[personal profile] kittenscribble
Me: ...I just stuck my hand in my tea.
Cubemate: What?
Me: I just stuck my hand in my tea.
C.: Why?
Me: I thought it was my little jar of nuts. I reached without looking.
C.: Well, that'll wake you up.

I'm a bit bleary this morning, because I spent most of last night worrying about a mosquito in the house. We had thought it done for after K whacked it with a newspaper and tossed it into the trash can. Later, when I went to throw something away, the mosquito buzzed into the air and freaked me out. I couldn't find it to kill it again. At any rate, I slept badly; I jerked awake every time something tickled my skin (it usually turned out to be the cat, who sleeps with her back to me and tends to hit me with her tail). I had bug-infested dreams all night. I know, I'm a total wuss.

Last night we went to Brian's route-setting seminar. He sets most of the climbs for ET and I was definitely looking forward to learning more about his methodology. Turns out he just gets up near the wall and makes it up as he goes... for illustration he set a V0 on the wall, then turned it into a V1 by removing one of the first two footholds and turning the remaining foothold and the first handhold towards one another. After people climbed it and agreed that it was harder, he proceeded to make the climb incrementally more difficult, just by shifting and turning holds, until it was a V6 or so. It was a great demonstration of how a climb could be made harder just by changing the angles of the holds, not by making them smaller or insanely far apart. Really educational. It was also educational to watch the climbers; the really good boulderers just seemed to float up the climbs, shifting weight effortlessly. You don't really need to do many dynamic moves to do Brian's routes, and he makes sure of it by never setting a hold beyond the reach of his elbow; his routes are all about making static moves and staying in control. It was neat how people deviated from his plan, too, the climbs becoming harder or easier depending on body type. We had to leave early to get back in time for book club, which reached a record attendance (at least at my place) of thirteen people. Fun conversation, likely because everyone was ripping on the author. And next we get to read about zombies, so that'll be cool.

On Saturday, we drove down to DC and met K's parents in Chinatown for a Mother's Day lunch. Then we checked out the exhibits in the Building Museum (the Green House exhibit is really quite fascinating, lots of stuff you can do to reduce your environmental footprint). Then we hung out at R's and listened to Beer in the Basement rehash their songs. They were a little rusty, but happy and enthusiastic.

Went climbing Sunday; it was gorgeous out and the gym was almost empty (all the serious climbers were probably outside). We watched a girl climb the new 11a; she was really flexible and strong, and it was just amazing to watch her figure it out. I tried to climb with her style in mind and managed to clean one of the new overhang 10a routes. Pretty nifty. Then it was down to Anacostia for dragonboat practice; the festival is next week and if the weather is anything like it was on Sunday, it'll be perfect. Sunny but not hot, breezy but not too windy.

Then we went to G and V's barbecue. Their daughter is awesome – she's not quite two years old and has a three-word vocabulary: "mama," "dada" and "ball." It's amazing to see how much range she can get out of just one word; she dropped her ball and as it rolled out of reach she got agitated and began increasing in volume and frequency: "Ball. Ball, ball, ball ball ball BALL BALL BALL!" Anyway, it was a fun evening, and the grilled food was fantastic.
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July 2011

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