so long 2024

 with this post I'll have made 268 posts in 2024. above average. It was a really really good year. Particularly the summer which was one of the best summers I've ever had.

Highlights in no particular order:

-Camp Poplar

-getting to have my sister as a roommate for two months!

-being in a cave

-going to Florida

-getting STRONG! (strong for me at least)

-playing the melodica more

-picking up skating

-whittling

-getting more plants

-becoming a better coach

- I didn't vomit this year! A whole year with zero pukeage. Very nice. Last time I puked was fall 2023 when I ate questionable reduced fat shredded cheese.

There's more stuff for sure for sure. My word of the year for this year was Magic and I think this year lived up to that. It was magic in a lot of ways. Mostly Chappell Roan. Chappell Roan was the most magic part of the year. But other stuff too.

My word for 2025 I've decided is STRETCH. In a very literal sense I want to do a lot more stretching. My hips and hamstrings have been tight for a really long time and I've made a lot of progress in becoming more flexible so I want to continue that. But also stretch in the sense of growing and reaching and progressing. 

-find ways to make camp better and new

-continue becoming faster and stronger

-I've started making a half page of comics every day and I've kept it up for a week so I'd like to keep that going. They're not anything and most of them will never see the light of day but it's good practice.

If you are reading this I appreciate you and if you left a comment this year I double triple appreciate you.

If I could ask for one thing and I can so I will, the thing I would ask for is to approach this upcoming year and the events that transpire with tremendous GUSTO. And within that gusto a lot of listening and understanding. 

what's that Andy guy like? Well he's the kind of guy who appears at certain times and places and he is of those certain times and places. And otherwise he hides. But his goal might very well be to cram as much meaning into a given time and place as possible. Doin' goofs and bits between bouts of trying your best.

minute skit write a skit in about a minute

 frog scientist. go.

FROG SCIENTIST: I've done it! I've finished my latest and greatest experiment! It's practically ribbiting!

HOPELESS STOOGE: Congratulations, professor! This is absolutely ribbiting!

FROG SCIENTIST glares

HOPELESS STOOGE silent open mouth smile

FROG SCIENTIST smashes beaker on lab floor

FROG SCIENTIST: I just said it was ribbiting, you hopeless stooge! There's only two or so good frog puns and now you've made me hopping mad!

HOPELESS STOOGE: I'm terribly sorry, professor. It would seem that I've made you--

FROG SCIENTIST: Don't you dare say it! Don't you dare steal my second frog-based pun and claim it as your own! If you do, I'm going to put your name in the book of BAD FROGS and then we'll let the Easter Bunny, who has dominion over all hopping based creatures decide your fate.

HOPELESS STOOGE: Um...I hope I don't croak!

FROG SCIENTIST glares

FROG SCIENTIST: I was just about to use croak! Everyone knows that's the third good frog-based pun! That's it! In the book!

HOPELESS STOOGE: Please professor! Your tongue-lashing is more than sufficient!

FROG SCIENTIST: Gross! That one is forbidden on account of being gross!

FROG SCIENTIST writes Hopeless Stooge in the book of BAD FROGS

FROG SCIENTIST: Now we wait for Easter.

HOPELESS STOOGE: But--it's July.

pause

HOPELESS STOOGE: Would you like to tell me about your experiment?

FROG SCIENTIST: What? Oh. Yeah. I--um--proved that uh--my heart will go on.

CELINE DION'S 1997 MEGA-HIT MY HEART WILL GO ON BLASTS

THE END

crab walk 2024

 Walked with Crabby today.

We squelched in the mud through the trails.

The thing about the word squelched is that it's an unholy amount of consonant sounds to place on the back of a single vowel. Let me give you the breakdown-

s-k-w-E-l-ch-t

Roughly the sounds made as best I could figure! That's SIX consonants on one vowel.

The only word that I think can beat it is strengths

s-t-r-E-ng-k-th-s

Seven sounds. If you don't think there's a 'k' sound in strengths, you're wrong and I'm right. Fight me.

Say it. Say it out loud. You're put in a little bitty 'k' in there. Don't lie to yourself. Don't try to roll it straight into the 't' out of spite. That's not how you say it. You put in a 'k'. You always have.

