A most unique camping experience

Last weekend for Memorial Day, Tom and I decided to get out our backpacking gear and head up to the Emigrant Wilderness for a couple of days. We had been wanting to go backpacking for a while (since Tom got a new frame pack for his birthday last year) but hadn't gotten out on a major trip since then.

We left on Friday after work (with the puppa) and drove to an area near Pinecrest lake. Tom had arranged for our backcountry permit to be left at the ranger station there and we picked it up and headed off to find a site at one of the campgrounds nearby. We rolled into the first campground at 11:00 pm and searched in vain for an unoccupied spot. We moved up the road to the next option, only to find it full, as well. We were feeling a little panicked (and exhaused) by then, but fortunately we found a nice spot at the third campground. We pitched tent under a tree in our campsite, which turned out to be a very prescient move.

It started to rain at around 1:00 am, so the three of us nestled together in our sleeping bags in the middle of the tent to stay dry and warm. It was very cozy. At about 6:00, Banjo and I decided to make a run for the restrooms and found the very quiet campground looking like this:SNOW! Some of us (obviously) liked it a little better than others of us.

Anyway, the ground was wet and it continued to sleet almost all day. Banjo displayed unusual (for him) amounts of wimpiness - apparantly freezing cold gravel bits hurt his little paw pads. So we bailed on the original backpacking plan and decided to drive back to Pinecrest lake to see what could be seen there. We ended up playing some boardgames in our car during lunch, and then taking a 4 mile jaunt around the lake. It was a beautiful area and we enjoyed scooting up and down the rocky coastline and watching the fishermen who were out for Memorial Day. After our nice (albeit still sleety) afternoon, we stopped by the ranger station for a weather update (continued sleet and snow through the weekend) and decided to pack up and head back. We stopped at "columns of the gods" viewpoint on the way back, which was a cool columnar basalt outcrop that Tom hiked to and took these pictures. Sadly, this minor pit stop ended up being quite costly as his favorite hiking boots were apparently left as a sacrifice to the geology gods. We still have some hope they'll turn up, but it isn't looking all that likely.
The rest of the weekend was relatively uneventful - hanging out, doing a little grilling and catching up with some stuff around the house. Hope you all had a nice Memorial day, too!

McClellan's Memoir

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan's book about his time spent with the Bush Administration comes out next week, and today I read the excerpted preface of the book. The memoir is apparently harsh on Bush and insiders such as Cheney, Rove, Rice, and others, as well as on himself. In reading the excerpt, what appears to be a main theme of the book is a good example of why I can be optimistic about the possibility of an upcoming Obama presidency, as opposed to either HRC or McCain:

Most of our elected leaders in Washington, Republicans and Democrats alike, are good and decent people. Yet too many of them today have made a practice of shunning truth and the high level of openness and forthrightness required to discover it. Most of it is not willful or conscious. Rather it is part of the modern Washington game that has become the accepted norm.

As I explain in this book, Washington has become the home of the permanent campaign, a game of endless politicking based on the manipulation of shades of truth, partial truths, twisting of the truth, and spin. Governing has become an appendage of politics rather than the other way around, with electoral victory and the control of power as the sole measures of success. That means shaping the narrative before it shapes you. Candor and honesty are pushed to the side in the battle to win the latest news cycle.

Of course, deception in politics is nothing new. What’s new is the degree to which it now permeates our national political discourse.

Much of it is barely noticeable and seemingly harmless, accepted as par for the course. Most of it is done unconsciously or subconsciously with no malicious intent other than to prevail in the increasingly destructive game of power and influence.

Some of it is self-deceit. Those engaging in it convince themselves to believe what they are saying, though deep down they know candor and honesty are lacking. Instead of checking their political maneuvering at the door when the campaign ends, they retain it as part of the way Washington works. The deception it spawns becomes the cancer on our political discourse, greatly damaging the ability of our elected leaders to govern effectively and do what is best for America.

Too many politicians and their followers have become passionately committed to a preconceived, partisan view of reality that allows little room for compromise or cooperation with the other side. The gray nuances of truth are lost in the black-and-white ideologies both parties embrace. Permanent division, gridlock, and a general inability to constructively address the big challenges we all face inevitably follow.

...

In exploring this syndrome and the way it helped damage at least one administration, I’ve tried to contribute to our understanding of Washington’s culture of deception and how we, the American people, can change it.

