I successfully completed my second 14er today. It was my second attempt at Grays Peak. It was actually fairly easy. A very enjoyable day.

Kilts have heaps of fabric. Just in case no one knew. I finally got around to hemming mine. Last time I wore it I was teased that it was a skirt because it came down below my knees. But it was daunting to think of hemming it. And it was hard also. I got some advice from my mom, and it wasn't too bad. I folded it up to the appropriate length and ironed the fold. Then sewed it. I used somewhere between 3 and 4 yards of thread and it was only a simple whipstitch. I then had to iron the pleats back in. It took a couple hours all told. I hope this means I'll wear it more now that it's the proper length.

I have too many blogs. I have a hard time figuring out where to put my thoughts. I try to keep this one just for actual creative writing. Then there's the emo/poetry one and my trans one, then the movie reviews one. Then I have tumblr, and occasionally facebook. And I put videos on youtube and photos on flickr and facebook and tumblr.

 Basically, I don't have just a ramble blog. Perhaps tumblr is the closest thing, but this one gets it today.

(ps, all the links to the aforementioned blogs are on the sidebar.)

I've been realizing more and more that I make a pretty awful roommate and friend, especially when I'm in a relationship. I don't know how to balance things and prioritize. I don't know how to do people. I would totally be one of those mountain man recluse types. Yet I do like people. I like to watch people and listen to people, I just don't know how to talk to them. I need to start being more deliberate about my interactions. Look at people. Have more than cursory conversations. Listen and hug and spend some real time. Seriously. I think having more time with other people may actually help my relationship as well. I think we are starting to drive one another crazy because of constant contact. Buuuut, as I'm notoriously terrible at first moves, I need people to call me out. This is my cry for help.

I can't shake this sinking, sick feeling. It's not my health, I feel amazing. I've been doing body weight exercises, conditioning for parkour.

But I keep having weird sensations. I have the urge to write a will, not that I have anything of value to will to anyone.

Around 5pm today, I had the overwhelming sensation of missing my parents. Missing sitting in the living room and chatting. Going on hikes together with the dogs. Sitting around the table eating my mother's wonderful cooking. Working in the yard together. Watching movies together. Telling my mom about the book I'm reading. Talking with my dad about life.

And I miss my nephew. I haven't properly seen him in years. He knows nothing of what I'm going through. And I miss his cheerful inquiries and his incessant chatting. I'm sure he's changed a lot from what I remember, though. He's 12 now. Probably not as chatty.

I guess I should visit them. And perhaps it should be just me, even though I feel alone and bare when it's just me and them. But the idea feels right.

I just wish I knew what this sinking feeling was, and how to get rid of it.

Perhaps cuddles will help.

Hunger Games

(Here there be spoilers!)

I was going to put this in my Movie Musings blog, but I want to review the film and the books.

Let me start with the book, and work my way forward.

Overall, I enjoyed The Hunger Games and the rest of the trilogy. I love post-apocalyptic books. I also enjoyed that the protagonist was a strong female. Not just a female main character, which often annoys me, but actually a hero. She is not overly emotional or love-struck or preoccupied with pretty things, etc. She's real. Katniss takes the traditional hero role and fights not only for her life, but for the lives of others. Suzanne Collins certainly wrote her character well. But she didn't diminish the men in the book either. Peeta is not a weakling just because he is not the protagonist, or because Katniss has to help him. And even the other tributes, male and female alike have their strengths.

Besides the basic story, I also love the deeper implications of the books. How ruthless governments should not be allowed to be cruel to the weak over whom they rule. How even the poor and downtrodden can rise up and do good in the world.

I did not however, particularly like the writing. It was simplistic, probably because the target age was youg adult. I read the entire series in about 4 days.

I have a hard time reading first-person narratives, even though I'm prone to writing them. I feel there is the lack of omnicient voice that helps to tie things up. That actually wasn't ever a problem in this series, it was just a worry as I read the first page. I got used to the first person and it did work out quite well. As a reader, I was able to sink into the perspective of Katniss and essentially exoerience things as they were happening to her.

I also did not like the love-triangle-ness. I think it was perhaps useful, but I found it not only dull, but also very annoying, distracting me from the actual story. Perhaps I'm just "team Gale."

Moving on to the film.

I think the realization of The Hunger Games on screen was nearly perfect. I was slightly put off by the choice of actress for Katniss, I always thought her more plain. Not homely, but not pretty. However, Jennifer Lawrence did very well in capturing the intensity of the character. Woody Harlson was spot on. He was excatly the Haymich I imagined. The lank, greasy hair. The wry, drunken humor. Perfect. Really, they cast the movie wonderfully. And James Newton Howard's score tied everything up perfectly. I read that at one point Danny Elfman was going to score the film. I'm rather glad he didn't; it would have had a very different tone.