And you always will.

Anyway, linguistically English is weird in that the rules of how you can put sounds together allows you to do that. A lot of languages don't. 

Mostly because crushing a bunch of consonants together is often hard to parse and so vowels are a good opportunity to break things up and create rhythm and harmony and such. 

But not English. Just nash away you little goblin.

it's important to remember and some facts about la croix

 Timothee Chalamet, he's just a person. He's just a guy. Like you and me. A flesh and blood human being. He's going through everything you're going through. Ups and downs. He's been righted and he's been wrong-ded.

Michael Jordan. He's just a person. At the end of the day he's a human being like everyone else.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, she's just a person. Let's not forget that no matter what position or label is attached to someone, above all--they're a person.

Seth MacFarlane--the guy who made Family Guy. He's a person. Real as they come. We have access to so much information that our perceptions of people we've never met feel more real than reality.

My neighbor Eric, he's a person. He's just a person.

Donald Trump. Well he's just a little man beneath the stars and moon that have shined for a long long time.

Hedorah aka the Smog Monster is a Kaiju from the Godzilla franchise meant to be the embodiment of Yokkaichi asthma which affected a lot of Japanese citizens in the 60s and 70s because of pollution. He's not a guy.

But Travis Kelce, well you bet your buttons that he's just a person. No different in any way--both physical and mental--from any other person. 

All people are indistinguishable from each other as far as I'm concerned. One human collective mass.

Abraham Lincoln. People call him a great American hero. Abraham Thinkin' they sometimes called him. But I know what he was really thinkin' about--probably about how his son Willie died at 11 years old in 1862.

I've lost the thread on this. I just wanted to say that while it's definitely logically true that all people are people I can't accept that and I think it denies the myth-making NEED that we all have--like I think it's a fundamental human thing--human process for a thing to represent a thing. I don't know.

Did you know La Croix means 'the cross' but it's called that because it's from La Crosse, Wisconsin? How crazy is that? La Crosse is also where the St. Croix river is, which is pronounced like 'croy'. 

You can't even find the inventor of La Croix. It was some beverage company that wanted to compete with Perrier sparkling water.

Plants are people. Spiders are people. Dogs are people. Trees are people. Carrots are people. Steam is people. A frog in a vest is a person. It's not--

hey remember when I made a post about all my workout goals well here's the follow-up

#1- hang 10 seconds on a 20mm edge with 70lbs added to my body- My best hang in the 3 weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas was 5 seconds with 70lbs added. BUT! I tried training on a smaller edge for longer amounts of time with less weight and I did make progress with that. I was one rung away from the top of the campus board on the 15mm rungs and that's been a goal for a long time as well. I don't know what was going on with my fingers but 70lbs was always feeling really heavy so I just kinda leaned into it and found other ways to train and improve. I still plan to come back to this goal. So this one was kind of a failure but there was a morsel of success within it.

#2- One pull-up with 100lbs added to bodyweight. Again, I never really went for a single pull-up max. I focused a lot on one-arm pulling strength, specifically at the bottom where I feel like I'm noticeably weaker than at the top. I used a pulley to take weight off and tried to hang in the bottom position for as long as possible. I also added 75lbs but only did the bottom portion of the pull-up, like from the start to elbows bent at 90 degrees. I think I made progress. Actually I had a huge breakthrough at home where for the first time ever I could pull from a slightly bent elbow and feel myself pull up a little. If that makes sense. Like I made upward progress from a low position. Which was exciting. I did it again today when I was working out so that's cool.

#3- Squat 205lbs for 1 or squat 135lbs comfortably for 8- I'm really happy with my squat progress. I did 3 sets of 8 with 135 on 12/15 and on 12/19 I went for a one rep max of 175 and felt good! It was super hard and I went really slow but I got it up and felt good about my form. I've become strong enough and learned the form well enough that I feel like I can make progress without worrying about my safety. I knew I wasn't even going to try 205 for 1 but I did do 135 for 8 multiple times--it was hard but we'll call this one the most successful so far!