As an extreme outsider to the whole Washington scene it is of course difficult for someone like me to really know how genuine campaign promises of "change" and the like are; as McClellan points out, even Bush's 2000 campaign promised to change the Washington culture. However, I do have some measure of hope (appropriately enough, or maybe I'm just brainwashed) that as a relative newcomer to the Washington scene and someone with a clear message and respectable track record, Obama and his team would be able to at least start breaking the cycle of political deception and misguided priorities that McClellan laments.

Of course, as Karl Rove pointed out on Fox News, it could have been a rogue ghost-writer:

“First of all, this doesn’t sound like Scott. It really doesn’t,” he said. “Not the Scott McClellan I’ve known for a long time. Second of all, it sounds like somebody else. It sounds like a left-wing blogger." (Hey, that's me! And also, phew! - that sounds exactly like the Karl Rove I've known for a long time, so we don't have to worry about any misquoting there.)

Looks to be an interesting book, at the least. Let me know what you think if anyone reads it.

Super dog tricks

Following up on an earlier post, here is installment #2 of silly tricks that Banjo can do. He takes requests!

Belated post #2 - futbol

A year and a half ago, when Tom and I moved down to Sunnyvale, I decided it was time for me to strap on the old shinguards and cleats and start playing soccer again. I found a women's outdoor team with one of Tom's co-workers and started playing every Sunday. Adult soccer out here in California is a little crazy - believe it or not there are SEVEN divisions of women's soccer on the peninsula, which means there is something for everyone.

My first team was in division 6 (second from the bottom), so it wasn't terribly competitive, but there were a lot of nice people on it. One of them, the owner of a local Cuban restaurant, sponsored a co-ed indoor team, as well, which I joined. That team couldn't have been more different from my outdoor team. The men on the team, in particular, were quite spectacular soccer players. I sure was glad I didn't play goalie - their shots were so hard you could practically feel the floor vibrate.

Last season I heard about an opportunity to join a newly formed division 2 team with a couple people I had met. I decided to take the plunge, although I was a little intimidated to be moving up four divisions. It turned out great - all the players on my team are very comparable in ability to me, and we get along great. People really focused on having fun - no one blames anyone else when we do badly and we all are happy together when we do well. Despite having low expectations for our first season together, we ended up coming in second in our division! It was actually a relief not to win it, as the first-place team gets automatically bumped up to division 1 (home of the recent college players and hardcore soccer junkies).


Our team has some super fans, too. Tom is nice enough to come to almost all of our games, and there are a number of other parents, spouses, and significant others who come all the time, as well. One woman's husband always brings coolers full of water and gatorade, a "mist tent" for us in hot weather, and margaritas for anyone who scores a goal.

Since that season has ended, I've joined a fun new women's indoor team, and have signed up to play in a couple of weekend-long tournaments with these same women this summer.


Anyway, I don't have many pictures, but I'll put a few up, just for fun. Hope everyone else is having as much fun getting outside and playing as I am!

Belated post #1

So, we're a bit behind on our posts - forgive us if you've already heard what we've been up to.

About a month ago, Tom's boss came into his office and offered him a pair of tickets to the Sharks / Flames playoff game (#4) at the Shark Tank.

It was our second Sharks game of the season - the first being during the pre-season. So we're basically fair-weather fans, enjoying the exciting lead-in to the season and then jumping back on the bandwagon during the playoffs.

Anyway, the tickets were in the "Lockheed Martin Presidential Suite", which we figured would be pretty posh and swanky. We did, after all, have to show our ridiculously high face value tickets to a "private concierge" who directed us to a private elevator up to our private room on the top, private floor of the arena. As it turns out, the most expensive seats in the place are also furthest from the action - we wished we had brought binoculars. Fortunately, as Tom has mentioned before, the sharks have the most ginormous jumbotron ever, so we could always catch the replays there.

The Sharks started out behind but came back to win the game. Afterwards, walking back to the light rail, we enjoyed the exuberant crazy crowd atmosphere. The Sharks squeaked out a win in that round, but sadly ended up losing in the next round. Oh well, there's always next season!

The other man in my life

One of the biggest perks of being a dog owner is good morning kisses...

