random thoughts edition

my brain is on ramble.

one, i think i may start using proper capitalization, rather than my current usage of proper nouns that i respect beyond simple old names. i'm not e.e. cummings, nor should i feign to be.

two, i have a new tag team blog idea. it was spawned by ridiculous scenarios that often spring from late night imagination. oh, and one of the funniest blogs i keep up with. ma, you might want to shield your eyes. i may enlist a few of the crazies in my cadre of friends. yes, that includes you, palmer.

three, i need to reassess how much information i share with acquaintances. i'm generally a pretty open person, but it's somewhat off-putting when details of my life spread to people i barely know. the result is getting pointedly personal questions about my life, my love, my plans, my hobbies. my impulse is to say, "none of your damn business," when i get them, but that wouldn't be very nice, now would it?

four, carpooling is fun. i had forgotten how much i liked it back when i was a summertime construction worker. the stupid things that justin and i used to do to and from jobsites are recreating themselves with casey. yet another example of fictional ridiculousness that would go nicely in random thought two.

we're going to stock the car with old pairs of underwear we get at goodwill. then at random stoplights when we're bored, toss a pair onto another car's windshield and make a fast getaway. what would go through the pantied driver's head? is that.......? no, couldn't be. it is!!! ewww...

five, i'll sleep when i'm dead.

six, life is good. i'm out.

slip and slide

all the local blogs are simultaneously freaking out about the weather and decrying the local news media for doing the same. it's pretty funny actually. myself, i said the hell with it and rolled with the punches. for those of you out-of-towners, it snowed here most of the day on tuesday. it was a teacher workday, no kids. the county sent me home at noon. for light, fluffy, pretty snow.

i was glad to go home early, since i was going to try to sneak out anyhow. i'd run out of things to do. grades were due that morning at 8:30, so i'd finished them the day before. i spent the day working on smartboard lessons with a teammate.

i ate my lunch when i got home and stomped off into the snow to snap some photos. this new camera is a lot of fun, but i probably ought to read the user's manual a few times to figure out all the bells and whistles. i found my way to lubber run park near my house. it's my go-to wilderness spot in my urban landscape. against norm, there were many kids roaming the park with their sleds and snowballs and classmates. i wanted to take some fun action shots of kids being kids since it seems so rare these days, but i thought better of it. it's sad that it takes the local anomaly of snowfall to get lazy adolescents and younger kids out of the house to play in public with their friends. x-box and playstation and wii have ruined this generation.

yesterday, more of the same with far more than snow on the ground. the treachery of ice prevented most districts in the area from having school. instead of heading to the slopes to ride, i took off to the city for some urban winter shots. i threw out about 95% of what i snapped. i'll try some of the in-camera editing features to make them black and white or color balance or filter to tweak them before i post some more.

as of this morning, ice had refrozen on many sidewalks and roads. some of my sidewalks were never cleared by our management company, and my neighbors are understandably upset. we got a two-hour delay out of it, turning our already short week for the kids to barely more than a day and a half. i sure hope tomorrow is a normal-length day. i'd much rather have them in a normal, structured day than one that i've had to modify in the wee hours of the morning before school starts.

next week, forecast is calling for another dose of the white stuff. i'll deal with it with a grin and a grimace. the grin for the beauty and florida boy in me that enjoys the novelty of the seasons. the grimace for all the morons on the road and locals (who are mostly transplants to begin with!) who bitch about it. it's january folks. shut your mouth or move to brownsville, texas.

almost wobbled

i guess it's this week. i'm not sure why. i seem to be attracting the inept and inexperienced. on the road, in the gym, on the metro. there has to be some causality. instance number 103 from this week.

last night at the gym, i tied some knots so i could pull on some vertical plastic. i was still a little weak from friday's epic session which saw me work and send two V7s, a V6, a few V5s, and countless made up shenanigans (including playing takeaway on one of those V7s!). in any event, my biceps were sore and not willing to crank very hard on anything, much less what the strong(er) boulderers were inventing on the 45 degree wall. i convinced rob to put his harness on and climb some routes.

