I'm doing something wrong, I know it. I just have to figure out what.
- Mood:
sore
I also tried an overhung pink 5.8 and was too pumped to do anything about it, and got two thirds of the way up a 5.10- on the steeper slab before I hit a hold I just could not stick and use.
I'm getting better at overhangs.
- Mood:
intimidated
Then he got to come out to Wolf Rock for a dry run as a climbing dog, where he was just a perfect gentleman. He's well on his way to becoming a very nice crag dog--he was mellow and kind to climbers and the occasional hiker dog, too, which is quite an accomplishment for a dog with the PTSD issues Ace has had. He seemed to understand that this was Serious Business, and that he needed to have his game face on and be a working dog, which was excellent, and means he can probably keep coming back--though I'm not yet ready to try him at Ragged, which is crowded.
I climbed a 5.8 (with a little cheating since the damned tree was in the way anyway) and a 5.5, and nobody died.
GRD is now sacked out so hard he didn't even lift his head when I went downstairs to get my phone.
And I am about to join him. Next Sunday we're going to try a herding instinct trial and see how he does with the sheeps. Memo to me: order his seat belt in the morning. Because he does have some bad habits in the car, like wanting very badly to help drive....
- Mood:
exanimate - Music:James McMurtry - You'd a' Thought (Leonard Cohen Must Die)
But. I did get up the 5.8 on the barrel vault again, which makes me feel pretty spiffy, let me tell you. Especially since I'm pretty sure this time I know how I did it. And it is getting easier.
Also, alas, I am back on the Discipline. It's yogurt, oatmeal, shredded wheat, triscuits and cheese, and fruits and veggies for the foreseeable future. Fortunately, I like all those things. And my tendons will thank me the kindness.
- Mood:
grateful
A couple of photos from climbing yesterday:
Steven found a nest of baby birds near where we rigged a 5.9. I took this with the zoom setting, standing on a nearby boulder. Nests full of baby birds pulsate in unison. Who knew? It's very Lovecraftian.
Scenic Chatfield Hollow, rigged for top-rope. TBRE and The Jeff, for scale.
And because no post is complete without some gratuitous house pets, a Giant Ridiculous Dog and his pretty princess pony. (TBRE maintains he's a pretty princess. He does kind of mince like a sad cat when confronted with icky wet grass or mud. So she gave him a lavender unicorn.)
- Mood:
tired - Music:NPR
The Jeff and Alisa de-skinned and grated TWO ENTIRE COCONUTS.
I'd like to say something about that cake, but I really can't think of anything beyond oh my god it's amazing and I can't believe the frosting came out. The frosting, you see, involves beating a meringue over a double boiler, and I was seriously convinced it was going to completely fail.
But it didn't.
Oh, my god, it was good. Oh, my god, I never want to see another slice of cake. If you think you have eated coconut cake, you have not.
Oh my god.
I die now.
- Mood:
listless
Only four walls today, but considering that I was feeling tired and sore and staying off the overhangs, and the walls were an 5.9- (which I have done before), a 5.9+ (which I did some time ago but could not duplicate today--it's the one with the swingy barn door of an arete), a new 5.9, and a 5.8, I feel pretty good about myself. Please note, I didn't manage any of those without falls (though I came close on the 5.9-, though when I did fall I fell against the rope and gave myself a really nice forearm bruise), but on all of them except the 5.9+, I felt like I knew how to do all the moves: it was just a matter of strength.
I was particularly pleased with myself for figuring out one move on the 5.9, which involved standing up, going big, and letting myself fall sideways onto a side-pull to get opposition on the arete. And I logiced it out instead of thrashing, which felt awfully good.
I also had a small epiphany, which is that one reason the handholds suck so much on harder routes is because you're supposed to be able to do more with your feet.
Since I've been practicing footwork pretty hard, this pleases me.
...and then when I got home, I hurt my gitchy ankle getting off a chair. *sigh*
In other news, because of a frost warning, my garden is all tucked in under blankets tonight. I crack me up.
