trains are the best

I am writing this from a very comfortable seat on an Amtrak train headed for a weekend trip.  Now, I don't do sponsored posts, but if I did, I don't know if any of them could compare to how gushy I'm going to be about trains.  Amtrak, you should really be paying me.

Anyway.  Trains are my absolute favorite mode of long-distance transportation.  (Biking and walking are my short-distance modes of choice.)  Airplanes are really convenient for some things, like crossing continents or oceans, but for trips that might take half a day by car, trains are the best.  Perhaps you ask: Why?  Buses and driving are usually cheaper.  Planes are faster.  But!  The thing people usually don't take into consideration while traveling is stress.

There was only one line I stood in for three minutes to board the main train, I have an open seat next to me, and there were no security hoops.  I don't have to deal with traffic.  Everything is as scheduled.

This morning, I walked out my door, waltzed onto a train (figuratively), had two completely painless transfers, and several hours of reading, working, playing Minecraft, writing email, and blogging later, I'll arrive at my destination.  It's quite nearly as comfortable and productive as sitting on my couch, and so the day of travel has really cost me under an hour in terms of time.

You can see the countryside in ways that driving doesn't allow.  And while the price of Amtrak isn't the lowest relative to buses or driving, if you play things right with AAA, booking early, and Amtrak rewards, it's quite reasonable.  I'm willing to pay a little extra not to lose a day driving or cramped on a bus. And I'd really rather not be subject to the whims of traffic.

Also, trains are just awesome.  What other mode of transport is so cool that there are miniature replicas of it made for adults?  Sure, there might be the occasional car miniature, but trains win hands down.  Because they really are that amazing.

I love trains for commuting and for longer weekend trips.  I love them abroad and domestically.  I love them here or there.  I love trains anywhere!

The fine print: I love everything right now; being done with generals is making me a touch high on life.

11, 11, 11!

Eleven is my favorite number.  I should have planned a party for today or something.  Instead, I might just go read The Eleventh Hour, cut edible things into eleven pieces, and other such nonsense.

priorities, virtues, goals, and then some

Fair warning: a long, detailed post.

It's fall break and I've been using the extra time to catch up on a bunch of different things.  One of which is getting more organized.  I read most of the GTD book this summer, and there have been a bunch of lists floating around.  I've plowed through a bunch of goals--basically, I'm getting closer to my optimally productive state.  Of late, however, I've felt the need to take a step back, so I'm going to pull from GTD and hash out my "priorities." (Why the quotes will be addressed later.)  I'm doing this on my blog instead of on paper because it forces me to 1) generalize, 2) be reasonable, and 3) be clear.  But back to the priorities...to use the altitude analogy from the book, we have six levels:

• 50,000+ feet: Life
• 40,000 feet: Three to five-year vision
• 30,000 feet: One to two-year goals
• 20,000 feet: Areas of responsibility
• 10,000 feet: Current projects
• Runway: Current actions

The last two items--current actions and projects--are too numerous and detailed for this post, so we'll start with my areas of responsibility, which are basically just categories for organizing my projects.

• Academic
  • Research
  • Classes
  • Administrative
• Personal
  • Domestic
  • Hobbies
  • Church
  • Social (including family)

Next: my one to two year goals.  I want to pass my generals.  I want a good summer internship this summer and the next.  N and I were thinking of starting to have kids after I pass generals, so I guess that would be in this category: plan for children.  I want to have published at least one paper as first author, maybe two.  I want to successfully save tomato seeds from my garden.  I want to make at least one more quilt.  I want to start grinding my own wheat.  I want to do lots of stuff, but you get the picture.

The three to five year vision?  I want to have at least one kid and have strong, loving family relationships.  I want to finish grad school in five years and be looking for a job (or have one already).  I want to be minimalist enough that moving anywhere in the world wouldn't be a hard logistical problem.  I want to a host of skills or stores of knowledge of homestead variety: beekeeping, butchering chickens, making cheese, gardening, preserving, and various from-scratch baking skills.  I want to have enough money for downpayment on a house.  I want to have written my Russian historical fiction novel.  Again, lots of stuff.