#4- Bench 190lbs for one. I don't know why I made my goal for this 190. Well, first let me say I did 185lbs for one pretty comfortably and it looked like I could do more so maybe that wasn't crazy. But it really came together in the last week before Christmas break. 155lbs was feeling heavy heavy for a few weeks there. Anyway, I did 185lbs which had been my goal for a few months so I'm happy about that!

#5- Not doing too much sprinting although I did 2 workouts of 4x200m and ran some okay times and then ran some even more okay times a week later so that was encouraging. I've made a lot of progress in skating still. It seems like every time I go I can set a new PR in something so that's really exciting. I did some really good skating in Harrisonburg. The temptation to start running again looms over me, sometimes more than others. But I feel really motivated to accomplish my goals before I go back to it.

Overall I think the past month shows that progress isn't linear. And you can't always attack your goals head on. Sometimes you gotta work on different things and take a windy path to get to where you're trying to go. Or prioritize some things over others. With fingers and pull-ups and bench, the weight was just feeling heavy for some reason so I worked around as best I could tried to really zero in on where I needed to get better. I give myself a 

good job/10

 

used naked pairs and naked triples on today's sudoku

 feel like I'm wielding unthinkable power

three two four sevens so it HAS to be eight?

that's bananas

continuing my sudoku journey

 my new thing when I visit home for the holidays is to do the Washington post sudoku. The easier puzzles don't give me much trouble but today I spent about 10 hours on and off trying to solve the 6 star expert sudoku before I finally gave up and put the sudoku into a solver. It was really nice though because it gave me step-by-step instructions and it ended up requiring steps that I didn't really know how to use. So I was happy because it wasn't like something obvious--it was something that I actually needed to learn and it kind of taught me. I say kind of because I still don't know if I could spot it and use it on my own.

anyway my point of saying all that is that's it's funny to get mad when you can't do something. Especially a sudoku. Like you can't figure it out so you power up to a mode that makes you even dumber and less likely to do it. I just think that's funny. There definitely are times where expressing anger and frustration is helpful but learning to differentiate those situations is probably one of the single best things you can do for yourself as a person.

now it seems like I got really mad at the sudoku. I didn't. I didn't yell or stab the sudoku. I'm not being sarcastic. I really didn't do those things. I didn't get mad at the sudoku. I maybe would've made a show to a receptive audience of how frustrated and how hard I was trying but that's only because it's fun to express a feeling and have it feel understood.

One time my freshman year this professor was talking about a poem like Tristan and Isolde or Troilus and Cressida or something and he was saying something about how the guy was confessing his love to the girl but he was looking at a reflection of himself as he was saying it so the professor argued that he was actually in love with himself being in love and I remember feeling dumb or like he was solving a sudoku using techniques that I didn't understand and I couldn't figure out how he was so sure of his answer. Like how did he get that out of that?

And then I went back to listing every country on Earth from memory in my notes. And my takeaway from that is that...I don't know. Just be trying I guess. Even if you're failing and stuck or feel dumb and there's things you don't know--it's better to be in an uncomfortable position of growth than stagnation or anger. That's one thing trees get right. They keep growing. Trees actually get everything right. You literally couldn't convince me there's a thing that trees do that is wrong and I wouldn't even like you to try. Thank you.

good tree this year

 

they can't stand that I'm merry and bright

 

the Larry story

 Larry called because he had to drive down to Mississippi because his wife's been down there for a year and he needs to go down there and figure stuff out. Then he called me, he was in Bristol, and called me to say that he forgot his wallet. 

That ain't no little mistake.

That's a big mistake. 

There was that one time we came back from Grandpa Dave's and got turned around and went to Bristol--but this is a nine hour trip just to do nothing.

And his wallet's probably under the seat of his car and he'll get back home to realize it.

-story my dad told

the instructions say to chill the cookie sheets first

 said Mom

"Put em outside!" said Dad.

"That's a good idea!" said Mom.

"Oh wow! That never happens. Write that down." said Dad

I invented a game today while driving home for the holiday

 it's called--I don't know what it's called but the game is simple

you pick a word, preferably a longer word, like Catapult or Virginia or a name or anything and then you start with the first letter- C or V or whatever and then the game is deciding the order in which you should add letters that best capture the meaning of the original word. 

