Spine and Open

I just got back from 4 days of skiing at glorious Mt. Bachelor.  I had never skied more than 2 days in a row, I was skeptical about my ability to do 3 in a row, much less4.  We got there on Friday.  There were no clouds, you could see for miles, it was really warm, pretty much a day you only get blessed with once in a while.  That day the Summit chair was open, which takes you almost all the way up Bachelor’s 9,065 feet.  We pretty much rode this chair all day.  The fact that I hadn’t skied since January 2nd, combined with the fact that I am not at all used to being at 9,000 feet made me pretty loopy.  I had to lay down in the snow for a while.

Here’s a pic from Jen, of the bowl at the top of the mountain;

I skied in there!

I didn’t ski from the top, since I’m not a double diamond type of skier, but I skied from the middle and it was fun!  A really bizarre feeling with no trees around and just gliding through the remnants of a once super violent place. 

The next couple days the weather got worse (or better if you like the pow pow), which did mean some fresh snow on sunday and monday.  Sunday was the first time I attempted skiing 3 days in a row.  There had been some fresh snow, and towards the base (6,000 feet) it was really wet and hard to move through.  My first run is when I encountered this wet snow.  Of course I was kinda sore from beating my muscles for 2 days, I hadn’t even seen a green run.  Once deep in the wet snow, and just trying to get through it, I felt pain like I had never felt in my life.  I’ve played 6 lacrosse games in one day, I’ve ran in ridiculous relay races, surfed, done all kinds of activities that cause pain, but nothing like this.  It was as if all of the muscles in my legs and back cramped at once, and were just screaming.  I felt like I could hear them screaming.  I finally got to the end of the run, and explained to my ski buddies that I had never felt anything like that before.  We decided to hit some higher elevations to get away from the wet snow.  It worked.  I skied a ton that day.  The weird thing is that on monday, I felt pretty good, not great but pretty good - that was my fourth day of skiing in a row. 

We got back home at about 10 PM on monday night.  I woke up tuesday morning and rode my bike to work - not really sore at all.  How is that possible?  I think that run where I felt the screaming was like breaking some kind of deal with my body; it was asking If I really wanted to.  I think the deal is that my body has agreed to give me more strength as long as I take advantage.  So I’m moving forward with getting in shape for the ski to sea and for the northwest passage relay.  Thanks body and thanks Mt. bachelor for being so great.  Speaking of how great Bachelor is, they had these electronic ticket passes that track your runs, you can check in online, here are my final stats:

that's a lot of vertical!

Head over to space weather to get all the details of the satellite collision that ocurred 800 KM over Siberia.  There is a lot of room in space, you’d think something like this would not happen, but it did.

Some of the info from Space Weather’s sight:

The US Air Force Space Surveillance Radar in Texas reportedly detected echoes from the debris cloud when it passed over the facility on Feb. 11th. Spaceweather.com is streaming live audio from the radar, and it might be possible to hear echoes the next time debris passes overhead. Try listening on Thursday, Feb. 12th, between 4:14 pm and 4:24 pm CST (2214 - 2224 UT). That’s when Kosmos 2251 would have passed over the radar intact had the satellite not been shattered.

Yes that’s right 3:14 to 3:24 (Cascadia time) you could hear space debris on the space radio.  AWESOME!

Here’s what a pentagon official had to say,  “It’s an unfortunate incident that highlights the importance of cooperation and collaboration in space.”  Yeah, the pentagon wasn’t aware of the impending collision.

It came in the mail, the 2009 Territorial Seeds Catalog, now with 225 new varieties.  Hello - I do not NEED 225 more varieties to chose from, it is hard enough!!!

Now those of you that are gardeners or know gardeners, will find nothing new about my post.  For the rest of you, I will try to explain the drama, joy, bargaining, and ultimately, hard truths that a gardener goes through when planning their crops.

The seed catalog arriving is a time of joy.  There has been time to reflect upon successes and failures from last year.  I sit down with my catalog and my gardening journal and start writing down what I need.  Golden Beets, I don’t like them, but I’d love to grow them for those who do.  I stayed up late looking at the catalog.  I made myself put it down and try to go to sleep.

I’ve been reading books on self sufficiency and I have plans.  New garden plans.  There will be so much room for crops and new flowers, to attract the bees, for proper pollination, and delicious herbs for cooking with……

Just writing about it, you see I don’t have very much room, I live in a city - I already tore up the lawn and converted it to garden, but I’m not ready to move on to bargaining yet.  I think I’ll let myself have more joy and let the list of plants NEEDED get really out of hand.  Maybe instead of real scientific bargaining, I’ll cut each plant out, throw in a hat and pick 15.  We’ll see what happens.

Of Spines and Wide Open Spaces was going to be the title of Half Light’s (then functioning under the name Opunita) first CD.  The thing was Opuntia did not have that many songs at the time, or a real band.   So Before Half Light’s first CD came out, another local band called their album Spine to Sea.  I had to be different of course.  Here is a picture that reminded me of the abandoned album title, and it’s condensed version which has taken on new life as the theme of this here bloggity blog.

