…beyond nice.

Last night was the first day of class for my glacier traveling class. Being the first day, it was mostly introductions with a quick lesson on the most important knot you have to learn how to tie. Being a rock climber, the figure-8 knot is a knot that I can tie in my sleep. The instructor went over the schedule and told us there will definitely be a Mount Rainier climb scheduled after the Mount Baker climb for those of us that are interested.

My buddy Daniel and I took this mountaineering course specifically for learning how to climb Rainier so I can’t tell you how excited we are that the class will lead us up there.

Yes, I know I’m behind in writing up about a couple trips. I do plan to do something about them…but I’m hungry right now.

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My company recently hired a new studio coordinator and she’s been putting pretty touches everywhere.  This morning I walked into the kitchen and noticed how nicely arranged all our snacks are when they used to be piled in cardboard boxes.

A couple thoughts came to me at that moment.  One, it never occurred to me that I can arrange my food all pretty-like and it brightens up the space, but even if it did, I would never do it.  Two, it must be a nice perk for guys with wives that likes to organize things like this, and I will never be privy to this.

I was complaining to my coworker about how I’ll never have a sweet wife that will pretty up my snack table at which point he said I could marry a nice metronome guy that could do the same.  I scoffed and said I doubt I could stay with a pansy guy that puts my food in linen lined baskets for long.  I’m quite okay with lamenting over the wife that I will never have.

A couple friends and I just signed up and paid for a mountaineering course.  It’s a two month program with a class every Tuesday and a weekend trip every other weekend.  At the end of it, we will climb Mount Baker, but my friends and I are really hoping we will be able to Mount Rainier before the summer ends as well.

The two guys have been training for last few months while I sat on my ass since my last hike of the year on December 31st:

The weekend before last, I went on my first hike of 2008.  I felt great and pushed myself as hard as I always do.  Two days later I was hobbling around and in a world of pain but loving every minute of it (I couldn’t tiptoe without crying like a little girl, but when I’m clinging for dear life while rock climbing, my legs can move every which way without hurting, go figure!)

Last weekend we went on a nice mild elevation gain (maybe 2000ft) hike with great distance (11-12 miles) for stamina building and it was just so wonderful.  I remember at one point I felt like calling all my friends and family and telling them I love them.  Hiking is some powerful drug.

We hiked to the top of Oyster Dome.  The hike was very easy, I didn’t even feel a muscle twitch the day after.  Most of the trail was snow covered but luckily the viewpoint was bare.  If you plan on hiking this anytime soon, bring gaiters and waterproof boots, there is much slogging through mushy snow.

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Whenever I talk to my doctor about stuff like, how soon can I start exercising after donating blood or is it okay to do this type of exercise, they always tell me, “Listen to your body.” If I actively listen to my body I would be the world’s laziest tub of lard sitting in front of my TV or computer all the time watching some never-ending anime or Chinese soap. I swear my body purrs with joy and joyness when I’m lounging around watching every episode of Death Note with ice cream!
Just yesterday, on a fine Saturday morning, I figured it was time I get myself back into hiking shape, so I got up, made an omelet and got ready for quick hike up Mt Si. As I was shuffling around the kitchen I noticed my right knee was tweaking a bit, by the time the omelet was cooked I was moving with an all out limp. Have I been cranking up the resistance too high on the elliptical machine? I ignored my knee and got dressed for the hike. As I gathered random gear to prepare for possible snow at the top, I felt a side stitch. Seriously, body, WTF? I know I haven’t been working my abs or my cloits and dloits, and I know I didn’t rupture my appendix while eating brunch, so fuck off you lazy bastard.
I’ve been complaining about how there’s a lull in between backpacking season and snowboarding season, well I’ve decided it’s now boy season. Oh - there are the good bad and the ugly to report on.
Yes, I know…does anyone want to hear a girl drone on and on about boys (especially if the “girl” is a 30 something woman)? I’ve decided on this a while back, I’d rather hear about boys then weight gain in their thighs. Really, have you ever heard a girl that is clearly not on the verge of being slightly obese complain about gaining 2-3 lbs? It’s not a pretty sight and I barely ever have enough will to not punch them in the jaw, so why should I tempt you with such? So…tis the season of the boys.
I’ve also recently made peace with the idea that I’ve become a wino. How does one know when they’ve become a wino? Well, if you somehow end up at the grocery store…and you walk out with 3 bottles of wine and a variety of cheese, and you never intended to share that with anyone else – that could be a sign. I mentioned this to a buddy, and he said, well, it’s not so bad if you slowly drink each bottle over time. I stopped him and said, “No, no, it’s red wine, it’s not right to keep that stuff opened overnight.” Wino.

