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pain pain glorious pain 2006-08-19 Hey, Internet. Do you know how many tiny calf muscles you use just to turn over in bed at night? The answer is, ALL OF THEM. Oh lord, Internet, I am in such pain today. Francisco and I hiked Mt. Si on Thursday, and yesterday our calves hurt, but today they're absolutely screaming. When I walk (hobble) I look a tiny bit like Jewel on Deadwood, and can almost hear Al Swearingen's voice saying, "Every step a fucking adventure". If you don't watch that show, you'll have no idea what I'm talking about, but you should definitely be watching that show--it's very very good. Mt. Si is an 8 mile hike, round trip, and the 4 miles up was very grueling for me, since I'm not exactly in tip-top hiking condition. The sign at the bottom of the trail said the elevation gain on the hike was the equivalent of 6 Space Needles, and I could feel it. I was pretty done in by the time we got to the top, but a little bit of rest, water, and food helped. We rested for about half an hour before starting down, and the rest was entertaining, thanks to these cheeky birds:
My apologies to Kimmy for those photos. We took turns feeding them peanuts, raisins, and little pieces of crackers (a balanced meal) and they accepted these things as their due. When we left they quickly cleaned up after us (bits of food we'd accidentally dropped) and went on to the next customer. The hike down was excruciating--worse than the hike up--because my knees started hurting almost immediately, and were horribly painful by the time we reached the bottom. It's not the actual joints, I don't think; it's the little ligaments and whatnot on the outer sides of my knees that hurt. There's gotta be something I can do about that, but I don't know what. Anyway, to cut to the chase, we made it down and got Taco Time for dinner, which was a totally inadequate reward, but I got root beer to drink with it and it was delicious. In other news, my parents brought Sharky back on Tuesday. They stayed overnight (at a hotel, since they refuse to stay with us), and went home the next day, after taking us to breakfast. I need to call them, actually, because we got an email from them to say they made it home but their car broke down in Yakima and they were there for 3 hours while it got fixed. Horrors! I would not like to be in Yakima for 3 hours. Anyway, I'm glad they eventually made it home and am grateful they brought that kid back, even though he's already on my nerves with his teenage angst and thoughtlessness. An example of this thoughtlessness can be seen in the following conversation, which took place yesterday: Shark: Hey, can I borrow your Sambas [shoes]? I just. Arggh! He was 100% serious in his request and couldn't understand why anyone would take umbrage. Dear Tiny Newborn Lord Baby Jesus in your Ghost Manger, Please make the next 3 years go really really fast. And thank you for Will Ferrell and the movie Talladega Nights, from which I stole all that baby Jesus stuff. Amen. In addition to bringing Sharky, my parents also brought me the greatest present ever:
This is the camera my dad used to use but doesn't anymore, now that he's in love with digital. It's really great and I haven't yet read all the instructions that came with it, but I will do that very soon and can hardly wait to play with it. As one of my Flickr friends said, upon seeing the camera, "You lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky lucky cow". I really am. It was a lucky week for cameras all around, as yesterday I found this camera at the Goodwill, for 99 cents:
It seems to work perfectly, from what I can tell, and I'm excited to play with this one, too, because it's like the Lomo ActionSampler, except a bit more dollar store. It puts four images on each frame--the shutters fire individually, just a fraction of a second apart. I'm going to take it to the Monkey Madness party tonight, for use during the daylight hours. Francisco is going to the party as The Man in the Yellow Hat, and I'm going to be one of those wind-up monkeys that bangs cymbals together. I made a red felt vest for myself and have two tin pie plates to transform into cymbals. Half assed, yes, but easy. Only just last night I had the idea to go as Grape Ape, and it killed me to think of that, because there was absolutely no way to put together a Grape Ape costume on such short notice. Maybe someone else will have done it. Construction next door has temporarily ceased, but this past week the preliminary step of turning the next door portion of Wilson Creek into a fish ladder was completed. Before, or actually, During:
After:
It's much nicer now, for both us AND the fish, but I won't miss the construction, though Esther will:
She loves work; she can watch it all day. Fortunately for her, the actual house construction will start soon, and there will be loads to look at. That's it for now, darlings, except to say I'm ridiculously excited to start my job on Tuesday. One of my impending coworkers emailed me this week and invited me out to lunch on my first day, so there's even more to look forward to now. WOO!
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