Its kinda fun to see all the stuff you can actually fit in a MINI Cooper....

The typical load: me, my Timbuk2 bag and my Mammut Bouldering bag
The weekend load: me and Mendra
The Meredith load: me, Meredith, Cassidy (4), Jared (< 1), a toddler seat and a infant seat
The JBoss load: me, four other JBoss Developers, and their laptops
The Trail Days load: me, three ripe hikers and their internal frame packs

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Posted by Jessica on May 22, 2006 3:43:37 PM EDT #

There are SO many patterns out there.... I figure I should make myself a bit of a list of the ones I'd like to get to. PLUS hopefully this can give my secret yarn swapper person some ideas about what yarn to get me. :-D But really -- its just as much a list for me -- I've got all these random patterns saved on my hard drive, and magazine's spread around the house -- hopefully this will help me to put all these potential projects in one spot. (... see the details...)

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Posted by Jessica on May 18, 2006 9:59:00 AM EDT #

Two years ago I was visiting my friend Channing in New York and saw her band, The Somnambulants play at Piano's. Channing and I grew up together in Salt Lake -- we were very different people who hung out with very different groups, but it didn't matter. We got along great. She's in San Francisco now. We have the craziest timing sometimes... ending up visiting Salt Lake the same weeks..... hopefully we can meet up soon.... but I digress:

Two other bands played at Pianos that night: Boyskout and Au Revoir Simone. I loved the whole night. Each band was so different, yet SO great. Somanbulants are electronica, Boyskout is a bit 80s rocky and Au Revoir Simone is gentle and melodic and harmonious. It was a neat mix. And everyone that I met from the bands were so cool.

I love Grey's Anatomy. And this morning I started watching the two-hour season finale that I'd DVR'd. I'm sitting there, watching and working on a database schema when suddenly I stopped. And listened. "I recognize this." "How do I know this." "Is this?..." "Damn, what's their name." And I found them. And it was!

for those of ou who are of the tv-watching persuasion, "through the backyards" will be broadcast on the program "grey's anatomy" on monday, may 15 at 9pm on ABC.

You can Download the MP3 of "Through the Backyards of our Neighbors" or you can listen to that and more on their myspace page. Check them out! They're opening for We Are Scientists at the TLA next month.

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Posted by Jessica on May 17, 2006 1:46:40 PM EDT #

I hear rain
I like hearing rain
smells so fresh
and earthy
and sounds so beautiful
mom and I
we'd stand in the back door
we had a big sliding glass door
we'd stand there with the glass open -- and the screen shut
and just listen
and smell
then Dayzee would come running up and want to go outside
so we'd let her
and then she'd turn tail and come back
sometimes if she was feeling puppyish she'd run around
I've got the window open here :)
cats love open windows
they sit and sniff

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Posted by Jessica on May 11, 2006 11:08:00 PM EDT #

Kathleen got herself knocked up.

(granted.... it was by her husband, and they planned it -- but its just more fun to say "knocked up" doncha think?).

I was a big big dork and scheduled my flight to Atlanta last week during her baby shower. I felt like poop. I realized the timing of things while I was in Salt Lake City -- so I stopped at one of my favorite yarn shops there: Soul Spun Yarn and found some great yarn for Kathleen. She had learned how to knit awhile ago -- but last month after a lovely double date with our husbands, I helped teach her how to cast-on and knit, again. I also introduced her to all the wonderful videos on KnittingHelp.com -- and now she's knitting like a fool.

Kathleen's husband Paul stopped by this evening, so I gave him the yarn to deliver to her. I've got to figure out a pattern for her -- but whatever it is -- its gonna be SO nice -- I love this yarn. I got her one skein of Brown Sheep Company's "Lamb's Pride" bulky yarn in "Creme-M10", and two skeins of Crystal Palace's "Musique" in Picnic-9134. I'm thinkin I may have to buy some of this myself -- I'm gonna have yarn-envy.

And speaking of which... I think whatever I buy for the yarn swap I'm going to have to buy double of, so that I don't get yarn envy after I mail it out. yeah -- good excuse (I mean reasoning). I <heart> yarn.

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Posted by Jessica on May 9, 2006 12:00:20 AM EDT #

I've been reading KnittingHelp.com more recently, and I found a thread for The Great Yarn Swap. It's kind of like a secret santa thing -- but for yarn geeks like myself. I believe there's almost 50 people signed up for it. They take a bunch of names and trade them among people -- and each month you send out yarn to your secret person and someone else sends you yarn. Wahoo! Cool new yarn!

