Well, I'm finally getting around to posting a triplog/hike description. If you want more pictures to go along with the descriptions, refer to my post from two years ago, there are some links there to pictures of the lower part of the climb.

( Cut for length )

Our reputation as rain gods is preserved.

You can tell I've been really busy with other things because since May I've only got two books to list on the reading list. I think there was something else that I read before "The Secret Adversary", but I can't remember what it was, so it doesn't make the list

I read Agatha Christie's "The Secret Adversary" on the ebook during the time of moving. I enjoyed the style of the book and the plot. I thought it read more like a Wodehouse story than a Christie. I like that when people got out of tight spots, there was always a reason, not just luck.

31. Agatha Christie "The Secret Adversary"

I read this month's Asimov's in one rainy day at the foot of Katahdin. I liked the language of "Blue", there were some great turns of phrase in that. "Two Boys" was an interesting take on the Neanderthal theme. I found "The Qualia Engine" to be one of those stories where you have to think back over the evidence after you reach the end. "California Burning" was trippy and fittingly weird, but the weird went on a bit too long for me.

32. Asimov's August 2009

Haven't been on here in forever. Moving and work have kept me insanely busy. Work is not relenting (weekends and ten hour days), but the moving and putting away is starting to wind down.

We are going away this week and I just looked at the forecast: sunny and in the 70's during the day! If the current forecast is any indication, Thursday will be our summit day. OMG! I need to stretch and I'm beyond the point of being able to exercise. Yesterday I ran heavy boxes down to the storage area and ran around the house a lot. Hopefully that counts for something.

In the meantime, the van so has to be cleaned. And I need to find the stuff to load in it.

Even if we don't make the summit, it'll be very nice to get away for a while. Must run, the van and packing need attention.

(icon for solstice, even if it's the wrong solstice)

This is probably really good for me. Today started with seven or so trips up and down the stars followed by a cool down period, followed by more lifting and carrying. All day long I've been doing a little (which means going until I'm dripping with sweat) and then resting a while. It's probably a very good way to get in shape, but I'm totally knackered.

The van is loaded with the last two bookcases and a bunch of boxes. I will deliver those tomorrow afternoon. The bed is disassembled, with various pieces standing about everywhere and the mattress on the floor. The shelves of miscellaneous have been disassembled. The miscellaneous that hasn't already been moved is strewn across, err placed on, the floor. A good portion of the dust bunnies have been gathered together. I heard mutterings about dumping tea in the toilet and property rights last time I walked by the pile. Perhaps putting them all in the same place wasn't such a good idea.

It was about 4pm when I realized I hadn't eaten anything between my intervals. Wonder why I was slowing down.

The last two days have been busy with cleaning and getting things ready at the new place. I've gotten three bookcases worth of books moved and re-shelved. I've got another two bookcases worth in boxes ready to go. We've got most of the cleaning done. We've still got a lot of stuff to move, but I plan on doing one van load a day so it should go fairly quickly. We now have music at the new place. It's primitive, but it's good.

We had our first visitors today. littleredhead and groundctrl dropped by for the dime tour (adjusted for inflation).

If you can't tell, I'm exhausted. I can't think straight. But it's a good exhaustion, tired from doing things and getting stuff done.

Finally made it to the weekend. I ended up working until 4:30 today despite being completely burnt out. Most everyone had already bolted by noon, if they'd shown up at all. We have a major rollout in process and most of the implementation team heard there mother calling.

After work I went over to the new place and scrubbed the sink for a half hour. I figure I got it about half done, but I had to stop because I'd scrubbed my hands raw. I've got maybe a quarter of the kitchen cabinets cleaned, but they aren't nearly as bad.

I migrated the big speakers into the livingroom last night and hooked them up to the stereo in there. Glad I didn't do that earlier, they block out most of the light coming in from the windows. I'm moving the other speakers to the new place tomorrow, hence the shuffle. Now I've got my ass planted on the couch and listening to a CD. They sound notably pretty.

Tonight I should load up the van for the next round, but I don't want to put my shoes back on. So I'll just do little things around the house and listen to music.

I finished "Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said" last night after a long reading session. It took me a while to get into this book. The first bit plods along in happy valley and I was bored by the walk. Then suddenly, the rug is pulled out from under the main character and things get interesting. In full Philip K. Dick style, this book keeps the main character and the reader guessing as to what's the truth and what's a lie, who is really who, and why things are turning upside down. The world Dick draws is halfway between dystopia and last Tuesday. I felt the epilogue diffused some of the power of the book.

30. Philip K. Dick "Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said"

I finished "Ophelia Speaks" yesterday. If aren't familiar with this book, it's a collection of writing by adolescent girls on topics that concern them. It got a fair amount of press when it came out. I picked it up out of a flood of books that was offered to us at one point. As you might expect, there are some stilted bits. There are some clunky bits were the attempt to be arty or deep comes on too strong. But there are also some incredibly well written stories. Not well written "for a thirteen year old who's been through hell", but well written. Period. End of sentence.