So like for for catapult you'd go C then CT then CPT then CPLT then CTPLT then CATPLT then CATPULT then catapult.

Or for a group game one person could pick the word and then everyone has to guess the next letter they will add back in preferably following the same logic but if no one agrees with the person who's it then they lose or something.

 one time last week  I was really tired and someone said, "guess what I have in my jacket?" and I yelled, "pockets!"

I did a hard workout and now I'm deliriously but pleasantly tired

 yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

today I was sitting outside of an old navy people watching

I like watching the way people walk because I think it says a lot about them.

I like seeing two or more people together and thinking about what the dynamic between them is like.

I like seeing a person alone and thinking about where they're headed and what they're doing.

I saw a lot of people going out of their way to hold the door for others and being friendly.

yesterday I saw a Hawaii license plate, today I untangled a dead deer out of a soccer goal

 I'm gonna be totally honest, those are very different experiences.

saw a Hawaii license plate today

 on a tacoma in the wegman's parking lot

and y'know

if that little pick-up truck can drive all the way across the mighty Pacific and the whole breadth of our country to reach the Old Dominion

maybe I can slay an actual demon. That'd be cool. I bet I could. I'd do research and figure out the necessary rituals and incantations. I think I have the fortitude for it. The demon's like "AHHH! I'M BAD! FEEL BAD!" and I'm like "NO! LEAVE!" And the demon knows I mean business. They'll go bother someone else.

I'm not the type of guy who thinks he could beat most people in a fight or score a point off Serena Williams or wrestle a bear but I do think I could cleanse a forsaken cursed dwelling. If push came to shove.

one time this guy just told me "stop it."

 I've probably already told this story but it's been at least a few years so I'll tell it again.

One time I was working at this job and the staff were sitting around eating, relaxing, having a good time and from across the table I was sitting at my supervisor looked me dead in the eyes and with a completely straight face said, "Andy. Stop it. Cut it out."

And I hadn't been saying or doing anything. I was just sitting in what I thought was a completely neutral way. And my supervisor was a really nice guy and he liked to kid around a lot so I just laughed and said, "what?"

But he didn't smile he said, again, "Stop it."

And I still don't know for sure what he ever meant but in the back of mind I thought, he's telling you you look nervous and weak. Stop sitting there all quiet and passive.

I don't know. He never explained. He looked directly into my soul and said 'stop it.' while I thought I was doing as little as I possibly could. 

I don't think he was being mean. I like to think he was saying, "this is your issue. you have the power to fix it. fix it."

Or maybe it was a joke. Or maybe he just wanted to see what would happen. The conversation at the table drifted on to something else. Nobody else really reacted to it. The more I describe it, the more it sounds like a dream but I'm 100% sure it happened. 

To put it in terms that no one ever asked for, if words are spells, this is the highest level spell that's ever been cast on me. Power Word Stop It.

blueprint for how I live my life OR the process of buying and replacing a can opener

 The first step is to need a can opener and go to the grocery store and buy the cheapest can opener available. The second step is to very quickly realize, within months of owning the can opener, that it doesn't work very well. Don't replace the can opener. We are years away from replacing the can opener at this point.

The third step is to find all sorts of ways and tricks to make the can opener barely function. For some reason it works better after you run sink water over it so do that every time you need to use it. You buy a lot of cans. Try to understand what could be wrong with the can opener but then realized it's inscrutable and you'll never be able to understand it. Continue to use the ever-worsening can opener until it almost ceases to function completely and then discover a brand new technique for using it and do that. In the end game phase, two and a half years into owning the can opener, you spend a few months barely making it work at all. You cease being able to turn the wheel and just kind of repeatedly stab around the rim until the can opens. Then forget to buy a can opener every time you go the grocery store for a month.

Finally remember because you wrote it down on your hand and buy a nicer can opener that works great.

