quick update

My best friend and her husband (also a friend, just not a best one) are visiting this week.

We went on a hike with a great view of the San Juan islands:


It was awesome leading my best friend on her first ski tour near Baker.



Now we're headed to Olympic National Park. We'll spend two days there before heading 10 hours south for the big Mt. Shasta effort. I will be wheezing. Stay tuned for a report...I'm hoping all my ice cream eating has prepared my lungs adequately for a summit attempt.

If I do summit, it will be in honor of Sydney Banks, who passed away early yesterday morning. RIP Syd. Thanks for everything.

tributation

I'm back in New Hampshire this week for a work program. I flew here Saturday morning after taking in the Mariners/Red Sox game at Safeco Field in Seattle. Even though the Sox lost, the game was a great segue for a return trip to the east coast. I came in early to spend some time with my awesome New England friends, who I love dearly. They're incredible and talented individuals.

RS, for example, picked me up at the airport after taking a red-eye flight from LA. He is amazingly good at riding road bikes and mountain bikes and making sangria. He's also super sweet, funny, and a good sport about all the ribbing he gets from GG. GG makes delicious hamburgers. He's king of "your mom" one-liners, a patient teacher and the most generous and giving guy I've ever met. He just married ED. She's an amazing athlete, an amazing daughter, an amazing sister and an amazing friend. She's also amazingly good at doing more in a week than most folks do in a year. She's the most generous and giving woman I've ever met, so her and GG are a great match. I love her. So does witty LS, who was a bridesmaid GG and ED's wedding and made their wedding rings. She has a rad job at the MFA in Boston, more talent decorating than should be allotted to one person, and a love of all things orange that she shares with her newly minted fiance, DJ. DJ rips on a snowboard and is my "eccentric engineering friend" who writes this highly entertaining blog. He sporadicly spews tourett-like outbursts that sometimes give us new insight into his true nature but primarily make us laugh. ET also makes me laugh. She's a kindred spirit, an all-American, a sweetheart and someone I must've known in a previous lifetime. She's married to ES, who has the most beautiful male smile I've ever seen and an even more beautiful heart that just beams out to whoever is lucky enough to be around him.

And such is the snapshot of my closest New England friends. We met as single twenty-somethings and celebrated our engagements and marriages together. Its amazing to have such ridiculously fun, unique and caring people to play and laugh with. We miss them, we love them. It was great to see them on Saturday.

Now we just need to get them out our way for a visit.

its getting its getting its getting kinda hectic...

T-minus 19 days 'till the big Shasta effort. I trained today by walking two blocks to the grocery store (and two blocks back, phew!) to buy some ice cream. I'm a little concerned about my lung capacity for this trip. Luckily I've got this week to ride my bike. Next week I'm headed to the University of New Hampshire for a work program and I'll get to use their fabulous gym. It'll be filled with fit 20 year old college kids, and fit college kids tend to motivate me. The week after next my best friend is visiting and we'll most likely spend a couple days hiking in Olympic National Park, among other adventures.

So the bike, gym time and hiking should help, but if my primary training in the next 19 days remains spoon-to-mouth, there's always the mind over matter thing. So really, I'll be fine. Right? Right.

once was fabulous enough...

Just got back from a couple days in Las Vegas with my girlfriends. It was fun and I'm glad I went but I'll be happy if I never set foot in the place again. In fact, I'll be even happier if some alien lifeform somehow manages to wipe the entire monstrosity off the map. Or if it suddenly implodes. Too many lights, too many hotels blasting the A/C 24/7, too many glassy-eyed people mindlessly punching their money away all day, too many guys on testosterone (and who knows what else?) benders. That much stuff just does not belong in the middle of a hot, dry desert. Humans do not belong in the middle of a hot, dry desert.

But, spending two days in bizarro-world watching people gush over really bad plaster copies of amazing human accomplishments like Rome's Trevi Fountain (the bad copy of which, amusingly enough, was found in the Venetian, a hotel/casino patterned after Venice...not Rome) made me appreciate Washington even more. Its nice to be back in the lush, quiet farmlands. Instead of cigarette smoke and stale alcohol, I can smell earth and lavender wafting up from our garden outside.

I gave it a chance, really, I did. We went to a Cirque du Soleil show. That was cool. And we had a fun night out dancing and the shopping is incredible. But the rest of it? Meh. It's back to the mountains for this girl.

L'Chaim!

Last night Sean and I escaped the quiet streets of La Conner to take in a local production of Fiddler on the Roof, which is probably my favorite play of all time. I'm probably butchering all the proper drama terms, but it was put on by a super cool youth theater program and staged at McIntyre Hall, the area's incredible new performing arts center.

Never one to take a stage other than a soccer field or basketball court, watching Fiddler last night showed me how awesome it is to support community theater programs. No, it didn't run with the mechanical precision and grace of a Broadway production. No, not every song was sung completely in tune. But the new theater is gorgeous, the kids were beaming and the effort and love of many people was obvious in every costume, dance step and prop. And I got to support the whole thing while being entertained with "If I Were a Rich Man" and "Matchmaker, Matchmaker". Not a bad deal!