're starting a new tradition of going to Wilson Farms in the rain, since it was raining three weeks ago when we went.

I ordered black linen and white silk floss for my next embroidery project, and when she heard what I was ordering, Theresa said "WHAT are you working on?". She thought it was cool once I explained it, though. I think it'll be cool too, although if my family sees me working on black linen, they're going to tell me I'm insane. They already told me that when I showed them the pattern for Elizabeth and the Lavender Sky.

I also finally got XonX downloaded and transferred to a CD such that the Mac could read it, so now I've got that running. AbiWord turned out to be less than entirely helpful, but that's only a minor problem.

When in danger, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.

I went climbing last night, and as hot as it was on the ground, it was a lot hotter 25 feet up. It wasn't a very good night for finishing climbs. I went through chalk like mad because my hands were sweating so much. It was a workout, I'll give it that. Today my arms hurt.

How is it supposed to be in the 80s today when it was already 80 at 7:15 this morning?

Work has just turned into a giant fiasco hatchery. We have no faculty at all, so nobody can see patients, and for some reason everybody's demanding that I do something. Pardon me, am I a dentist? Is it my fault that nobody tells me anything? GRRRR

I'm lightly sunburned on the arms and the face, and I'm sore all over, but going climbing yesterday was worth it. I keep forgetting that rock is a lot harder to climb than the gym walls. After climbing real rock I hurt more in more odd places. (You know you've been climbing real rock when your hip joints hurt.) Despite all that, though, it was a good day. I actually got to the top of the climb I wanted to get to the top of. The quarries look silly all filled in; you can see where there was water once, and there are these giant monoliths sticking out of the dirt in random spots. It's a really nifty place anyway; Hobbit is right in that it would be a good hiking/meandering/exploring spot as well as a good climbing spot.

I also discovered that those silly little labels they stick on fruit don't let light through. I had an apple sticker stuck on my shoulder and now I have a white spot in my sunburn. Hee hee.

On Saturday I spent the morning outdoors, since it was too nice not to, and then went and laid out some of my quilt pattern. The problem is, the table is too short, so I had to start sewing it all together so it wouldn't fall on the floor and get disordered. It's going to be wide enough, hooray! Now I hope I have enough fabric to finish it. It's also going to be somewhat darker overall than I thought, but that's not terrible since it will probably fade in the sun. Sewing machines are a bit like bicycles, in that you sit down and say "Oh, right, I used to know how this worked", and then do it. Or at least I did. I can still sew straight lines, at least.

I wish I still had Advil in my desk drawer. Oh well. I think I'll go get some from the dispensary. That's the good thing about working for a dental school. If you need a toothbrush, or Advil, or something like that, you can get it.