Chick Hell

Sometimes, in the land of game making, we stop counting our toes for fun and actually play some games. When I got back from the gym, my teammates were playing this game, Cubivore, for “research”…it is the world’s trippiest game. If you’ve ever played Katamari Damacy, you’ll know that sometimes our Japanese game developers take a little too much shrooms and acid. Well in Cubivore, it’s like they’re candy flipping shroom, acid, weed and Viagra. The whole game is about your little character, which looks like a cardboard box, jumping around eating other colored boxes, so that you can change color, gain limbs, impress the ladies and mate. Much like Katamari, it’s oddly fun.

Is our current game done? …um…next topic. Our next game in the line up will be awesome, it’s our highest profile game yet – unless you’ve been hiding in your mom’s basement for the last two years, you’ll have heard something about it, so we’re very excited.

I went out with my sister last night and somehow two of her girlfriends showed up at her place and insisted they come out with us. Well, my sister and I were planning to play pool, so the ladies came with. Did I forget how to get along with ladies? I feel like my sister’s little brother that was tagging along. The conversation didn’t interest me. The first thing the ladies said to me was, “Oh my god, how do you stay so thin!? It’s 10 at night and you’re eating that?” Me, “Mmmmph, yeah, I’m hungry, and this is Butter Grilled Salmon is amazing. Want some?” Then when we got to the pool hall, they didn’t really want to play pool…they just wanted to talk about boys. Really, now! Boys? They decided my sister should meet their friend, this 45 year old guy, who is very “nice”. My sister is only 33, she’s not in need of dating some guy who the girls would say, “Well, by nice, I mean he’s really sweet, but I don’t find him sexually attractive…but he’s rich.” I tried to stay out of their conversation by focusing on the game which makes me look like the competitive asshole who cared too much about the game – but I can deal with being an asshole sometimes.
Somewhere in the course of the night the girls find out I’m single, and one of them said, “Oh dear, I can help you.” I was in chick hell. In all honesty, the ladies are nice and sweet, but I’m not sure I want to spend my night talking about boys.

What do the boys talk about when we’re backpacking? Well, we spend a lot of time making fun of each other. The boys come up with endless crude jokes and songs about their nutsacks. Yeah, sac. They love it. I poked fun at them for that and they told me I could come up with my own songs, I told them, “Yeah, but really vagina doesn’t rhyme with many things.” One of them made a valiant attempt at a good vagina song, then conceded that I was right.

Shape of an Orangutan, Transform!

Another day of thumb twiddling…another day in the life of a game programmer. We’re either being flogged to death while have caffeine pumped into our body intravenously or we’re…waiting. So, today will be long lunch day with long gym session. I am slowly but surely adopting the form of a small orangutan, not even a cute one, but the scary lippy one that makes cameo appearances for humor sake. Even with all the time I spend in the woods, I know funny looking orangutan does NOT equal pretty girl…but an orangutan can easily shoulder a 30lbs pack without bitching and moaning for days.

Hester Lake

I love me. I love spending an insane amount of time with me. I didn’t realize there was only so much of me that I can take. The worst is when I can’t escape.
I hadn’t planned on going hiking this Saturday since I’ve decided to stop being an asshole friend and actually made time to see Gigi, who had been in town for a few weeks already. I planned our outing around a dinner so it’s not as much about “drinking” but I knew it would be there, so…I figured hiking the following morning wouldn’t happen. It is, as always, fun to hang out with Gigi. She ran into a few relationship snag and I gave her the same advice that she had given me many years ago. Relationship makes people stupid, I love it and truly one never feels more alive than being in love…but I’m also at my worst when in love.
I woke up Saturday morning at 8 despite crawling in bed at 3. After much cleaning, reading and re-hydrating, I gave up pretending like I wasn’t going to hike and started packing for one. I wasn’t hungover since I didn’t have much to drink because *gasp* I’m learning how to drink in moderation (*sob* i feel like i don’t know you anymore. shut up!)…still I was a bit dehydrated so I figured I should choose an easier hike. I figured I could probably do a hike to a lake since I’ve hiked to some mountain top or another almost every weekend since April.
I found this nice hike to Hester Lake from “Beyond Mount Si”. The book gave the trail a “four peak” difficulty rating…with Mt Si receiving “three peak” so I thought it would be decent challenge. They should consider downgrading the rating to two. There wasn’t anything challenging about the trail. The elevation gain seems non-existence.
I know the writer gave it a higher rating because the trail was “wild”, covered with random rock climbs, creeks and ford crossing, and root mazes, but the trail was still stupid easy. Instead of giving this easy trail a harder rating because of the rocks and roots, the author should just make a side note of, “Look at the fucking trail, you moron!” It’s really not that tough.
I hate to call a trail boring because…you know…there’s nature and stuff - and heaven forbid I should ever call nature boring, but it’s BORING. There was just flatness and trees for most of the hike and god damned the hike was 11 miles round trip. Oh and I didn’t see a single soul aside from the few leaving the trail as I was entering from beginning to end. It’s strange, but I also felt more “alone” on this trail than any other…most of the time when I’m on a trail, I don’t feel alone at all, I feel surrounded by all the life around me, it’s comforting, this time, not so much. Maybe I got bored of talking to the trees too – they usually don’t have much to say. The most exciting part of the trail was probably the bumpy drive in.
I don’t know about other people, but when I’m alone, I have a dialogue in my head with myself, sometimes it’s like I’m writing my blog for me to read as I live the moment. After 9+ miles of talking to myself, I actually got tired of me. There were moments when I’ve caught myself not thinking, moments when I’m just a bipedal creature flapping my limbs instinctively to move from one place to the next. I actually stopped thinking; I don’t think I’ve ever caught myself doing that. Every single day, from the moment I wake up my mind is already racing. Food! Breakfast! Brunch! Elevensies! Angelina Jolie! There’s always something occupying my mind. It’s a bit eerie to find ones mind shut off even if just for a moment. I realized I ran out of things to say to myself, but there were two more miles of slogging. It was an interesting boring hike.
I’m actually a little stiff around the joints today, so despite the hike being easy, the 11 miles factor does take some toll. If you ever go on this hike, bring a friend and watch out for the baby frogs and toads. Try to pick a sunny day to go too, because I sooo wanted to take a swim in the lake, but for the first time in WEEKS, Seattle was actually not baking hot...the water was definitely warm, but there was a freezing strong breeze in the area while I was there.
Slide of this hike here.

Hell's Kitchen

Hell’s Kitchen is an awesome place despite my dislike for Tacoma. They make this amazing Bacon Cheese Fries that I am absolutely in love with. If you can brave the stench of Tacoma, I highly recommend it.

Brian’s show was being recorded to be put on DVD by some UW film students who asked to record their band as a student project. I’m not sure Brian could have asked for a better birthday: non-stop free beer, 5 cameras on him, he gets to sing...and he was constantly hounded by women all night. I could hardly get into the swarm to buy him a shot. It’s good to see him enjoying himself.

The band that played after his band, was Embalmed. They were great. The odd thing about this band is, when you look at them, most of them look like beach bums. They should be saying, “Yo dude, how’s it hanging?” and not screaming at you in demonic voices. One of the guitarists is actually too damned pretty for death metal…but hey, I’m not one to complain about eye candy.

The headlining band, Origin, was the final band to play…they were good. I think I would normally rate Origin a little higher than good…but every band was just so damned good that night. Still, there were people from Vancouver there that drove down to Seattle just to see Origin, so they must be better than good to a metal head.