- Mood:
pleased - Music:Tony Furtado - The Ghost Of Blind Willie Johnson
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ashacat at the gym. I feel like such a jock, Or I would, if I could do more than seven push-ups. La.I went out climbing at Ragged Mountain yesterday with TBRE and The Jeff and some guys from the gym. Basically, I sucked. We went after work and there's a forty-minute drive and a twenty-minute hike in, so we weren't rigged until six, and it got too dark to climb around eight thirty. Everything rigged was way too hard for me, and I spent most of the night belaying. I am really disappointed to have missed a climbing night. Really, even in despite of not really loving climbing outdoors (though Wolf Rock has proven to me that I do, in fact, kind of enjoy climbing on granite: it's fucking traprock I hate with a fucking passion, and o hai there I live in Connecticut, Land Of Traprock) I'm starting to think it's just not worth it to me to go outside on school nights. Because I wind up feeling like I haven't done a damned thing except sit in dirt and get eaten by bugs for three hours.
Ahem. I guess I'm venting.
However, the company was awesome, and the day was beautiful, so it was a win in other ways, even if I don't feel like I got any exercise. (And I won't get to climb again until next week, because TBRE and The Jeff are in Vermont this weekend for a caving thing, so no chance of Friday or Sunday climbing--unless I steal
cristalia and make her come bouldering on Friday.)Speaking of which, I may be a little absent for a bit. Page proofs for By the Mountain Bound have landed, and as of 2:00 PM this afternoon, so will
cristalia, who I am picking up at the Hartford Train Station. Plan then is thai food and Evil Sexy Leonard Cohen at the beautiful Palace Theatre in beautiful Waterbury Connecticut. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! *faints*I will have to be restrained from throwing fedoras at the stage. Not that they're reach: we're in the nosebleed seats.
Then Friday is my mom's birthday, which means
cristalia gets to come shopping with us, and then, Saturday, we get to take cristalia to Manhattan for the first time, which I am really looking forward to.And then next week
stillsostrange and her boy land, and there will be further mandatory fun. (Seriously, if you want a minivacation in Southern New England, this is the time of year to do it--unless you can make it here in October.) *g*So, um. Be good while I am gone.
- Mood:
exhausted just thinking about it - Music: (WNPR - Live Stream)
Also, it's kind of a beautiful morning, and I am having a big urge to curl up with a book and be unscheduled for a change.
Yesterday we went climbing up at Wolf Rock, which is kind of a climber's bunny slope, and therefore just right for me. We rigged two pitches with a variety of routes ranging up to 5.6, and I managed all five of them without too much trouble. Huzzah! Nobody died. And thus we proved again that I'm pretty good at slab climbing. The second one was all edging, and man, it killed my arches. More foot strength needed, but itsn't that always true?
Still no sign of any urge to write anything. Maybe I'll be lucky, and Anne-my-editor will come back with notes on Chill, thereby freeing me from any decision-making on what to work on. Otherwise, I suspect I will have to start nagging my poor beset cowriters about some of these lingering projects....
Maybe I'll sit around and read a book and do my slush today, before reporting for dinner at my Mom's place. That actually sounds like it might be a pretty smart idea, given how much I've got planned for the next week.
Also, goodbye, Bea Arthur. You'll be missed.
- Mood:
relaxed - Music:Weekend Edition Sunday
Alas, it's over already, and I'm trying to get up the energy to shower, dress, and take the dog out. Also trying to decide if I am going to make it to t'ai chi today, and climbing outside, which was the plan. (Actually, it was the plan for Friday, and then Saturday, and now today, and it seems like more and more people keep accreting to the party, which makes me feel less like going. Because I'm self-conscious about sucking in front of even more people, yeah, and also because I'm an introvert and large groups are tiring and I am seriously overpeopled these days.
I should go, to both. I need the exercise and it's good for me.)
There's a great post on Making Light today relating Britain's Got Talent to slushpile reading. If you're one of the would-be writers around, I suggest it might make good reading: it reveals something about the editorial process that Algis Budrys (accidentally) taught me when I was a baby writer. It was an epiphany to learn that the editor was really, despite appearances, on my side.
Still no writing brain available, but that's mostly okay, as any deadlines are also far in the future. Finished the Greg Bear books last night; should probably try to finish the Pterry sometime soon. Reading fiction is pretty much work, these days, but at least it's mostly pleasant work.
This is more or less recharge time, and I need recharge time. I'm forgiven: I just need to convince the guilt monkey that I'm forgiven, and that normal people aren't really expected to operate at 150% 24/7/52. Tomorrow, I should get some admin stuff done, like sending in my passport to be renewed, since I got the photos done, and signing some signature sheets I really need to sign.
For those of you following Shadow Unit on your mobile electronic reading devices, the mighty Arachne Jericho has updated her fan-produced e-reader bootleg. And, of course, there will be a new episode on May 3, Emma Bull's "The Sin Eater." And, of course, rolling content until then, including another vignette in the "Tales of the Monster Zoo" series sometime today or tonight.
