more beast on beast action

tiger vs crocodile

Fun in the Bay Area

On the 24th I was finally able to check out Mission Cliffs, which believe it or not got me pretty psyched.  Before climbing I met up with Lucho and we got chai and a bagel, and then I met up with Karl and Audrey for a sesh at MC.  I was a little skeptical about MC, but I think I went there on a good day.  There were no crowds at all.  I know it sounds silly, but I'm actually pretty psyched on gym climbing right now.  Partly because I suck at it, and would like to get better, partly because it's social, and partly because you can get a killer work out in not much time.  At any rate, it was pretty fun.  

After that Karl, Audrey and I drove around San Francisco looking for a place that was open on Christmas Eve.  We settled on the Jasmine Tea House, which was AWESOME!  Going out for Chinese food sometimes seems like a crapshoot, but this was a winner.  We ordered basil tofu, some special with portabello mushrooms and eggplant, and red bean fried sesame balls (whatever they are called - they are freakin' good).  After dinner we blabbed for a while about stuff, and then I drove to SFO to pick Sunsh up from the airport, and then to her parents' house in Redwood City.  

Redwood City was a lot of fun.  Sunshine's mom is super delightful - whenever she sees me she gives me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek and says "I'm SO HAPPY TO SEE YOU!!!"  It's awesome.  And she's pretty much the most laid back, supportive and happy mom I've ever met.  She also did the MS bike ride with Sunshine back in September (they did the 50 mile ride).  

Anyway, since we are Jew-"ish" heathens, we went ahead and ate the pies that I made for breakfast the next day (Christmas morning).  I made a chocolate cranberry tart and a pecan-pumpkin pie (sort of a hybrid).  The latter made an excellent breakfast.   

So after pie for breakfast, Sunsh and I went El Mercadito, which got me pretty psyched on cooking Mexican food...but it's Christmas, and heathen or now, it didn't seem appropriate.  So we bought some groceries and went back to cook dinner: stuffed sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes with caramelized onion gravy, Mexican Spanish rice (one of Rosa's friends is Mexican and brought rice over), polenta and roasted vegetables, roasted brussels sprouts (not my idea...), homemade cranberry sauce...and probably other stuff that I can't remember...oh yeah, and tofu.  I was psyched that another friend from Santa Cruz, Zoe, came over.  Post-dinner entertainment was a stroll around the neighborhood to look at the lights, and nearly get trapped forever in a local school.  People in Sunsh's neighborhood got pretty psyched on the inflatable holiday art this year.  I think I may have even seen an inflatable nativity scene?  Oh yeah and there was this creepy ferris wheel with Christmas themed snoopies, bears, santas, elves etc. on it.  Anyway.  After that we tried to watch Sukiyaki Western Django, but my attention span is way too short to watch a western in Ingrish.  I couldn't understand anything they were saying, so I got bored and went to bed.

Today we went back to Berkeley (after more pie for breakfast, of course) and traipsed around the Berkeley hills looking for mushrooms, but didn't really find anything except rosy russulas, which taste like shit.  Oh yeah and we stumbled across someone's creepy campsite.  It was a beautiful day though, so it was nice to hang with Zoe and Sunshine and take advantage of the sunny day.  Then we got dumplings and potstickers at some other tea house.  A lot of places are still closed for the holiday.  We tried to get juice and cupcakes first - dumplings were plan C.

Tomorrow I'll probably go to Gold Wall with Stanley, unless he decides that it'll be no good.  Maybe Bishop next week?  Honestly I could climb in the bay area gyms for the next few weeks and be pretty psyched.  HA!  Though I just found that a friend from Boulder might show up for a week or so, and he wants to go to Jailhouse.  So who knows.  I'm pretty easy going about climbing these days.

It's been kind of cool not spending every weekend away this fall/winter.  I'm still restless as hell, but it's nice to find new outlets and hang out with different people.  I got so tired of everyone last season.  Plus I get tired of talking about climbing all the time.  I think my favorite climbing partners rarely talk about climbing.  It's good to hang out with people who have a little bit of complexity.

Stuff

The end of the year always brings a lot of reflection for me.  Probably because the days are short and the weather is not so nice...seems to give me a lot of time to think.

This year has been really really hard.  So many bad things have happened.  I hate to focus on the negative, because many wonderful things have happened as well, but I think it's important to honor the shitty things too.  It seems like people like to ignore or deny the unpleasant things.  But we all know that the challenges tend to make us grow a lot more than the easy stuff.

Getting diagnosed with multiple sclerosis is a pretty big deal.  To this day, I still can't believe that when I write the previous sentence, it is the truth.  It still sounds like it's a lie - something that isn't really happening.  But it has and it is, and it will.  Things have calmed down since the spring when things were really bad, but my hand still acts up, the injections hurt, and I still go to the hospital once a month for a steroid infusion.  It still is.

