The Quixotic Jedi

In the past couple of weeks, at least two people have told me directly that they’re “living vicariously through” me – specifically with respect to the photos posted on facebook of my winter peakbagging extravaganza.  I can’t tell you how cool that is; how good that makes me feel.

Well, I’m considering dialing that vicarious experience up a notch, dear reader.  I have four trips left, comprising 7 mountains; I’ve climbed 20 mountains since December 26th.  Tomorrow (today) I’ll be climbing Bearpen and Vly mountains.  They’re outside of the Catskill “Blue Line” (meaning they’re not technically in Catskill State Park), so these mountains aren’t accounted for in my Catskills map set.  Which means that not only do I need to find my own way to the tops of these mountains (there aren’t any trails to the summits), I also need to make my own maps.

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It’s not really as hard as it sounds.  I have the National Geographic Topo! software, so I can isolate these two mountains and print out a topographical map on a regular sheet of paper.  It won’t be a very good map, but what the hell, that’s what experience is for.  I’ve climbed these mountains before, and I think I could probably climb them without even bringing a map, but I’m going to print one out anyway just to be on the safe side.

This hike shouldn’t be ridiculously long – maybe 7 miles round-trip – so I’m considering climbing Kaaterskill High Peak on Sunday.  What with all the snow we’ve had here in NNJ in the past week, I’m not sure how bad the Catskills got hit.  If there are three feet of fresh snow on those mountains and no tracks to follow, any of the trips I have left will be a total bitch.  So I’ll check it out tomorrow (today) to see what the conditions are like.  If I can climb Bearpen and Vly without being totally exhausted tomorrow, I’ll bag Kaaterskill on Sunday and be a week ahead of schedule.

That will leave two trips:  Friday/Balsam Cap and Lone/Rocky.  Those four are, in my opinion, the hardest mountains to climb in the Catskills.  The peaks are all covered with extremely dense pine forest – imagine wall-to-wall Christmas trees, then make the Christmas trees a little taller and closer together and you’ll be getting close to what it’s like inside of that obstacle course.  Almost the whole hike is spent ducking under, going around, going through, or getting scraped up by stiff branches poking horizontally out of the trunks of the conifers.

On top of that, the hike just to get to Rocky (passing the base of Lone on the way) is almost five miles in and of itself.  Which means almost five miles of hike on the way out as well (not counting actually climbing those two fir-topped mountains).

Friday, Balsam Cap, Rocky and Lone basically form a northeast/southwest ridgeline.

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I’m considering bagging all four peaks in one day.  Considering – it’s not a plan just yet.  But if the Catskills don’t get too much more snow over the course of next week, and if I can get my lazy ass up early enough next Saturday, I think I might just be able to do it.  That would mean I’d be finished two weeks early.

We’ll see.  It’s just a thought right now, and I have a lot of those that end up growing up into not-so-good ideas.

Kicking some iz-ass this week, dear reader.

I think.

I feel good right now because I just turned around a 400-word piece of copy in about an hour.  And it’s not too bad.  I’m getting faster, which is good.  Maybe not so, because I’m paid by the hour, but I think I’ll just focus on the silver lining of my sense of accomplishment.  Once upon a time, a little writing assignment like that would have taken me forever - I’d have procrastinated right up until the due date and then spent hours agonizing with my procrastination while I was actually writing.  It feels pretty good to bang out some copy without too much mental stress.

And check my work.  I’ve never really done that before.  I was a philosophy major in college, so I wrote a lot of papers – short ones, mostly, but I never actually went back over what I’d written.  Now I do.  A couple of times.  And I make changes, too.  Who’uldathunk?  I don’t know that I actually need an apostrophe in that word.  Hm.

Way-back-when, I was convinced (for whatever reason) that everyone did things this way:  that authors dashed off books by writing from start to finish.  Outlines?  Yeah, those are for the kids in the remedial classes who can’t keep what they want to say organized in their mind while they’re typing.  Pshaw.  True genius – specifically my true genius – was best expressed (hell, only expressed) in one shot.  Go back and make changes?  Hell no.  That would be corrupting the sanctity of the original work.

