another orca dream, with a talking hat

I sent this to a friend:

Last night I dreamed that I was sitting in my upstairs office working and you kept sending me emails but when I opened them I couldn't read them. It was like trying to read a piece of paper under water. And then I heard you say, apparently through my laptop somehow, "that's because I'm sending you emails from my boat."

Then somehow I was transported to your boat, which was somewhere in the arctic. There were huge icebergs everywhere and it was freezing. I saw you sitting in the pilot house looking at some maps. You were wearing a thick red flannel shirt and a black wool cap. You didn't look at me so I looked out over the stern of the boat and saw a bunch of orcas jumping out of the water right next to the boat. It was really cool.

I turned around to tell you about the orcas but you weren't in the pilot house. So I looked around the inside of the boat for you but you were gone. Then I thought to myself "Hm, I'm in the middle of the arctic surrounded by ice on a boat that I don't know anything about." So I went back up to the stern and your hat was laying on the deck. It said to me "I think this is probably just a test."

Then I woke up.

The hat had a voice like Kermit the frog.

My friend responded:

I doubt that was me...none of my hats sound like Kermit.

what's with all the orcas?

I keep having dreams about great whites and orcas (mortal enemies, those two).

Last night I dreamed that I was on a fishing boat in a hurricane, and we were supposed to keep all the ports shut, but I was outside, starboard, and the boat dipped into the water. I saw a great white looking up at me (I was standing in water up to my knees) so I reached out and pet the great white on the head. Then an orca jumped over the boat and I was like "that was so cool!" So the great white bit my hand (I was wearing a mitten, actually) and wouldn't let go because it was jealous I liked the orca better. The captain ran outside and was like "what the fuck are you doing out here?!? You'll drown in those seas if you go overboard!"

(which is true, I've been outside on a boat in a hurricane)

The great white let go of my hand and waved his pectoral fin as if beckoning someone behind him. Suddenly about 10 huge mantas showed up next to the great white, who said, "Meet my friends, we're cooler than the orca!"

I was like "yeah, yawn" because I wanted the orca to come back. Then the captain of the boat yanked me inside the galley and nailed plywood over the windows.

After the captain left I ripped the plywood off one of the windows with my fingers so I could see what was going on outside. The great white and the orca kept jumping over the bow. I couldn't decide which one I liked best.

Then I woke up.

push the button? don't push the button?

Well, I used to think Lenovo laptops sucked badly. They do. But my HP laptop (work assigned) sucks worse. On Thursday it died. When I hit the power button I get this:

Mother. Fucker.

Usually when a hard drive is about to step on a rainbow it acts weird or gives you a warning. Not in this case.

I've been running all the BIOS tests. Nothing of interest coming out of them. I did a web search on the error message, then checked HP's web site. I find it ironic that you can find a prostitute shitting on a german man's face on the internet but not the solution to my boot up problem. Fuck you internet. And I can't create a recovery disk because apparently you can only do that once and some fuckwit in IT must have done it already for my laptop. And when I take my laptop in on Tuesday (yes, they can't fix it until Tuesday, not exactly speedy service) they'll probably just wipe the hard drive and re-image it.

So now I'm debating doing a factory reset to see what happens. Because of course I had a lot of files on my hard drive that weren't backed up and if I lose them I am SCREWED. For the record, my hard drive is encrypted. To back up my drive I have to have an external encrypted hard drive.

That means the backup goes R   E    A     L       S         L          O          W.

Like the whole weekend to back up My Documents.

Running the diagnostics again. Then I think I'm going to press the reset button. Like, it's not going to get worse. Is it?

Should I press the button?

not everyone takes the universe as seriously as I do

Me (to my friend Klaus):

I have to get back to my dark energy class. I am getting so far behind. I'm only up to universe primordial soup and the next lecture is black holes.

Klaus:

The beginning of the universe: I think the mice have all the answers. I don't like rodents so I might never find out what the real story as Douglas Adams is dead. Otherwise I'd call him. My second theory is that everything started with a can of coke that exploded and that Coca Cola will actually reveal that in an super bowl ad.

...and some cooking advice from mom

I sent my mom an email about the chili I made, as well as a picture.

My mom wrote:
All I could think of when I read your Blog was, how in the world you are going to eat all that.  It filled your biggest pot, didn't it?  Are you going to freeze it in smaller portions? 

Er, good point. 

Anyone hungry for some chili? I have, let's see, 11 more servings.

127 hours and other cutting limbs off projects

My friend Carol came over tonight with chinese food (Uptown Wok - highly recommend it!) and we watched 127 hours. I read the book because I e-met Aron through Paradox Sports (I was mentoring a woman who had lost her arm and wanted to try ice climbing) but had never had the desire to watch the movie. But decided to give it a go and I'm glad. It was REALLY good (except the part showing him driving out of the city at the beginning - guess they did that to show how isolated canyonlands is but it definitely didn't look like Colorado). I should note we were supposed to watch it at Carol's house on Sunday (she got a new DVD player) but I couldn't get the DVD player to work with the TV (she had the wrong cable).

Anyway, while we were watching the movie my friend Blanch emailed me. I emailed him back that we were watching 127 hours.

Blanch:

Hey, I'm mentioned in Aron Ralston's book (127 Hours)*. He was volunteering at the Banff Film Fest one year and I gave him some advice on what to climb. They figure that he used the gift -fake- Leatherman from the Fest to cut off his arm.