My relationship with Alex was extremely painful this year.  There's not really any good left in us anymore, not even a friendship.  Of course it's nothing that anyone reading this hasn't gone through before.  We've all been there, which makes the fact that it's so fucking painful seem cheap and lame.  I'm just reflecting on the reasons that I hung in there for so long.  One time a friend of mine said that we all had to date one person who is mean to us.  Hopefully I've ticked that one off the list.

I've met and become close with so many wonderful people this year.  I finally feel like I have a community of supportive friends that I care about.  I think it's been really good for me to spend time with people who are genuinely nice.  Nice without wanting anything, and nice without worrying that you're going to try to take something away from them.  

Work has been mostly sidelined this year, especially with the medical crap that I went through.  However I did pass my qualifying exam, and studying for it gave me more inspiration and made me psyched on what I'm doing again.  I hope that I can sustain the passion long enough to get a lot done in the next quarter.  

So in the next year, I hope to do some healing, spend time with nice, well-adjusted people, repair the relationship with my parents, and get a lot of work done.  Hopefully I'll get some rock climbing done too.

Thanks so much to everyone who has listened to me, been there for me, and sent positive thoughts my way.  

Movies that scared the S*** out of me

So I came across the above image on my googlereader page today from the website ugly overload.  When I first looked at it, nothing really registered.  Upon closer reflection however,  I realized that it scares the crap out of me, partly because it reminds me of this:

This is the poster from the movie Ghoulies.  Here are two more pics of the little monster (I think the second one is from Ghoulies II):

Images from here and here.

Point being, the snub-nosed monkey reminded me of movies that scared the crap out of me as a kid.  I mean, imagine the terror when you are 8 and you are thinking about sitting on a toilet and a monster coming up to eat your bum.  

So Ghoulies in turn reminded me of other movies that scared me as a kid.  So here it is:

List of Top Movies That Scared The Crap Out of Mandi:

1.  Candyman

2. Gremlins

3. Ghoulies (not sure I ever watched it, but the concept is frightening enough, and I still remember talking about it with my sister)

4. Ghostbusters II - why 2 and not 1?  No clue.  I think it was the pink goo that tried to grab Sigourney Weaver's character and her baby out of the bathtub (maybe I get freaked out about things coming out of plumbing), or maybe it was the evil painting.  Whatever, my Dad had to take me out of the theater I was so gripped.

5.  Poltergeist

So what movies scared you?

Update, I polled my housemate and she said she's still scared dogs because of Cujo.

Christmas? New Year's?

I have no idea what I'm going to do for Christmas or New Year's this year.  I spent most of the past month thinking about my qualifying exam, which was nice.  Since most people plan for these sorts of holidays, I find myself unsure of what to do.  Should I go somewhere?  Stay here?  I have a lot to do here, but it would be nice to get out to the desert.

Ideas?

Short list of things I'm interested right now

Stem cell therapy - how does it work?  What about for MS research?  How do you administer stem cells to damaged nerves?  What kind of cell signalling apparatus is at work?  

Ethics of genetic testing.  Patenting genes.  The public interpretation of science literature making claims about single gene regions causing X percent increase in disease or condition Y.  Government + personal genomics companies...

Mushrooms.  I'd like to be able to find and ID and consume more species/subspecies.

Biodiversity.  I'm always fascinated by photos of newly described species, or photos of really really small things.  Also see here and here.  Bizzare life history traits are interesting too.

Genomics and new technologies for obtaining whole-genome sequences.  How does it work, but more importantly, what do you do with all of this data?  When the human genome was sequenced, it was a big deal.  Now it is b-o-r-i-n-g.  What's next?

Evolution, always.  It's my worldview.

Epigenetics and post-transcriptional processing - Here's a nice New York Times spread.

And finally (well, not really, I just have to end the post at some point), how will science figure into the next administration.  Here's a nice recap of the newly appointed science folks.

Oh yeah - water in California, particularly the bay-delta region and desert regions.

when to give up

You know when I wrote the title of this post it made me think of the old song "the gambler".  I've always had a romantic vision of the person (or being the person) who had absolute control over my feelings and desires.  Just being able to make a decision about life and stick to it.  For example:  "I'll never eat chocolate again", or "I'm going to climb route X or grade Y before January 1st."  And then making it happen.  Or "I'm never going to talk to person X again, and I'm never going to drink so much that I puke in the bathroom at the north entrance to Yosemite..."

Anyway.

But at the same time, I feel like as I've gotten a bit older (mellower?  probably not), I don't want to be that controlled.  I don't want to force myself to do things just because they're "better", or "proud" or whatever.  It just seems like if you have to force yourself, what's the point?  Why does everything have to be a battle all of the time?

