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Five-Day Birthday Weekend!
Jul. 20th, 2015 06:32 amIt's my birthday! All of a sudden I'm 39. And I get a five-day weekend for it! I took Monday and Tuesday as vacation from work, but Friday was a surprise: the project I've been working on got rave reviews from an important customer, and I was rewarded with an unexpected day off work. Hooray!
I didn't do much on Friday - slept in, cleaned the house a little, talked to Mikie, went for a run. Fell down during the run, unfortunately. And it wasn't the slow kind of fall where you have a few seconds to try to catch your balance; it was an abrupt headfirst dive. Most of the impact was on the top of my right shoulder. I could hear the fabric of my shirt scraping loudly along the pavement for several inches and was astonished to find afterward that my shirt was not torn or damaged in the least, even though the skin of my shoulder under my shirt was bloodied. That is impressively strong fabric. Not such impressively strong skin, unfortunately. But considering the angle of my fall, I guess I should just be glad that I somehow managed to avoid any direct impact between the pavement and my head.
Then on Saturday I went for a hike. Several hikes, actually. And that's what I'm going to spend the bulk of this post writing about. But before I get to that, I also want to say a little about the rest of the five-day weekend. On Sunday I went to my parents' house for presents and cake. Here's what I got:
Books:
Other Stuff:
While opening presents, I observed that there seemed to be an ethnic studies theme to the literature. My mother asked, "Isn't there always?" To some extent, yes, but usually there's an occasional novel or two by a standard-issue First-World Caucasian Person™ to make the theme a bit less obvious. Also sometimes there's less actual literature and more gardening/wildlife/food books so the trends within the literature are less evident. This time it appears I'm just blatantly culture-sampling.
I've already read the Chinua Achebe - I was assigned to read it, in high school, and didn't actually like it much at the time, but wanted to try again - but the other books are new to me.
For my actual birthday (Monday), I hope to manage a short outing by myself, and then on Tuesday I'm planning to go to the California State Fair with my parents and my brother.
Now, about Saturday. Basically I decided to wander around several parks in Nevada City. I looked at Google Maps, noted where the green patches indicating parks were, and noted the directions to all of them. I figured I wouldn't have time to actually go to all of them, but I wasn't sure which ones would end up being interesting, so I figured I'd just go spend time in each of them until I'd had enough and then move on to the next until I ran out of time. I only ended up going to two of them. I also ended up spontaneously wandering around the downtown area a bit. Really, I should spend more time in the Nevada City/Grass Valley area; it's only 45 minutes away from me and is far prettier than anywhere else within 45 minutes of me. (With the possible exception of the Sutter Buttes, but those can only be entered on guided hikes that cost significant money.) Plus, the people there are much less Republican than the people here! Marysville is full of cowboy hats and State of Jefferson bumper stickers; Nevada City and Grass Valley are full of rainbow tie-dye and every kind of left-wing bumper sticker imaginable. They are much more my scene than my own town is. Not that I actually own any rainbow tie-dye. But it would be easier to persuade me to wear rainbow tie-dye than to persuade me to wear a cowboy hat.
You can't really tell, but I decided to wear trail-running shoes. First time I've ever worn them. Didn't actually run much at all in them, since it turns out that running uphill while carrying three liters of water and assorted other supplies on my back is not actually fun. Also, I found that I really do not like my trail-running shoes. My feet ached all day long from lack of arch support. I'll have to put arch support inserts in them in the future.
And if you're thinking that this is an odd outfit to wear for either hiking or trail-running in the wilderness . . . well, I've never claimed not to be odd.
( The full tour! )
I didn't do much on Friday - slept in, cleaned the house a little, talked to Mikie, went for a run. Fell down during the run, unfortunately. And it wasn't the slow kind of fall where you have a few seconds to try to catch your balance; it was an abrupt headfirst dive. Most of the impact was on the top of my right shoulder. I could hear the fabric of my shirt scraping loudly along the pavement for several inches and was astonished to find afterward that my shirt was not torn or damaged in the least, even though the skin of my shoulder under my shirt was bloodied. That is impressively strong fabric. Not such impressively strong skin, unfortunately. But considering the angle of my fall, I guess I should just be glad that I somehow managed to avoid any direct impact between the pavement and my head.
Then on Saturday I went for a hike. Several hikes, actually. And that's what I'm going to spend the bulk of this post writing about. But before I get to that, I also want to say a little about the rest of the five-day weekend. On Sunday I went to my parents' house for presents and cake. Here's what I got:
Books:
- Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
- Brick Lane by Monica Ali
- The Devil That Danced on the Water by Aminatta Forna
- Arabian Nights and Days by Naguib Mahfouz
- Field Guide to Birds: Western Region by the National Audubon Society
- Citizen 13660 by Miné Okubo
- Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai
- Great Food Fast: Bob Warden's Ultimate Pressure Cooker Recipes by Bob Warden
- Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en
Other Stuff:
- California poppy seeds
- baby blue eye seeds
- bird's eye gilia seeds
- globe gilia seeds
- the CD The Messenger by Johnny Marr
- two atmospheric vacuum breakers for my garden hoses
While opening presents, I observed that there seemed to be an ethnic studies theme to the literature. My mother asked, "Isn't there always?" To some extent, yes, but usually there's an occasional novel or two by a standard-issue First-World Caucasian Person™ to make the theme a bit less obvious. Also sometimes there's less actual literature and more gardening/wildlife/food books so the trends within the literature are less evident. This time it appears I'm just blatantly culture-sampling.
I've already read the Chinua Achebe - I was assigned to read it, in high school, and didn't actually like it much at the time, but wanted to try again - but the other books are new to me.
For my actual birthday (Monday), I hope to manage a short outing by myself, and then on Tuesday I'm planning to go to the California State Fair with my parents and my brother.
Now, about Saturday. Basically I decided to wander around several parks in Nevada City. I looked at Google Maps, noted where the green patches indicating parks were, and noted the directions to all of them. I figured I wouldn't have time to actually go to all of them, but I wasn't sure which ones would end up being interesting, so I figured I'd just go spend time in each of them until I'd had enough and then move on to the next until I ran out of time. I only ended up going to two of them. I also ended up spontaneously wandering around the downtown area a bit. Really, I should spend more time in the Nevada City/Grass Valley area; it's only 45 minutes away from me and is far prettier than anywhere else within 45 minutes of me. (With the possible exception of the Sutter Buttes, but those can only be entered on guided hikes that cost significant money.) Plus, the people there are much less Republican than the people here! Marysville is full of cowboy hats and State of Jefferson bumper stickers; Nevada City and Grass Valley are full of rainbow tie-dye and every kind of left-wing bumper sticker imaginable. They are much more my scene than my own town is. Not that I actually own any rainbow tie-dye. But it would be easier to persuade me to wear rainbow tie-dye than to persuade me to wear a cowboy hat.
You can't really tell, but I decided to wear trail-running shoes. First time I've ever worn them. Didn't actually run much at all in them, since it turns out that running uphill while carrying three liters of water and assorted other supplies on my back is not actually fun. Also, I found that I really do not like my trail-running shoes. My feet ached all day long from lack of arch support. I'll have to put arch support inserts in them in the future.
And if you're thinking that this is an odd outfit to wear for either hiking or trail-running in the wilderness . . . well, I've never claimed not to be odd.
( The full tour! )
