February 2012
6 posts
Thing #32: Visit my parents in Florida
My parents bought a house in Florida well over a year ago. I have been saving the Florida vacation for the time when mere existence in Seattle becomes an unbearable trial. That time is February. Five days in Florida visiting my parents along with my brother, here we go!
My brother is a fun person who likes the same fun I do and when we get together in the same place we have a pretty good time...
Not a Thing: Climb the Zipper
Emily and I were both suffering from upper respiratory infections last weekend, but the weather was beautiful and we were also suffering from cabin fever after mostly taking January off from climbing, and so we headed off to CLIMB A THING. Namely, Lane Peak. Namely, the Zipper, which is a steep little couloir up the north face of the mountain, right about here:
Emily and I have been wanting...
Thing #21: Do 25 push-ups
I was at a party some years ago, and someone mentioned an article they’d read earlier in the day about how many push-ups the average person ought to be able to do. The article mentions that a 40-year-old woman in good health should be able to do 16 push-ups, a fact at which all of us marveled, it seemed so unreasonably ambitious. Oh, except me. I didn’t marvel. I scoffed. And then in a...
Thing #43: Read Faith in a Seed
A favorite English teacher gave me this book when I graduated from high school, and he told me that he was reminded of me whenever he read Thoreau. What little Thoreau I’d been required to read in high school I’d found painfully boring, and seventeen-year-old me certainly didn’t know what to make of such a weighty pronouncement anyway. And so I toted this book and all of its...
Thing #75: Participate in Hourly Comic Day - Part...
Man, I did not even try to make today interesting for you. Are you ready for the thrilling conclusion to a completely average Wednesday? I’m going to bed because I couldn’t even stay awake to watch a movie, that’s how boring today turned out to be.
Thing #75: Participate in Hourly Comic Day - Part...
I initially declined to participate in Hourly Comic Day this year because my weekdays are a little underwhelmingly boring, thanks to my standard-issue office job. But I guess that is the point of Hourly Comics Day, right? The whole “day in the life” aspect, plus bringing a tiny bit of humor to really mundane details? So I started frantically drawing to catch up while on my lunch break...
January 2012
2 posts
Thing #18: Get lead certified at the gym
Are you terrified of heights? Then perhaps you, too, would like to start lead climbing in the gym, where you will take falls of ten or twelve feet or so while hoping your friend keeps you from hitting the ground! Even more terrifying, perhaps you would like to be solely responsible for keeping your friend from hitting the ground while her feet plummet directly toward your head!
I have long...
Thing #8: Learn to ski
So one month after I went skiing (uh, memorably) for the first time, I skied my first black diamond run. It was an accident, really — we took a lift that we thought had a nice intermediate blue run, and then we were greeted at the top by a list of black diamonds. “Well, what do you want to do?” Eric asked me. And that is how I skied my first black diamond. No big deal. I asked Eric if...
December 2011
4 posts
Thing #69: Cure meat
I originally had visions of curing my own guanciale, but Eric found out about gravlax and we have seriously been talking about curing our own gravlax for nearly a year now. Eric is… so Norwegian it is like some kind of joke. And I hail from northern Minnesota where everyone is very Lutheran and therefore everyone voluntarily suffers through Minnesota winters and annual lutefisk dinners...
Not a Thing: Climb the Tooth
Back in July, I was a little disappointed that I got rained out of climbing a mountain rather charmingly named The Tooth. The Tooth is an extraordinarily popular climb during the summer, since it’s a good beginner multi-pitch route close to Seattle. It is a lot less popular in December. It’s also a little more exciting in December! Well, I am pretty excited, anyway.
A lot of my...
Thing #8: Learn to ski
Let’s go ahead and say this one is IN PROGRESS.
Thing #98: Start a retirement fund
As mentioned previously, I moved to a place with cheap rent to free up some cash to help achieve other goals, both things and not-a-things.
Here. Here is the most boring of all of those goals.