Life?  I want a happy, healthy family (or at least as happy and healthy as possible given whatever circumstances we will have).  I want my family to be supportive, open, and loving.  I want to not have things I don't need.  I want to be organized.  I always want to have some form (or multiple forms) of creative expression as a hobby.  I want to be generous but financially stable.  I want to own land, and try my hand at some form of homesteading: raise my own chickens, waterfowl, or sheep, keep bees, have an orchard, tend a garden...these are all options, though I probably won't get to do them all.  I want a satisfying career: I could go into industry or academia, but I would also be happy making homesteading a full-time occupation.  Whatever I choose, I want to love what I do.

---

Now that I've gone over the GTD version of my "priorities," I wanted to explain why I put that term in quotes.  The premise behind setting priorities is setting an order of precedence.  Theoretically, everything I listed as goals above, no matter what the level, should come over anything else, all other things being equal.  Life is rarely that clear-cut, though.  Setting priorities as described above leaves me with more questions like "how do I prioritize things within my goals?"  There's the classic example of women who want to have both a family and a career--how do they choose when to put what first?

At the end of last year, I created some themes instead of specific new year's resolutions (the last one is new).  These address some of the issues of simple goals because they define a set of precedence rules.

• Physical over Virtual
• Creative over Consumptive
• Independence over Reliance
• Community over Isolation
• Simplicity over Clutter
• Stimulated over Numbed
• Appropriate Use and Reuse over Waste
• Thoughtful over Instinctual

When making daily decisions, people rarely consult their list of goals.  Likewise, I rarely consult my themes, but they're there to help give me guidance when I have the time or feel the need to sit back and ponder the bigger picture.  They also help evaluate the merit of simple goals.  I'm doing both of these things right now.

---

I've also given some thought to virtues.  There is the famous example of Benjamin Franklin's list of virtues, as well a lists from various religions and philosophies.  I've tried making lists of virtues, but they all come down to two things: treating others well, and improving oneself.  I feel that the first category is my first priority, over all else: love, charity, kindness...it's all kinda the same.  It leads to altruism and universality, mindfulness, justice, honesty, and respect.  It's the golden rule.

The second category is includes things like moderation (which in turn includes temperance and restraint), order, cleanliness, frugality, industry, tranquility, patience, knowledge.  Even still, some things like patience are on the border with the first category.

But even though love for others is my first priority, sometimes I must do things for myself.  Doing things for myself can enable me to help others, but I also just have a drive to take care of myself, so the first and second ordering isn't really strict.  In fact, I can frame my entire life as taking care of myself:

• take care of self
  • physically
    • sleep
    • nutrition/appropriate diet
    • hydration
    • medical health
       • preventative care
       • other treatment as needed
    • be in shape:
      • strength
      • balance/dexterity
      • flexibility
      • cardio
    • grooming/hygiene
  • mental health
    • mediation/prayer
    • organized life
       • all projects personal and academic/work under control
       • clean, tidy, and aesthetically pleasing environment
       • able to provide or have access all things listed here, combined with a sense of being in control
    • healthy relationships
      • spouse
      • family
      • friends
      • work
      • church community
    • sense of morality and acting accordingly (includes activism and various opinions)
       • fair trade, treating people equitably, giving to international aid, gender equality, etc.
    • have projects/purpose/a way to productively spend my time
    • have good outlets/hobbies/secondary ways to spend time

---

You can see similarities between the various framings of priorities, virtues, and goals. They're just different ways to look at the same thing: all the complexities of an individual life.

Take any one facet of a life, like my urge to do homesteading-type activities.  It's a hobby under the GTD system, possibly growing into something larger over time. In the priorities system, it's a manifestation of independence and arguably a few others.  Under the virtues system, it's something to hone my personal virtues, like industry, or something to keep me mentally healthy by having a productive way to spend my time.  You could make a slew of arguments to describe this impulse under any of the systems.

Given all this, what's the point? Priorities, virtues, and goals are just different ways of measuring or articulating our desires.  Too often do I fall prey to the mental trap of trying to put everything in its appropriate little box; it's a kind of game.  Sometimes it's useful, though; going through this exercise helped me gain motivation for the things I need to do this week, even this month.  But where do I go from here?  I get back to getting things done, appreciating as much as I can of the world, and living my values or accomplishing my goals or however else I want to frame it.