They left out very few details, and the only one I really missed was the gift of bread Katniss recieved from Rue's district after her death. And yes, I think there was an involuntary sob when she died.

I hope you read the books before you saw the movie. I hope you did both before reading this ramble.

I can hardly wait until Catching Fire comes to the screen.

There's some recent hype about Uganda again. And yes, the situation is horrible, and has been for many many years. However, Invisible Children is not the best organization to support in this issue. Buying a DVD or a bracelet doesn't help the people there. Awareness is good, but there are more effective ways to help. Westerners are not the saviors of the world. Yes, we generally have the money, but that doesn't always mean we know how best to put it to use.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/the-soft-bigotry-of-kony-2012/254194/

Watch War Dance, it's on Netflix. It's a really fantastic story.

I want to do parkour. I wish I knew how to teach myself, because I don't have enough money to take classes. I think I'll buy some ankle weights and wear them at work. And do stair runs and the like with them. And lots of push-ups and pull-ups. I need to work on my core, it's quite weak.

I can do a one handed pull-up. That's pretty exciting.

Memories

It was February 15th, 1995. I was ten, sitting at a booth with some classmates, selling tickets to a school fundraiser. We were in a stock show lobby area. Mostly, it was a fun day, I would occasionally slip into the auction area and listen to the babbling of the auctioneer and watch the livestock saunter past.



Then something exciting happened. A man brought in a box of puppies. He left them with us, telling us to get rid of them for him because he couldn't take care of them anymore and was going to have to kill them otherwise. This may have just been a ploy for us to make sure they were gone by the end of the day. But it worked.

For the remainder of the day, I carried the runt puppy around with me. She was (obviously) small and sleepy. Her face was mostly black and her body was spotted and flecked.



I easily convinced my dad that we needed another dog, as we were down to just one at the time. I was even able to convince my mom to let me bring the dog home to show her, then she could decide. I knew that the second she saw the pup, it was easy.

So at the age of ten Valerie came into my life. She was a typical puppy. She gnawed on everything and nipped at heels. She peed on the floors. She cuddled and licked.



Val was raised in part by my cat Patrick. He is a very large grey tabby who, in his younger years, weighed a whopping 16 pounds of muscle. He would bring my puppy live mice and show her how to hunt them. The two would wrestle for hours. At least until she got bigger than him and then the game was for her to chase him under furniture.

When we were young together, Val and I would run around (her nipping at my heels) and jump over the four-foot fence around the yard.

She got into quite a lot of trouble on a regular basis. Mostly because she liked to roll in particularly foul-smelling things such as horse manure and road kill. She also had a habit of not learning from her mistakes and was repeatedly sprayed by skunks. During the summer, I washed her several times a week.



I took Val with me many places. We would hike together and she rode with me when I'd go four-wheeling. I even took her with me when I rode my bike. Once. She got blisters on her paw pads from trying to keep up. The first time she went camping with us was in Utah, when she was only about 5 months old. She had a blast, but she got tired on all of our hikes and I had to carry her a lot of the way.

Tennis balls were Val's favorite toy. She wasn't allowed to play with them inside, but whenever we were outdoors, she had one in her mouth. She would drop it near a person and whine and nudge it until it was thrown. She would do this for hours. Long after our arms were sore.































Val of course had some neurotic tendencies as are common in herding breeds. One of them was that she was terrified of thunder. If she was outside when the storm clouds came in, she would run away. She ended up at neighbors' houses many times. Cowering on their porches, hoping that they'd have pity on her. If she was indoors, she'd hide in the bathroom in the center of the house.



I remember her idiosyncrasies fondly. I wanted to keep her with me, but alas, I went to college then remained in the city. I didn't think it would be right to bring a farm dog to an apartment. And so I didn't see her very regularly for the last 6 or so years. The last time I saw her was last September. She had been growing some benign tumors and slowing down in general. I knew it was only a matter of time.

I did not get to see her another time.

I want to write a bit about my dog. But I think I'll save that until tomorrow. Instead, I'll provide an anecdote about today.

My mother called me at work today to tell me that they had to euthanize my dog. I promptly took a lunch break and walked to the gas station. The woman who rang me up asked if my coworkers had given me a list, as if I'd taken orders. I could only chuckle. I got heaps of junk food. And to think I'd only just decided not to spend any more money on such things.