THING #98: DONE. (21/101)
November 2011
2 posts
Thing #77: Draw 50 pages of comics
Man, it’s been nearly a year since I last drew a comic! Well, here you go. Here is a comic about Eric, and what life with Eric is like, and how hard Eric makes me laugh when we are mean to each other, but in a funny way:
THING #77: IN PROGRESS. (1/50)
Not a Thing: Climbing at Red Rock
I did not think I would be the sort of person to buy a plane ticket for the express purpose of going to another place just to go climbing, but here we are, four days in Las Vegas, and the only views of the strip were from the plane and the tops of nearby mountains. I guess this is a thing I do now.
I led the first pitch of the weekend, for courage-building purposes:
I also led the last pitch of...
October 2011
3 posts
Not a Thing: Live alone for a year
I had a favorite professor in college. She was an English professor who loved Shakespeare, and I loathed Shakespeare. And also I was a geophysics major. So it was a bit improbable that she should be my favorite. But we all hung on her every word for an entire semester of classes (a feminist writers seminar, not Shakespeare, thankfully), and we were far from the only ones. My university’s...
Not a Thing: Climb on ice
I am going to stop saying there are things I’ll never do when it comes to climbing, because now I think maybe I have done all of those things I said I’d never do, in the space of the last few months. Ice climbing, there’s a thing I’ll never do! Just kidding! Let’s go ICE CLIMBING.
What did you do last weekend? Oh, that’s nice. Me? I was repeatedly lowered into...
Thing #6: Day-hike the Enchantments
A few summers ago, a friend of mine asked me if I wanted to join him for a Death March. How could I say no to a Death March? I said no. I’ve regretted it ever since.
The Death March, also known as the Enchantments Traverse, is a twenty-mile hike with over a mile of elevation gain through the Enchantment Lakes Basin, one of the prettiest places anywhere ever. If you are lucky enough to get...
September 2011
7 posts
Not a Thing: Hike Vesper Peak
I tried to hike up Vesper Peak last September, but after climbing 2500’ across a talus field through a pass to an alpine lake and seeing that the summit was socked in, we decided the lake was a fine place to have a beer and head home. Also, I was tired. And out of shape.
Here’s what the lake looked like just over a year ago:
And then on Saturday, it looked like this. Big year for...
Thing #61: Make yogurt
The idea of making yogurt always struck me as vaguely disgusting, which meant I HAD TO DO IT. Disappointingly, it is not disgusting at all. It is actually disappointingly easy as well. I used this recipe, and then I used a bunch of these tricks because I rather prefer thicker yogurt, myself. I have been known to eat sour cream with a spoon at 3 AM, standing in the glow of the open fridge in my...
Thing #17: Take a wilderness first aid course
I took a course through the Red Cross on wilderness first aid. I am now equipped to help you with all of your wilderness first aid needs.
I spent all weekend sitting in a classroom while it rained outside, and spending a Saturday evening cooking in a real kitchen instead of adding boiling water to dehydrated chili mac on the side of a mountain was really quite pleasant. I can make a béchamel...
Not a Thing: Climbing at Squamish (and my first...
By the time I actually put up my first trad lead as my very last climb of the weekend, it felt sort of underwhelming, considering that I was physically pretty worn out and mentally exhausted from all the other things I learned over two days in Squamish. Things like how to make TAPE GLOVES:
And setting up my own rappel without supervision, which TERRIFIES ME STILL:
Some sweet CRACK...
Thing #5: Climb the Haystack on Mt. Si
When I hiked up Mount Si for the first time back in February, it was covered in snow and ice at the top, and there was no way I was going to scramble all alone up the Haystack, which is an intimidating chunk of rock looming a few hundred feet over the trail with several USE EXTREME CAUTION signs reminding everyone that people have died trying to climb the Haystack. I was afraid of the Haystack....
Not a Thing: Climb Mt. Shuksan (and my first...
Several times this summer I have come home from a climb and told Eric about it, at which point he rolls his eyes and says, “Oh my god. You guys. You guys are a trainwreck.” I blame this dude:
Both of us have enjoyed a great climbing season this summer, but only as long as we are not climbing with each other. It is apparently the combination of me and him that is disastrous. See,...
