Just back from a hike with my brother. (Mt. Tremont.) Good hike, great views, wonderful to see him, but I don't know how many more of these I'm gonna be up for. Even leaving aside the emissions, 3 hrs. driving + 6-7 hrs. hiking + 3 more hours driving really takes it out of you.

I hope you are all well. Or yn well, depending.
I am going to finish this beer,* take a much-needed shower (I jumped in the Swift River on the way down, but it's not quite the same), and then fall over. Or possibly fall over and THEN have the coffee kick in.

* Related note: see if you can special-order some of the "Farmor" that D. brought.

Things that happened this weekend:

- Watched De bestiis miris inveniendis, which is a fun and surprisingly poignant film.
- Picked and made cranberry sauce from some lingonberries.
- Saw Ben Butler, a.k.a. the play that has been eating my brother's life and sanity for most of the past month-and-some, and of which I should really write a review, but the short version is that you should all go see it if you can find a production to which you can afford tickets. As usual, I'd send you to Portland but Dan's production is closing today.
- Climbed Old Speck, for the third time, this time with excellent visibility and very low humidity. Nearly getting frostbite was definitely worth it in recompense.

Today we are having EDC's 60th birthday celebration! Tomorrow, I have a date! Some day, I will be able to describe my life as something other than "Fun, but way too busy"!

Yoiks. I never posted about LAST weekend (well, the non-theater bits),* and now I'm headed for Maine again.

Well, as soon as I get this job interview done.
#toomanythings

* The fact that the ten-foot long fast sketch artwork has been riding around in my car all week pretty much says it all.


ETA: OK, that was one of the most wtf job interviews I've ever had.

Right, I should post something about the Presidential Traverse.

At some point there will be photos, but there are some that just didn't happen. Neither of us were awake enough to get a photo showing one of us with a frowny face in front of the motel alarm clock reading 4:52. And we didn't get a photo on the top of Mt. Madison. We were too busy trying to breathe, not get blown off the mountain, and not get hypothermia in 70 mph winds. (The last mile to the summit was pretty interesting too. One of two times I've really thought I might die on a mountain.)
(We still did THAT chunk of the climb in like 3/4 of the book time.*)

( Read more... )

Now, unfortunately, I have to find a job. Like, urgently. My parents started getting on my case about this as soon as Peter left last Friday,** and they have a point.
Soooo...yeah. I don't think I can really justify going to Boston for the house concert at the Buttery tomorrow: it's too late to contact Boston lawyers or publishers to try to stop by for a chat while I'm there, and so I should be sitting around Temp Agency #2, and doing job applications.***
(I may go anyway. Feel free to talk me into or out of it.)


* Book Time=the AMC Guide's estimate of how long it should take to hike a particular trail.

** which now seems like a different lifetime.

*** Esp. since I was sufficiently tired, lazy, and out of my normal routine yesterday that I blew most of the day on my fourth most shameful pastime, namely reading teen fantasy novels.

On Saturday, as I was packing the car to leave Ossipee, I got a call from the organizer of my Geek Club.
"Hey. Burson. Where are you?"
"Umm, New Hampshire... $#!7, was I supposed to be somewhere??
"...You went to New Hampshire all by yourself???"

I'll leave out the next couple minutes of conversation. Eventually, I got it across to him that I'd been in NH for a week at my aunt's cabin; he reminded ME that I'd signed up for a hiking trip, back when it was still a theoretical possibility without a set date or, indeed, a set hike. It had now, of course, been set as Today, at Arathusa Falls.

I weighed a possibly-sprained knee and a carful of perishable leftovers and laundry, again missing yet ANOTHER meetup (and presumably doing some cool stuff).
"...Ah, what the heck. When are we meeting?"

And so, when I got on the road, it was in a very different direction than expected. One that would ultimately take me over Bear Notch Road, because (a) I'd been by it a million times but never been over it before, and (b) when the traffic on Conway is backed up all the way to the Kanc., you avoid the HECK out of that town.

Once we finally all got there, I had the unusual experience of being the slow one that everyone has to wait for while hiking. But my knee failed to turn sideways and kill me, and eventually we got to the falls.
One of these years, I will go to Arethusa Falls when there's actually a decent amount of water going over it. I mean, it's impressive even after a couple of weeks of drought, but...
I made better time on the way down - the hike seemed to have loosened up my knee, rather than making it worse - and so I got to participate in the conversations about [resident Brony]'s epic trip to Ireland, and his unexpectedly drug-addled past.