In Pursuit of Less Drinking

What did I do before I started drinking? I've been asking myself that a lot lately because I've got lots of friends that I want to hang out with, but it seems these days everything revolves around alcohol. My ONE token girlfriend is in town and I haven't made time to hangout with her, because I can't think of anything that doesn't revolve sitting in some bar or another. Again, I love a good beer, I have absolutely nothing against drinking, but I just don't want to keep blowing all my money on booze. Hell, even if it is free, I don't want to waste my time dealing with hangovers or having the exact same conversation five hundred times.

I've got two invites to parties that both involve heavy drinking tonight. The first that I'm passing up is a (booze fest) boating party. Sounds like it would be fun...driving around in a boat, swimming here and there, drinking, then parking at a beach to have a barbeque.
Then there's my best friend's (booze fest) birthday today. Oh and he also has a show tonight over at Hell's Kitchen in smelly armpit Tacoma...I can hear my liver screaming and squealing.

How do people deal with this? When you move from drinking all the time to not so much...what do you do with your friends?

I've had people tell me I could just go and have a couple drinks... Is there even a real bar that will serve you a "couple drinks"? I'm pretty sure any bar worth their salt would beat the crap out of you, steal your money, throw you out, and call your mom a dirty whore if you order less than five drinks. I can't tell you for sure, since I love my mom and didn't want to put that to the test.

I'm So Sexy It Hurts

I smell like ammonia. It’s my secksi new perfum called “AfterBite”. I found out that perhaps my bonking out half-way through my workout yesterday might be due to the severe blood-loss from feeding too fucking much mosquitoes on my trip. They were everywhere.
I was smart enough to have picked up a bottle of Jungle Juice the day of my trip which helped immensely, but those bastards were persistent. They just hovered until they found a spot that I’ve missed. Like the small of my back – because dudes camping, they don’t sit around rubbing oil and stuff on each other. And my ass, because dropping my pants to rub DEET on it seems a little…unseemly.
So I now smell like freshly mopped linoleum, am covered in bug bites, and possess hair that feel like crunchy straw from being baked in salt and sweat for three days. God damned, I sound hot. Oh yeah, men, if you come after me now, I’ll even throw in some bonus dirt in the nails and a bruise on the knee. Yech...
I left work early yesterday to grab some dinner with my sister. She mentioned wanting to see a certain movie so I said fine. She wanted to see “Devil Wears Prada”. I’ll have to admit, when I first saw the preview for that, I thought, who the fuck is going to want to see that. I squirmed for a moment, but then thought maybe I could use the estrogen boost and lots of chick flicks are perfectly charming. After watching that movie, I think my IQ went down a few points, my estrogen level is boosted by 50%, and I think your shoes are ugly.

Mount Daniel

Work is amazingly non-eventful today…we’re still in “wait” mode. So instead of trying to make thumb-twiddling look like work, I went to the gym. Kids, don’t be a dumb ass and try your normal gym routine without extra fueling up the day after a backpacking trip. I bonked sooo hard halfway through my normal work-out, breaking into cold sweat and feeling a bit dizzy. I took that as a sign from God that I don’t need to exercise ever again and left (thanks God, you’re my favorite homie *throws fake gangster signs*)…then went to QFC next door, ate ALL their free crackers and hummus samples, bought out half the store, and inhaled the entire content in the five minutes drive between store and work.

So now I get to sit here, blog and comb through the five billionty pictures that the four of us took during our three day/two night trip.

The trip out to Mount Daniel was a lot of fun, but I doubt it’s a trip I will be repeating any time soon. Our buddy, Fraser picked out this hike, saying that it will be extremely easy. I did a little research on the trail and found hardly anything except for this blurb on Trails.com:
I assumed we must be going up a different trail because despite English being my second language, I’m pretty sure “Physically most difficult, technically difficult” does not mean the same thing as “extremely easy”. Yes, I looked it up in case I forgot all my English after speaking to my mother in Chinese this morning…most difficult does not fucking mean the same thing as extremely easy…they’re fucking antonyms.

We (Fraser, Daniel, David and I) all met up after work at Fraser’s house around 7 and drove out. By the time we got to the trailhead, it was dark. We strapped on all our gear and started our hike in for our first campsite, Squaw Lake 2.5 miles away. When we got there, we hardly broke a sweat so we figured we could charge in for the second camp, Peggy’s Pond, another 3.5 miles further in.

The hike to Peggy’s Pond was easy except for the end part which consisted of us hiking on slippery gravel surface, trekking across some snow-covered ledge, and scaling a bit of cliff side – all with our full packs on. I was not so happy after climbing around on the cliff in dark…then we lost our trail. We did eventually find it after much stumbling around lost in the night. It was past 3a.m. when we made camp and we were worried about being fried alive by the sun at 5 because the weather forecast for Cle Elum that weekend broke 100 degrees.
The weather ended up being absolutely perfect the following day with a bit of sun and lots of cloud. We really couldn’t have asked for better weather to sleep and hike in.
The “hike” up Mount Daniel is really more about trekking across rocky fields,
climbing up boulder fields,
climbing up slippery gravel mountain side,
and trekking up fields of snow.
We could have died so many times on this climb it was stupid – seriously, despite all my jokes about being eaten by bears, I don’t go out of my way to take chances with my life. We just went too under-prepared. If any of us knew how technical this thing really could get, we would have all brought crampons and ice-axes. Really stupid - I’m going to always carry an ice-axe at any mentioning of snow from now on...hell, maybe I'll just carry it all the time, take it to bed...toilet...you never know when it'll come in handy.
The view from the top was gorgeous and a stark contrast from Green Mountain, which is nice – because you can only have so many pictures of lush green mountain tops before people wise up and realize it’s pictures from the same place only with a slightly different angle (don’t worry I tell my hiking buddies to put on different clothes so it looks more authentically different).
We hung out at the top for a while enjoying the scenery and being silly goofy. Strenuous hikes have a way of making people giddy. We glissaded parts of the way down but we still had to trek across a steep snow field with a cliff drop-off which was yet more stupid risks we shouldn’t have had to take. Still, watching Fraser do a flying leap onto the snowfield wearing only nylon shorts is pretty entertaining. None of us bothered trying to suit up for the glissade, with rainpants or whatever, we just sat down on the snow and slid. After a while, my butt was frozen through from the snow, but god damned that was fun.

I was bone-weary by the time we got back to camp. We ate dinner, hung out then bunked down early so we could be up by 5 to pack and head out.
We woke up to the weird wind storm thingy. The trek back was pretty easy but it was scary to see the steep drop from the cliff that we scaled in the dark. We stopped by this wonderful place for breakfast. I had steak and eggs and a nice cold Guinness (I’m not much of a drinker these days, but for some odd reason, a nice cold beer and steak ALWAYS sound so good after a tough hike) for breakfast.
Edit: Finally got the slide together. It's a bit long but we did have over 2 gigs of photo between all of us.
It was a wonderful trip. Happiness is a piece of steak grilled rare and an ice cold Guinness at the end of tough hike.

Getting Hot In Here

Seattle is too damned hot. My moldy swamp loving self can't handle this baking heat. Top of Mount Daniel was a nice balmy 70, but I can't write worth a damn about it now in this heat. Must drink more ice water...but I survived. I'll post pictures and summary of the backpacking trip when I stop wilting...hopefully tomorrow.