first one i get on is a wicked sloperfest of a 5.11. heel hooks, long deadpoints, and few rests snake their way up one of the tallest walls in the gym. did i mention it's slightly less than vertical the whole way up? flash pumped, my forearms fail me about three-quarters of the way up. as i chalk up and rehearse the moves, i notice movement below me. some kid clipped himself into the auto-belay and was now climbing below me. for you non-climbers, this is what's known in the climbing world as a bad thing. no matter your brain function, you should realize that climbing beneath someone who is probably going to fall is probably not the best idea for your safety, much less the other climber's.

"hey. you shouldn't be on the autobelay while i'm climbing on this rope," i say calmly.

"oh, i'll be okay. our routes don't cross, and i'm sure not going to fall," he responds rather snidely. my blood begins to boil as about 10 feet above his sight, our routes did indeed cross, and i took his falling comment as a i'm better than you kind of jab. which was not exactly the case as he was on a 5.9 jug haul.

so, i hang dog until he gets up and downclimbs so that he doesn't hit me when he releases his grip(!). i haul myself on, cruise the last few moves on adrenaline, and rob lowers me.

at this point, i'm fixing to toss a wobbler at this kid.

Tossing a wobbler” means throwing a fit after trying really hard and failing. A corollary is that wobblers are most often “tossed” (Britain) or “thrown” (U.S.) by sport climbers when they fall—usually a recurring fall at a specific high point on a route (though a fall henceforth from any point lower than this is equally wobbler-inducing). Tossing a wobbler is not limited to sport climbers, and boulderers and alpinists have been known to “throw mean wobblers” (slang). Trad and aid climbers, however, typically never toss a wobbler because trad climbing is too scary and aid climbing is too boring to justify anger.

not only was he stupid, he was arrogant about it and unapologetic. i could've throttled him. it was no better on terra firma. i kept my composure, though my italian blood was cursing lemme at him.

and thus ends your climber lingo lesson for the day. time to go play in the snow.

idiot magnet

not sure if this only happens to me, but you ever feel like everyone else on the road is distracted and out to get you with their negligence? i liken it to an idiot magnet. i'd love to know where the switch is for mine; it was clearly on high power this afternoon on my drive home.

in my pocket at chipotle with the lack of customer service. "hi. i'm in line. i don't care about your phone-in orders or internet orders. i walked in the door instead of sitting on my fat ass to order a 1,000 calorie bomb of deliciousness." perhaps it's in my cell phone...

from when i dropped casey off after work, what takes 3 minutes some days took about 20 today. people who need a turn signal not using it. people who don't need one leaving it on for miles and miles. cabbies that ignore every conceivable traffic law. extra traffic that i ain't used to, even for a friday.

one thing's for certain. there's no way in hell i'm getting back in my car tonight. anyone got the schematic for my car? please label the idiot magnet for me with instructions on how to turn it off. okthanks.

this and that

no wonder my toes were numb for most of yesterday morning when we were standing around, waiting for john roberts to bungle the oath of office.

Brr!

fortunately, we had a challenge to warm up the blood routed through my brain. how to get out of the mall in a seamless, quick manner. didn't work by the way. somewhere between a million and a half and two million people. they knew how many people were going to show up, but they still weren't ready. at times, it felt we were cattle herded into the chute at the slaughterhouse. it sure could've been bad. i've been in huge crowds before; luckily, i didn't need to know all this. it could've helped though.

How to Avoid Getting Trampled at the Inauguration

two little words

"buenos dias."

a smile. for the first time since i've been shopping at the neighborhood market on glebe road, a cashier made eye contact with me. it wasn't terribly busy, and we were the only customers at any of the registers. she didn't say a whole lot else. she probably knew that i didn't speak a whole lot of spanish and saw my eyes scanning the register in the off-chance that she told me how much in spanish.

"six seventy-five," she says. i pay; she give me my change.

"gracias."

