"Stop it - you're making me feel like a 13 year-old Catholic."
-girl at the rock gym, perhaps receiving too much advice on how to climb?


My climbing partner moved, and it is so sad! I am realizing that looking for a climbing partner is a lot like looking for a boyfriend. Here are the parallels:

1. Climbing partner moves = Getting dumped.
This wonderful person you've trusted with your life is suddenly gone! Who will ever understand you in the same way? Who else could push you toward success by telling you precisely where to put your foot, or at what angle you should grip?

2. Looking for a new partner = Dating.
Instead of giving up (on either romance or climbing), you decide to press on and look for another person to fill that void. You want to seem talented but not show-offy, projecting the desire for a partner without seeming too desperate, showing interest without being clingy. The hierarchy is still present - there are optimal climbing partners as well as sub-optimal ones, not to mention the ones that can actually be harmful. That cute female pediatrician climbing 5.12? She probably already has a partner. That sketchy guy spacing out on the 5.6? No thanks. Better look for someone in my own range...

3. The first climb = The first date.
Shit. Now that I've told her I climb 5.11, I don't want to fall on my ass on this 5.10. The delicate balance of being yourself... but being your BEST self.

4. Climbing outdoors = Having sex.
"Yeah? You want to? Really? Ooh, me too... OK, I'll meet you at the Starbucks at 7am..."
Lots of trust needed to move to this step, as well as some extra gear. You know, for safety. Herein lies the potential to really get hurt, whether dashing oneself on the rocks of romance or the rocks of... um... just the rocks, I guess.


Okay, the analogy breaks down at certain points... there's not really a marraige analogue, for example. And nobody really cares if your belay hooks up with another climber on a weekend when you're out of town. But you get my drift.

My cousin reminded me that I had a blog, and that I should post something in it. Luckily, I still have the shred of junk mail onto which I scribbled an astoundingly inane conversation that Mr. Blue and I heard at the coffee house. (Yes, he's officially Mr. Blue now... I've gone and made him an honest man.)

Most of these posts happen when someone says something dumb, and I happen to remember it. This was just a huge FLOOD of dumb, some of which I managed to scribble down until I got tired of writing (and listening). I think it's easiest to describe the conversants as those kind of people that find it necessary to smoke pot before 10am on a regular basis. (Just in case you did not ever go to NAU or any other hippie-centric school like I did, this group differs from the rest of the population in the amount of plaid worn at a given time, the focus placed on shaving and haircuts, and the length of the "maaaaaan" that is appended to each sentence.)

From this group of Aristotles:

"There is absence in the presence of absence..."
"That is absolute absence.... actually absolute is beyond the world."
"There are prophecies, and next-world powers... Nostradamus wasn't makin' that shit up.... it's just out of context." (maaan!)

It went on and on and on. Perhaps they were the reason the guy working the counter muttered:

"Ah... I hate people."

This outing provided one other gem, from a studious girl in front of us, explaining to her friend that:
"Bifocals are when one frame has a different prescription than the other."
Hopefully, she is not going into optometry.


You'd think that I would have bucketloads of amazing and stupid overheards from the wedding and related events, but I can't remember anything. It was all just wonderful and we loved every minute of it. There was a funny moment when, introducing a group of people to one another, I had to go back through and say "And you also know each other as Black Susan, Corn Child, Zandperl, and Seven of Two". That was kind of cool. :)