Well, that was a pretty elaborate life pep-talk.

in the dark

the power is out
(it's easily said)
and this time
the danger bears
fruit like teeth

it's laughable really
the number of times
i've already made mention
this one thing
splintered a million ways

well at least
i'm glad i didn't
go shopping
for groceries



Finger snaps, everyone!

blackout bread

Last night I was feeling a little adventurous, and given that we might be experience a blackout this weekend, I decided to make some bread that would hold us over if anything happened (our stove is electric).  I concocted a yeast bread (yeast, warm water, honey, flour, salt) with grated carrots, pecans, and rolled oats for texture, taste, and nutritional balance.  I then rubbed the outside with honey, ground nutmeg, and salt and let it rise.  Right before baking I added some grated gruyère to the top.

Man, it was so good that we've gone through half the loaf as of this morning.  I'm letting a second batch with zucchini and almonds rise as I type.  The veggies keep it really moist and the cheese adds a wonderful flavor, especially paired with nutmeg and honey.

I don't have the exact amounts/proportions of everything, since I was kind of winging it, but the ordering is pretty intuitive: mix the yeast (5g?) in warm water (~1 cup) and honey (2 T?) in a large bowl, let it bubble.  To this mixture, add grated veggies (4 sizable carrots or 2 medium/small zucchini), oats (~2 c), salt, nuts, and mix thoroughly.  Add flour and mix until everything is fairly well coated in flour.  Kneed and add flour as needed.  This is trickier than regular bread dough because of the moisture in the veggies--add flour slowly.  You can let the dough rest a little (15 min) before shaping, or just do it directly; I chose long loafs.  Rub in honey, nutmeg, and salt into crust and let rise 1-2 hrs.  Top with grated cheese and bake at 350 until cheese darkens.  Let cool and devour.

Also wik: we found a friend outside our window today.  Red-tailed hawk?  N thinks it might be a beaver.  

Brave Trailer

I've been anxiously anticipating Pixar's Brave since I saw the concept art forever ago.  The first trailer is out at disney.com/brave!  I love that Merida looks like she's not wearing any makeup (contrasted with Rapunzel in Disney's Tangled who has blonde hair and black eyelashes); they make it obvious that the story is not about her looks or her love life, which is really refreshing.  The clip is too short to make any final judgements, but thus far it looks like a story about a strong character who just happens to be a girl.  I'm stoked.

Joseph Smith papers

The Church History Department of the LDS church released the Joseph Smith papers online relatively recently and it's blowing my mind--N discovered the site today.  Take this journal entry, for instance: the page includes a photograph of the original document, a transcript, and notes on the historical context of the journal.  I'm getting an itch to run topic models on a giant church history corpus...

gimmick of the week

N says that every week I have a new gimmick, and he's right.  Some days I proclaim new routines or desires, other days I bring home oddities; today was one of the latter.  I've been lusting after a French rolling pin ever since I started making pasta from scratch (which is an occasional treat for us, since it's no walk in the park when rolled by hand).  I looked up lots of them online, but it's not exactly a French rolling pin I desired...what I really wanted was the rolling pin described in Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, which described a dowel 1½ inches in diameter and 32 inches long.  The length was the catch.  Since pasta sheets can get really absurdly big, I wanted that extra length.

After not really being able to find what I wanted online for a reasonable price (although there were many options in the $10-20 range, just none as long as I wanted), I went to the hardware store today and picked up a 48in solid oak dowel for under $4.  There was an in-store saw for molding and such that you buy by the foot, so I cut it in two, came home, sanded the ends of the longer piece, washed it and let it dry, and just recently "cured" it with mineral oil.  (I'll do the same with the shorter piece soon too.)  Voilà! ...or Ecco! or whatever the Italian equivalent is.

This style of rolling pin will be good for a lot of things, from the homemade cereal and crackers that I've been experimenting with, to tortillas and pastry dough.  I think I'll still like my handled rolling pin for things like breads, but we shall see.  My preferences will probably have to do with the mass of any particular project and the desired thinness.

 My 32 in (1¼in diameter) dowel rolling pin.  (Also, in the background, a new comfy chair bought at a sale of recent graduates' unwanted furniture.  It's almost as wide as the moon and I love it.)  I really need to stop collecting things.

blaze daze

I spent seven hours outdoors today, which was absolutely incredible.  The weather was perfect--it was sunny and in the low 80s--and I thoroughly enjoyed everything I did.

The first patch was a four hour stint up in Hopewell: I fed sheep, bathed a cow, and groomed a horse.  There was also a good amount of walking, talking with and listening to the shepherdess, chasing after/playing with a young (3? 4?) kid, and petting the animals.  I learned a lot; when a cow licks its hide, it looks like a cowlick!  One blunder I made was mistaking straw for hay...sheep don't like to eat straw.  Now I know.  I also learned about the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, which I sadly can't attend this year.