 From the beginning of our work on the Popol Vuh, Andres Xiloj felt certain that if one only knew how to read it perfectly, borrowing the knowledge of the day lords, the moist breezes, and the distant lightning, it should reveal everything under the sky and on the earth, all the way out to the four corners. As a help to me own reading and pondering of the book, he suggested an addition to the prayer that daykeepers recite when they go to public shrines. It goes like this:

Make my guilt vanish,

Heart of Sky, Heart of Earth;

do me a favor,

give me strength, give me courage

in my heart, in my head,

since you are my mountain and my plain;

may there be no falsehood and no stain,

and may this reading of the Popol Vuh

come out clear as dawn,

and may the sifting of ancient times

be complete in my heart, in my head;

and make my guilt vanish,

my grandmothers, grandfathers,

and however many souls of the dead there may be,

you who speak with the Heart of Sky and Earth,

may all of you together give me strength

to the reading I have undertaken.

warm air and damp ground blue sky

 the smell alone is enough to FIX ME

a sand wish

is that something?

make me a sand wish

a sandwich?

oh I thought you said sand wish.

My sand wish--I wouldn't make a wish upon the sand.

You know what animal clearly made a sand wish?

Camels

I'm sorry. Camels have all sorts of great features and abilities and they're incredibly well adapted to their environment and human beings wouldn't be where we are without them but they do not look cool. They just don't. You split a camel into fourths and none of the fourths look like they go with any of the other fourths.

Look at llamas. Look at alpacas. Look at animals that made a mountain wish. A wish upon the mountain.

That's cool. Look at that proud neck. Look at that regal stature. That elegant wool. Those bois are cool bois.

I don't want to be mean to camels. It's not their fault. It's the sand's fault. The sand warped and distorted their body. The sand is not to be trusted. 

Never make a sand wish.

me momo shmandy

 

what a time

 quote from CEO of "security provider" talking about surge in demand for protection services

“You think about pharmaceuticals, health care, insurance, finance, tech … all of those boards are creating enemies or disenfranchising people, and there’s going to be direct threats against them as they continue to grow and expand globally,” Buckner said.

Normally you get some sort of spin on stuff like this. They never come out and just say the reason is because the companies are bad and the people do bad things. This guy's just saying it. I guess it doesn't hurt him either way. Still business for him. He's like, "yeah we gotta protect these people because they are creating enemies and disenfranchising people." 

That's wild

remember this:

 VISIONS

upside down is

SNOISIA!

quick recap of everywhere I've been at the start of December since moving here in 2015

 2015- moved to Charlottesville. went to work orientation. went to my first day at after school at the then Meriwether Lewis elementary school. got lost driving home. was generally sad. it was cold and rainy all day.

2016- Still working at the same after school job but made up my mind that I would quit. interviewed at the therapeutic boarding school I would go on to work at.

2017- Working at the therapeutic boarding school. It was really tough but also really fulfilling and probably grew more as a person during that year and a half than any other time in my life.

2018- Back at the same after school gig from before but with a new boss and enjoying it a lot more. Was living at a summer camp but would leave in April of the next year.

2019- Still working at after school but also was an art teacher at an all boys middle school. Had terrible roommates. Started climbing once a week or so. Was pretty busy during this time.

2020- COVID. From March to June I'd moved back home to Harrisonburg. Then I worked at Field Camp for my second summer and then I didn't really have a job. I was working on illustrating a book for Field Camp but not much else. Got more into climbing and applied to be a coach at the gym around this time.

2021- In the spring of this year I went back to afterschool for one more semester and started coaching once a week at the gym. Then I left afterschool completely and coached more in the Fall while doing some off-season work with camp. This was the last year I'd live with roommates. Still in the house I'd moved into after the harrisonburg COVID break. So far I'd lived in a duplex with roommates, a summer camp, a different house with different roommates near the first house, back home with parents, an old house near UVA with new new roommates, and then the next year I'd get the current apartment I have.

2022- Living in current one bedroom apartment near the climbing gym. Coaching every day and also doing off-season camp stuff.

2023- Same.

2024- Same.