West texas, New Mexico???

I took this picture in October of 2006 while on tour with the Purrs.  We were headed from Austin to Tuscon, and coming upon these mountains was really nice, because West Texas is pretty flat.  I’m not sure if we were in Texas or New Mexico, but this is one of my favorite pictures from the 100 or so that were taken on tour.  I really enjoy the sky.

I have an update regarding my disillusionment with what I call Deathcake 2.0.  I sent Cupcake Royale an e-mail begging them to bring back the original deathcake.  Les than 24 hours later, I received a great response from them.  While I may still be in disagreement, I was impressed that they got back to me with a personal and caring response.  When is the last time you got customer service like that?  For me it’s been a long time.  Here is the response from Jessie at Cupcake Royale (I assume female - but just like my name, Jessie can go either way.  Jessie I apologize if I assumed your gender incorrectly) -

“Hi Dayna,

I’m so sorry to hear you don’t love the new Deathcake!  We are all super excited to have a new, cupcake-ier manifestation of death-by-chocolate meets Cupcake Royale.  We use the same bold Stumptown espresso ganache as last year, only this time, instead of a thin outer layer, it’s a dark, luscious truffle deep inside the cake-y interior.  And on top, we have decadent waves, piled extra high, of the same super dark Theo Chocolate ganache.  Altogether with our fudgey new chocolate cupcake,  we are in love this chocolate treat.  Our biggest complaint about last year’s Deathcake is that it just wasn’t a cupcake, and that’s what we always wanted it to be - the absolute ultimate chocolate cupcake.  As a cupcake bakery, we really don’t want to be in the business of making painstakingly elaborate, super pricey desserts.  After 2 years of experimenting, the discovery of a method to cram that much chocolate and coffee goodness into one magical cupcake was like a life changing moment for us.  A baker’s miracle, even.

I too, was an avid fan of the squared off version, but have been quickly converted by the deliciousness of this cupcake beast.  I sure hope you are too, but if not, I do understand, and I sincerely apologize for any Valentine disappointment it may have caused you.

Cheers,
Jessie”

At least now I understand, and judging by the picture on their website, they have made a little modification to the deathcake 2.0 that I tried, specifically - there is much more of the espresso part:

that does look good...

I  felt that, now that I know where to find the hidden treasure, you could probably cut this guy into 6 parts and get 6 bites with all of the goodies deathcake has to offer.  I wrote to Jessie to ask permission to include her response in my blog, and to let her know that I plan to try another cupcake with my new splitting strategy and she said,

“Yay!  Just let me know when and where you want to give the new deathcake another try, and there will be one waiting with your name on it, on the house.   And feel free to post my reply on your blog.”

I thought that was pretty nice.  And, I have no intention to swindle a hard working local company out of $ they deserve for chocolate, but I will buy another deathcake, probably tonight.  And thank you Cupcake Roayle, for that little thing called customer service.  

Thanks to space weather’s simple satellite tracker, I have been informed that we should be able to see the International Space Station tonite in Seattle - if the clouds hold off of course.

space sightings tonite

You can see that the transit time for the space station is only 3 minutes, so you can’t really mess up with your timing.  I’ve seen the fly by once and it was super cool.  For those of you directionally challenged, here in Seattle look roughly towards the Olympic mountains and in the general direction of Canada.  You should see a bright, small, fast moving light head across the sky over towards the eastside.  This time the ISS will be at a pretty high elevation too, almost straight above (instead of close to the horizon).  I think I will time my bike commute so that I’ll be hitting the ballard bridge at 5:27, it is pretty open there so I should get a great look.    Anyone else?  Bridge party?

I heard a rumor that Deathcake was out a day early.  I called cupcake royale, and they were in.  I started running around the house freaking out, grabbing my coat, and as much cash as I could I find.  In a moment of complete disregard for almost everything I believe in, I got a ride to the store.  I needed to get there fast, and I needed my precious cargo to get home intact - the bike ride would have destroyed their beauty.  I am sorry polar bears.

Lucky for me there was not a huge line for cupcakes like there usually is.  I got to the front of the line, “I am here for deathcake.”

“How many do you want?”

“Four.”  The deathcakes they gave me, did not look like the beauties in the post below.  For one they look like a cupcake.

I thought the layers of cake and ganache were tucked inside the wrapper.  You know, the economy is tough, cost of goods is high, they just scaled the thing down, no problem.  I got home, I peeled back the wrapper no layers.  I thought, well this frosting stuff on top better be really good.  It was ok.  I got a hint of the espresso, but none of the deep dark ganache I remembered.  This new version 2.0 deathcake is an imposter.

The old deathcake, it was made with love.  You could tell that the person(s) that created it, and delicately put it together, had a well-thought out and well-lived devotion to chocolately goodness.  This person(s) did not even consider milk chocolate chocolate, they laughed at anything under 60% cocoa.    Deathcake 2.0, 2009 release is really cute.  Someone spent a lot of time on the application of the frosting.  But its not the same thing.  One can easily eat the whole thing in one sitting, and never get the chocolate high.