After a brief interlude for some grocery shopping and lunch, I went to work in my new garden plot!  It took forever to get the fence halfway around the rectangle, and I ended up with a mild sunburn.  Hopefully I'll be able to finish the fencing tomorrow and plant my greenlings the day after that.  Yay garden!

I am drained right now.  Seven hours in the sun mid-summer wouldn't pull quite a number on me, but to go from indoor-all-the-time mode to this jarred me some.  To give me a boost, N treated me to Chipotle.  So here I sit in the cool of the evening, my four layers of muck scrubbed off and full of yum.  Can I do it again tomorrow?

saturday skirt and wild leek treat

I've been fiddling around with my sewing machine for a while, doing mending and a few ill-fated projects.  Today, however, I completed my first real project--a skirt--start to finish in one day.  It wasn't much, made with cheap natural-colored muslin, but it felt good to finish something.  I made a pattern based on a purchased skirt in my closet, but had to adjust it along the way since I ended up using less of the seam allowance than anticipated; it went from a 12 panel skirt to a 10 panel one.  I also doubled up the fabric on every panel because muslin is so incredibly thin; even with the two layers, I'll still need to wear a slip.  There's a lot I need learn and work on when it comes to sewing, but the skirt will be fun for around-the-house work and such.

After that project was done, N and I went for a long walk in the woods.  Along the way, I discovered the secret hiding places for wild leeks!  I'm determined to learn what and where to forage out here since I thoroughly enjoyed what little foraging I did in the Berkeley area.  I'm trying to start with very distinctive plants: I've been keeping my eyes out for fiddleheads and morel mushrooms too, but with no luck at all.  I have no idea if they even grow in our woods since the granularity of range with online resources is pretty large.

The wild leeks were pretty young and N was impatient since we had been out a while, so I didn't bother to dig them up; instead, I plucked off the tops of a handful.  There were lots and lots of them, so I plan on going back when they're a little more mature.  When I came home, I chopped them up and put them in a béchamel sauce with some cheese for a tiny tasty treat!

the smell of tomato leaves

Have you ever noticed how tomato plants have a particular smell?  It's mellow as anything until it hits you like a whip and then fades into the earth.  As I've mentioned before, I've caught a few tomato plants growing wild in odd places, and the smell is always the last and final test to see if they are what they pretend to be--it's the only way to be sure.

Now that I have seven varieties of tomato finding their places in the world with the help of my windowsill and not nearly enough help from the sun, I must admit that sometimes I just like to smell them.  They remind me of home a little, and of my mom growing tomatoes.  I used to go out into the garden and pick tiny cherry tomatoes right off the vine, painted with the grey minerals of dried water.  Sometimes I'd wipe them off on my clothes or take them inside, but sometimes I would just kiss them clean and eat them warm.  I've never had better tomatoes.

I was also reminiscing about plums recently; my grandma used to grow plumbs and still grows apricots and pomegranates.  Not even thinking about the season, I tried to buy plums recently, which was a huge mistake.  They were a totally different kind of fruit, sour and clear, and N got a ranting earful about how I've been spoiled for life and I can't buy any of those fruits in a grocery store.

When I pick fruit (in the botanical sense), I always like to wait until the plants gives it up willingly--no pulling, prying, twisting, or cutting.  Just a simple pluck.  They're best like that, and grocery store fruit is rarely, if ever, picked so--farmers' markets maybe, but not stores, lest they spoil in transit.

As a kid, I used to sit in the treehouse that my grandpa built in the bigger of the two apricot trees and test the fruit until I got the ones that were ready to go that day.  You could bite them exactly in half as easy as opening a book.

I'd do the same for the pomegranates, without the biting.  Instead, I'd smuggle a butter knife out of grandma's kitchen and cut them until I could crack them open by hand--they were softball sized fruit, bigger than anything I've even seen at a stand or farmers' market.  They'd bleed all over the treehouse or on the concrete (which I'm sure grandma didn't like) and I'd pick out the seeds to my heart's content, peeling away the translucent pith in as big of sheets as I could.

The plumb tree died when I was still fairly young, but I remember getting out a ladder and making my brother hold it so I could get the very best ones on top.  We ran barefoot and wild...well, I suppose I still do.

