General update

[luzula]

1) I met up with the Danish fans calvinahobbes, kabal42, oneiriad, ximeria, and blnchflr recently. We generally hung out, ate lots of food, watched vids, went to look at a castle, cuddled Calvina's ball of white fluff puppy, and watched the David Tennant/Catherine Tate version of Much Ado About Nothing. It was pretty great.

2) If you remember my auditing kerfuffle a year ago, I am in the middle of another one: the board wants to grab more power again. Rinse, repeat. Arrrrgh. You're probably not interested in the details. I am so looking forward to next year when I will not be auditor of this organization any more! OTOH, I feel good about the organization where I am on the board. But combined, I have a lot of organizational stuff right now. Also I am currently in three book clubs, although one is just for a single book and then it's over. Yeah, that's probably crazy.

3) I signed up for Yuletide, although I'm a little nervous about writing since I haven't written anything in a while. But I do have ideas for several of the sources I signed up to write, so that's a good sign.

4) I am soooo enthusiastic about tree climbing right now! ♥ I just wish I could do it on my own, so I'm not dependent on other people having the time/inclination/skills to do it with me. I mean, I could climb on my own, but what if something happened? Probably not a good idea.

5) I failed at modding ds_snippets this month. /o\ Possibly a sign that I have too much going on. I'll put up a new challenge for next week, anyway.

Comments

[seascribble]

...oops. But you have an entire team of co-mods who failed with you. We should get our lives together in the new year, huh?

[luzula]

Well, but you probably thought I was on top of things since it was my month, which I apparently wasn't. Ah well.

[jesse_the_k]

I am highly jealous of your tree-climbing explorations. I've hungered to climb from childhood, and I tried some, and I always froze around 3m above the ground. Only once I climbed with someone who was committed to making me feel safe, and I almost did, and I was 12 m up a fir tree admiring a green valley, and I concluded that I must come back as a hawk in my next life.

So what trees are you climbing? Do you use a safety rope? Do you end up with tarry hands?

[luzula]

Yes! Tree climbing is wonderful.

Apparently I lack all fear of heights, which is practical but I'm also afraid it might make me less careful. But I do feel like I know the safety procedures well, so I think I'm okay.

I've mostly climbed in oaks and beeches and other broadleaved trees, and I avoid pine trees (which are otherwise good) because I don't want pitch all over my ropes (or hands). I've used various methods: climbing up a single stationary rope using two prusik knots, climbing up a double rope (which is the main arborist technique, and my favorite), and once I'm up in the crown, I mostly use two alternating adjustable cowtails/lanyards for safety.

Someone said to me that what I'm doing isn't really climbing since I use the rope a lot to climb on and I'm not climbing the tree just with my body. But whatever, I don't care. I really love the problem-solving process of thinking about which technical solution is the most practical/safe/helpful in different situations, and I think that is a skill worth having in its own right.