skinnerclan.org

Saturday Climbing

I went climbing on Saturday. I couldn’t hook up with my climbing partner Michael, so I went for some bouldering. It was like 5ish when I went and the place was only lightly populated. I worked a bit around in the boulder cave, then on the walls of the gym where people weren’t roped up.

They cleared away a lot of the holds in the boulder cave and it’s much nicer now. It was too chaotic before – way too many holds. It was hard to figure out where the route went, and you’d be on the wall looking for the next holds in the midst of a bunch of rudely tagged stuff. Now the wall is much more clean, and it’s easier to identify where you can “legally” use holds in a tagged climb.

So in the middle of my climbing session I tweaked my left shoulder. I was on the ceiling of the boulder cave and I went for the last hold on a new route with my left hand, and something went wrong because it just hurt and I dropped down and felt nauseous. I climbed a bit on the slab wall, giving that arm a rest, and moved it around until it felt better, and later went and completed the climb; apparently I had missed this one large red hold immediately prior to the last hold.

Anyway, on Sunday my shoulder was painful to move. I even tried putting my arm out the window driving (since it was fairly nice out) and that hurt too much to do.

Today it’s feeling better, but it’s still painful at times. I’m totally going to have to take another rest week. Hopefully this weekend I’ll be able to get back on the wall.

Games

On Friday night I got together with John & Melissa, Luz, Paul, and a couple who are local gamers. John and Luz and Paul and I played Reef Encounter. John and Melissa and I had tried to play before, but Melissa bailed because she couldn’t handle it that night. John and I played, going through the rules. It’s a very difficult game to learn by yourself – the rules are circular in nature . . . by this I mean that to understand A, you need to understand B, and to understand B, you need to understand C, and to understand C, you need to understand A! It’s all very intertwined and so it takes some experimentation to realize what’s going on and how things relate.

Anyway, we played and since John and I had already played before we had at least a basis for teaching and it went much smoother. I still had to read the rules out loud, but at least we kind of knew what was going on and could answer questions. Luz won that game, and I think I may have come in third.

On Saturday, I got together with the Looks and we played a couple of games of Colossal Arena followed by a game of Reef Encounter with Luz again. And again she won! And again, I came in third…

I’m really digging RE though; it’s my kind of game, kind of like Tigris and Euphrates. I haven’t been able to find many strategy articles, however. I find that RE has a lot of cross-gender appeal. There are plenty of games like that, but this was one that surprised me how well the females took to it. It’s pretty heavy, but you don’t have to play it too heavy, if you know what I mean.

Car debacle

So I had to put new license plates on my car, both front and back. I got them last week, and last week my second headlight gave up the ghost, so I was driving around with brights (whoops). I got and installed a new headlight (I need to take the battery out and that wasn’t happening this weekend for the other one – at least, not without a little help from some tools). When I tried to remove my license plate, I found that I couldn’t! I’d turn the rusted screw, but the backing would also turn and so I couldn’t make progress. Dremel to the rescue, however – I was able to take off the head and then the back once I opened the trunk. I burned through my fair share of those discs doing it though. The nylon screws I got this time didn’t fit on the front though, so I need some smaller screws I guess (and I’ll need some washers too no doubt). Perhaps I can pick those up tonight.

I also raked some leaves this weekend. I didn’t quite do it all last fall, so I did some raking and bagging and put them out with the trash. I watched a fair amount of Arrested Development as well (seasons 1 and 2). I’ve been enjoying that.