Geared and Ready

Chugga, chugga, chugga, chug! Wheeeeee! I think I bought enough freeze dried food to feed a small army again. So...if you don't hear from me by Monday, my corpse is somewhere on this map:

Fancy Top Ramen

I went out for dinner with my sister tonight because she has been dying to take me to this place in Columbia Tower for dinner. We sat in the bar, Stratus Lounge, which is on the 75th floor of the building. You can see in the picture on the far right corner, the Space Needle is but a tiny speck far below. It’s a beautiful place; the view of the city is lovely.

The one problem I’ve found from going to nice bars in these fancy five-star restaurants is that the two of us, somehow scream, “Please, all you dirty old men, hit on us.” We were sitting at the bar with her friend’s business associate (let’s call him old white guy) sitting next to the me. At first the guy was being congenial, then this guy (old Asian guy) sat down next to my sister and the white guy introduces the Asian guy to us as, “The nicest guy I know of with AIDS.” It was meant to be a silly over-the-top joke, which I got, but it’s kind of a fucked up thing to say, even if the guy was obviously drunk. Another drink later, the same guy asked us, “If the two of you were to fight over me, who would win?” My sister is trying to be polite with, “Oh we never fight.” Me, “Over you? We wouldn’t bother fighting, we would both walk away.” He wasn’t happy with the answer, “No, really, humor me. I said IF.” I replied, “No, really. There is no ‘if’. You set yourself up with that question. There’s simply no way we would fight over you.” My sister is laughing, “Yeah, we would walk off together to go get a drink.”

Since my best friend sings for a death metal band, I end up in some really dingy dive bars, but the rudest people I’ve found are often in the nicer places. The last time we were given similarly nasty bad lines was at the bar of Waterfront Grill, where my sister and I used to hang out at all the time. These two middle aged white guys (one very very fat, the other on skinny side made more skinny by sitting next to his friend) sat in the table next to us. They made polite conversation with us and invited us to join them, which we declined. They ordered a few $200+ per bottle wine and asked the server to bring us two glasses, which we tried to decline but they insisted.

Fat guy: Are you ladies alone?
Me: We’re each other’s hot date.
Fat guy: My friend here is single.
Us: No, really, we’re happy with each other’s company.
Fat guy: Don’t tell me. Your boyfriends’ name is Bob.
Us: Huh?
Fat guy: You know, Battery-Operated-Boyfriend.
Me: Sir, I think you’ve just stepped over the line of polite conversation, let’s not go there.
Fat guy: What's the big deal, it's just a simple question.
Me: Sir, that is not a subject to be discussed, I find it distasteful.

My sister pretends she doesn’t know what he’s saying, while the skinny guy looks a bit embarrassed by his friend. Fat guy doesn’t want to stop despite the fact that I was still smiling and trying to let him off easy.

Fat guy: Well, if you don’t answer, I already know what you answer is.
Me: That’s fine, but you are being inappropriate and this conversation is over.


After over two months of not hanging out with my sister for more than an hour, I went out with her on Sunday night. I love hanging out with my sister once in a while, but I do have to brace myself for certain things when I hang out with her. Like, we decided to have dinner at this steakhouse called The Metropolitan Grill…and she wanted to drive…even though the place is TWO blocks from her place, and valet costs 7 bucks. While relative to the cost of a meal at The Met, 7 is nothing, but two blocks...getting in a car and driving for two blocks…my brain is still hemorrhaging from thinking about it.

She heard about my vacation time and immediately decided we should go to Cancun or Vegas together. I can’t tell which of two places I would like to go to least. She mentioned I should go to this party with her on Saturday, I told her I was going backpacking this weekend. One thing she asked me during our really delicious meal is, what do I eat during the camping trip? I told her…um…a fancy version of top ramen, eaten right out of the foil baggy thing with my spork, it screams class. She looked horrified and asked, "What the hell is wrong with you!?" I laughed and explained, two years ago, I would have said the same, somehow at this moment, it makes sense.

In then end, I didn’t drink much and had to leave early to pack for my backpacking trip tomorrow (we’re leaving after everyone gets off work). I guess I’m getting old and boring…but if I’m having fun being “old and boring”, that’s all that matters.

Edit: I was just looking up how tall the Columbia Tower is, it's listed as 967 feet, which means, if you hiked up Mount Si, you've hiked up the height of that tower three times and then some.

Limbo, Hamster and Ninja

After sitting in Limbo for so many days, our team finally got our wish…sort of. In a horrible way…I think. I can’t tell anymore. We really wanted a chance to polish our game, but we think it has been approved already… Instead we were just told we get to make a Japanese version of our game, which wasn’t originally in the plan. So we all sat down and played the game together for 3 hours to see what we should fix for the Japanese build…then came away feeling like crying knowing how broken the game really is, and that it will probably be released that way for US. *sigh* While we wish to see the game in great shape, I doubt we’re jumping at the thought of killing ourselves some more for a version that might sell 10 copies – bought by us and maybe this guy.

I’m not sure what impact the new game version will have on my weekend schedule yet, but my friends are thinking about heading over to Cle Elum to backpack Cathedral Rocks, and Mount Daniel…so here’s to wishing.

My little brother, who is 11, recently asked me to get him Eragon. So I went to the store to pick it up, but they were out of that book, so I bought him Pikman 2 and Legend of Zelda: Four Swords instead – because I’m good influence that way. We played Zelda for a couple hours, it’s pretty good. They made really good use of the GBA link, but it's a bit distracting to constantly have to look up and down whenever you enter houses and caves or go underground. I got killed a few times trying to get my bearings.

I've been jumping around looking at other people's blogs (Blogs of Note from the Blogger.com front page is always fun) now that I suddenly have that mysterious thing called "time". It would appear people actually spend some time in designing their page. Programmers "design" (emphasis with finger quotes) by aligning some text, maybe add a few scrollie-button things and it’s done. I guess I could look into some html code, I don’t think I’ve touched that since I was a freshman in college, making my first (god awful) Tripod.com page. Ah, the good old days, where it’s okay to find joy in loading up your bright green page with dancing hamster and gay ninja gifs.

Damn, I think this blog title is more interesting than the blog. Dammit.

Marmots Of My Dream

My blog has become a few different things to me. It’s a place where I share various moments with people - a place where hopefully it sometimes amuses them. It’s a place where I sometimes vent my frustration. It’s my means of convincing my friends that hiking is a beautiful thing. It’s where I sometimes come to day dream when I’m stuck at the office and I would rather be hiking.
Today, I was looking at a photo from Green Mountain and I was, for just a moment, teleported back there. I can smell the flowers in the field. I can feel the warmth of the sun with a gentle breeze. I can hear the soft rustling of tall grass and plants dancing against each other - and echoes of marmots whistling throughout the hills.
Marmots…we saw a few marmot holes along the way and let me warn you now, if you walk past one, hold your breath. Those things are the stinkiest little dens. It really doesn’t help that as a hiker going uphill you’re already huffing for air…catch of whiff of that, and you will fall over dead. It smells like twenty little hobos shoved into a ditch, where they all pee in the corner and the ditch gets baked in the sun…it will make your eyes water. Pesky little marmots, what are you doing in my day dream!? Get out!