Thing #93: Get new glasses
Yes my glasses are very thick, yes I meet the World Health Organization definition for blindness when I am not wearing corrective lenses, yes natural selection should have taken me out long ago. Yes glasses are insanely expensive, yes I would like to do something about it. Internet to the rescue!
(Seattle City Hall is HOT PINK how rad is that!)
This was my first time ordering glasses online,...
August 2011
5 posts
Not a Thing: Climb Sloan Peak
Well, how about another what did I do last weekend oh look I climbed a mountain photodump! Every week, a completely chaotic email thread gets started with about twenty people, wherein we try to figure out who is available to climb which mountain. A month or so ago, we ruled out Sloan Peak as an option because the road was closed 4.5 miles before the trailhead, adding nine miles to the climb....
Thing #51: Crochet a hat
I tried to teach myself to crochet while on vacation back in March, but I wound up crocheting a lovely teal dinner plate. I don’t know exactly what went wrong except that the pattern did not seem to be a very good one and also I had no idea what I was doing.
Two boring, uneventful days of jury duty renewed my discipline, though! And now thanks to the lethargic machinations of the King...
Not a Thing: Climb Mt. Adams
My little brother suggested months ago that maybe I could take him on a climb sometime, and I immediately knew exactly what we ought to do: Mount Adams. It’s a 12,276 ft volcano, and yet there is a completely non-technical route that avoids the glaciers, and so climbing Mt. Adams is essentially a very intense day hike. A very intense day hike. I suppose crampons and an ice axe are...
Not a Thing: Climbing at Washington Pass
It seems to me that writing only about the very specific goals I achieve from my master list of bedroom-wall-pasted index cards is a narrow assignment indeed. And it turns out that this silly blog has improbably become one of the primary routes of communication between me and a few family members, and it also turns out that several friends I did not even know were reading this blog have told me...
Not a Thing: Multi-pitch climbing
I don’t know why I didn’t put multi-pitch climbing on my list of things to begin with, though it might have something to do with the fact that I have a fairly intense fear of heights and so getting fifty feet off the ground sounded plenty ambitious already, thank you. But I have been doing a lot of climbing lately, and so I went from thinking this was something I might never want to do...
July 2011
4 posts
Thing #4: Climb Mailbox Peak
Well, climb is maybe a strong word for what we did last weekend. But the original plan was to climb Mt. Adams, until the weather forecast looked such that I maybe didn’t want to be out on a 12,000 foot volcano with my inexperienced brother. I was worried about losing some of the fitness I’ve built up, so Eric and I decided to go camping for a night and hike up something. There are many...
Thing #11: Sit in a hot spring
This was the last stop on my aforementioned (and aforebemoaned) backpacking trip. Olympic Hot Springs If you would like to go to the Olympic Hot Springs, you should do it soon because the road to the Boulder Creek Trailhead closes on August 1 for five years while they remove a dam, and instead of 2.5 miles up an old road bed, you’ll have to hike fourteen miles over a pass. These hot springs...
Thing #95: See a dermatologist
I turned 30 and suddenly it seems like everyone knows someone who’s had some kind of tangle with skin cancer. A co-worker who’s in remission from melanoma herself told me about how her daughter (who is my age) had just been diagnosed with melanoma as well, and said that now that I have health insurance, I should schedule an appointment with a dermatologist as a personal favor to her....
Thing #9: Go backpacking
Well, this is the first thing I’ve done from the list that did not feel terribly rewarding once I’d completed it. In fact, I’ve had a hard time writing anything about it just because I’m so disappointed in the way this trip turned out, and I’m a little heartbroken because it was something I’d been looking forward to so much. But I guess the point of the list is...