So yeah, I’ve changed a bit since then.  Besides the copywriting, I do a lot of writing for work.  I’m all about outlines and multiple drafts today.  Sometimes I even ask other people for comments or suggestions.  Parenthetically, though, I rarely incorporate them – old habits (e.g. extreme appreciation for one’s own staggering genius) tend to die hard.  Or at least, that’s what I’ve been told.

Seriously, though, outlines and multiple drafts over time are the way to go.  I try to avoid that eleventh-hour pressure as much as possible.  Stress happens, but I don’t need to be a cause of it for myself.

Possible forthcoming instant karma:

• $5 says my client isn’t satisfied with my work product from tonight.

Caveat to the above (and an indication of hypocrisy):

• I don’t make outlines or edit my blog posts.

Anyway, I’m gonna bounce.  I have a bunch of things on my plate for my day job – a couple of which just hit this evening.  Stress I didn’t cause.  And my right eye is still blurry, so staring at the computer screen all day has been giving me headaches.  I’m looking forward to the return of unobstructed vision.

Two posts for the price of one tonight.  That last post was written on Sunday night, but I guess I hit “Save Draft” and then never clicked “Publish”.  So yeah, double your pleasure, double your fun:  two QJ posts for the price of one.

…a-aaand I’m sorely tempted to leave it at that.

I need to figure out how to get the files I downloaded from MediaFire onto my iTunes/AyePhone – any suggestions?  Clicking & dragging just ain’t workin’.  I’ve got these two Vasco albums I’d like to burn and listen to in the car, but I can’t seem to get my computer to store them in the right place.  The first is Godzilla vs. Vasco and the other is From Vasco With Love.  My buddy Matt Vallerini is Vasco’s something-or-other – I’m not big on music industry terminology – producer, maybe?  Agent?  Vasco spits the rhymes and Matt does pretty much everything else (I think).  Maybe Vasco makes music too, I don’t know.  I’d love to have some good critique of the music for you, BUT I CAN’T FUCKING GET IT WHERE I WANT IT TO BE.  Matt’s also a Smoothe Moose Laboratories and Recordings guy, btw.

So yeah, more technical difficulties.  Did I mention that my computer is still running slow as sh*t?  It’s as bad as when I was pirating my neighbor’s wi-fi.  I really need to spend some time cleaning this damned thing out.

Anyway, since I’m plugging sites and whatnot of my friends both IRL and from the interwebz, why don’t you swing over to The Naked Redhead’s facebook fan page and become a fan?  It’s so inexpensive I think it might even be free.  If you want to spend money on TNR, she also has a store on her site.  Feel free to buy me an “I Heart Aural” tee (S will do the best job of showing off my svelt physique).  Plug, plug, plug.

Anyway, it’s about time for me to hit the hiz-ay (or the riz-ack, for those of you who prefer the military ebonics); it’s after midnight and I need to let it all hang down in the horizontal.  Groovy.  It’d be great to make the beast with two backs tonight, but I’M STILL SINGLE, so whatever.  I’m really only ever lonely during those moments between getting into bed and falling asleep (after, of course, Laila Jo is done with her little-furry-engine-on-my-chest imitation).  Yeah, yeah, cry me a river.  Back in man-town (where I come from), we don’t dig on the pity thing any more than Jules digs on swine, so you can just keep yours to yourself.  We do, however, dig on your sister – and your mom – at the same time, doncha know.

But that’s why I live in Ridgewood and not man-town anymore:  I’m just not into that whole “progressive” relationship thing.  Yep, still a monogamist.  Who cooks and bakes and can fix stuff.  Srsly, ladies, I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to check any of my internet dating profiles, but feel free to swing on over to OkCupid for a taste.  I’m on PoF and Yahoo Personals too, in case you prefer a different venue.

Holy shit, I’m plugging mySELF.  Not good, Ted, not good at all.

Frig.  Now I’m talking to myself – and tsking, no less – out loud AND on the internet AT THE SAME TIME.

Yeah, I know you dig it.  You should see me naked.

