something I live for

making regular people at the gym laugh at the banter I have with the kids I coach.

I made one guy laugh a couple times at the conversations I was having. good stuff. I feel unbreakable. Made of light and magic.

 I reckon it's good to make things simple. Do simple things well. Know simple things well. You'll go along okay.

I just want to write bad dialogue

This is a scene based on real events from the climbing gym on Friday

Me and Calvin are sitting at the front desk watching Funniest King of the Hill Moments videos after having sprayed 32 rental shoes and also learning to juggle.

This guy walks over from the climbing area and over to the front desk. He's holding a jagged piece of plastic in his right hand. We'll call him Big Guy.

Big Guy: A gift to you. From the Clydesdale department.

He places a chunk of the broken climbing hold on the desk in front of Calvin. Calvin stares at it.

Calvin: Oh that's a climbing hold.

Big Guy: Yeah I put my foot on it and it shattered from the massive amount of force I produced.

Calvin: When you said Clydesdale it made me think that was the chunk of a hoof or something.

Big Guy: Hehe no. It's the foot chip on the volume.

Calvin: Oh yeah I don't even think you need that hold. You can just smear on the volume. Too much need, not enough demand. (this is a real thing Calvin said.)

Calvin (again): Yeah you're actually the second guy to do this. The other guy is in here right now too. He's seven feet tall.

Big Guy: Oh ok, that's why he laughed then. We'll give me an invoice and I'll make it up to you.

Calvin: No that's okay it's--

Andy: FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS

------------------------

That didn't really go anywhere but it's a start!

I cleaned my plant corner today

 I went out in the rain and plucked out all the dead leaves on mama spiderplant and through them out by the trees near the street. And then I tried to get rid of whatever makes the plant smell so bad. It's something in the pot. I don't know what it is but it smells BAD. And only sometimes. Kinda like B.O. I was confused for the longest time and then when day I smelled the plant and I was like OH THAT'S IT? I never could figure out what exactly it was though. Anyway stinky plant aside I tidied up the area and felt good about that.

Then I went to coaching and this kid kept yelling, he was excited about what we were doing but he was HOOTIN' and HOLLERIN' and I told him nicely like 5 times and after the sixth time I was like, hey man you really gotta stop yelling. And he ROLLED HIS EYES at me. I stayed really calm the whole time and I was proud of that but I was said, "please don't roll your eyes at me." And then he rolled his eyes again! So I was like, alright you gotta take a seat.

I've talked about this before but at this point I don't take it too personally. What really bums me out is when people make it out of childhood and they clearly have no idea how to act around people. I'm trying to do my part! Andy tried, y'all! I'm out on the side of the highway picking up this trash behavior. Trying to make it nicer and greener for everyone else. I'll call the person out. I'll be the one to say it. That's my professional obligation.

Anyway it was a really good day. 

the ruins

 silly mug

getting back to my 2013-2014 era with these zines

zines!

 some sweet sweet nothings

dreams. I have dreams.

 I had one of my most common reoccurring dreams where I'm running through a building, usually it's like a school building, and I'm going down all sorts of different hallways and staircases and such. Sometimes I'm running from people but I never see the people. Often I'm looking for a bathroom. Other times I'm trying to get somewhere, usually a class that I'm late for. This time I was running around and a thing happened where I wasn't quite lucid dreaming but in my dream thoughts I knew suddenly where I was supposed to go and I went up this long staircase to the top of the building and I turned a corner and I arrived at wherever I was trying to get to and I woke up.

So that was good. That bodes well I'd say. Let's look up what that dream means. 

Well apparently dreaming about running around buildings and houses and hallways and stairs suggest exploring the self. Lately I've gotten back into my routine of doing my little tasks. I make my little drawings. I do my workouts. I play the melodica. All of it pretty self-directed. 

So maybe running around these buildings--I'm always running, represents these parts of myself that I know really well and these are like well-worn paths of the self. That aren't any negative emotions associated with the dreams. Just a sense of urgency. Which makes sense. At the start of the month I wrote out my goals that I wanted to accomplish by October and this is the last full week of the month so it would make sense that I would be thinking about those things.

how to distinguish different types of sadness

 melancholy- a sadness fraught with deep introspection and reflection, often no obvious cause

forlorn- a pitiful sadness with an abandoned and lonely flavoring

woe- A GREAT SORROW OR MISERY! to an exaggerated extent. 

It's fall and I'm not sad but it is the time to start thinking about sadness and all it's brilliant shades and hues. 

WOE! MELANCHOLY! FORLORN! SORROW! DOLEFUL! LUGUBRIOUS! MOURNFUL! DISMAL! 