I think I'll find a local pick-your-own-fruit orchard this year.  But one day, I'll get my own land...

The photos are of the tomato seedlings I started just three weeks ago.  Top to bottom: Yellow Pear, Brandywine, and Amish Paste.

I spy marigolds!

In all that talk of my heirloom garden, I forgot to mention that I got a packet of marigold seeds for free with my order.  Not knowing what else to do with them, I saw that they needed indoor starting, and with a shrug of the shoulders, I tossed them in along the edge of my starting box in the shadiest spot, not sewing them particularly well at all.

So when today, I spied tiny little pairs of leaves, I was a little surprised to realized that despite my neglectful apathy, the marigolds had won the sprouting race.  (Though perhaps it was even because of my neglect, since they were closer to the surface and on a warm edge.)  Welcome to the world, little ones!

Am I being a little obsessive about all of this?  Yes.  Yes, I am.  And I'm loving it.

starting my heirloom garden

I should have started gardening more seriously long ago, but it has been a half-hobby for a long time.  I would buy some seeds or rescue a tomato plant growing in the cracks somewhere (I've seen them growing sporadically in lots of places, including in the wall of a subway station entrance, the hearty little things) and cultivate them for a while, sometimes harvesting the fruits, sometimes just taking pleasure in watching new leaves form and being near growing things.  Usually I would let them die off in winter or if I got incredibly busy or if I was going to move soon, and then the process would repeat.

Now, however, I am planning for the spring and want to take a new approach.  The idea is to have a dream garden in mind, with a bunch of varieties of a bunch of vegetable, fruit, and herb plants, and then work slowly to accumulate them.  I'll buy a handful of varieties of seeds this year and harvest more seeds from the crops to prepare for the following year, thus I can continually add to the garden without needing to repurchase seeds.

First off, I kept stumbling upon the word "heirloom," which seems to mean different things in different contexts.  Sometimes it means that the same variety of plant has been grown since early human history (for various definitions of "early"), and sometimes it simply means that a variety's seeds can be saved.  Sometimes, however, it just means that a particular supplier has been producing that variety for a long time, and in the case of hybrids, harvested seeds won't necessarily produce the same results as the parents.

So in selecting seeds for my garden (which I am going to dub "heirloom" because I can), I wanted to avoid varieties that would not give me the seeds I wanted, namely hybrids.  I ordered seeds from Burpee, which seems to have a pretty good selection, and is good about labeling whether or not a variety is hybrid.  I know that there are other fantastic seed-selling websites, many of which cater more to seed-saving, but this worked for me.

I've looked into the way a lot of plants produce seeds and have also needed to learn more about our climate, which is new to me when it comes to gardening--no citrus here, for sure, but that's obvious.  I've found out that despite my love for carrots, they don't seed until the second year (no matter how much adoration you beam at them), so those are out for the first year, as are a lot of root vegetables.  I wanted to start with varieties whose seeds are easy to harvest, which means plants whose fruits are edible.  For vegetables, this includes tomatoes, peppers, squash, etc.  In the end, I went with a bunch of tomato and pepper variants as well as one breed each of eggplants and tomatillos.  For all of these plants, it'll be easy to control pollination and harvest the seeds.  I'll probably get some violas for under the taller plants and maybe chamomile as a border, but those don't need to be germinated indoors like the rest of my selection.

Today I planted my seeds, which was probably a little more of an elaborate process than it should have been.  I made garden markers out of aluminum flashing--I simply cut the sheets into the shape I wanted, filed the edges, and wrote on them with permanent marker.  Maybe one day I'll get one of those fancy stamping sets that I could use instead of the marker, but that worked for now.  I used a long flat storage bin as a planting container and set it on our sunniest windowsill, which isn't really that sunny at all, so I hope the seedlings will be okay.  Our central heating comes out right where the container is, so the seeds will be nice and warm, which is important for germination.  To be sure that they didn't get too warm, I propped the container up with squares of folded cardboard.

And now I'm trying to get back to work, but keep looking over at the container every few minutes or so.  They aren't going to sprout that quickly, silly girl.  I just can't wait to see the little seedlings emerge!

my new sewing machine!

I've been plotting to make this purchase for a while and finally did so.  Having done all my sewing by hand for the past two years or so, it was high time I get a sewing machine.  My pick: the Janome Sewist 500.