Blogging again at 1AM when I should be going to bed.  At least my eyes are scratchy – there have been a couple of nights this past week in which I had trouble falling asleep.

Due to the scratched cornea thing, I haven’t been at work for a week.  I’m going to have a shit-ton of things to do when I arrive in the office tomorrow morning.  Hopefully, that won’t be too much past 9AM; ideally, it’ll be closer to 8:30AM.

My eye’s doing fine.  It’s still blurry, but my brain isn’t really paying attention to the specific data from my right eye – it’s more just letting it help out my left eye.  It was healing pretty quick up until now, but I think that’s kind of plateaued.  No biggie – as long as it heals eventually.  I was pretty ok with my perfect vision.

Right now, I’m reading Galactic North by Alastair Reynolds.  It’s his eighth book (of nine so far), and the seventh of his I’ve picked up.  There’s one in the middle called Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days that I skipped over because it’s two novellas that aren’t part of what I originally thought was a series.  There’s not too much of a series-thing going on.  A couple of the books are linked, and most of them take place in the same universe, but I’m not currently reading the seventh of a series of nine.

This one isn’t even a full series:  it’s a collection of novellas and short stories.

I’m not all that impressed.  I think that Reynolds, like many authors, got lazy after his first couple of books.  The guy isn’t really all that great at writing endings – he just kind of wraps up one of the bigger chunks of the overall plotline and calls it a day.  He leaves too many ends untied for my taste.  Don’t get me wrong, I think he’s an excellent writer, just not a ridiculously great author.

One of the “rules” of writing goes like this:  “if you show the audience a gun in Act I, it has to go off in Act IV.”  Reynolds is continually introducing new guns – characters, plot shifts, whatever – right up until the end, many/most of which never actually go off.  As a reader, I prefer to have my questions answered by the author, not to have to make them up myself.  As a reader of fiction, I want to know what the answer is – whether I like it or not – I don’t want a novel to leave me with questions about the characters or the story.  I read philosophy stuff for that.

In any case, maybe I’ll give you a full run-down my takes on each of Reynolds’ books in another post.

I don’t know if I mentioned it, but my new bass came in the mail on Friday.  I’ve played it a bit each day, which is a good start so far.

Blech.  Back to work.  I’m ok with that:  I’m neither dreading it nor chomping at the bit.  Back to work and regular routine.  At least my apartment is clean.  Today was a good day for that.  I cleaned everything I own and made a good dent in the overall clutter of my living space (which was becoming oppressive).  I’m psyched to start the week with good feng shui at my back.

The opthamologist said that my eye is healing well.  I have a final appointment with him next Friday.  My vision is still a bit blurry, though today I finished the novel I started on Wednesday.  Driving is ok, but not great – I’m still a bit apprehensive.  I think the hardest part of this hike will be the getting there and back.

Windham High Peak is one of the easiest hikes I can remember – a gently ascending 7 mile round-trip.  I’ll be parking at the end of Peck Road off of Big Hollow Road (Route 50).  The 3500 Club is hiking Bearpen & Vly on Sunday, so maybe I’ll even join them for that.

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Not much new to report, dear reader.  It feels kind of strange to be out of the habit of blogging.  I mean, I’m sure I still have something to say, but I’m not exactly sure what.

I feel pretty good right now.  Composed and relatively serene.  When we had the snow day last Wednesday, one of my buddies beat feet over to my place because he was going “stir crazy”.  I didn’t invite him over, but I was ok with the company.  My point is that I wasn’t going stir crazy.  My apartment is a comfortable place for me, which, I suppose, is as it should be.

I vacuumed the rugs today – which is a stretch from my usual weekly cleaning (I usually do quite a bit more) – but that was enough to bring a sort of calm to my thought processes.  Make no mistake, dear reader:  feng shui works.

That said, I’d dearly love to stumble over the motivation to clean all this crap off my desk and to organize my kitchen-cum-workroom.  The clutter (though organized) isn’t getting to me yet, but I’m sure I’d feel a lot freer and be more efficient without it.

