allison

I am proud to report that I, along with partner Muffy the Wanker Sprayer, have successfully quit smoking. While this is not the first time for either of us, hopefully it will be the last. I wish I were full of witticisms about this sitchmo, but lacking that, I must say that I am at once relieved to be free of this burden, and thankful for the support of my former enemy (??) Muffy. Here's to you! Having said that, I still think the non-smoking bars in Seattle blow goats....except maybe the Latona.

Sorry, I am flying.....it is funny though, lately when people say "carpool" to me, they mean "drive me there" ...and anyway of course my car has been in the shop since 23 December.

I liked those Dean Potter pictures very much. My dad takes Outside and I read it at his house. DaveW and I got rejected for a piece on Darrington by both of the major US magazines. In fact I don't even think Climbing bothered to respond.

My politics don't allow me to objectively evaluate a speech? Why, because I'm a stinky liberal? Graphically describing methods of torture is a cheap device. I don't think Shrub is smart enough to do better than that, but certainly his speechwriters are.

His eyebrows looked like raccoon tails, only bigger, he made claims about cutting taxes and increasing the size of the gummint that would be destroyed by an Econ 101 student, he didn't cite a single statistic, factual or otherwise, and he scared young people by describing torture. All in all, another great night for the Republicans.

My favorite device for belaying is this thing they call a climbing partner.

Yah, my jacket had that same hangtag...I read it out loud and we laaauuggghhhed!!

I did a search of the site for 'recipe' and several threads popped up. Also I would search for 'ramen' to locate Jonathon's great thread on the subject. My favorite book on the subject is by June Fleming, called 'the well-fed backpacker'. Two things that dehydrate very well:Watermelon, sliced to a 1/4 thickness. Save yourself some hassle and get the seedless. Takes a while! Also ground beef is very good. Get fairly lean beef, saute and season. Rehydrate for a few hours.

I think I am happier loafing about the domicile than I would have been getting soaked at Crystal. Shut down twice this week by the warm and the wet, no less....

Anybody heading down to Salt Lake next weekend? I'm going for the first time, looks like a lot of fun to be had!

I've seen that study, Off, and it did not make me feel more confident about drinking unfiltered water. I HATE carrying a filter, but nothing else has been proven effective to a point that I'm willing to leave the beast at home. It's not just critters that are concerning, also the people walking around carrying giardia and not knowing it. Unfortunately, nothing works as well as a water filter.

Seriously, you people lack imagination. Any time I say anything remotely controversial, the response is that I must be doing the nasty with so-and-so. How dull.

Let's not forget about our good friend Cryptosporidium, avoidable with a filter, but uncurable so far. I'd elaborate on Crypto, but one of our many scientists could surely do it better. Iodine and bleach are both helpless against Crypto, and bleach really hasn't been proven successful against giardia either. Be careful out there.

Uh, who's Aidain (from Tacoma)....and who on earth is Veronica? And whoever wrote that thing, man, sharpen up your wit! That's PATHETIC!

At the risk of making a painfully obvious statement, not all bars that allow smoking are especially smoky. Can't we just toss around some places we have been and then perhaps ix-nay the really smoky ones? Or are you all just so bored that you are arguing about this for the sake of it? Here's a bunch of places that come to mind that we have had Pub Club in the last year: Swiss, E9, Nickerson, Owl/Thistle, Fiddlers, Alki, Latona, Teddys, Ballard Alehouse, Blue Star, Duchess, Big Time, Sausage Place on The Ave, Dex/Hayes, Ballroom, Al's, E'lk Zoo, Spar, place in strip mall in Totem Lake, Lockspot, ?Sloop? Which places were good, and which places were bad? Which places were "too smoky"? Which places did I forget?

Minx, 1.9 million dollars isn't going to get you much of a transit system. The voters of this region approved the RTA mass transit in (?) 1996, and then effectively stripped it of its funding in 2002.

Absolutely not directed at you in particular....directed at the electorate. BTW congratulations on getting our hobbly friend out to a Pub Club. Sorry I wasn't there, would have gone if I'd known you 2 were making an appearance. CC, my mom is UW staff. They did away with merit raises a few years back, and haven't had any kind of cost of living increase in two years. Here at the city level I haven't had a full cost of living increase in at least four years.

You vote to lower taxes, and then act all surprised when there are fees for things that used to be "free."

I had a dream that was strikingly similar to this after I went back to sleep this morning after I found out it was raining at the ski hill. It was not a nightmare, but it was pretty dang weird. Trask was not there.

Never mind.

That's what I'm saying here. It wasn't super light fluffy powpow yesterday, far from it, but it snowed, a lot , and then by the end of the day even, there were, like less rocks showing. It will still be a while before we get any good days, but like sex and pizza, even bad skiing is, well, pretty good. I'm going up tomorrow and some of my gear is not *quite* dry yet....but good solid base is dumpingdumpingdumping, and now all it needs to do is get ten degrees colder, and then, as they love to say, "it's all good."

Check your PMs Dave, hopefully we can hook up for a few turns and/or lunch.

Ok, Newstips, the CK eulogy thingy was mostly in poor taste. Watching the poor guy's mom cry on the news and the reporter nodding empathetically....that's the sort of thing I think we all fear will happen if we supply information to the media abut our fallen friends. Time to leave this alone.

7 and a half new at Alpental in the last 24, and I'm going to say we got four in the seven hours before that. There is some new snow some places.

I don't know for sure. I think we were in there at around 5pm. I think the best way to find out might be to call the Eddie Bauer outlet, they might know, or if they are not too busy, they might run over and ask for you. I *think* the whole mall is open until 7 or 8, but I would hate for you to drive out there and find out it is closed.