WRETCHEDNESS! A sadness brought on by the crappiness of a situation.

Very fun.

space booboo

Today I climbed on some rocks outside. I wouldn't say I'm hooked or dying to get back out and do it again but it was fun and a little scary in an exciting way. I like being outside but I also like being inside too. Outside is good because it has little spiders living their spider lives. But inside also has little spiders and they live in the corners of the stairs by my door and we have a symbiotic relationship. I give them protection offered by my stair corners and they send my encouragement psychically in my sleep. thank you tiny friends.

coaching

old man button 

This year I've really figured out how to coach the climbing club. Our beginner and newbie team. It's been a challenge in the past but I feel like I've really got it dialed. I've found a way to structure a practice where we do things on and off the wall, we work on technique, we do little climbing challenges. We have a lot of variety and short blocks so nobody gets too bored or frustrated. I'm really proud of that. It's a synthesis of everything I've learned in 3 years of coaching and what I've learned this year about training speed and athleticism. And 15 years of working with kids in general. 

The kids seem happy with the practices too. yay!

my next whittling project is making this

 

capybara orange head

I already have a piece of wood that was going to be a bird but looks just like a capybara so I just have to find a way to put an orange on its head. And then it will be a new greeter at the climbing gym.

smelly peanut!

 smelly peanut!

I think it's the time of year where the weather is changing a bit and I've been at Rocky Top a lot around kids who are back in school and I've caught and extremely low-grade cold. The two things I've noticed since Saturday is that sleep has been a little off and when I've gone to workout I've been missing that last 10 to fifteen percent. I had a stretch in the week before where almost every time I went to the track or the gym I was hitting a new PR and since Sunday I've taken a step back in performance. At first I thought it was because I climbed on Friday and that introduced a new stress but there's no way I'm not recovered from that.

I also had that thing where I woke up at 5 this morning and felt a little something in my throat and head that was like, 'oh you're a little bit sick.' But then I slept another 5 hours and felt fine. If I wasn't working out at all and noticing those tiny dips I wouldn't think I was sick.

Anyway, if I am little sick I'm thankful that it's as mild as it is and I'm glad I'm not just inexplicably getting weaker. This happens every time I get sick--I think for no reason my body is decaying and withering away into oblivion.

In other news- I'm propagating my spider plants. I've got 4 I'm going to take to Rocky Top this evening and I'm going to prepare some others after I finish writing this.

Okay. I've finished writing this.

Knock Knock

Who is there?

Schrodinger's Cat

Schrodinger's Cat who

How does the quantum description of reality, which includes elements such as the superposition of states and wavefunction collapse or quantum decoherence, give rise to the reality we perceive? Another way of stating this question regards the measurement problem: What constitutes a "measurement" that apparently causes the wave function to collapse into a definite state?

master meep

 master meep

floopy booboo!

corpulent donker

here's what I'll say!

colonoscopy exams. there's cooler procedures we could be doing than that

1- wrap people up in toilet paper like mummies. when you're 40 you should get that.

2- swim in a pool full of jello. when you're 60 you should do that.

3- we find a person with your same name and you talk on the phone with them when you're 20.

4- count to 1,000. when you're 11 years old we make you go in a room and count all the way to 1,000.

5- just throw a brick though the office building of some big multinational corporation that wants to watch the world burn and is actively working towards it. this should be doled out like jury duty. you get a letter in the mail and you gotta go find a brick and chuck it.

6- reverse colonoscopy. A reverse colonoscopy is where we invent an edible camera and you eat it and then just watch what happens on a screen until your stomach acid dissolves the camera. you can do that on a birthday of your choosing

7- Stridulation. I was thinking about cricket legs and how they make noise and that is called stridulation and then I found out there's a MAMMAL that also makes noise this way and whatever you think this mammal looks like--that's not what it looks like. 

ladies and gentlemen! the lowland streaked tenrec!!

a right proper lad if I've ever seen one!

yesterday while coaching I said, "who knows what an isopod is?"

and this kid thought about it for a second and went, "is that a critter?!"

And I said, "yes. it is a critter."

 

floppy rainbow

some good tab cats from today and also a meditation on plants and dirt

 Evil Raccoon

Tiny Zingo

highlights of my day right there.

Here's another reason I like plants. I like plants because they grow in dirt. And normally when we use dirt in a figurative sense we mean it in a negative way or we even have the word "dirty" which is bad but that's so lame because plants grow in dirt and that's awesome because plants are awesome and they wouldn't have it any other way. I guess if you want to be fancy you could say that plants grow in "soil" but even the word "soiled" is bad so there's just no winning for plants and dirt.