Don't get me wrong, I hold athletes and frazzled academics and people who achieve "greatness" in whatever field they apply themselves to in high esteem.  But often you look at these people and their personal lives are in shambles.  What does it take to try so hard for some sort of external goal?  What drives people?  Because no one is really going to remember anyway.  I'm just not sure that I always want to feel like I'm never good enough, or I've never done enough - because it seems to me that this is what it takes to be so controlled.  But as I say this I know I'll never feel like I'm good enough or have done enough.  Maybe being aware of it will help me calm down a little bit and allow myself to be proud of the things that I have accomplished.

So now I've gone off in a completely different direction than I was planning for this post.  I was planning on talking about when you should give up on people.  When do you stop looking at a person through the filter of what you hope for and start seeing - no - feeling the reality.  I feel a little bit like I've given up on my parents.  Every time I communicate with them...it just doesn't work.  I never feel like I'm heard.  Same thing with others.  There are some people who won't hear me, don't want to hear me, or can't hear me, and I have to accept that.  When do you give up?

In other news, Thomasina and her toddler Cedar stayed with me last night.  I was so happy to see them, and finally meet Cedar.  What a wonderful and happy child.  Thomasina looks happy as well.  I was glad to let them have a place to stay, since the roads to Bishop are a bit treacherous at the moment.  Anyway, I haven't had a whole lot of exposure to young children, and whoah!  I don't know why Thomasina isn't more tired all of the time.  Cedar is so talkative and independent!  I think she wandered over more of the house than most people who've been over.  It was pretty cool.

Climbing and mushrooms...and heinous sweaters

This weekend I got to do two of my favorite things: rock climb and mushroom hunt.  Plus I saw a lot of awesome people, and generally had a good time.  Yeah!

Friday I went out to Gold Wall with Drew and we did lots and lots of pitches.  Well, ok, not that many, but my skin hurt like hell when we were done even though I took 3 aleve during the day.  It was also fun to see Karl and Audrey, both of whom are crushing.  James was there too.

Anyway, Saturday night I drove to Berkeley to go to the Retirement Island Christmas Party (holy shit it has its own blog!).  I was thrilled to have an excuse to bake extravagant desserts.  I couldn't really decide, so I made two: a cranberry upside down cake-thingie, and a chocolate peanut butter torte.  The torte was basically peanut butter mousse in an oreo cookie crust, topped with ganache and more oreos.  Yeah.  I think it might be the healthiest thing I've ever eaten.

So I went over to Drew's, dropped my stuff off, and we went over to Sunshine's to rage.  Fortunately, Sunsh provided the sweaters, since neither Drew nor I had appropriate attire for the occasion.  We also managed to drag Casey out of the library so that we could all catch up for a little while.  Casey also had to wear a sweater.

At any rate, I'm not much of a partier, so we left early and went to bed.  I was pretty psyched that Drew has cable, and a freakin' huge flat screen HDTV, so that when I inevitably woke up at 6:30am, I could roll over on the couch and turn on the TV.  The problem with having lots of channels, is that you spend way too much time channel surfing.  And by the way, when did so many religious channels come online?  It's fucking weird, pardon my language.  Anyway, it still wasn't raining Sunday morning, so we drove up to the Berkeley hills and went...mushroom hunting!!!!  Boy was it thrilling - and I'm not even being sarcastic in the least.  Seriously. I love mushroom hunting.  I found a lot of edibles, but none were as exciting as the Prince that I found (Agaricus augustus).  I'd found two Princes in Big Sur a few years ago, and remember that they were beautiful and delicious.  I was pretty psyched.  The Prince ended up being a topping on a pizza for lunch.   Here are some pics from the weekend:

A group of Lactarius spp.

me sniffing the Prince for the characteristic almond fragrance.

A Satan's bolete - on the approach to Gold Wall

Another view of Satan's bolete

An emetic Russula - clearly not an edible, considering the meaning of the word "emetic", and the common name is The Sickener.  However it reminds me of the perfect Super Mario Brothers mushroom:

But I digress...

An action shot.  Somehow crawling through the bushes doesn't matter when mushrooms are involved.

Uncovering a "shrump".

A HORRIBLE picture of me, but a good picture of the desserts that I made.  Christmas sweaters are NOT flattering.  Word.  Plus, how did Drew manage to escape the party without having a picture taken of him in his sweater?  WTF?

Something to blog about

let's start out by saying that I just had a pint on an empty stomach.

Can I just ask all men who read this: on what planet is it OK to spend time with your ex-girlfriend one day, and then call her up for the sole purpose of talking to her about another girl that you like the next day?  Is it Earth?  Really?  Wait... what planet are we on?  Is this the same planet where women are supposed to be smitten when you tell them "I'm not a boob guy, but I'd totally tit-fuck you"?  Yeah.  I think they are in the same galaxy.  Shit I need to hire a shuttle.   All I know, is that I am over-extended on this planet.  I'm trying to fill the role of best friend and ex and it's working for everyone but me.

Did I miss a memo?  

Anyone got a map?