Bear Food

My friends are planning a backpacking trip this weekend, soooo…if work permits I might get the privilege of lugging around 30lbs of schtuff into the woods and hiking until my feet bleeds. Yay!
I had mentioned that in my last trip that between the three of us, we had almost three of everything. Dave brought a tent for 3, Daniel for 2, and me for 2 -- we had enough shelter to construct our own Ewok village. Me being me, am always paranoid about starvation, so I brought enough food for 2 people and then some…not joking about that, Dave didn’t pick up food before hand so I told him I would share mine, we both ate well and I still had to pack food home.
Being that it was my first backpacking trip, I was very apprehensive about my ability to lug around that much weight for any distance so my friends had told me I didn’t need to bring some of the duplicate stuff. No way! Of course we needed three water pumps, three camp stoves and three of everything! Personally, I wanted to make sure I can carry everything I would ever need and to make sure I actually bought everything I needed if I were to go on a solo trip. Not to mention there’s the obligatory testosterone gear competition…and I wouldn’t want to miss out on that. Who’s got the brightest headlamp? I do! You ought to replace your sad dim headlamp with a miner’s helmet and candles. Who’s got the brightest pink mattress? It’s Chrysanthemum, you bastards, and it’s um...very manly and cushy...I grew chest hair just from sleeping on it.
I found out during the trip I forgot to get ONE very important item. Before I ever went on the backpacking trip I had been hemming and hawing over the possibility of a bear attack. Well, I forgot to buy a bear bag. Yeah, both guys brought theirs… What did I plan to do to keep the bears from going after my food? Well, I was thinking of slathering myself with molasses and maybe tying a small piece of steak to my neck to distract the bears from my food, of course. Uh-huh, because I am a god damned idiot… *sob* I’m so going to get eaten.
Note to self: Go buy a bear bag, bear mace, some bug juice…and stop being such a dumbass.

Green Mountain

My project is currently in Limbo. Yes, it is in the Land of Judgement AKA Nintendo. Most of the team, myself included is wishing that we would get bounced from lot check so that we might get an extra week to fix all the bugs. We honestly WANT another week of no-sleep, working till 7a.m., pumping our system full of Starbucks to get our game to the state that we know we can be proud of. The game is seriously flawed right now and we will get eaten alive by reviewers if it gets released in its current state. How do we allow a game like that to go to our client? Well, it was due date, we simply had to turn in what we have with a request for more time to work on it. If the client decides they are okay with the state of the game, they can choose to take it as it is and hope that Nintendo will let the game pass. Nintendo has their own testing team to do quality control to make sure the game isn’t complete crap…but bugs and such, if the client is a big name company…they can belly-ache up a storm if the game gets kicked…well, there you go.
On Friday, we were all just on hold, waiting around to see if our game got bounced from lot check. I rolled into work at noon, went to the gym for two hours then left work at 4:30. Rough day. At the end of the day we had a quick team meeting, the producer said we were actually allowed to have real weekend. I felt my face crack…it felt like a smile…what is this feeling…I think it’s joy. Then I asked him what I rolled on my Save to Disbelieve. I expected we would all be leashed to our phones this weekend for on-call duties. He said nope, we can actually turn off our cellphones if we like. That would mean, I can actually wander outside of Seattle…
I was sitting around pondering over what I planned to do with TWO whole days off when Dave called and asked if I wanted to go hiking. Ha! No...I hate that hiking bullshit.

So I went hiking on Green Mountain with Dave on Saturday. I woke up that morning with the worst fucking migraine ever…no it’s not a hangover, it’s something worse…it’s caffeine withdrawal. Holy shit, does it ever hurt. I’ve only heard about that, being not much of a coffee drinker myself but towards the end of the project my typical coffee intake starts with half a cup of coffee mixed with a Starbucks Doubleshot. A coworker asked me if I was spiking my coffee with coffee. Yes, our company coffee is the most potent shit on planet, but it tastes like potent SHIT (Dan describes it as, “It’s like licking tar and asphalt.”)…so the Doubleshot is only there to make the drink a little more potable. Doubleshot is actually really good and tasty, try it sometimes. So I have two or more of those, plus the one or two Double or Triple Mocha from our coffee runs each day. I didn’t have blood; I had coffee coursing through my veins. I’ve stopped drinking coffee for two days, my body was in shock. Fuck you, body, no coffee!

Who needs coffee when you have a beautiful hike to wake you up? Green Mountain is the most beautiful hike I’ve been on thus far. I say that about every hike, but I really do mean it this time. It starts out really easy, it was so easy that I commented to Dave, “This is too scary easy so far. We’re going to have to pay in the end aren’t we?” He couldn’t quite remember since it had been 3-4 years since he was last there. The hike calls for some 3000 ft elevation gain in 4 miles…at what felt like the halfway point, I don’t think we’ve even touched 1000ft.
At around 3 miles, all the elevation gain that we were missing backhanded us. I was hiking along when I suddenly felt…winded. I’m asking Dave, “What the fuck is going on!? I think I’m getting winded. I CAN’T get winded!” He laughed and said, “I wasn’t going to say anything, but...” We started cursing the trail together. It just went from pretty stroll through the flower meadows to hahaha, fuck you, burn thighs burn! It’s a good thing the view from the trail was just gorgeous throughout because it made for good excuses for breaks. It’s a bit humbling to have a trail force you to take breaks.
The view from the top is…wow… You end up standing on a stone ledge with nothing to obstruct your view. Here’s a stitched photo from the top…it’s 360, so wrap the photo end to end, that’s what you see.
I saw my first marmot on the way down. It’s so cute. Suddenly they were everywhere. Not so cute. Dave warned me I would have to kick them if they come after me. I protested. He said, “No really, they have really sharp teeth.” As we hiked along, we saw two marmots on the path, we stopped, one of the marmot bee-lined for me. I was frozen in shock with my trekking poles crossed in front of me in case I had to fling the poor little bugger. It veered sharply to the right about 2 yards away from me. Whew! The other one scrambled off.
We made it back to the car without having to kick, fling or otherwise maim a marmot.
The drive to Green Mountain is 2 hours, but it’s so worth it if you have the time and good company. Here's a slideshow of the hike.
Eric just emailed me reminding me that he lives in the Bay area too. What a bastard I am to forget. That’s 4 men that I want to see in the Gay area, and only one of them is gay...why are all these straight men congregating to the not so straight area?

My Last Roadtrip

I’m finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. So…vacation planning time! I’m still entertaining some serious thoughts on an extended solo backpacking trip, but I’ve got recent invites to the Bay area that I’m thinking could be worked in there somewhere. While Ian was here for work, flitting by every once in a while, I made the time to stop by to say hi and bitched (bitching is my true not-so-hidden talent) him out for having the world’s shittiest timing. He always seems to visit when we’re a little deranged from being over-worked…or are we always just a little over-worked and deranged? He laughed and responded, “You know, this simply means you have to come down to the Bay area for a visit.” The man was skirting the key issue that his timing sucks. Focus!
Later when I actually got a bit of rest and I stopped thinking everyone sucks and I’m awesome and that the world should revolve around me, I thought Ian’s suggestion might not be such a bad thing. I do have my extremely gay (seriously, the guy wears hot pink stripped skin-tight Speedo shorts to go shopping downtown) but very much in the closet cousin there that I haven’t seen in a long time. He’s what 35 or so now? His mom is very old-fashioned Chinese so I think he stays in the closet for her benefit. It’s cute how she insists that his “best friend” that always hangs around the house has a crush on his sister.

Still, I’ve got this longstanding tradition of running off to do some crazy solo things after every project. Last year, I thought I ought to do a solo road-trip to Grand Canyon. The planning for the trip went something like this:
My boss: So are you have any vacation plans for after the project.
Me: Nothing solid yet, but I’m thinking about driving down to the Grand Canyon.
My boss: You driving with a friend?
Me: No, just me.
My boss: YOU’RE GOING TO GO ALONE?
Me: Yeah, I’ll be fine.
My boss: Well, if you must drive solo, I highly recommend books on tape. We have Eragon around here.
Me: Thanks, I’m sure I’ll love them.
My boss: So when are you thinking of doing this?
Me: Well...whenever we get the okay from Nintendo.
My boss: We should be fine, it would be better if you leave and come back sooner.
Me: How about tomorrow?
My boss: Tomorrow sounds fine.