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Whoever you are that is in charge of weather for Seattle this year, you suck!  It’s the day before my annual backpacking trip, and there’s supposed to be a wind storm coming through and lights have been flickering at the office all day.  I had to work both days last weekend and I hear from people that the weather was fantastic?  Fuck you, you’re fired!
Less than a year ago, Seattlites scoffed at the idea of people being afraid of a little wind.  What wind coming this way?  We should all relax and try to harness some of that natural energy and do the earth a favor?  I’ll just go back to sipping my latte and toting my green bag to Whole Foods for some fine fresh produce.  Now we hear “wind storm” and people freak out, trample over each other to get to the power generators and stock up on Twinkies and bottled water.  During the last major storm, my girlfriend’s house was out of power for 2 weeks, she was 5 months pregnant at the time so she and her husband ran to her mom’s house.  When they went back to check on the house about a week after, there was a pool of blood in front of their fridge from the freezer thaw.
My trip is supposed to be 4 days/3 nights.  On the plus side, being out in the woods means I will not having to worry about trivial things like power outage, on the other side, I have to worry about other minor details - like whether or not my shelter will hold up in the storm.
Here’s another prayer for better weather.  In case you worry about me being out there, I’m about 4/5 of the way through the last Harry Potter book, I’ll be back soon enough to finish that damned thing.

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My backpacking buddies and I made a pact to return to the most beautiful backpacking destination in Washington every year the weekend after permit season is over. That weekend is this coming one. I’ve been wavering on whether or not I should go because the weather has been biting cold and rainy and our project is going Alpha this Friday. I assumed half the backpacking crew would be on the same fence because of the weather, but we met up during lunch today to discuss trip plans and everyone was gung-ho over the trip, which got me equally giddy in no time.
The last time I was this giddy was…oh gee, for the last trip, so it seems like the only thing that gets me excited these days is dragging a ridiculously heaving pack up some mountain in freezing ass rain – glutton for punishment that I am. I’ve been in a bit of an odd mental funk these days and no amount of partying or hanging out with friends was able to shake me out of it. This mental funk is something that I think hits a lot of the 30 something crowd…I call it “The Beginning of Feeling Mortal.”
Hitting 31 was when I first felt a twinge of understanding that I will one day die from old age, prior to that, death by aging is a concept as foggy as counting to one trillion. Mind you, I understand I’m still far from “old age” but it’s just no longer a number that I can’t count to.  With that feeling came a need to make peace with the idea of death, which led to the need to constantly over-analyze life – to question every moment because “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Then the more I questioned life on making peace with death, the more I came across the answer of simply stop pulling myself out of moment and to live a good life…but if a good life requires examining, I’m back to square one.
Obviously, I’m going crazy here and I’m two steps away from committing myself, but before I do that I have important unfinished business to attend to, like finishing Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. It’s so damned good that I’m a little pissed that I didn’t think of half the puzzle concepts they came up with. I’m a bit irked by how many times they make you go back to the Ocean King dungeon but I freaking love the boomerang. They should consider renaming “Legend of Zelda” to “Legend of Cutting Grass” because that’s all that you really do in all the games.