Blah blah blah donation-supported internet content licensed by creative commons, blah blah blah. Also, a seriously cool fan community, involving an awful lot of talk about food.
- Mood:
crabby - Music:Alabama 3 - Bullet Proof
Winamp has decided it's the '80s. Tom Petty, Sheena Easton, and Sting. Not that any of that is a bad thing...
So far this morning, I have managed to get a lot of necessary housekeeping done (cleaned floors, brushed dog, did dishes, started cooking chicken soup out of leftovers* and pureeing the somewhat overripe strawberries with a little lime juice so I can hand my sick roomie a bowl of soup and a strawberry margarita when she walks in the door), and also done some plotting for Shadow Unit. If I were virtuous, I would be working on "Smile," but I think I may still be in post-novel-draft braindeath. And there's no point in pushing that.
*chicken bones from the freezer, the wilting rosemary that needed to be used up, some chopped onions, a carrot, two half-tomatoes, a handful of long-grain brown and wild rice, two cloves of garlic, a bay leaf, a few ounces of leftover shiraz, some fresh oregano, half a red sweet pepper, a long thin green chile, some diced cucumber that was sitting around and I hope the BRE didn't have plans for, sliced fresh ginger, half a package of mushrooms. There is now room in the fridge, and I am pretty sure I qualify as the best wife ever today, without even being in a romantic relationship.
One thing about yesterday's climbing that I wanted to write down somewhere was how I got up onto the 5.7+. It starts off with a big roof about three feet off the ground, which fortunately has really good hands above it--but that means your first foothold is at waist level. So what you have to do is get on the hands, right-foot all the way out, and then switch the left hand to a sort of 45-degree-angle mantel at waist level and use the opposition between right foot and left hand (and a right-handed pull) to lift yourself off your left foot. Then you can raise your left foot way up, and get it on a little ledge off left.
At this point, you are doing a split. I don't do splits. Ahem. But the hands were good enough that I could pull myself up out of it, even though my inner thighs and hip joints may never be the same. 0.o
I am getting better at this. And a hell of a lot stronger. And thank you, yoga, for the flexibility to make that move.
Meanwhile, the GRD has discovered that he can get on the sofa when I'm not already on it. We had a little argument over whether I was going to get any of the sofa, just now, but I won and now he's decided that it's nicer to use me as a pillow than have the whole sofa to himself. Dogs with lots of pack drive are so nice: they want to do what you want to do, and all they ask in return is to get to hang around wherever you happen to be.
- Location:the boys upstairs wanna see how much you'll pay for what you used to get for free
- Mood: relaxed
- Music:Sheena Easton - Modern Girl
I got them both, and even topped out on the 5.7+, but boy, my meat still thinks outdoor climbing is terrifying.
I have gotten better though, though it sucks that the meat is totally not willing to fall, outside. (I scraped up my right pinkie pretty good, though. That feels like an accomplishment.
la.
- Mood: exhausted
- Music:Nina Hagen - 99 Luftballoons
I also started a 5-something that's not yet rated, but I didn't really give it a good shot. I got on it, though, and I may go back and thrash at it on Wednesday. I also want to work on the balancy green 5.9 in the back room (I've climbed it, but not well), and the black 5.8 with all the slopers in the front room.
I'm actually kind of starting not to suck at this. If I were lighter, I think I'd be a pretty solid 5.9 climber on technique and strength, but because I am a big person, it takes a lot more effort for me to hold myself on the wall and move up than it would if I weighed 140 pounds. My strength is becoming fairly formidable, however, especially when you consider that I'm a chick. I'm even getting to the point where I don't actually hate the physical act of climbing--there are parts where I even feel competent and capable, like my body knows what it's doing and my brain can help.
It never lasts, mind you.
But boy, does this sport do fantastic things for my serotonin levels....
- Mood:
peaceful - Music:Big Country - East Of Eden
So alas, you will be without cute dog and cat photos for a while, because I can't afford to replace it until Tor pays me.
I'm actually more annoyed about the loss of the photos than the camera, because the camera is just stuff, but I had plans for one of the photos.
*sigh*
At least dinner was awfully good. Best Roomie Evar brought home nine-grain bread, and I made stroganoff, and we were good and hungry after climbing, so it went where stroganoff belongs.
And the cat is wandering around the house again for the first time in a week and a half, and the dog is still fascinated but far more willing to be called off her.