While I've mostly done mending and simple garments in the past, I've wanted to try quilting and some larger projects, so I got a machine versatile enough to handle a lot of different things without being too fancy--no need for 200 kinds of stitches or embroidery.  (I will likely always prefer hand-embroidery.  Machine-work looks it.)

In-store, they demoed it plowing through six layers of thin denim, which was rather impressive.  It also has a finishing stitch, which means I wont need a serger.  Another perk is that the place I bought it from has unlimited free one-on-one classes with their in-house teacher.

Having torn my skirt on a walk up to campus this evening, I had a chance to try it out when I got home and it's amazing.  I re-hemmed the entire skirt and it felt like near no work at all.  Maybe this means I'll actually be able to make a dent in my mending, let alone any of my other half-formed projects.

I've been calling it "Mons," which is short for "Monster" since its one-toothed humming drives N absolutely nuts.  Perhaps its full name will be "The One Fanged Monster."

Hurrah!

I received an admissions email from Princeton yesterday!  I'm quite intimidated...N keeps saying "I don't know why you want to do that to yourself," but he's in the process of being broken in, and I'm sure I'll go through the same.  Lots of work ahead, but I'm gunna get me a PhD!

better than voting?

I'm a statistic!  I just spent a good 20+ minutes doing a phone poll covering all sorts of important political issues.  The thought came to me: in some ways participating in those surveys can be more important than voting as I was able to voice my opinion in a much more nuanced way than a simple vote allows.  I had the opportunity to rate all sorts of arguments for and against several bills on a spectrum of convincingness in addition to saying how strongly I supported those bills (twice each!...both before and after the series of arguments, very thorough).  In addition to just being fun, it's nice to feel involved in current goings-on, even if I am just a single perspective in the huge sea of opinions.

Merrily on our way we go

This is long overdue (and also very long), but I wanted to post about the summer in chronological order...the wedding photos held me up.

The JMT is about 210 miles. Adding in the descent from Mt. Whitney to Whitney Portal, we ended up hiking about 220 miles in 16 days or 17 calendar days, the first and last both being half-days. That's averaging 13.75 miles a day, but there were definitely days we did closer to 9-10 miles and days we did about 19-20 miles.

One of the funniest things about the trek was that everyone kept implying that N had to finagle me into doing the hike. To this, he would respond, "It was her idea," which is completely true. I didn't always think I was wise for having the idea, though. The whole point was to do something fun that would take up a good chunk of time between the wedding and when we were to drive cross-country so we wouldn't need to sublet a place for a month. It was painful on occasion--like the day I got 150 mosquito bites--but in the end I was really proud of having done it and we got a lot of nice memories and some beautiful photos out of it.

While hiking we met some very strange people, which was not wholly unexpected. Who else is going to be in the middle of the wilderness? There were certainly many people who just longed to talk to other humans (especially the PCT folks) and would stop to chat for extended periods of time if you let them. A few folks would use "we" for "I"--we didn't pass anyone else who could have been a companion. There was a man hiking in a kilt, another man with a silver umbrella who thought it was the greatest invention of all time ("It's dual purpose! It keeps off both sun and rain!"), and lots of folk who were just off their rockers.

We met a lady and her daughter doing the PCT. The daughter was normal but seemed to agree with our assessment that her mother was a little nuts. The mother told us a story about an Asian lady down the trail who spent the day going in the wrong direction--never a fun thing. Soon after that conversation, I started a little ahead of N, who was packing things up and was going to catch up. I was greeted by a man asking, "Are you hiking alone?" My response was, "No, why?" He spent about a full five minutes explaining how he had seen a glove on the trail and how he thought it belonged to this lost Asian lady and how I should pick it up and bring it to her and explain that I was doing this because "the man she passed" told me to. I assured him I would, but he kept going on and on and on. Though I looked, I never saw the glove. A few days later we met this famed lady, who was named Sunny. She told us to pass a message to her friend Sherry, who should be camping where we would be that night (Sunny was too tired to make it that far), that she was alright and that she would meet her at that location--the Muir Trail Ranch. When we got there, we discovered that she had told nearly everyone she passed to send a message to Sherry. Two firefighters, who had been roughly sharing our pace, actually talked extensively with Sherry and sought us out to see if we had seen Sunny. They convinced her to stay put until Sunny arrived. Quite a mess, if you ask me.