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Soooo…it’s the big weekend of making an attempt at the most technical climb I’ve done to date…which actually isn’t all that technical (hopefully), but I’m busy pretending I’m a total bad-ass, so leave me to it for a moment okay? There are many ways up Glacier Peak but the short routes all require quite a bit of technical knowledge in glacier traveling, so we’re taking the long painful 34 miles round trip route up.
The weather seems marginally better than last weekend, but I’m hopeful it’ll be decent all weekend. We’re expecting some rain on Saturday which I don’t know what that will mean for us sitting on an exposed rock field, but I’ve spent an entire weekend in town last week in company of many humans, so I’m definitely ready to get back on the trail.
Our tentative plan is, on late Friday, hike in 5 miles then set up camp. Saturday, we’ll take our time to trek in 5-6 miles more in campsite #2. The on Sunday, we pray very hard for good weather and we’ll do the 14 miles roundtrip to the summit. On Monday we’ll run the 10 miles back out. That’s just our “plan”, we’ll see how it goes. This is going to be the longest backpacking trip I’ve done with my buddies Daniel and Fraser, so I might end up killing them on Sunday then I have to do some extra hiking to find a good remote spot to bury them.
Wish me good-luck with the weather…and I hope everyone have a safe and wonderful weekend.

Edit: I just weighed my pack after packing it all nice and tidy-like this morning and the fucking thing is 38lbs.  There were a couple little things that I thought maybe I should bring…like an extra shirt and extra food, but now I figured extra food and shirt will do me very little good if I break my back first.

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It’s been a while since I wrote about volunteering at the hospital.  I was starting to feel that perhaps I’ve gotten jaded to the sight of human suffering…that perhaps suffering has become a banality of its own and that it’s everyone’s own lot in life to deal with…I figured I finally learned how to draw boundaries.
Tonight, I saw a mother pass out from being too distraught by the harm done to her daughter at the hands of her kidnappers.  I watched her sob as her husband held her when she came to while he wiped back his own tears.  I watched the girl’s sister cry along side her family.
I’m not sure it’s possible to draw boundaries when you see people hurting people.  It’s not something I think I can get used to…and more importantly, I don’t think I want to get used to.

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My weekend was so nice and uneventful.

On Saturday, I had a wonderful girl’s night in with Jessica and Alexis…something I hadn’t done in literally years. We drank a lot of wine and ate a lot of desserts while laughing about life and relationships. We laughed so much my cheeks were hurting by the end of the night. It’s nice to recharge my estrogen batteries after overloading on testosterone.

On Sunday, my mom’s new restaurant opened and I stopped by to see what I can help with. Holy sheesh, the place was nice and busy. Her old restaurant seats around 300 people, while her new place seats around 500. We’ve gotten so used to serving about half the number of people that suddenly doubling it, made service a bit of a cluster fuck, but we still managed decently and we all had a good time working together. Oh, and I think my plans on becoming a closet gourmet vegetarian chef will be short-lived, because my mom’s new place is less than 5 minutes from my home, so yeah…there goes the need to cook again, ever.

The weather has been so crappy that one could almost forget that it’s still summer in Seattle except it’s clearly labeled on my calendar that it’s still summer. It has been raining and raining, and mind you it’s not the nice summer rain that is pleasant and warm, it’s the bitter cold digging into your skin kind of rain. Of course this serves to reinforce how happy I was to be at home with the heat turned on instead of sitting on a glacier, but really, we still have a good week of summer left, I would really appreciate some decent weather for next weekend. I know I whine a bit too much about the bad weather, but this year has been terrible at best and this is the first year that I’ve wisely decided dragging me up a glacier with teeth on my boots and an ice axe to cling on for dear life is a good idea…so weather matters more so than times when I needed to figure out which chaser makes cheap tequila taste less like ass.

During the last couple weeks, I’ve made time to sit down and watch a few movies so that can watch the sequels and I highly recommend these:
-Borne Identity + Supremacy
-Harold and Kumar Goes to White Castle
I don’t think I need to say much about the Borne series, everyone I’ve spoken to that has seen this said it’s great. Harold and Kumar is a movie I’ve heard so much about from my guy friends and they swear up and down it’s great, so I assumed it’s a movie filled with dumb guy humor that I won’t get (like I did not love Superbad)…but I was oh-so-wrong. The movie was fucking fantastic, I laughed my ass off and it gave me a bad case of the munchies.