I just got my yarn-swap-person this morning. I think I'll go over to the Knitting Knook in Marlton tomorrow and see what I can find. I <heart> yarn :-D

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Posted by Jessica on May 8, 2006 9:44:25 AM EDT #

I've been on the road a bunch the last two weeks, and thanks to websites like IndoorClimbing.com, I've been able to appease my climbing habit wherever I've gone. I find it interesting how different gyms are setup, how they mark their routes, and how they rate them. So -- here's a little blurb about where I've been and what I thought...

• the gym:
  The Front Climbing Gym - Salt Lake City, UT
• the walls:
  For those who are familiar with the Philadelphia Rock Gym -- the Front has a similar setup. A long, high-ball bouldering wall with a smaller area for toproping. I don't recall seeing any lead climbing. The walls were lightly textured -- it looked like wood covered with some kind of resin. I definitley was a bit edgy climbing to the top of the wall without a spotter -- the bouldering wall seemed to be 15 or so feet high. It prevented me from pushing myself beyond my range, as I flashed most every climb I attempted.
• the routes:
  They'd had a comp recently, so a lot of the comp point values were still on the wall -- and that was fun to climb on. But their typical rating system is a series of colored dots: it was something like "yellow: v0-v1, green: v2-v3, blue: v4-v5, red: v6+. I wasn't a big fan of such a loose rating scale. They have something similar at Vertical Reality in NJ. Maybe I'm too dependent on ratings -- I guess you can look at it two ways: 1.) I like to use the ratings to judge how good I'm getting. or 2) I hold myself back by only attempting things that are of a particular grade, and no higher.... I'd like to think its the 1st, but sometimes I know its the 2nd.
• the other stuff:
  They had a dog at the gym! Very friendly, liked to fetch. It was cool. They had a full weight gym too, and according to their website have yoga and pilates classes. I think that's awesome. I'd love it if our gym had that. I need to do yoga. Maybe I'll sign up when I get back home.
• the gym:
  Rockreation - Salt Lake City, UT
• the walls:
  Rockreation makes a GREAT use of the space they have. They've got some great bouldering -- lots of angled walls, and lots of interesting holds with creative routes. There's a cave, a traverse, a low arch and very nicely textured walls -- some of the holds are even built into the wall, which was fun to play with. All I did was boulder -- but it looked like they had some great lead climbing routes too - the lead area wasn't very big -- so the routes were really crowded, but it looked like a good challenge, with some great angles.
• the routes:
  The routes were all rated on the standard V-scale. And they seemed to be rated pretty similarly to other gyms. I got winded very quickly while I was in Salt Lake (its the first time I've really noticed the whole altitude, thin-air thing), so I don't think I was climbing as hard as I could. But I had a great time.
• the other stuff:
  They have a full weight gym too, and are right next door to Black Diamond.
• the gym:
  Atlanta Rocks (Intown) - Atlanta, GA
• the walls:
  The walls at Atlanta Rocks were nice. Highly textured, lots of angles. They had a cave and a free-standing bouldering wall too. As for lead climbing -- they've got routes that go up about 30 feet and then across the ceiling another 30 feet -- talk about endurance. Unfortunately... they had an icky floor system -- it was the ripped up tire stuff. bleck.
• the routes:
  They recently had a comp at the gym, so they said they had just taken down all the problems and were in the process of putting them all up again. So there wasn't an abundance of routes -- but the ones that were there, were fun. I don't like how they mark their routes though -- each of their bouldering "routes" are simply defined by the color of holds used. No tape. All the orange holds make up a route... all the yellow holds, blue holds, etc. I would think that limiting your routes to a color system would really limit the creativity a route setter can have in creating routes. None of the routes are graded either... so I had the same issues with that as with the routes at The Front.
• the other stuff:
  They too had a weight lifting area. But the thing I really liked to play on -- was their rock climbing treadmill. You could use some pre-defined programs or manually adjust the angle of the wall and the speed of it. I found that I used my arms WAY too much. And I really felt like a hamster. I've run on treadmills and elliptical machines many a time, and never felt like I was running and running and getting nowhere (even though, that's exactly what's going on) -- but it was certainly a strange sensation to be climbing higher and higher and still be only a foot and a half off the ground.

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Posted by Jessica on May 3, 2006 12:06:29 AM EDT #