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.