[North] Conway traffic also accounted for why we wound up stopping at a barbecue place on the way back, rather than getting Thai food as planned. (Self-destructive impulses presumably account for why I joined 'em all in this, rather than the much cheaper and more sensible option of just heading back to Portland and eating some of my leftovers. Ditto for why I opted in when we all ordered the 'epic piles of meat that provide a week's RDA of protein all at once".) But hey, delicious food. Also awesome conversations: the bits I remember mostly involved ragging on ex- or absent members of the groups, and a pleasant arguement about the ontological basis of morality, because that's just how we roll.

Aand thanks again to insane traffic (and somebody's suggestion), I wound up taking another road over a mountain to get home, except this one was one-lane and insane. I got lost in Fryeburg; but on the other hand, there's some insanely pretty countryside over that way.

******
The week since then...has mostly involved a less-painful-than-it-could-have been staff meeting (ok), the Development Office unloading all their alcohol onto us afterward (epic), and finding out that Book Company has laid me off (sucky). Back to the ole-job application process, I guess.

There are few ways to wake up than with the feeling of something crawling over your skin.

OK, that's a lie. There are LOTS of less pleasant ways, starting with hearing someone yelling "Spit it out, man, don't think, just spit it out!" But especially after you've experienced bedbugs...that's a pretty bad one.
I squished the whatever-it-was, then brought it up to determine whether it was, in fact, a bedbug. (Damn leggy bastard was still wiggling, too. It took repeated /precision/ squashing to kill.)
Anyway, that's why I was searching the internet for "bedbug" at 6:40 AM. It was not, in fact, a bedbug. It was a tick.
I guess I'm going to have to keep an eye out for symptoms of Lyme Disease...
[Hey, did you know that Ötzi the Iceman seems to have had Lyme Disease?]

I presumably picked up this unwelcome hitchhiker while hiking the other day in Bradbury Mountain State Park. Despite horrible humidity and the comparative lack of elevation it was a good hike, and the young lady I was with was an excellent hiking companion, but I don't think that's going to work as a LTR. Back to the drawing board...

After truly dreadful weather on Saturday—pouring rain AND absurdly high temperatures AND muggy: it was like a monsoon—Sunday was the first real autumnal day, at least in some weeks. It was everything a day should be, in my book: it was clear and cool, with a strong wind that you fought against and drank in with delight. I decided to skank on church in favor of hanging out with friends, and so had a second breakfast at the Pantry with Stephen, maweisse, and a friend of theirs. Although Grace was something of a regular there in her high school days, I’d never been there. It has a modest frontage and, on this occasion, a line stretching down the street. I was glad the others had gotten there first. We talked about our coffee addictions (or lack therof), conference papers, and great breakfast places we have known The food was very tasty (I shall have to remember to order ham-spinach-mushroom-cheddar omelets again), although the menu was not nearly on the scale of O’Rourke’s. But then, what is?

In the afternoon, Stephen and I took advantage of the weather to go hiking. For this, of course, we needed a car, so we recruited a friend of his called Elise, and, after protracted negotiations, got her to pick up straussmonster, before we all drove out to Sleeping Giant (This is a large series of hills near New Haven, that looks like… you guessed it.) We hiked up the easy trail, pausing along the way for Stephen to examine the cliffs, and for everyone to admire periodic views over changing foliage. Oh, and gather juniper berries. (Long story.)

All in all, a lovely day. It made me reflect on the fact that I don’t have nearly enough like that; I don’t hang out with my friends—my geselle, my comitatus—nearly enough. Back in college, it was something of an event if I didn’t run into any particular person I knew several times a week: I would inquire anxiously of friends in Driscoll: were they sick? had they been eaten by a CS project? Here, by contrast, it's a bit of an event if I do run into someone (like yaleartificer today> in the course of my daily round; still more if I actually get to hang out, have a beer, go hiking, or talk about medieval music theory. (Or all of the above). Part of this is due to my self-imposed exile from most Yale functions: I saw, and met, a vast number of people at Freedman’s Company of Scholars talk on medieval food last week. And part is a busy schedule of work, other work, two choirs, and childbirth class, and the consequent being wiped much of the rest of the time. But still, it’s sad. I need to get off my ass more.