could i please buy that power-bar from you?

i rehearsed that line about 50 times going up a mountain. to put that in context, here's the story. so i wake up on saturday looking forward to an absolutely blissful, caffeine-free, movie-loaded day indoors without any of those unhealthy exercise-type things scheduled for the day. my weekly fix from netflix was on the worship platform in front of the tv and the freezer had a ton of colored popsicles (why do they even try to convince us that it's *real* fruit? gimme the chemicals anydays). so, in all, a great day for lazers united (as in people who laze ... in case you were wondering).you know the kind of day i'm talking about right?
and then, stealthily, it kicks in. the "oh but it's such a nice day outside" thought. sometimes you dream it up yourself and sometime it's that over-enthusiastic friend who's all charged up about going up a hill and coming down. and that was my thought, my own damned invention - to go up a hill and come down. and dammit, i'm not even english!

i went up mt.si. it was dripping a little when i started up but it wasn't too bad. i kept trudging up the trail kicking myself for doing it. i had to keep moving over for the elderly people passing me in the fast lane waving their sticks at me. so i'm a little slow, sue me. around the 3 mile mark i decided that this was stupid, i've proven a point, i've driven out 30 miles in the rain to trudge up a hill. time to get sensible.

and then i heard the bell again. i'd been midly irritated by a bell all the way up the trail. it wasn't very loud, but it was incessent and always seemed to be just a little ahead of me. so i walked a little faster and found the bell. the bell was attached to a small wooden keg. the small wooden keg was in turn attached to a great huge shaggy neck. the great huge shaggy neck connected a huge wooly head to the rest of a st.bernard. a big friendly happy looking dog. being lead up he trail by this dog was a blind man. now, mt.si is not a terribly hard hike but it's not for the faint of heart. it's pretty steep and the rain had made it pretty hard not to slip. that spurred me on and i decided to wing it.

and then it happened - i got hungry. it was this sudden transition. one minute i was wondering if the wooden keg (the one attached to the big neck) contained whiskey and the next i was hungry. ravenously hungry. all i could think of were krispy creme donuts. i'd passed the store in issaquah on my way. i pulled my backpack out to pull the power-bars out. no power bars. i'd left them in the boot of the car. so i trudged on. each time i passed a weary hiker munching on a power bar i'd drool. those unwary hikers had no idea that they were an inch away from a ravenous power-bar seeking humanoid. then it struck me that i could buy a power bar off someone. but i didn't get around to actually doing it. i'd left my wallet in the boot of my car. so i trudged on.

i wanted to do the haystack scramble at the top but visibility was about 20 meters. it was cold and wet and chilly and foggy and desolate at the top. there wasn't even a view except for a small break in the cloud cover over snoqualmie valley. given that i was soggy and my boots made a 'squelchy' sound with each step i decided to leave the scramble for another day. and i trudged back down.

word of advice - when it's cold and wet and it's been raining a lot, don't take shortcuts. or you'll end up sliding down quite a bit, seeing some of your life flash before your eyes, arresting your slide painfully using your bare hands, get up and try to wipe the mud off your behind and realize that you can't since your hands are covered in mud and pine needles. you will then end up trying to squirt water on your hands using your back-pack mounted water hose thingie and figure out that it's not easy given that you can't actually hold the hose using aforementioned hands. stick to the trail, take the shortcut when it's sunny.

but in all it was a great hike. i was up and down in about three hours and a quarter even though i spent quite some time on the top goofing off. mt.si is a great hike for a sunny day, it's not bad on a rainy day if you have a good rain-proof jacket.


yaaay! the halo2 beta is out. i've been waiting for this since the inception of the transistor. but frankly, the beta has been a bit of a let-down so far. i like the maps but there's only a few of them and the weapons are a bit difficult to get used to. the pistol is the only weapon you *really* need anyway. but the halo2 pistol seems to be quite useless. they have all these fancy covenant weapons that i don't like very much. hopefully we'll get to download and use some good maps sometime soon. fingers crossed.


i saw king arthur earlier today. my friends have officially stated that they don't want to watch a movie with me ever again. i can't help it - i laugh when the guy with the arrow sticking out of his rear does this heroic lunge, saves the maiden and kills the saxon. i laugh when the music reaches a cresendo and the hero flails his arms amidst a whirlwind of knives and bodies fall like sacks of laundry around him. i laugh when i see about 30 polite saxons attacking the brave knight. they're polite because they only ever attack one at a time.
it's like in martial arts movies, specifically kung-fu movies. they surround the hero but they only attack one at a time. it's like there's an unwritten code.

here's a fun fact, saxons plait their beards. that was a bit disturbing. here's a fierce saxon warrior with arms of steel and a ferocious expression and a pony-tail in his beard. next he'll be challenging me to a death-match and a game of house-house afterwards complete with a miniature tea-set and barbie dolls.

tired of all those cool movies and serials set in ny city? here's one for the seattle'ites. singles. it's a must watch. another great movie in the confused cinematography genre is go.


yawn, it's another week coming up. sometimes i get the feeling that life is passing me by and giving me the finger as it goes by. remember sometime ago when i said "bring it on"? can we please stop "bringing it on" now? i'm full, thank you.