Laurel Fan

+ planning trips for the summer
- foot hurts
- planning trips for the summer that I might not be able to go on
+ opportunities/distractions
+ starting my pack list for Hawaii
= 6

+1 camping in the desert
+1 hanging belay on a new-to-us no-guidebook climb
-1 foot hurts
-1 mosquito bites
+1 mosquito bites don’t itch anymore
+1 happy hour all day sunday at Mars Bar
+1 CENSORED
= 8

The comments and hover help is a great idea.

I’ve been thinking about features to make the morale o meter more useful without ending up with an intimidatingly large form or making it overly technical or spreadsheety.

A few empty spaces for things that come up, but I have stuff for about half the weekends so far.

June 7/8: -Baker- Squamish
June 14-15: Baker
June 21-22: ?
June 27-30: Rainier, Kautz

July 4-6: Squamish
July 12-13: STP
July 17-20: Enchantments
July 26-27: ?

Aug 1-4: ?
Aug 8-10: Rainier, Emmons
Aug 15-16: RSVP (if I can get a ticket)
Aug 23-24: ?

Sep 5-7: Leavenworth
Rest of September: WAC intermediate class
Late Sep – Early Oct: sister’s wedding in NYC, East coast road trip?

The pancakes were for a car camping trip so I kept things simple and got some Bob’s Red Mill pancake mix, using whole milk instead of the water and butter instead of the oil (sorry vegans). Butter is easier to measure than oil if you’re not in a kitchen. I also brought some toasted walnuts (using Daniel’s walnut toasting technique) and bananas to mix in.

The griddle on top of the camping stove was a little uneven, so all of the pancakes had a bit of a gradient between singed, golden brown, and a bit rare, but nobody complained. Of course we had maple syrup too, and not too much ended up on the picnic table.

But usually with the added excitement of having something fun enough to do that it’s worth getting up at xx:00 AM

Daniel and I are looking at subscriptions and how to better integrate them with the new profile page on 43things, instead of making you go over to 43people all the time. I think I might work from home tomorrow to make some progress, the robot office is fun and social but there are lots of interruptions…

• Dr Jose Rizal Park
• Katie Black’s Garden
• Beacon Hill Playground

I’m going to have to start marking my park map so I can remember which ones I’ve checked off here…

My phone refuses to send pictures so no more photos.

Last time I asked for anonymous suggestions, I got one response that I “need to get laid”. I guess that works. But this time I’m looking for things that I don’t already know.

I spent a week at a goat cheese farm in Eastern Washington for a farm cooking school thing (ie. a vacation).

http://quillisascut.com/

• Condorphamine Addiction (Leavenworth)
• Prime Rib of Goat (Mazama)
• Methow Inspiration (Mazama)
• Shuksan
• Glacier
• The Brothers

I “met” him at a huge event last weekend. I could see him better on the Jumbotron than on stage and could only hear him through the microphones, but it was still worth it to pack in the nosebleed seats to see him.

Yes, he is just a person, and the format of the panel had a lot of thanking the VIP donors and watching videos of people saying that children shouldn’t watch videos all day. But it’s not every day that you get to see a monk from Tibet tell stories about his childhood, suggest an experiment to test the compassion of sea turtles and then challenge the scientists to come up with a secular ethics because nobody has been listening to the religious people.

Webcasts of the whole thing are at http://www.seedsofcompassion.org/webcast/index.html

I bought some plant starts last night. They came with a pretty great website URL: http://www.eatyouryard.com/

Now I need to get in there and actually weed, clean up, etc. I’ve been lazy about because it’s been raining every day I’ve thought about doing it. My CSA farmers just blogged about harvesting in a hailstorm so I think I can handle a little rain while I deal with my 15 sq ft garden :)

I’ve had this for a goal for a while, but it hasn’t been very useful to me. I haven’t been able to figure out how to do this in a goal-directed way.

I’m going to do it this year. Despite all of the complaining I’ve heard about the flatness and unscenicness, I think it’ll be interesting to go through parts of the state that I’ve only experienced as freeway exits and strips of traffic lights that just happen to be in the way of more interesting sounding destinations.

So apparently one of the options for spending the night at the midpoint is Vader:
http://www.cascade.org/EandR/stp/stp_centralia.cfm

All I know about Vader is that it’s the best named I-5 exit in WA, so I might have to do the STP just so I can stay there…

May 2/3/4: Vantage
May 9/10: WAC class field trips
May 11: Mother’s day weekend trip to Mt St Helens
May 16/17: WAC class field trips
May 18: crazy bike ride with Joe
May 23 – June 1: friend’s wedding in Hawaii

I had a faux fireplace covered in red-brick-colored paint with scars from an incomplete scraping project. This week I finished repainting it in the same off white as the rest of the trim in the room. Fun! Though with the unexpected cold temperatures these past few days, keeping the place well-ventilated was a little uncomfortable.

Thinking about what I’d like to spend more time doing and less time doing, “eating healthier” conflicts with a lot of things I want to do. Things like going out to lunch with coworkers, having dinner parties, going out, going on trips, backpacking, etc. all involve choosing not to eat the “right” thing.

Short term gain and long term loss, but whatever. Short term has to happen sometime.

I got my enchantments permit, and it’s for July, which looks like pretty prime time. Now I need to find 3 climbing partners…