The subject matter here isn't for the faint of heart. There is some very strong stuff here, but it's generally not sensationalized or overstated. In fact, sometimes it's very well understated.

Overall, the book reminded me to be grateful I'm no longer sixteen. A lot of the tone and nuance still rings with parts of my brain and with my memories. It made me doubly grateful that I'm not sixteen and blessed with ovaries. That said, I think this should be the 11th or 12th birthday present for every girl who has to trudge through adolescence in American culture. Not to scare the shit out of them, which it might, but to let them know when they do hit the really heavy weather they aren't alone and there are others who have broken the trail. It might not help, but then again it might.

29. Sara Shandler "Ophelia Speaks"

On the PostSecret post this week was one entry from a woman who wrote, "Some kinds of sit-ups make me orgasm!" My immediate thought was, "she must have incredible abs." That's one way to stay motivated about exercise.

I heard a story on NPR yesterday about a money manager who got caught up in the whole too big of a house, too much credit card debt thing. He was bringing in over 100k a year and still falling behind. Now he's 7 months behind on his mortgage payment and will be losing his house. Unlike most stories, he freely admitted he screwed up and he had to pay the price for screwing up. It was refreshing to hear someone with the attitude, "Man this sucks, but it's still my problem." It does suck. My brother lost his house a couple of months ago, but when it comes right down to it, it was self-inflicted. He and his wife had a mortgage, racked up other debt, refinanced the house to get cash out and pay off the other debt and got sucked into a mortgage they couldn't afford.

Speaking of debts and loans, with any luck at all, next week we will have debt for the first time since we paid off the car three years ago. The mortgage has gone to the underwriter for "final approval" and I expect we'll have a closing scheduled sometime next week. I'd really like to get closed before the Memorial Day weekend! This has been a heck of a process.

I heard a bit on the radio today that said people could actually improve their cognitive capabilities as they aged (hard to believe if you're over 30). The trick they said is to exercise your memory in three different ways. One way was to exercise longterm memory. The example they did was pick a year that you lived through and begin to think of all the things you can remember associated with that year. The second way was to try to work short term memory with keeping track of multiple things. His examples made me think of concentration games or doing math in your head. The third way was sense memory. It seems mainly it's an exercise in concentrating and focusing.

So maybe there is hope for me after all. Of course, I couldn't remember the third kind of memory exercise, I had to look it up. :)

If you're interested, the piece was on "All Things Considered" and is available online.

I finished the July issue of Asimov's over the weekend. "Sleepless in the House of Ye" and "Shoes-To-Run" stretched into very different societies. "Sinbad the Sand Sailor" was a romp well suited to R. Garcia Y Robinson's style. "Camp Nowhere" was creepy, though I must admit I thought the main character was female through most of the story, which is not the case. "Earth II" has a complex world with all kinds of things built into it, but it didn't wow me. I think it fell a bit short of its potential, but even so, there is a fair amount there.

28. Asimov's July 2009

For obvious reasons the last few months have been very stressful. Some of it good stress. Some of it bad stress. But there has been a lot of stress. Finally, it looks like the streak might be breaking. Everything is proceeding along as best as can be expected on the new place of residence. My company completed the layoffs that had been in the works since December. A few of the huge projects that have been going on at work are finally coming to a frenzied crescendo.

I have to give derien props. Through this all she has been pulling things together with unprecedented aplomb. She won't admit to it, but she has.

We can usually work pretty well as a team, but the last few months we've had to hone that to a fine point. As an example: She drops off the van at the VW dealership this morning. I get home at around five and find a message on the machine saying that the van is ready. I don't think either of us dreamed they might complete the work in one day. I immediately run out to the dealership arriving just before they close to pay for the van and get the keys. Tomorrow, we'll be able to go pick it up. This is typical of the I do a bit, she does a bit, somehow we have to get this done behavior. All of it orchestrated through days where we see each other for an hour or so at most.

I'm glad the oil leak is fixed in the van. Now we can use it for moving and not be spewing oil all over the countryside. It's also good to have it in full working order before the camping season, which begins in earnest at the end of this month. We don't have any May trips scheduled (and we'll probably be busy moving), but now we can start cleaning the interior and getting ready. I still have to deal with whatever it was under the dash that melted the fuse earlier this week (groan), but I can deal with that on any sunny weekend and at present it's an avoidable problem.

I grumble a fair amount. In fact, I grumble a lot. But I don't expect that anyone will grumble along with me. Someone might say, "that sucks" or "I hate that too" and it's a nice bit of sympathy. But I realize other than a mutual low key grumble, it's not good to pile on. That's where it should end and usually I'm conscious enough to end it there.

At work it's easy to get wound up about things and people are quite willing to jump on the Bitchin' Wagin. Because, afterall, if you're standing around bitching, you're not actually doing any work and you're getting paid to not do any work. It's a bad habit to get into. I go to work to work. When I can get some good work done I'm proud of it. It's a self-reinforcing good thing. As opposed to the bitch sessions which are usually self-reinforcing things that produce bad feelings.