I left work early and started sort of packing, but I had a birthday party to go to….so I went to that, crawled home at 3a.m. I woke up way too late the following day with a nasty hangover, packed and was on the road at 3p.m. I think I threw everything from my closet into my trunk. I plugged in Grand Canyon on my GPS and realize…fucking 22 hours drive. So um…if I drove it straight, I could be there by 3p.m. the following day, but if I stop for 8 hours, I would be there close to midnight… Since I had so obviously planned the hell out of the trip, I didn’t want to get stuck in god knows where land at midnight, so I figured I should drive it straight.
Solo long distance driving trip is a strange religious experience of its own. You start to hallucinate when the sun goes down and all you see is the road and the light. The only thing that really matters is the light on the gas meter. I get a panic attack every time the gas light goes on and there isn’t a sign of approaching gas station anywhere. There was a point around 2:30am, when the gas light went on…but exits after exits went by without any sign of gas…then finally…”Gas”. I drove into a town with the population of one dim lightbulb…drove up to the gas station and my eyeballs nearly fell out of their sockets. They were out of gas. How the fuck can you run out of gas when you’re the only station within 30 miles radius? I asked the gas attendant lady if there was another gas station nearby, she said there is a smaller one two blocks south, but it’s not open until 8 in the morning…or another 30 something miles down the highway. WTF!? I’m thinking I could maybe crash out, but this would throw off the arrival time even more. And the place was creeping me out…you have this giant brightly lit gas station (you said, population dim bulb? it's a metaphor, jackass!) in the middle of nowhere with NO GAS and there’s one lady with a mullet attending the gas-less station. It’s the perfect setting for a B-rated slasher flick. I got back in the car and started driving. Serious, religious experience…if you ever want to find god, do this. I’ve never prayed so hard in my entire life to just be able to get my car to the next gas station…I pleaded, I bargained, I begged…I’m pretty sure Brian’s left nut was thrown in there too. I was noting the highway numbers as I drove, in case my car dies and I have to call for help. Oh and my phone wasn’t getting any signal, joyful! And then…there was light…and gas.
The rest of trip was thankfully less exciting. Utah, dear god the place was gorgeous. Driving through Mount Zion was…wow. I’m so sad now that I wasn’t a backpacker back then, because man oh man, the place deserves a good backpacking through.
Around 4pm the following day, I arrived at Grand Canyon. I got out of the car, all pathetic shakey and wobbly…and nearly died from being underwhelmed. The Grand Canyon was a pile of rubbles.So, I’m trying to make myself feel a bit better about the place…it’s not that bad. It’s a nice tall (very tall) organized pile of rubble. It’s…um…a shithole. I knew I was delirious from being on the road for too long and sleep depravation…but the place looks nothing like the pictures… Now I know sometimes, the photographers make the place out to be much prettier…but this is not even close.
I walked into the visitor center/gift shop to see pictures of the Grand Canyon mocking me…then got a map of the place and realize…I was on the wrong fucking side of the canyon. Now my extensive planning for the trip had included me quickly googling “Grand Canyon” so I was vaguely aware of the fact that there was “North Rim” and “South Rim”…but what they really should have done is labeled it as “South Rim” and “Do Not Fucking Go There”. The site had drawn maps that really doesn’t show you the difference between “Fuck You” and “Oh Wow”. Why bother directing people to the pile of rocks that form a shithole of nothingness? That's another 1/2 hour of driving that I would love to skip.
Now comes the good part…South Rim is 2.5 hours drive away. The place was fucking huge! Apparently that’s why they named the place “Grand Canyon” and not “Modestly Sized Canyon”. I’m a genius, I figured that one out by myself.
Problem now is…do I even have the energy to do another 2.5 hours? You know…when you’re going through something that’s tough but you see the light beyond the horizon, so you tell yourself you can keep your shit together for another moment longer and that things aren’t so bad? Well, I used up that reserve. When I parked at North Rim, I had moved onto uncontrollable sobs and, “Thank god it’s over.” I stood there for a moment and found energy in, “Fuck you, website designer!” And got back in my car and drove. I have to say…when I got to South Rim, I got out…looked around…and thought, “Now THIS is Grand Canyon.”My buddy, PJ called me later that night to check when he should be expecting me in San Diego…I said tomorrow night. Yeah, I thought I might like to camp at the Canyons for a few days, but I had quite enough of alone time by then.

I emailed my buddy, Josh (not to be confused with Josh from L.A.) yesterday day asking about mountaineering gears and classes then bitched him out for flitting through town like a ninja butterfly. He apologized (even though he didn’t have to, but he is a silly sweet man like that) and mentioned that I was still invited for a visit. Last I checked he lives in the Bay area. So that’s three people that I wish to see in one area.
In case I doubted his words that California is beautiful, he linked me to sites of his climbing destinations. Tempting.
Josh, was my climbing buddy. I’ve almost completely stopped climbing since he moved because climbing is one of the few things you can’t do solo. Everyone thinks Josh got bitten by a radioactive monkey because his climbing ability is inhuman. Judging from all his photos, all his friends are really marmots, so he really must not be human after all.

Bus Driver to Hell

If you’ve maybe been feeling sorry for me lately, don’t. Guess what I did today? I hiked some mountain in my favorite hiking weather of light rain, had hot chai at the top, then got a bunch of FREE magically delicious Chinese take-out and watched a good movie with my little brother (while having the optional ending of FREE sushi and open bar, but I’m still not in the drinking mood). Life really doesn’t suck too hard.
I decided to hike Mount Si since it was close by and it’s one of the few places I still get a phone signal at (I was on call for work). Being that it was such a rainy day, the view was non-existent up top, but the hike was nice and quiet.
Being that I’m so close to being done with my project, I’ve got friends that are eagerly awaiting the completion of the game, so that I can go drinking with them. Really, they’re all lined up at the finish line with shots, lime, and salt, all ready to go.
Having cut off so much of my drinking habit lately has brought up a few interesting light. I’ve always said it’s stupid easy to drag someone into hell, but nigh impossible to get them out. Every time someone finds out I haven’t been drinking, they try to find out what “my problem” is…and will actively seek a cure.
A few years ago, in the peak of my party phase, I would be driving around to a 4am after-hours party with my car packed to the brim…quite often 10 people stacked on top of each other. Balls of coke, tabs of ecstasy, bottle of GHB, bottles of vodka, jugs of whiskey, joints galore, plus a mix of other drugs that even I wouldn’t touch and porn blaring on the screen. That is my prequel of driving the bus to hell. There is never a lack of passengers. Why do I ALWAYS drive? So that I may come and go as I please. And, no offense, Prince of Darkness, your place is lovely and all, but sometimes I miss my fluffy soft bed.
Every now and then, my friends would comment on my darker days and remind me how much they worried about me…I would shrug. Sometimes I get the feeling that they want me to apologize or say I didn’t know what I was thinking. All I would say is, “If I could go back in time, knowing what I know now, I would do it all over again. Because, god damned, that was so much fun! I had a fucking blast!” Given the chance to do it all again now, I wouldn’t want to, but what was right for the moment was just that. For those that are curious about dabbling in powder, if you’re going to mix, go with the coke first because it’ll numb your sinus…just about everything else will sting like a mother fucker…oh and I’ve heard about this from a friend of a friend of course.
Now all my friends that were so worried about me are focused on getting me back into drinking more? I already know I’m going to drive the bus to hell, don’t worry about my “drinking problem”, I just want to take a scenic detour every now and then. The road out of hell is a lonely one; I don’t plan to spend forever on it.
I saw Eight Below with my little brother…it featured EIGHT dogs…so you just know they’re not all going to make it. I cried when the dog whimpered in pain…I didn’t even bat an eyelash when Jack died in Titanic, I was just thinking…damn, that bitch killed him…but ooooh, the poor dog. Then I thought I need to either go get a fucking dog already or maybe I do need to get out a bit more.
I just starting reading The Moral Animal…but work seems to not quite be done. I found out we got bounced out of lot check tonight, no big surprise there. So back to work we go tomorrow.