I was checking out YouTube for videos to an old Hong Kong show that I loved as a kid. It’s called The Bund (aka Shanghai Beach) starring a very young Chow Yun Fat about life in the Shanghai mafia, and I noticed China did a remake of it recently. I clicked on the link to see who they would pick to fill in such big shoes and my god did they ever find the world’s hottest Chinese guy to play the leading guy. I didn’t think they make them that hot in China even though numbers are in their favor that one or two of them would smoke the planet. Normally, I’m not one to go for a pretty face, I have a weakness for geeks and climbers/mountaineers. Yes, when I’m hiking up a mountain and I see some guy pass me by carrying 70lbs without wheezing, I fall in love every time. What? You say he looks 60? Don’t be such a hater, he’s totally hawt! So when I say a guy is hot by looks alone, he’s smoking…some people are hot for having very strong ethnic features, but this guy is gorgeous internationally.

I’d like to note also the quality of China shows are finally catching up and perhaps surpassing Hong Kong quality. They used to be such poor quality that it’s like watching bargain bin porn without the hump-hump.

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Bleh, the weather is looking bad this weekend.  I guess it’s too much to hope that we might get three good weekends during SUMMER in Seattle.  I don’t think it takes a genius to figure out that standing on a sheet of ice while it’s raining/snowing (and also the ice is tilted at a steep angle) is a bad idea.  As much as I hate to postpone this trip for a week, the idea of staying home this weekend doesn’t seem bad at all.  I look forward to doing some yoga and a lot of cooking…and my mom is taking over a new restaurant while her old place is being rebuilt, so I get to play a good daughter and swing by.

Oh, sleeping in my own bed is going to be so sweet but I’m scared that given more time to plan this trip, the gear whore is going to sneak up on my credit card and…oh god too late, she bought a new backpack.

I’d like to take out a moment to complain about how much it sucks to be short, because in addition to not having the long leg stride, the same backpack sized “Small” also carries less.

Now I’m really glad I went out last night and partied my ass off instead of staying home to pack.  There was a party that was thrown as a preparty to a fashion design convention happening this weekend, so obviously there were beautiful men galore there.  Of course 99% of them are probably gay, but hey, a little eye-candy never hurts.

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During lunch today I called in an order at one of my local favorite Thai restaurant…it’s such a favorite of mine that the lady knows me by my voice and she knows I like my order with 2 stars. Scary how predictable I am.

On my way to pick up my order I stopped by REI to return a messenger bag that I bought at the beginning of summer, back when I had hopes and dreams of becoming a road biking bad-ass. It’s almost first day of autumn and the tags and everything are still attached to the bag, so I figured it’s time to surrender myself to being a couch surfing bad-ass.

When I got to REI, I checked my bag for my wallet and found the thing missing. Apparently I forgot to put it back in my bag when I took it out…last night…when the gear whore in me needed access to my credit card so that she can jerk off to a fancy new altimeter. Damn you, gear whore! You ruin my life!

Still, I had a food order sitting at a restaurant with staff that greets me by my name and I have not a dime to my name. So I had to drive my sorry ass back home to get my wallet. Damn you!!!

I need to get my whoring habits in control or somehow consolidate them to one because this A.D.H.D. whoring is leaving me with too little time to spare. I’ve got plans to climb the most difficult mountain I’ve climbed to date starting tomorrow, and the universe caught wind of that so it has sent me activity invites galore. I promised my rock climbing friends I will go climbing with them tonight…then I have to go to a fashion show with my sister, then I have to go clubbing with Jessica. It would be easy if I’m not a party girl at heart too because I can forgo the partying, but I can’t. Damn you, party whore! And damn you, rock climber wannabe whore!

I’m very excited about this trip tomorrow. Trekking 17 miles and climbing 10,000+ft to get to the top of a volcano will be the most grueling thing I’ve done to date, but like the raver girl that I once was, this is something I need to keep chasing the high. Wish me more luck with the wonderful weather we’ve been having.

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