- Mood:
annoyed - Music:Andrew Bird - Anonanimal
Actually, right now he's circling the living room and library with his giant red stuffed frog in his mouth (particularly hysterical: even funnier than the teddy bear) while my roomie packs up her stuff to go to w!rk. But a few minutes ago, while the tea was brewing, I decided to take a few minutes to stretch out the hell that is my lower back this morning (I'm sure this is the cat's fault, as she was sleeping on my head all night) and he came right over beside me and started demonstrating downward-facing dog, and upward-facing dog, and plank position.
I think his sun salutations are better than mine.
Good climbing night last night. I redpointed the orange 5.8 on the slab that I thrashed my way up last Wednesday (this means I climbed it without falls or breaks, but with previous experience), and I also re-sent two hard 5.7s, one overhung (on a negative pitch, as they say), that I'd done before. And I thrashed my way up a new unrated route on a slight positive pitch, which consensus is is probably a hard 5.7 or a 5.8.
I have, I think, shown improvement. Being lighter helps an awful lot. Also, my joints (including my unstable ankle, my weak wrist, my hinky elbow, my bum finger, and both complainy big toes) are complaining less. Tape works!
You know, NPR can stop telling me about the
In a moment here, I have to heat up some breakfast, then go upstairs and start work on the CEM. Other projects today: get to the gym, and also walk the giant dog, who did not get to go for a walk for the last two days due to humans overscheduling themselves. (He did get to play fetch in the back yard, so he was not entirely without exercise.)
Tomorrow is dog-grooming day. Oh noes! Can he really have been here for ten days already?
But right now, I'm going to read my internets.
- Mood:
hungry - Music:NPR - Morning Edition
It was ugly as sin, and I did the last part as a total thrash, but I got it.
Then I did a little bit of work no-hands and then downclimbing on the slab wall, and called it a night.
Woot.
I am a good girl, and also virtupus. I went climbing even though I felt like blowing it off, and I did awesome when I got there.
And now I have a sort of totally fake beef paprikash that's been in the crockpot all day, and I have a new Criminal Minds episode tonight, promising Emily backstory.
If I were a dog, I would have to say: "Best day ever! "
- Mood: hungry
- Music:OK Go - Hello My Treacherous Friends
What you can't see in this shot is that my feet are actually cut, and (for additional grossness) I can pump up my extensor digitorum brevis muscle so that it's ripped and the veins over it pop.
My feet are bodybuilders.
Is this the best sport ever, or what?
- Mood:
muscular!
I'm such a happy bear. Not only did tonight's Criminal Minds continue the process of renewing my faith in the show (way to deconstruct the male gaze and whiplash the UNSUB from an object position to a subject one--I will be a little late on the writups this week, I fear, as here I am with errands all day tomorrow) but I had a really good climbing night. I'm beginning to think I might be getting the hang of this thing.
I showed up a little early and did some casual bouldering and traversing, then re-sent a tricky, physically challending 5.7 thaqt pretty much pumped my forearms all by itself. Afterwards, I went to work on a 5.8 in the front room that I've had my eye on for a while, pretty much not expecting to be able to do a damned thing with it. And I sent it. Not elegantly, and not without a certain amount of falling off and dogging on the rope and cursing, but I got it. That makes my fifth or sixth 5.8. Someday I will get one clean.
Today was not that day.
Then I did a 5.7 I've done before, just for practice, and a 5.6 on the slab that's all underclings and gives me the heebie jeebies. And of course my foot slipped and I tweaked my bad ankle, but I finished it anyway, then downclimbed the easier route on the same rope. Back to taping the damned thing again. Sigh.
I'm actually starting to feel like I have some expertise at this. I mean, I'm not good at it, not by any stretch. But I am starting to feel like I'm not a rank beginner, either. A Real Climber.
The revelation that our 5.8s are like 5.9s (and not easy 5.9s) anywhere else in the country also did a little for my morale, frankly. In Texas, I can climb.
- Mood:
content - Music:Concrete Blonde - God Is A Bullet
The 5.9, I have the bottom half of, and I'm pretty proud of that, because it's overhung and all off-balance slopers. Very technical. (We have decided that routes can be hard, difficult, complicated, or all three. Hard routes are physically challenging, difficult routes are technical, and complicated routes are intellectual. This one is all three. *sigh* Also, it scrapes my hands to hell and gone.)
I almost have the 5.8. I can send it, but it's ugly, and the last move is a total flail.
- Mood: hungry
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