Ugh...

I just woke up after sleeping like a log and thinking about going for a quick hike before checking in with work and saw this. That sure puts a damper on things. Pinnacle Lake is right in that area near my last hike (Mount Dickerman is probably within 10 minutes drive from here) where I had lots of plans to do solo hikes this week. I'll probably have to rethink about solo backpacking a bit more.
Edit: Here's an updated to that article. Scary.
And another. It's so sad.
More updates.

Rarr raar rawr?

English fails me at 5:30 in the morning. How do games get released with so many bugs? Well, at some point, you look at the the ugly baby in a brain dead state, and say, "Gosh darnit, it's a beaute, bring in the stork!" What never ceases to amaze me, is how the team never really lose their sense of humor. They're really an awesome bunch, I love them. If anything the less sleep we operate on, the goofier the team gets. In between pacing, bug fixing, and kitten naps, I hear my coworkers reading out loud to each other, "You committed a BONER; Joker! You were so busy forcing me into a boner, you forgot you were committing one yourself!"
The more I read The Pacific Crest Trail during my sleep deprived delerium, the better the trail sounds...like let's start tomorrow. I'll just saunter over there...hell why not right this moment...
"What is that cutscene? Is that Lando and Han Solo making out? That doesn't look like a hug to me."
Ian came by earlier and offered to gofer drinks, people started placing orders for ice cold forties, but alas, it wasn't meant to be, so we got ice cream. I'm in love, yes, I'm easy, my love can be bought with a simple ice cream bar.
I fall in and out of love quickly when I lack sleep. Fat dinner delivery guy, call me.

Just Push the Button

I'm slowly seeing a nasty pattern in my blog...that I'm slowly but surely migrating toward doing nothing but whine about work, and not being snarky. Which means, I need to stick my head in the toilet and flush a few times. Because if I can't even be a proper snarky gal anymore, what the hell do I need my head for? Wait...did that even make sense? No, perhaps not. What I'm saying is, I'm losing my sense of humor and my own blog is boring the hell out of me. And honestly, I'm sure all my friends would pay to see a picture of me flushing my head in the toilet, because they're all bastards.
Ian is in town. I think he's here to make me cry, because I would give my best friend's left nut to spend some time with him. How many of Brian's left nuts have I given up by now? Let's see...there was that time when I wanted more snow for snowboarding...then that backpacking trip that I really wanted to go to...the parking space that we wanted...then that one day I wanted a bit more breeze during that hike... The way I see it, I'm doing Brian a huge favor by making all these bargains with the Good-Snow-Day Fairy, Backpacking Trip Fairy, Parking Fairy and Trivial Stuff Fairy because it's bound to have a Constantine effect. Seriously, invincible nut! See, I'm an awesomely sweet person forever looking out for my friends, now you fuckers go flush your head in the toilet to entertain me.

Sleepless In Seattle

Ever wonder what no sleep looks like? I think it starts with a tight deadline...then something like this around 11 p.m. (actually that was Saturday's run, Sunday's run was around 9:30p.m.):
We did not meet our deadline...to be honest with you, I can't say I didn't see it coming. I think the ENTIRE team knew we're at least a good week away from being truly done. Still, the chugging of the machine goes on. Sometimes you just have to keep plugging away and show an ernest effort to get there, and we will get there. The important thing is, we still enjoy each other's company tremendously, and we all know we've been putting in the work.

PSA: This is your friendly Public Service Announcement, parents...do not let your kids play video games. Who knows, they might like it and grow up to make a living out of it. Then they'll find that they have little time for sleep, and definitely zero time for hot dates (wait, any kind of dates, could be cold and clammy ones). One day, they will take a walk into the woods and never be heard from again. Woooooo-oooooo! (That was supposed to be more like the ghostly haunting wooooooo! and not retarded gamer WOOT!) We never got to know them...those game programmers in the mist.

Mount Dickerman

Our game is DUE today…ALL OF IT. So needless to say, my team has been living at work. I’ve been putting in 12-14 hour days while some have been putting in even more time.
I had resigned myself to the idea that I will not be hiking this weekend, but then my buddy Dave called and it took him all of one sentence to convince me to flake out on work and go hiking. He said, “I was thinking about hiking Mount Dickerman.” It was THE hike that I had flagged as my next hike if I had time to hike. In the end, I was very late for work (5pm), people were pissed off at me, but I was stupid happy. It’s hard to feel bad when you have a blog that shows the last time you had two days off was back in June 3rd…and the last time I had any day off was 24th of last month. I ended up leaving work at around 2:30a.m., while I was not the first to leave, I most certainly was not the last. Takes a bit out of the magic of making video games, doesn’t it? I woke up this morning completely disoriented. What day is it? Where the hell am I? Oh yeah, gotta get back into work.
Hiking is so good for my sanity. It reminds me that while life might not be making a whole lot of sense at the moment, I still have me. When you take away everything, it’s just me and trails. The adventuring goes on.
Hmmm...Ivan is in town, while the idea of hanging out with a gorgeous guy sound so good, having some time to get some proper sleep seem so much better.
Mount Dickerman is currently on my list of favorite hikes…the view up top is simply insane. When I have a moment, I’ll put together some pano-shots.
In the mean time, here's a slide.