*He's quoted at the beginning of Chapter 15, which is about Aron cutting his arm off. The quote is "It was like having sex with death." (about Blanch's team's attempt to climb the 15,000 ft Rupal Face of Nanga Parbat)

In the movie they said his mom gave it to him as a stocking stuffer. But I like Blanch's story better.

Speaking of cutting things off, Carol is going to show me how to take apart a chicken and then make chicken stock. She was like "why do you want to make chicken stock?" and I was like "hm, no reason in particular". All part of learning to cook. BTW, I am NOT touching a raw chicken. It's going to be a cooked chicken. I think I'll get two in case I fuck up the first one (which I can guarantee I will). She told me to get some shears, and at first I had this image of a razor thing (like shearing sheep) and started to feel ill that I was going to have to "shear" something off the chicken. It turns out shears are scissors for cutting up shit like chicken.

stand back bitches, I am learning to cook!

I've been downloading recipes for a few weeks so today thought "you should maybe cook one of them since you're destroying the planet printing them out".

I found 4 recipes to make this week: chickpea soup with roasted garlic, some quinoa snacks I was advised not to make because quinoa is disgusting, quinoa pancakes (see previous item), and flank steak chili that boosts immunity because of the spices and shit in it.

I went to safeway and found everything all by myself. I also set a record because I went down 7 aisles (I usually only go down the aisle that has coke, and that's only if they don't have a coke display set up when you first walk into safeway, which is most of the time).

When I was checking out I went to Ms. Catherine because I like her the best. She took one look at my groceries and said "baby girl, what are you up to?" The first time I met Ms. Catherine she said "oh, are you having a party baby girl?" and I was like "um, no, those are my usual groceries".

most impressive grocery list EVER - btw, skipped the vegetable oil and used olive oil - vegetable oil just sounded like an oxymoron - what vegetable has oil in it????

I explained to Ms. Catherine that I'm learning to cook, mentioning specifically quinoa, and after she stopped laughing she said she thought I would do okay, but then sent the girl who was bagging my groceries to get me a box of chips ahoy (they were on huge sale). She said "if your dinner doesn't turn out Ms. Catherine gives you permission to have cookies for dinner". She's better than the pope.

So as part of the recipe I had to "pan sear" a flank steak. I had no idea what that meant. I looked it up online and it turns out the directions were perfect. Then I was heating my cast iron skillet and realized I had no idea how to tell when it was hot enough to do some searing. I called my mom (she helped with that part, just to be honest that I didn't totally do the recipe by myself - also, she gave me a totally cool tip: grate up a lemon and freeze it, then added it to shit you cooked after you cook it because it tastes good - also she translated quarts to ounces for me because I couldn't leave my chili by itself to go look that up on the internet).

I had to cut up the flank steak into little pieces. That was kind of gross.

it looks like I killed someone and then chopped them up on my cutting board - GROSS!

Then at some point I had to add a bunch of liquid stuff, beef stock, tomato sauce, blah blah. I still had two cans of stuff left and was like "FUCK!" because the pot I was cooking in was too small. I managed to transfer it to a bigger pot but then accidentally ran one of my pot holders down the garbage disposal (lesson learned about cleaning as I cook).

too fucking small, and pot holder accidentally fell into the other sink which is how it ended up in the garbage disposal

I started getting a little cocky after tasting my chili, and realizing it was actually edible, so I added some other stuff (sriracha sauce, green tabasco sauce, an entire can of diced green chilies, extra garlic) and it tasted even better. To me, at least. Of course it's simmering now. Could go downhill any moment because I always forget to check on it and make sure it isn't burning and shit.

Spices! Sriracha sauce! Wine! It's almost like I know what I'm doing!

Tomorrow I make the quinoa snacks and pancakes. Wednesday I make the chickpea soup.

Then, on to CHOPPED!

I'm KIDDING, of course.

BTW, got a viscosity injection in my knee (they gave me three times the normal dose because I'm special) and am not really supposed to be standing around cooking and stuff. But my knee feels fine. And I wanted to give a huge shout out to Dr. Koenig at Kaiser. Best. Knee. Doctor. Ever. She's going to get my zombie knee back in line so I don't have to have another surgery. And she's going to get me a TENS for free. If it reduces the pain even by a small percentage I will be VERY happy. And maybe bring her quinoa snacks.

Kidding again.

it's all fun and games until the car gets totaled

A friend of mine came into Denver last night so we could have dinner. I had walked to the restaurant but he insisted on giving me a ride since it was colder than fuck when we left.

Also, he has always been under the impression I live in a bad neighborhood so he didn't want me to walk home in the dark. I was like "my neighborhood is TOTALLY safe." So he dropped me at my front step and stayed to make sure I got into my house. As I was opening my door there was a huge CRASH noise. He was like "what the FUCK was that??????"

The crash was a car accident. A big insane guy rear ended some woman almost right in front of my house and then got out of his car and started yelling at her, my friend and I, and another neighbor who came out to see what happened. Someone called the cops (my bb was buried in my backpack). Then the guy got back into his car and drove away from the scene and it was like something out of a movie. First he pushed the car he hit out of the way with his huge car and then he drove over some sidewalks and shit, fishtailing down the street. Awesome cop car chase ensued because there was a police car with its lights off less than 50 feet from the scene. The cop did a u-turn, ran over someone's lawn, and then drove the wrong way down the street after the guy.

My friend was like "I think I'll leave now". He seemed slightly traumatized.