Except in my household. In my household there is winning for plants and dirt every day all the time. I wake up in the morning and I say, "good job plants! good job dirt! you're doing so great!" And maybe one day I'll just be some dirt and I'll be so excited to be that. I don't know why we gotta imagine that we're going to a place up in the clouds where there's literally no dirt after we die. Um...excuse me, we could just be in the dirt which is where we know the body/ashes is anyway. And then you're in the trees and plants which is awesome. My grandmother on my dad's side had her ashes buried under a lilac bush and it's a living memorial to her and that's incredible.

weighing in on the eiffel tower controversy

a lot* of people have been asking me to give my two cents on the olympic rings Eiffel tower controversy and I've decided to break my silence and speak my truth.

if you don't know, for the Paris games, the iconic olympic rings were placed on the tower with the understanding that they would be taken down by the end of the year. But now, the mayor of paris whose name I don't know says she wants them to stay up until 2028. The family of the designer of the tower has cried foul play. Or, in french, 'le jeu irrégulier!!"'

An age old argument about who gets to decide how the big metal thing will be dressed up. Well if there's anything I've learned in all my many years of working with children it's that if anyone starts arguing over anything and it's a big headache then just take the thing away. No more Eiffel tower. Nothing is worth fighting about and disturbing my ever-so-fragile peace. 

I move that the Eiffel tower be thrown in the bottom of the ocean with a whale carcass and we set up a webcam to look at the various kinds of life that form around the whale and the symbol of *searching for symbol of Eiffel tower*

french industrial prowess

But yeah just take the rings down. It's like leaving the Christmas tree up in February. If you're going to leave anything up, leave up Halloween decorations. And just put Santa hats on the skeletons.

Do the equivalent of putting santa hats on skeletons on the olympic rings on the Eiffel tower.

Put reindeer skeletons on the olympic rings on the Eiffel tower in the bottom of the ocean next to a whale carcass and call that a new holiday called Mebtobericus.

lonely police

 today this girl I coach came up to me and told me that at lunch she and her friend play this game called "lonely police" where after the students get dismissed from lunch there's a lot of trash on the floor and usually there's one piece of trash all by itself and so they go tell the custodian to get it because he's the lonely police.

and I said, "why don't you pick up the trash?"

And she said that she's not allowed to because the lunch room is divided and they have to stay on their side.

And I was like, "oh fair enough."

And then we invented this game where you and another person stand on one leg and you try to push/pull the raised leg to make the person lose their balance. You can't kick and you can only make contact with the other person's raised leg on the ankle or below.

another year another spider plant giveaway

 hit me uppppp

I have a lot more I'm planning to pot soon

how'd that get there?

dfw

  “The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.”

some lyrics to nothing

 when I'm making rice

then I make it in a pot

and I set it on a burner

and I hope it's not forgot

for if it burns asunder

and my hopes are all for naught

then I'm living by the charity of the moss

MOSS MOSS MOSS

so shiny green and bright

a blanket that is strong enough to hold me down

at the end of the day

 "at the end of the day" that's a commonly used phrase. It's supposed to highlight what really matters. You have some experience and you think a lot of things and feel a lot of things but at the end of the day you're only supposed to think about one thing and feel one thing. 

That's terrible logic. Really bad.

Usually at the end of the day I have the worst attitude and am more likely to think negatively about something than any other part of the day. No, what it should be is, "at the start of the next day".

That's when you have clarity. When you've processed things into dreams and weird little plays of the mind. That's the time to reflect. At the start of the next day. 

"Well you know at the end of the day all you can really do is despair and think about how you're a deeply flawed human being. But at the start of the next day you remember that what really matters is friendship and the laughs we had along the way. So, there you go."

thinking about orders

 I was reading something or other the other day. It was about--well it was about Nietzsche but that part wasn't all that interesting but there was this part at the end that talked about what an Order is--like the technical definition of an Order and it's a group of people whom by voluntary association hold themselves to specific high standards. I said that weird. People choose to be a club based on the rules of the club. 

I think it's a cool idea because it's not like a normal group where the rules are sort of separate or in place to prevent bad stuff while you're doing whatever else. Like, oh you're in the climbing club and a rule is you can't spit on your hands and then climb the climbs or walk underneath people or eat chalk or whatever. 

But if you're in the ORDER OF ESOTERIC WHITTLERS. Then you have to whittle and craft from wood all manner of esoteric and mystical brickabrack. It's like the limiting conditions don't detract from or inhibit the experience, the limitations create meaning and purpose. 

So go start an Order if you want. 

grapevine grapevine grapevine

 there's a place off lone pine with a mighty fine grapevine