As with the firefighters, there were several people we saw frequently or at least a few times on the trail.  Since we couldn't remember anyone's names and it wasn't really important, we gave them nicknames.  "Ginger" for the red-headed bloke who kept referring to himself that way; he and N would hike together for stretches using each other for pacing.  "Fats" for a very kind gentleman who worked for IBM; he introduced himself with that nickname and I wondered if its origin had anything to do with FAT.  And then there was "Damascus," named after his city of origin; he had lunch with us once and shared with us some Spanish cheese.  At some point, Fats figured out that we were newlyweds (given that we're fairly young, we probably hadn't been married long) and after confirming it, he proceeded to tell everyone ahead of us (he started earlier each day).  So for the last five days or so, everyone that passed us greeted us with, "Oh! you must be the newlyweds!  Congratulations!" Blah blah blah (see paragraph 2).

As we neared Whitney, one of my favorite encounters was with a teenage boy.  I was chugging along and this boy comes galloping down from nowhere.  After getting my attention, he asks, "What trail am I on?"  I was a little flummoxed that he didn't know where he was, but I responded saying that I was on the JMT to Whitney.  He just looked at me.  I asked him where he was going and I still got the stare.  After naming a few points of potential interest, we worked it out and I sent him on his way.  How can one get so confused?  Anyway, that's enough blathering.  Feast your eyes on some photos.

 

About to start out.  We're so clean and happy.  Aww!

  

Lots of streams and rivers to cross, with and without shoes.

 Sunset after a thunderstorm right before Donahue pass.

 Wildflowers!  These ones came in a beautiful lavender too.

 Many waterfalls from melting snow in stunningly clear lakes.

 Granite in abundance.

 Thousand Island Lake.

 N's favorite type of landscape.  (That's Ginger behind him.)

 Very blue and very cold.  N jumped in one of them.

 Buggie!

This picture makes me want to go back very badly.

 I kept calling this one "Trinity."

 Hopping lake to lake.

 One of my favorite views.

again...

Many-a-pass.

Grey and blue.

 These trees were fascinating.  Closeup of the ribbed wood.

 More wildflowers.  (The wildlife was fairly elusive.)

Though I missed deer, chipmunks, and all sorts of birds, I managed to snap several photos of one particularly chubby marmot.

 Day before Whitney!

 A strange desert in the mountains.

Several people camped near this lake.  Look closely to see one flying a kite.

 We stayed above Guitar Lake (pictured) before the final climb.  The lake shimmered--the photo doesn't do it justice.

 We woke up at 4 am to someone rummaging around near our camp.  After that, we couldn't sleep, so we joined the train of lights starting in the wee hours.  This was some of the first light to hit.

 I'm at the tippy top!

 Him too.

 The plaque.

On the way down.

Once we got down, we had some delicious (and expensive) burgers and fries, took showers, and started looking for a ride.  We got down early (a Saturday) and given the bus schedule, we wouldn't be able to make it back to our car for a few days.  N held up a "Yosemite" sign, that being where our car was parked, and I held up the sign in the picture below.  After about a half hour, we caught a ride in the back of a pickup (a dad had taken a bunch of teenage boys backpacking) amidst a bunch of backpacks. He took us to Bakersfield, where my Mom picked us up.  After a day of rest, we borrowed one of my parent's cars to pick up ours.  Cars are so fast.

Wedding Photos!

The photos from our wedding have finally arrived!  I've uploaded a subset of them to a Picassa web album.  Here's the slideshow.  There are many, many more photos than I've posted, so if you want me to send you a different subset (e.g. all the photos of you/your family) please let me know.

redefining ambition

I'm currently applying to grad school...again.  This time, I'm going for the full-fledged PhD instead of the half-hearted Masters.  Last year was half-hearted because I wasn't sure what I wanted to be doing--I'm still not totally sure, but I have a much better idea.

Grad school or industry employment--that was the question, and to some extent still is.  I love working and I love learning, but the more I think about it, grad school and industry are both really similar: you work hard and get paid (at least in the sciences).  Expectations are different, and so is the kind of work one does, but in the end, it's pretty similar.

And in talking to people about what I want to do with my life, part of me wants to tell folks that what I really want to do is live on a plot of land, grow my own food, raise a variety of livestock, keep bees, bake bread, make cheese, mend and sew clothes, read books, write, paint, play the guitar, sing, work on open-source software, eventually raise children, and be involved in my community--for starters.  Sometimes I tell people that, and I can't tell how seriously they take me.  (I try to reserve the outburst for people who have a shot of understanding.)