June 2011
6 posts
Thing #3: Climb Mt. Rainier
Last winter, Eric and I went for a walk after brunch on an uncharacteristically sunny Seattle day. We paused on a bridge to marvel at a perfect view of Mt. Rainier, and I sighed and said I sure would like to be able to climb that thing one day. “Oh!” said Eric, “That’s pretty much what the basic class prepares you to do!” WELL. My plan was to spend some time climbing...
Thing #1: Climb the HIKE90 Summit Series
Still working on this list, which was the inspiration for this whole silly project in the first place. My climbing partner was insistent that we do something more challenging than “just a walk-up,” and I thought a nice Sunday climb up an avalanche chute instead of taking some boring trail to the summit of Granite Mountain sounded like a fine idea! Two thousand feet of elevation gain in...
Thing #2: Take the Basic Climbing Class
I met Eric when he posted some pictures of himself climbing something awesome years and years ago, and I said I wanted to learn to do that too. And so for all these years, Eric has been trying to convince me to take a mountaineering class, but this year was the first year I had both the time and the money to do it, as this mountaineering class was rather expensive on both counts. (My current...
Thing #73: Print a minicomic
This isn’t quite what I had intended when I made my original list. I thought I would spend some time drawing proper comics (Thing #77) I could compile into a nice little book I could maybe sell on my website (Thing #72), or maybe hand out to friends at comics conventions, as I’ve done in years past. But no, this is a little minicomic full of inside jokes that I printed up as a gift for...
Thing #76: Have a piece of art publicly displayed
I thought this one was going to be a real challenge to check off the list, but then some of my very talented cartoonist friends invited me to be a part of a live drawing event in a studio where we spent last Friday evening drawing and covering the walls with sketches and art that people could buy. I was extremely nervous about it, since drawing in front of people (and quickly!) does not exactly...
Thing #10: Camp on a beach
Gold Bluffs Beach, California THING #10: DONE. (6/101)
May 2011
1 post
Thing # 19: Climb outdoors
The list of 101 things takes physical form as a grid of index cards taped to my bedroom wall. Occasionally, my boyfriend will stand over there by the window, looking at the cards and sweetly searching for something he can help me check off. One of the cards says, “Climb outdoors,” and well, if there were anything Eric could help me do, that would be the thing. So we went to...
April 2011
2 posts
Thing #65: Make Mom's wild rice soup
I have fond childhood memories of my mom making a giant pot of wild rice soup to feed my stepdad and his four brothers at our cabin every fall, when the whole family got together to chop enough wood to last another northern Minnesota winter. I guess I did not remember just how giant that pot of soup was. I called my mom to get the recipe. First ingredient: two and a half gallons of water. Last...
Thing #64: Make a cheesecake that doesn't crack
I’ve made maybe a dozen or so cheesecakes over the years. All of them have had horrible cracks on top, cracks I have had to cover with all manner of fruit and cream and apologies to dinner guests who didn’t give a shit anyway, they just wanted dessert. I have never, ever baked a cheesecake using a water bath. Because I am lazy. Well! Time to turn over a new cheesecake leaf! OH YEAH. ...
March 2011
3 posts
Thing #39: Go snowmobiling with my stepdad
When I put this list together, I tried to think hard about the people who are important to me, and what I might do that would make my relationships with them better. A few years back on a trip home to northern Minnesota, my stepdad and I spent an epic few days at our tiny log cabin, riding four-wheelers around in the woods and jumping in the lake at midnight and eating beer-battered fish and...
Thing #23: Hold plank pose for 60 seconds
I saw this one on someone else’s list of 101 things when I was searching about for ideas. “That sounds pretty hard!” I thought. “That would make a pretty good, challenging goal that I would have to work up to!”
Then one night, I thought I’d better get a baseline and see just how much work I was going to have to do in order to work up to such a goal.
Oh.
Not...
Thing #1: Climb the HIKE90 Summit Series
My 2011 started off with just a touch of emotional trauma. Historically, I have preferred to deal with mild emotional trauma by wallowing in the bathtub with a bottle of something strong for a few days. But I have also learned enough about my own personal biochemistry over the years to know that the best trick for getting over a problem is to immediately get outside and wear myself out. Another...