I have another appointment with the opthamologist tomorrow at noon.  The pirate patch is off and I’ve been putting the drops in my eye religiously as instructed all day, but I’m not looking forward to squirting that creme into my eye before I go to bed tonight.

I think I’m going to bake a cake or two tomorrow afternoon for the opthamologist.  I’m sure that my co-pays and insurance company will compensate him for his work, but I still feel like saying Thank You.  He’s Greek, so if anyone knows what the customary Greek TY gesture is (no matter how old – I dig anachronisms), please let me know.  A cake is the best I’ve come up with so far.

I had some work-related news this evening, but it’s a bit premature to discuss it here and now – it’s begun to occupy my thoughts, though.

On the serenity thing – it’s pretty cool.  I’m pretty effin mellow right now.  I have some financial worries niggling at the back of my mind, but I’m not paying attention to those voices too much right now.  I’ll probably always wish I had more money, so I think I’ll just keep on paying my bills for now.  It would probably be a good idea if I stopped buying stuff for a month or two.

That said, I bought myself a new bass the other night.  It’s going to cost me $329, but the website will take that out of my account in 3 $110 payments over the next three months.  Not too big a deal.  I’d still like to buy a (leather) loveseat, tv and dvd player, but I think that can wait for now (I’ve survived this long without those things).  Once I get my taxes done, I’ll hopefully have enough money to purchase or put a down payment on a motorcycle.  But that too is a “we’ll see” situation:  it may end up getting de-prioritized at some point in the future.

I think I’m going to hike Windham High Peak this Saturday.  It’s the easiest mountain left of the eight – about 7 miles round trip, on a trail the whole way, and not really all that strenuous.  I may even invite my fraternity brother from New Paltz along with me.  My right eye is still blurry and I’ve been saving this mountain for a “just in case” kind of situation – mostly if I somehow started running out of time and needed to squeeze a second hike into a weekend.  I think this eye thing qualifies as one of those “cases”.  My vision is still a bit blurry and mentally I may still be a bit gun shy about sticking my face into thick branches (which is exactly what I’ll be doing when I climb the Lone/Rocky and Friday/Balsam Cap combinations).  This weekend is probably a good time to take it easy.  Hell, I’ve been taking it pretty easy all week so far.

Yes, I know it’s been nearly a week since my last post, but I have a good excuse:

I’ve only had the use of my left eye since Saturday, and until yesterday, my right eye was in quite a lot of pain.

(Skip to around 1:23, please.)

Saturday’s hike was Doubletop and Graham mountains – both bushwhacks, though I started out for a short bit from the trail at the base of these two mountains.  I summited Doubletop and struck off for Graham.  Graham was truly a mountain-climbing experience:  there was a lot of snow on the ground and the climb was steep.  Lots of hands-and-feet work – in the sport, I suppose we’d call it “technical” (though not to the point where I really needed ropes and ice axes).  My snowshoes stood me in good stead for the whole trip.

About a hundred yards or so from the summit of Graham (on the way back to the trailhead), I got popped in the eye by a tree branch, and the day’s fun ended.  I spent the last mile and a half or two miles of the bushwhack with my right eye closed and in quite a lot of pain (see above), stopping every hundred yards or so to wait for the latest wave of acid-burn pain to wash over my eye, and/or attempting to flush out whatever debris might have still been stuck in there with water from my near-frozen water bottle.

At the end of the day, the flushing process didn’t really do more than take up extra time and possibly numb my eye – the NP at the emergency room later told me that there wasn’t anything in my eye:  that an abraded cornea feels like there’s something there, though.  I prefer to think that my body responded to my vocal request to “just digest the fucking thing, if you’re not going to flush it out (I’m sure there’s some protein in there somewhere).”

In the spirit of gratitude, this was also running through my mind.

The nice thing about the whole experience was that I was able to stay in the moment (though they were not exactly the moments in which I preferred to be) and not panic.  I stayed off the near-frozen river, as much as the land wanted to push me in that direction, and I didn’t freak out when it started to get dark (that’s exactly why I carry a headlamp).  My legs carried me the last couple of miles back to the car, and I checked my map and compass regularly, in deference to my underdeveloped sense of direction.  And at no point during the whole ordeal did I wonder why god or the universe or the mountain was doing this to me.  I just accepted the state of affairs as it was and made lemonade.  Not too bad for a one-time vice president of the pessimist society.  There’s no anti-Ted conspiracy; sometimes things just suck a little more than other times.