"de nada."

all the more reason for me to sharpen my spanish. as has been the case for years, i understand far more than i can speak, so long as the speaker isn't a rapid-tongued cuban. i watched a primetime special earlier this week called "what would you do" on abc. it was a candid camera kind of show, though not for comedic effect. the first situation was a cashier at a lunch counter who refused to serve day laborers because they couldn't speak english. both sides were actors, but they wanted to see what the real customers would do. some did nothing; some agreed with the cashier; few helped the "laborers". when the host interviewed a local laborer, he tearfully told him that situations like that happen more often than not. it ain't right.

"we are all made of flesh and bone," he opined (through the translator), "treat me like a human being."

conflicting interests

something pains me each time i walk into an outdoor store. the gear head id in me is elated, excited, intrigued at all the shiny new toys and clothes that will keep me entertained whilst pursuing outdoor fun. i want to try them all on and have an unlimited gift card to purchase said gear. this half of me is in conflict.

the quieting force that seems to be stronger in me is the anti-consumerist ego that fights its every id whim. i'd just as soon keep the same old stuff and old clothes and old pickup, but in this american society, it's pretty difficult to do. i read not buying it by judith levine a while back. if you've not read it, it details the trials and tribulations of the author's challenging project of not buying anything but needs for an entire year. i thoroughly enjoyed the book and identified very strongly with her internal conflicts on doing so. i'd say in climber fashion, this is the strongest statement we make. thrift store finds, flea market used pants, army surplus wool sweaters. to top it off, it's all chalked up because wearing clean clothes to climb in seems to be a ridiculous faux pas.

of course, this is fought by our craving for new shiny carabiners and cams and ropes and packs to stow it all in. granted a good bit of our climbing gear carries our life in its function. substandard gear doesn't cut it. in the snowboarding realm, i've had to drop a few bills on new gear just to get started. it ain't top notch stuff...yet, but it gets me outdoors on the weekends when the rocks are too wet or snow-covered to climb on them. this weaker id loses far more often. were it stronger, i'd have a kayak, a new mountain bike, and and and.

a tale of two cities

first, an old article from slate magazine. it was written in 1993 when the clintons were moving to the district. they updated a few things, but their primer of the city for president-elect obama seems pretty accurate to me.

done? ok, good. it's funny to me how the article references some in the city that come here for political jobs or financial jobs or just the hell of it that never venture outside of their safe little enclave. this is a two city kind of town. i love the diversity. i'm glad that some of my friends live in columbia heights and shaw and the u street corridor. i'd never have ventured to chinatown or black cat or artomatic in the east side of town without them to guide me along the way. sure, there's the hip, trendy parts on the east side, and i've hit them up too. this city is far too diverse to not try to breathe in all of its uniqueness. i find more in common with the eastsiders than the northwesters in mentality and personality than i do with the yanks that populate most of the rest of the city.

it's that slower, southern speech that makes me feel at home. it's not name dropping. it's weather talking. gonna be a cold one today. it's not work work work. it's gotta get home to sunday dinner with the family. working enough to get by, but not enough to get ahead.

life is more than just work. it's football in the fall and laughing children at the park and singing in the rain and listening to street music and eating ethnic foods and listening to different points of view and reading in the sunshine and laughing at tourists and....

new names at a new job

has this ever happened to you?

you start a new job. people introduce themselves to you. they more or less automatically assume that you know their names immediately. as time passes, it becomes more and more awkward to ask, "what's your name again?" you try and try and try to remember this one person's name: overhear it in conversation, wait for one of the kids to say it, steal a glance at their id badge. nothing works. you know if you hear it one time, you'll remember it, but damned if you never do!

yeah, me too. rarely is she ever in the same place as the other teachers and instructional ass'ts, so i can't pick it up there. can't ask one of the students in the room she works in, they're a little less than communicative. tried stealing a glance at her i.d. badge, it's always turned the wrong way. in fact, i'm not so sure that it can be seen. the part that makes me feel the worst is that she greets me by name every morning. we talk several times a week while her 4 little charges play on the playground with my 23 rugrats.

i'm a terrible person!