Dear cupcake royale, please bring me joy!  Please do away with this imposter deathcake and bring back the real one.  You can charge me more money, you can cut the size in half.  I don’t care; the real Deathcake made February ok.  Now, well I’m just disappointed.

Deathcake.  I remember the first time I heard about Deathcake…” with layers of chocolate decadence, espresso ganache, and chocolate cake, all drizzled with dark chocolate ganache.”  It is like death by chocolate on steroids.  It is so much chocolatey yumminess that it is actually hard for a complete chocoholic like me (I probably put away at least 1 ounce of 70% or higher chocolate per day) to finish in one sitting.

OMG - stop drooling

I called cupcake royale about a week ago, because I  hadn’t heard anything about deathcake yet.  They assured me it would be available starting Feb.1.  Right now, you can preorder yours.  They are usually only available until Valentines Day.  The existence of Deathcake Royale probably makes up for the existence of valentines day entirely.

On New Year’s Eve this year I really wanted to listen to Phish and hippy dance with my bare feet on the large faux fur rug.  I counted on my friend Charlie to help and join me on the adventure.  I think this is how it went:

10 of us were staying at a house near Mount Baker.  9 of us had gone out for a snowy walk in the neighborhood.  I realized I was really cold and that I wanted to dance.  I knew Cmonster was at the house, I broke from the group ran in and asked Cmonster if we could listen to “David Bowie” (one of my favorite phish songs).  Cmonster got out the ipod and set it up, I ran upstairs and got the fake rug, brought it downstairs in front of the fire, and the hippy dance party begun.  Sometime during one of the tunes, Cmonster asked me if I remembered where I was on new year’s 10 years ago.  I did not.  He reminded me that we had gone to New York to see Phish’s new years run.  WOW.  10 years ago.  We were dating at the time.  We went to his niece’s sweet 16 party.

Since then, I purchased 2 CDs from the New Years run we were at.   I did actually not remember at all, being in New York in 1998, we did some research and discovered it was the New Years run for 1997.  Contrary to what I said in my post about online journaling, I need to show a picture from a journal:

written @ Penn Station 1997

The shows on the left are the phish shows that Charlie had been to, and the ones on the right the ones I had been to.  Charlie remembered that we wrote this, sitting on the floor in Penn Station.  Since then, I had found the rest of the shows I went to, and all of the setlists (here’s an excerpt):

All shows and some of the setlists

Yes, I flew specifically to the East Coast to see Phish at Camden, for one of their last shows.  I can not really express how great it was to see Lawn Boy and Frankenstein as my last 2 live phish songs.  I made this list yesterday, and I was really unsure about the George shows in 1998.  The setlists seemed familiar, but I really didn’t recall going there, but I did remember tons about the 99 run with the Portland show.  I asked Charlie, did I really go to these shows in 1998?  He had a really great answer, “Yes. You did go. I remember because we had recently broken up and when we were camping, you had on pajama pants I’d never seen before and I realized they were from the guy you were dating by then. And man did I not like that.”

This statement reminded me of the great power a bruised heart has to remember.  Last weekend, their was an after party at my house and someone had put on Love and Rockets “Seventh Dream of Teenage heaven,” one of my favorite records.  The song “Saudade” came on and I was inundated with memories, 17 year old memories, memories I could smell and taste!  I knew so many times and places, at first magically, then painful that I had listened to that song.  Thank you broken heart.

Tonite was yet another sample of,  “I usually don’t want to go out, but I’m always glad I did.”  Tonite’s agenda was pizza at Stellar pizza,  followed by music at the Squid and Ink.  I would have been great with just the pizza, then home by 9 and in bed early, but I wanted to see some friends play.  The music was really great and inspiring.  Jim and Barb were super killer on acoustic guitar and cello and vocal harmonies.  I loved all of the songs they played.  I also got to hear tunes from Herman Jolly and Black Night Crash’s Jim, who also turned in great sets.

Lucky for me, I had a similar experience about a week ago.  I had been to shows on thursday, friday, and saturday night, but some friends were playing on sunday night, and as much as the couch was calling to me, I had to go to the show.  I got to see Nathan Wade and the Dark Pioneers rock an amazing set.  I bought their EP have not been able to stop listening to it.  Nathan’s voice is somewhere between Jeff Buckley and Robert Plant, and that is not something that should be said lightly.  As an added bonus, Nathan is a killer guitar player - and the band is amazing too.  Next I got to see Bill Patton fill in with Whiting Tennis.  Bill sat back and played tasty pedal steel until about 1/2 way through a tune, when he all of a sudden set out on an amazing pedal steel solo, including breaking a string. I’m not used to seeing pedal players break strings.  It was great.  The night ended with C-monster and I sharing a plate of fries at the People’s Pub.

Yeah, relaxing and sleep are nice, but rock n roll always wins.