The 8 (or so) mile drive from the trailhead back to a main road where I could flag down a cop was pretty nerve-racking, but not nearly as bad as the 40 miles from the hospital to the Thruway.  Once I got just about to the Thruway, I called my parents and asked them to come rescue me – there was no way I was going to be able to make the 2 hour drive back home with only one eye not in excruciating pain and only able to see about 40 yards anyway.  It was exactly like the worst times I’ve ever driven drunk.  I am SO glad that’s no longer part of my repertoire.

Mad props to Ed and Betsy Wallace for effecting the rescue.

Sunday and Monday were spent in and out of consciousness.  Mercifully, I don’t remember much of those days.  I do, however, remember my mother bringing me coffee and food.  Thanks Mom.  <3  =D

I saw the opthamologist on Tuesday and again on Wednesday.  He put a bunch of drops in my eyes and a patch over my injured right one both days – the patch comes off Thursday and I’ll be responsible for the application of the drops and cremes after that.  My next appointment is Friday and the doctor said I can go back to work on Monday.  Work has been pretty cool about the whole thing – I’ve never missed this much time before (though I’ve been working a bit via blackberry and cell anyway).

I now have 8 mountains to climb in my winter peakbagging extravaganza (over 5 trips), and five weekends in which to do so before March 22d.  My plan was to get a bit ahead of schedule by hiking on Monday as well, but, well, that’s fucked.

So now I’m looking at Thursday and Friday off.  I’m sorely (no pun) tempted to hike one of those days, but I don’t know that I want to be off the air blackberry-wise for that long.  I’ll be out there this Saturday, though.

I drove a bit during the day today, but that wasn’t as much fun as it usually is.  I should be good once this damned pirate-patch is off.

So now I’m looking at two days of unrequested down-time.  I really should clean my desk.

I need a new bass.  I just spent about a hundred bucks getting the one I have tuned up a few months ago.  I think I bought the damned thing (close to 10 years ago) for $120 (amp included).  It’s a total piece of crap, but it’s a Johnson, strung lefty.  I’ve always enjoyed looking people in the eye and saying “I have a left-handed Johnson” with a straight face.

Oh well, I suppose I’ll still have one, even though I can’t play it anymore.  I’m pretty sure the neck’s all bent.

So I need to get onto the interwebz to see if I can find an inexpensive (but good) left-handed bass.  Don’t ask me why I play lefty – I shoot pool lefty too (and something else, but I’m not going to say what, because c’mon, this is a family blog) – I suppose it’s because I always played air-guitar lefty.  The reason for that?  I dunno, probably because I was just mirroring the people on tv.

It seems to make sense to me, though:  my left hand is attached to my right-brain, which is the holistic side; and vice versa (sequential).  That means that I feel the beat and keep rhythm with my right-brain, while the more specific things (what notes to play and how to finger them) are done with my right hand (left-brain).  I suppose what I should be saying is that it makes a kind of sense to me.   I’m sure this isn’t necessarily an Intro-to-Psych compatible theory.

I’m not really any good on the bass, and I don’t practice nearly enough, but it’s a lot of fun and I really dig bass.  I’d love to learn how to play the double-bass (“standup”) – playing the double bass in a jazz band would be sweet.  I once saw a dude on the double-bass playing jazz with a dude on the grand piano and almost wet myself.  The steak was good at that place, too.  Why I don’t live there, I have no idea.

So yeah, it’s time for me to purchase a new bass to collect dust in the corner of my apartment and get played every once in a while.  Any suggestions?

My writing this evening has already been completed:  I spent myself in a long-ish email to Didi.  Sorry, dear reader, there isn’t much left for you.  “Tomorrow, tomorrow,” as Annie sez.