I do have to remind myself of this occasionally, because I can -always- find something to complain about. It's my nature. A curmudgeon is someone who can imagine how things could be better and is frustrated that they aren't.

I finished "Clementine" yesterday. It was a fun book with good illustration. I could go into my who internal debate about whether the Clementine character is pitched younger than her stated years, but I don't know jack about kids, so I leave it to more knowledgeable opinions. I found the slightly (or others might say majorly) Aspergers way Clementine thinks to be realistic, endearing, and familiar, but that's probably just me.

This is a quick fun read. Might be a good midpoint between the easy books and the hard books in the reading development cycle. It's not earthshaking or classic, but it's fun and easy.

27. Sara Pennypacker "Clementine"

I finished Bob Newhart's "I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This" early in the week. I had read bits and pieces of it over the course of the last two years because it was on the bookshelf in the bathroom. (All truly civilized people have a bookshelf in their bathroom.) It's a fun, non-linear collection of recollections. Bob jumps here and there, generally starting with his early life and working forward to the current state of his life. But it's that kind of random walk that keeps it from being a biography. The bio bits and the general order keep it from being just a series of funny stories. I found the presentation to be a good combination, suited to Bob's storytelling style.

I wasn't a huge Newhart fan when I was a kid. "The Bob Newhart Show" was a bit to slow for me as a young child and "Newhart" began its run just as I was turning away from TV for the first time. So I can't claim that I've always been a fan. However, Newhart's style then suits my style of humor now. I love his understated delivery and his implied punchline.

26. Bob Newhart "I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This"

We have got almost everything done that we can do for getting the loan and getting the condo. Monday I have to bug the insurance people, but other than that its come down to waiting for paperwork to arrive and checks to arrive. I have begun the pitching and packing process. Yesterday I filled the recycling bin with papers. Today I'm going to try to get into the closet and begin a pitch fest there. I've got five more boxes to fill (we're going slow on getting boxes because otherwise the apartment will collapse under the weight of boxes of books).

Thursday was layoff day at work. The whole first part of the week was weird with everyone on pins and needles. The end of the week was weird with survivor guilt and giddiness. Not that there is any lack of work as far as the stuff I do. I've got a ton of work and I feel like a mouse running just inches in front of a steamroller.

I need to get all my around the house stuff done early today so that I can do things for work this afternoon. I'll be glad when some of the projects are done and I can enjoy a weekend.

Next weekend I think I need to go for a walk somewhere away from the city. I keep telling myself that. Perhaps if I make an appointment with littleredhead then I'll actually get out and do it. There has to be someplace upcoast that isn't entirely mud.

I have been stressed lately and have not been dealing with it well. I need to blow of steam.

I finished "Reaper Man" this morning. I hadn't read it before, even though I've read many of the later Discworld books. I guess I should read "Mort" at some point. I don't want to give anything away, but I really like the satire of the Ankh-Morpork subplot, it suited my soapboxing quite well. I didn't get into this book quite as much as I have some of the other Pratchett books, but that might have been because real life has been very distracting lately and I couldn't get a good reading pace going until this weekend.

25. Terry Pratchett "Reaper Man"

It is bright, sunny, and beautiful here today. It is so warm it feels like summer. This is a grand treat.

Last weekend we took the time to go out in support of our favorite independent record store on the day designated for support of such institutions. When we drove to the location in town, where we usually go, there was a line literally around the block to get in. We skipped that and went to the other branch out by the mall. It was also busy, but at least we could get in the door. We wandered around, but were disappointed in both the selection and the prices. We finally left dejected.

Today we went out again. This time we were able to walk right into our usual spot just like always. The selection was a lot better, with good variety and a lot of used. The prices were enticing on a few things that we wouldn't have otherwise gotten.

( The haul )

Now I'm going to clean the house and listen to music. Maybe later there will be a bit of rum involved.

From cygny's journal:

Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.

BTW: I offer no assurances that you'll get 5 subjects from me, but try if you'd like.

( My answers, cut for length )

Yesterday was a very nice day. We haven't had a two day weekend here at home in so long I can't remember the last. I got the fridge defrosted, cleaned up some stuff, and generally poked around. It was sort of productive, sort of relaxing, and very much needed. I woke up this morning without an alarm at about the same time I would normal wake up for work, then rolled over and went to sleep for another hour. That's always an enjoyable way to start the day.

Of course, it's not a real two day weekend because I'm going to remote in to work and try to get some things off my to-do list. I know, after working 10+ hours every day last week I'm going to put in more time on the weekend! Thing is I'm buried at work and I don't deal well with the chaos that causes. So if I can put in some time and create a tiny bit of order I'll be more happy in the long run. But that will only be the morning because I've got work to do on the van this afternoon.