It's been pretty stable since 2022. Haven't moved or changed jobs. I'm really grateful for all the people who supported me and gave me opportunities and I'm even kinda grateful for the people who were really awful because they taught me a lot too but they mostly taught me about what awful people are like and ideally I wouldn't have to learn that at all but...well, thanks I guess. 

me personally, I'm really on in it for the antics

 the word 'antics' evolved out of the word 'antic' which means grotesque or bizarre which comes from the Italian 'antico' which means grotesque

but antics means clownish extravagance or absurdity

if there isn't an undercurrent of antics and goofs then why are you wasting my precious time???

the funniest thing I heard today was...

 the funniest thing I heard today was that if you look at people in a crowd when they aren't talking, when they're just neutral--their faces are like how fish faces are. 

goals update

 in lieu of running this year I've made a bunch of lifting goals. I have goals for where I want to be by June of 2025 but I also make monthly goals. I didn't hit any of my monthly goals for November but I made progress on most of them so because December just started I wanted to go through each of them and talk about what happened.

#1- hang for 10 seconds on a 20mm edge with 70lbs added to body weight. My goal before this goal was to hang with 60lbs for 10 seconds which I achieved on October 27th. Shortly after that I hung 70lbs for 7 seconds on November 3rd and then 8 seconds on November 8th. Then there was a somewhat sharp decline and the best I could manage was 7 seconds on November 17th. I hangboard 3 times a week. Looking at my log, it seems like I got excited that I was very close to reaching my goal and started climbing more. The end goal for hangboarding is to climb harder so I'm not too bummed but I really want to get this done so for the next three weeks in December I plan to climb very little or not at all and see if that can finally get me over the finish line with this goal that I originally set out to achieve by May of 2023. woof. I'm very close though!

#2- One pull-up with 100lbs added to bodyweight. I got really close with this one and overall this was a great month for pull-ups. On October 31st I wrote that I did +100lbs for one pull-up but kipped a little at the end. I kicked my feet like some sort of strange dolphin to inch myself over the bar. I never really tried another max pull-up in November but I did some great workouts that I've never done before like 5 sets of 3 with +70lbs. I did 3 sets of 3 with +75lbs (and then tried a one rep max where I wrote that I got 90% of the way up with 100lbs). I also did a good pyramid where did 3 x 70lbs, 4 x 70lbs, 6 x 53lbs, 8 x 35lbs, and then 13 bodyweight pull-ups. So, that was a good month of work

#3- Squat 205lbs for 1- On October 27th I squatted 195lbs for one and shortly after that decided to pivot and focus on higher reps and better form. Heavy squats weren't feeling comfortable or clean so I decided to back down and work in a range that felt "better". I went from doing heavy and slow sets of 5 to sets of 8 where I felt a bit snappier. I also was using a medicine ball to judge my depth but that felt a little desperate so now I do a deeper squat with around 115 to 125 lbs. I just like the feeling of my legs getting stronger so I'm gonna stay in that range and see if I can get 135 and 145 to feel comfortable for a set of 8. 

#4- Bench 190lbs for one. Way back on September 10th I tied my bench press PR from the spring and did 175 for one. I've kept trying 185 a couple times a month and on 10/29 I wrote that I was very close with 185lbs but "not quite". In November I continued to fail at 185lbs but between those failures I had some really good sessions. On November 12th I had maybe my all-time best session where I did 175 for 3 and 155 for 7. I also had some other really good workouts. Overall I was a little busier this month so there were definitely weeks where I wasn't feeling fully recovered but hitting PR's isn't everything so I don't want to make too many excuses. 

#5- I had some sprint goals- 200 meters in 26.9, 100 meters in 12.4, and 50 meters, in 6.19. I'm not gonna lie. It was an awful month for sprinting. When the temperature drops though there's just not that much you can do. The wind and the temps were not on my side and that's okay. I got some inline speed skates and that's been really fun. Going into this year I knew I was going to reach a point where sprinting would fall-off and I would have to try to improve in other ways. That point has been reached! Until temps improve I'm going to focus more on skating and lifting. I really think those will address my biggest weaknesses in running, namely raw strength and hip stability.

#6- One arm pull-up training. Using a pulley system I can decrease my bodyweight and my goal for November was to do a one arm pull-up with my left arm with -2.5lbs and -5lbs with my right arm. Long story short I didn't reach those goals either but I DID hold a lock-off with my left arm for 20 seconds and 11 seconds with my right arm which is a huge improvement from back in August and September so we're happy with that. 

Anyway, like I said before I have 3 weeks until I go back to Harrisonburg for the holiday and so it'll be fun to see which of these I can accomplish if I really focus.