In the meantime, I invite you to check out the recent Free Music Monday Post over at Mashable:  my buddies over at Smoothe Moose Laboratories & Recordings are featured this week.  Check out their stuff; it’s pretty fly.

This post has nothing to do with fruitcakes, cheese-monkey.

I’ve been feeling a bit strange all weekend, dear reader.  And I’m not exactly sure from what it stems.  But more on that later.  Maybe.

I’ve some interesting things I’d like to relate first:

I climbed Big Indian and Fir mountains this Saturday.  Got to the trailhead around 11, which is WAY late for me, even though I’ve tended to sleep a bit past the alarm lately (and the alarm is no longer set for 5:30AM, the way it used to be).  As I was finishing lacing my boots and strapping on my gaiters, an FJ Cruiser pulled up and two middle-aged dudes hopped out, remarking at how late “we all” were getting to the trail.  Then they asked if I knew “this area really well,” or at least, if there was a gas station around.  I said I didn’t know; that I’d taken a different route than they and certainly hadn’t seen any gas stations for quite a while.  Then I asked if they had a gps in their car and suggested I might use mine to find the nearest gas station.  The dude gave me a sour look which I interpreted as a negative for one or more of my queries.

As I was heading off, I heard them debating about whether to bring their snowshoes (there wasn’t much snow on the ground at the trailhead).  I told them that even if they might not need them on the trail itself, postholing the last half mile bushwack to the canister at the summit wasn’t going to be a whole lot of fun.  I think they brought their ’shoes, but I never saw them again.

I suppose I got about a fifteen or twenty minute head start on them.  The first three or so miles of the trail to Big Indian are pretty flat and I was making good time (about 2 miles per hour).  As I was doing so, I wondered vaguely if I’d be able to hike both my mountains (they weren’t going to Fir) before they got back down from Big Indian.

When I was just about to the turnoff to begin bushwacking to the summit, I passed a little old lady coming back down.  We stopped and talked for a minute, in the manner in which hikers do when passing one another on the trail.  She was fucking ancient.  I’m going to guess that she was 75 or 80 – maybe subtract a decade if she’s a heavy smoker, but being that I met her coming down one of the highest peaks in the Catskills at a pretty good clip, I kind of doubt that’s the case.  She was wearing MSR Lightning Ascents – the same uber-badass snowshoes I was wearing – and had a smokin-hot French accent.  And she had more patches on her pack than anybody I’ve seen on the trail yet – Catskill 3500 Club, Adirondack 46ers, winter patches for both, one that said “something 400″ (I may have missed a zero and the patch refers to the 4000 footers in the White Mountains in New Hampshire), and a couple that I didn’t recognize at all.  None of these were rainbow unicorns or care bears patches.  This woman was seriously badass.

When we parted, she mentioned that she had to get back to the road because she didn’t have a car and had to hitchhike.

Last week I was talking to my friend Ed Pirone and I mentioned that I only had 12 mountains left to go in my winter peakbagging extravaganza, in response to his question of “what else has been up?”  He then said something like “wow, and you’re doing those all solo?  That’s pretty hardcore.”

Yeah, so hardcore a little old lady can do it.

So, needless to say I’m in love.  I have a vague idea that her name is Merguerite (something)-Webster (I think) “known as IHY” (whatever tf that means).  Her handwriting on the sign-in at the canister was pretty old-ladyish.  When I got back to the trailhead, I snatched her digits from the logbook.  Maybe I’ll give her a call this week and see if she’ll be hiking on Saturday.

Bagging Fir after Big Indian wasn’t all that hard – there was a trail broken by at least three people in snowshoes in the past week or so (I think one person was out there on Friday – or at least, that’s what the log indicated).  I made it back down pretty quickly.  So quickly, in fact, that by the time I was ready to leave – after re-heating my coffee and taking off my boots and such – the two dudes in the FJ Cruiser still hadn’t made it back.  So I gps-ed the nearest gas station (13.3 miles away) and left a note on their car with the location and phone number.  Not that there’s any cell service around there.

Meeting Merguerite was one of the coolest experiences of my hiking career.  I hope I’m still bagging peaks when I’m her age – whatever that may be.