But sometimes people talk (or just think) about being realistic or ambitious, implying that doing all that would be "giving up."  Sure, to some extent I would be giving up on the rat-race for money, but when it comes to ambition, I think our living on one income and my doing all of those crazy-wonderful things is truly ambitious.  It would be very, very hard, but also incredibly satisfying.

Realistically, I won't be able to be full-fledged independent land-owner without significant capital, so I'm going to need to work in the typical sense in some capacity for a while.  I'm incredibly grateful that I'm capable of doing so, that I have opportunities, and that I enjoy what I do.  I'm gradeful that I'm not exclusively tied to one world or the other and that I love my life when I'm working for pay and when I'm working as a homemaker.

For now, I've made it a goal to contact local individuals to learn skills that are hard to develop by just reading about them--starting with beekeeping since it's fairly location-independent and minimally time consuming.  Maybe I'll learn that I don't enjoy keeping bees, who knows.  But maybe I'll learn a skill that I will use when one day I "retire" with my sheep and my ducks and my orchards and gardens.  Maybe I'll always live in between.  What matters is that for now I'll take whatever opportunities that present themselves and find joy in life all along the way.

wild yeast bread

I've been collecting wild yeast for a few days now, and when the recipe called to throw half of it away (deeming it not quite good enough for bread yet...or something) I decided to try baking with it anyway.  Rebel of rebels.

Without using a recipe, I just added flour and water until it felt right--sticky but not too wet, refrigerated it overnight, and added more flour and water the next morning.  I proofed the loaves for a few hours and stuck them in the oven, starting at 500 and reducing to 450, keeping a ceramic bowl full of water in the oven and spraying it with water in the beginning to keep the air humid.

The loaves came out incredibly--thin, crunchy crusts with beautiful pockets of air inside, and very moist.  Texture-wise, they were possibly the best loaves I've ever made.  The flavor was a little nontraditional, likely owing to the dark rye flour used to catch the yeast and the flavor of the local yeast as well.  That said, I still ate an entire loaf before N got out of classes--I worked from home today.  I'm interested to see how the yeast flavor evolves with time.

Catching and Caring for Wild Yeast
adapted from The Bread Baker's Apprentice

Seed Culture
1 cup (4.25 oz) dark rye flour
3/4 cup (6 oz) water
Mix flour and water, making sure all the flour is wet.  Place in glass container or bowl, mark the top of the dough (e.g. with tape) and let sit covered for 24 hours at room temperature.

1 cup (4.5 oz) unbleached high-gluten or bread flour
1/2 cup (4 oz) water
Mix flour and water with previous day's dough.  Update marker and ferment another 24 hours covered at room temperature.

1 cup (4.5 oz) unbleached high-gluten or bread flour
1/2 cup (4 oz) water
Check for a rise in the dough--perhaps a 50 percent rise.  (Mine had more than doubled thanks to the warm weather and the amazingness of King Arthur bread flour)  Discard half the dough and mix in the new flour and water--the height should be the same as the previous day's marker.  Ferment again at room temperature for 24 hours.  The next day the sponge should have at least doubled in size.  If not, repeat for one more day, discarding half and adding new flour and water.

Mother Starter
1 cup (7 oz) seed culture
3 1/2 cups (16 oz) unbleached high-gluten or bread flour
2 cups (16 oz) water
Mix seed culture, flour and water, making sure that all the flour is moist.  Transfer to a non-metallic container at least double the size of the dough and cover for 6 hours or until bubbly.  Refrigerate overnight before using.  The dough will be ready to use for the three following days.

Refreshing the Starter
When you use some of the starter, you should feed it.  For example, if you use 1 cup of the starter, add 1 cup flour and some water to refresh it.  Otherwise, throw half of the starter away and replace it with flour and water.  It's okay to let the yeast starter go soupy, which will happen after 4 or so days. Once fed and bubbly, you have three days to use it.

Using the Wild Yeast
There are a number of recipes that call for wild yeast, and you can always make simple bread by adding more flour and water.  To use it in recipes that call for commercial yeast, you can either calculate how much flour and water/liquid you need to subtract, or else just add the flour/water slowly until it feels right, which is usually what I do for dough recipes anyway.