Off With Her Head...Erm...Hair

I’ve always claimed to be high maintenance…except I do all my own maintaining, and I’m only as high maintenance as my circumstance allows. I’ve been rather peeved with myself of late…or more specifically I’ve been peeved with my hair. Don’t get me wrong, I love my hair, it keeps me girly and feeling pretty, but god damned it’s getting in my way and takes work to make it presentable in public.
You might notice I almost always have it up in braids when I’m out in the wilderness, that’s because I suck at hair styling, and braids are the only thing I know of to keep my hair from attacking my air passage (yes, my hair has taken up the “Eat me!” attitude and has on more than one occasion attempted to suffocate me). I’ve never been one of those girls that figured out how to do intricate pretty French braids back in kindergarten…somehow I fell asleep through that class too. I can’t build a fucking tent and I can’t style my hair, how the hell did I sleep through all the important crap? Should I just feel lucky I figured out how to feed myself and tie my shoe-lace?
So…I’ve been thinking of chopping all my hair off…not just trim it, shave it ALL off. Why not just do it already? Because I’m scared. Yeah, there I said it. I’m scared of shaving my hair…and you know what? According to my blogging habits, the moment I admit I’m scared of something, I’ll just go out and do it because I am a god damned idiot. Someone call the police when I say I'm scared of petting poisonous snakes.
What am I so afraid of? Well…um…without hair…people will focus on your face…and who knows, maybe people will realize I’m really not all that pretty and will suddenly find me hideous without the distraction of hair? Now before you go and feel like maybe I lack self-confidence…let me reassure you, I am a great many faults, but I don’t lack self-confidence.
My favorite example of this is, a few years back, I did a solo backpacking trip around Europe for six weeks. One night, I got bored of being alone, so I thought I should find someone to hangout with. I noticed this adorably cute guy sitting a table away checking out some guide book. Now, I’m really stupid awkward shy (<--major fault) at the worst moments…this would be one of them (hey, I’m a programmer, we aren’t known for social grace and poise). I could not, for the life of me, figure out a way to go up and say hi…so I figured if I got his attention, he could do half the work…so I threw a peanut at him. Yes, I hit the poor unsuspecting stranger with a peanut. He lucked out I was eating something light…I could be eating beef ribs. Anyhow, we talked and hung out, so it was a happy story…the two of us cruised through 3 different bars in Berlin and ended up in some really awesome goth club playing amazing industrial music. At the end up the night, our intro somehow came up…and he made a comment of, “You know, you could just come up and say hi. Throwing peanuts at me was kind of rude, I almost got up and left.” My reply was a simple statement, “No, you weren’t.” He wasn’t going anywhere far as I was concerned…so yeah, I don’t lack confidence…I’m just a bumbling idiot a lot of the times.
Back to shaving my hair…don’t worry about encouraging me or discouraging me. My guy friends that are encouraging me are freaking me out…they seem excited about it. Down, boys! My friends that are discouraging me…I love them, and while I understand it’s nice if I try to improve their view by being less of an eye-sore, I am by no means contractually obliged to do so. My sister HATES the idea, she got really upset when I mentioned it to her…she told me I shouldn’t do so, and that she refuses to have any part in it. I told her, “Yes, I know you would refuse to shave me. I’ve already got Brian on stand-by.” I figured my best friend would lop all my hair off, I’ll cry because I’m a silly girl, he’ll give me a hug and we’ll go out for beer. Then when I go into work and people ask what happened to my hair, I’ll just tell them, “Brian and I got drunk and he shaved all my hair off.”
I’m at a point in my life where I “can” actually do this…I should take advantage of that while I can. I figure if need be, I can make up for my lack of hair with personality...and by personality I mean a padded bra.

Hiking Summary

I’ve had a few friends asking me about hiking, so I figured I need a spot to compile all the hikes I’ve done since I started blogging to give people an idea of what to expect. I highly recommend everyone at least go and hike Mt. Si to give themselves something to measure the hikes against. I say Si because it’s extremely close, and from talking to various people, that will either traumatize you from hiking forever or get you so hooked you can’t think of doing anything else. Also, I tend to not want to hike anything much easier than Si...so if you're still in hiking mood after Si, let's talk.

Note: Stats start to make a lot more sense after a few hikes because they really do help in giving you an idea of what to expect. Also it gives more room for bragging rights, and god knows, it's ALL ABOUT bragging rights.

Mount Si: 4/1/06, 4/29/06, 5/8/06, 7/12/06, 9/09/06,
Blurb: Great place for quick workout, trail is packed to death.
-RT: 8 mi
-Gain: 3100 ft
-Max Elev: 3600 ft

Oyster Dome: 4/8/06
Blurb: Lots of local school kids hiking here, a bit far for drive.
-RT: 8 mi
-Gain: 3000 ft
-Max Elev:

Mailbox Peak: 4/22/06, 5/27/06, 8/10/06, 10/07/06
Blurb: My favorite local thigh burner hike.
-RT: 8 mi
-Gain: 4041 ft
-Max Elev: 4841 ft

Mount Pilchuck: failed 4/15/06, 5/06/06
Blurb: Bring snowshoes if it's not late summer, otherwise it's impossible to get to the top.
-RT: 6 mi
-Gain: 2200 ft
-Max Elev: 5324 ft

Bandera Mountain: 5/20/06
Blurb: Very exposed trail, bring sunscreen.
-RT: 9 mi
-Gain: 2850ft
-Max Elev: 5400 ft

Enchantment Lakes: 6/3/06
Blurb: So so pretty, try to spend a few days here. Permit required in season for backpacking.
-RT: 13.5 mi
-Gain: 4020 ft
-Max Elev: 5420 ft

Camp Muir: 6/10/06
Blurb: Holy mother of god!
-RT: 9.2 mi
-Gain: 4600 ft
-Max Elev: 10050 ft

Granite Mountain: 6/18/06
Blurb: Ratings seems harder than it really is.
-RT: 8 mi
-Gain: 3800 ft
-Max Elev: 5629 ft

Tatoosh Ridge and Lookout: 6/24/06
Blurb: Oddly enough, feels harder than it looks.
-RT: 9.5 mi
-Gain: 3430 ft
-Max Elev: 6310 ft

Rattlesnake Mountain: 7/1/06
Blurb: Pretty easy, bring DEET.
-RT: 8.6 mi
-Gain: 2700 ft
-Max Elev: 3480 ft

Mount Dickerman: 7/8/06
Blurb: Too beautiful for words!
-RT: 8.5 mi
-Gain: 3900 ft
-Max Elev: 5723 ft

Green Mountain: 7/16/06
Blurb: Gorgeous place. Starts out super easy, ends with a burn.
-RT: 8 mi
-Gain: 3000 ft
-Max Elev:

Peggy's Pond and Mount Daniel: 7/21/06
Blurb: Backpack out to the pond was easy with a bit of scary scramble at the end. Mt Daniel is scary, not hard, but scary.
-RT: -
-Gain:
-Max Elev:

Hester Lake: 7/29/06
Blurb: Stupid easy but long.
-RT: 11 mi
-Gain: 2950 ft
-Max Elev: 3900 ft

Ptarmigan Ridge: 8/5/06
Blurb: Stupid easy but beautiful and well worth the trip.
-RT: 10 mi
-Gain: 2200 ft
-Max Elev:

Tuck and Robin Lakes + Trico and Granite Mountains: 8/7/06
Blurb: Very fun trail
-RT: 19 mi
-Gain:
Max Elev:

Gothic Basin and Gothic Peak: 8/19/06
Blurb:
-RT: 12 mi
-Gain:
-Max Elev:

McClellan Butte: 8/26/06
Blurb:
-RT: 8.8 mi
-Gain: 3800
-Max Elev:

Mount Pugh: 9/3/06
Blurb:
-RT:
-Gain:
-Max Elev:

Mount Saint Helen: 9/16/06
Blurb:
-RT:
-Gain:
-Max Elev:

Buck Creek Pass: 9/20-21/06
Blurb:
-RT:
-Gain:
-Max Elev:

Headlee Pass: 9/24/06
Blurb:
-RT:
-Gain:
-Max Elev:

Vesper Peak: 9/30/06
Blurb:
-RT:
-Gain:
-Max Elev:

Vesper Peak: 9/30/06
Blurb:
-RT:
-Gain:
-Max Elev:

Rachel Lake and Rampart Ridge:10/14/06
Blurb:
-RT:
-Gain:
-Max Elev:

Enchantment Lakes: 10/20-22/06
Blurb:
-RT:
-Gain:
-Max Elev:

Mount Defiance: 10/28/06
Blurb:
-RT:
-Gain:
-Max Elev:

Last Editted: 10/29/06

Doggie Style

I thought about working all day on 4th of July…then I thought I ought to hang myself for passing up all the party invites. And I figured I need to get my pastey white self out for a tan…and I always look for cheap excuses to jump into a bikini.
My buddy, Fraser, was throwing a party with a bunch of his buddies, where they planned to tie four boats together then have 3-4 giant floating fun islands tied together with various rafts and what-nots. It was pretty hard to pass up, especially since they were having it at the park that I stop by to walk at everyday after work.
Fraser rowed a raft out to get me when I got there, I asked him if he would end up shuttling people all day, he said, nope, I get to shuttle the next person. It ended up being a brilliant plan with the person getting shuttled to be the next shuttler. After an hour or two, people were drunk and pushing the raft around while swimming around, so that part was more than taken care off.
I met a gal, Becka, there who is a producer on some tight-deadlined project. She told me she insisted her team takes the day off, because the way she sees it, the client will not remember a year from now if they were one day late on the project, but her team will remember having to work on the 4th.
I swam and drank for as long as I could (actually, I can’t swim…in the words of Cartman, I do it doggie-style, I can’t tread water, if I stop, I drown)…then went off to work. It was a good day. I seem to be sporting a nasty bruise that I'm not sure how it got there, but my guess is: being wet + alcohol + leaping from boat to boat = what the fuck was I thinking!?