Linxtaposition, Wednesday Edition

Today I noticed that the Lockheed Martin internal webpage's "News Links" section offered one headline in particular that piqued my interest, mostly because of how it stood out from all the other military/defense contractor/space-mission status stories that are typically linked there. Click on the image to see for yourself:

Yes, that's right - next to "Japan Plans Missile Defense Warning Satellites" (yikes! that site is called Space War - Your World at War) and "Air Force Expected to Award $1.8B GPS Contract" is the groundbreaking story by the headline "Vatican: It's OK to believe in aliens," in all of its four paragraphs of glory, as reported by venerable Yahoo! News (ok, it's actually the AP, but still). Anyways, if any of you out there were secretly repressing your extra-terrestrial beliefs for fear of religious repercussions, today is your lucky day. I'm sure there are more jokes in there somewhere. Maybe this will pave the way for a Dana Scully profession of supernatural faith, given that the title of the upcoming X-Files movie sequel is "I Want to Believe."

Police Blotter, Hanover Edition

I always get a little nostalgic for the slow-paced, small-town lifestyle of the Upper Valley when I read the Hanover, NH police blotter, as printed in The Dartmouth student newspaper. Here are some of the recent highlights:

Mar. 27, 5:24 p.m.
Greensboro Road
Hanover Police received a call reporting that a large pig was blocking the roadway. Hanover Police left a message for the owner, requesting that she corral her pig. There is no record as to whether the owner retrieved her animal.

April 4, 12:50 a.m.
South Main Street
Hanover Police received a call that a subject was sitting in the lobby of the closed Bank of America building. He was holding a laptop and had left the door open. Around the same time, Hanover Police were contacted by New Hampshire’s 911 dispatcher to respond to an alarm from the same location. The subject informed Hanover Police that he was installing an alarm system and had wanted to test its effectiveness. No charges were filed.

April 5, 12:37 a.m.
Etna Road, Etna, NH
A Hanover Police officer arrived at the First Baptist Church to find a car entirely covered with “For Sale” signs. There was no apparent owner nearby, so the officer ran its plates. He eventually made contact with the vehicle’s owners, and informed them that they could not use the church as a place to display a personal item for sale.

April 5, 3:17 a.m.
Webster Avenue
While on patrol, a Hanover Police officer observed three males carrying what appeared to be open cans of beer. The officer questioned the males and discovered they were not Dartmouth undergraduates, but of-age students from Germany who were on campus visiting friends. No charges were filed, although in compliance with New Hampshire’s open container laws, the German students had to dump out the beer.

Apr. 12, 1:54 a.m.
Lebanon Street
Hanover Police responded to a “stray beaver” call. The beaver was subsequently struck by a car. (hmm, kind of sad)

April 26, 12:35 a.m.
East Wheelock Street
Two female students found a Co-Op Food Store shopping cart near the Hopkins Center and decided to ride it down the street. Hanover Police intercepted the students and suggested that riding a shopping cart at midnight is “not a good idea.” The students then offered to return the cart and left without further incident.

April 27, 12:43 a.m.
South Main Street
A clerk at CVS Pharmacy reported that an apparently intoxicated male had entered the store carrying a red snow shovel. The subject proceeded to growl at the clerk, according to Hanover Police. Police records did not indicate whether the clerk was male or female. CVS surveillance tapes revealed a subject who appeared to be a redheaded, college-aged male and could barely stand. Although Hanover Police searched the area, the shovel-carrying subject is still at large.

April 28, 7:37 a.m.
Appalachian Trail
A Lebanon Street resident reported a homeless person sleeping beside a trail in the woods behind the Hanover Co-Op Food Store. Officers located the man, who is a native of Tennessee. Hanover Police said the man has been making campsites at various locations along the trail since the winter. At one point, officers encountered a campsite 30 to 40 feet from a field near the Co-Op, which they said looked messier than a landfill because it was full of items he had gathered. The site was subsequently cleaned though, officers do not know who cleaned it. If he makes U.S. Service Forestland his permanent residence, Hanover Police explained, the man is not permitted to stay in any given shelter for more than two or three consecutive days.

Socksassins!

In college, we played lots of variations of "assassin" with our friends. The gist of it is that a bunch of people sign up and then everyone gets someone else's name to "assassinate". Your mission is to find your target and shoot them with a squirt gun, or kiss them, or dump chocolate pudding on their head (never tried this one, but it would be fun!). Then you get their "target" and the game continues until there is just one person standing.

Anyway, I saw this article today about an international game of "knitting socksassins". You knit a pair of socks as fast as you can and mail them to a "target". If they get your socks before they have finished theirs, they'll mail you their partially completed pair and you have to finish them and mail to the new target.

I know we've got a bunch of knitters in our readership - I challenge you to sign up and take part in this! You've got one day - deadline is May 3! Good luck...