Reality Check

Crunch mode at work has a way of warping reality. It almost feels like I’m high and time loses all meaning. All I could wrap my head around was if statements…then I picked up one of my new books that came in today from Amazon while I was building the project. Dispatches From the Edge, by Anderson Cooper will fuck with your head if it’s lost in some Star Wars Universe…hell, seeing those words in the same sentence just now fucked with my head. It’s just so strange to be completely lost in a video game world and then read, “In the next two hours, tsunami waves strike ten other countries. More than two hundred thousand people will die.” I had to pause a moment to figure out where I was…seriously the idea that people die was beyond my comprehension at that snap second in time…it didn’t seem real. I’m about quarter of the way through the book now, it’s really good, I highly recommend it. I did comment to Brian how inappropriately depressing that book is for me right now...he mentioned I could go back to reading Thus Spake Zarathustra, by Nietzsche for even greater depression. I've been reading that for over a year now...I'm not even done with Part One on that, it is too depressing...that it has taken me that fucking long to read the thing.
Yes, I will be working ALL of July 4th, we’re making the game for a British company, and we can’t exactly expect them to celebrate our independence from them. We’re supposed to turn something in on the 5th then go on bug fix patrol from there. Don’t feel too bad for me…soon as we wrap up, I’m packing my bag and heading for the woods. I’m actually going to ignore my stupid fear of being out in the woods alone at night and try a solo trip, so I’m checking around for a decently populated trail. I figure that way, if I get eaten by bears, someone might find my teeth and let my family know…that my upper left molar could probably use more filling.
I’m currently undecided between checking out a section of the Pacific Crest Trail (I’m still thinking about thru-hiking that someday), Mount St Helen Park, or Olympic Park.

Blog Already

You! Yeah, I'm talking to you. Can you go write a blog or something and send me a link? Because aside from it sucking to high heaven when I have to spend all my time at work, I also run out of shit to read online. Blogs are great for that because a typical entry is like 2-3 minutes of pure entertainment which is about how long I have when I'm building the project. So in between debugging stuff, I get a nice dose of brain candy. Right now, I've eaten EVERY bit of brain candy available...yes, I have read EVERYTHING on the web... It's possible, I'm sure of it. Go ahead, ask me anything, I won't have an answer because I'm also amazingly stupid now because of all the worthless crap I've read. Yay me! So go blog!

Rattlesnake Mountain

Rattlesnake Mountain is a very good day hike if you don’t have a lot of time to drive far from Seattle and you don’t want to hike with ALL of Seattle over at Mount Si. The hike is actually pretty damned easy, this book I got labeled it as harder than Mount Si, but I think it’s about the same or easier. The hardest thing about this hike is trying to fend off the mosquitoes, god damned there was a fuck ton of mosquitoes. The even worse part about the bugs was the fact that they start getting really bad only after reaching Rattlesnake Ledge at 2.0 miles…which is where everyone stops because they’re lame ass hippies…so I was their sole source of food.
I need to start carrying some DEET. The only good thing about those blood sucking bastards is the fact that they made me RUN through the hike. Yeah, my little legs have never carried me faster through a hike before. Thanks for the good work-out, mosquitoes, but I hope you all burn in hell, especially the huge fat fucker that bit me on my thumb knuckle. That one in particular was so freaking huge, I screamed like a little girl when I saw it chowing on me. Not sure how it got there without my noticing, they must have ninja training or something.
Minus the nasty little bloodsuckers, the second half of the hike was absolutely lovely. There was NO ONE on the trail (I saw maybe four people on the way back down), and the trail changed to this beautiful densely packed forest. It was probably one of my favorite forest-type to hike in. You feel like you’re actually in the woods and nicely shielded from the sun.
The viewpoint at the 4 miles mark was absolutely disappointing; I think the one back at 2 miles was much better. There were too much shrubs and such up top to get a decent unobstructed view. There was also a huge antenna doohickey up there…and I seem to have forgotten my lead helmet at home, so the tumor in my head probably just doubled in size from all the happy radiation.
Bugs, cancer, and shitty view aside, I really enjoyed this hike.

Having not drank in so long, I’m surprised I’m not hungover from being out last night. I had around 5 beers, 4 shots of somethin’ or another, and 2 jello shots…I guess it’s not that much, but again, I haven’t been boozing it up. Sung and Brian are both recent singles, so I guess that translates to I will end up drinking a lot more when my project finishes…if it ever finishes.
I haven’t really hung out with Sung’s friends much before, so I’m very happy to say, they’re all a great bunch. Just goofy, easy going, fun loving types. At some point during the night, the guys were playing grab-ass…I don’t know why, but this game seems to always come up with straight men (I’ve hung out with very gay groups, it seems their favorite drunk game tends to be titty-pinch). I opted out of the grab-ass game much to the dismay of the men, because the target’s girlfriend was standing right there…and while they say it’s okay…in my experience, the potential for it not being okay, far outweighs the okay. I guess I’m a prude about these, things…I tend to err on the side of showing a little more respect for the gal. All in all, the night was awesome, it’s a much needed break, because god knows, I will probably be working no less than 12 hours today.

Some Bitch with that Whine

You know...I had hoped that a nice morning hike would make working on a very sunny Saturday suck a few less donkey balls...but it doesn't. So here we go...whine, whine, whine, bitch, bitch, bitch. Okay, I can shut the fuck up about work already and move onto bigger and better things...like plans to go dancing and drinking later. Now I remember why I became such an alcoholic...working insane hours will do that to you. Oh, and don't anyone try and ask me what I'm doing on the 4th, because even if I can't kick you in the crotch right now, I will remember to do so at the earliest opportunity. I'm a girl, I remember these important details. I definitely don't want to hear from my friends that aren't crunching at working taking some 4 day weekend to backpack.

The Masochist

Being that I have to work all weekend, I figure I would have to skip hiking this weekend...then I realize I don't want to. So, the Saint Bernard should go to Rattlesnake Mountain...which is another 2 miles past Rattlesnake Ledge. And then work.
I was just reading this article this morning. I wonder how close to reality that is, because if it's true, I'm going to be such an asshole to my body. My knees are going to get ripped to shreds. I wonder how many other masochistic sporting assholes out there are rubbing their hands alongside me, delighting in the pain they're about to push themselves into.
I know I might sound a bit whiney far as work goes...but really, I do love my job. I love the people I work with. I love that they're okay with me sending out mass email, telling everyone to watch this. It's a good place to be.