high hopes laid low

Well, all my high hopes for Advent have been postponed for the moment while I try to shake a round of GI mess that hit me yesterday. I'll spare everyone the gory details, but sufficing to say that my Christmas tree is still sitting on the porch, the closest containing my ornaments hasn't been touched, and I spent most of yesterday asleep on the couch. I've already had to cancel one shindig due to this which I hate because I long for meaningful Advent celebrations and with me sick on the couch and not a single bit of my Christmas things out it doesn't feel festive around here one bit. I'm hoping that tomorrow/Saturday I can finally get around to these things, but for now I'm just figuring that God wants to teach me a bit about relying on Him for my strength and not myself. It's a thing I ignore all too often and getting smacked flat on my rumpus the day after telling a kindly concerned husband that I would just push through and get it all done (who knows how) makes me think that God had a few lessons for me to learn. Not that I think God just goes around smacking people, but I can be pretty stubborn sometimes. At any rate I've had amply time to reflect on the proverb that a man might set out on a walk one day, but it's the Lord who chooses his steps. I'm just hoping I can feel better and get some work done tomorrow. Thanksgiving + sickness + mad present shopping have made a hash of my plans for the week - and possibly of my immune system.

pincushion in underpants

I remember Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes fame) saying something to the affect that the doctor saw him as a pink pincushion in underpants. Well, I can relate. There's something about needles that gives me the heebie jeebies. Can't stand the things. Just thinking about them can make my stomach turn. Yeah, lovely confession for a self-proclaimed grown-up. It's not the pain (which is minimal). There's just some sort of icky gross-out factor that churns my stomach. But, I made an appointment. Tuesday. Nine vials. Fasting. It's bad enough of a full stomach, but you're going to stress me while I have low blood sugar? Jeesh. The doctor he lied to me. He said we probably wouldn't have to do the whole thing again. We'd just do a touch-up. Uh-huh.

Oh well, at least I'm not one of those people forced into getting used to needles. My head is pretty rational about the whole thing. I just wish it could convince my stomach.

Gut reactions? Not always helpful.

Back to my roots

The past couple weekends Allen and I have enjoyed going back to our roots and spending Saturday afternoon rooting for the home team. That happens to be Auburn for anyone reading this who happens to know anything about SEC football. It's kind of nice. We pull the game up on ESPN.com and share a moment with all our friends and family back in Alabama who tend to keep an ear to the game. And hey, it's a good year to be an Auburn fan. They're number 1 ranked right now, and looking good.

It's not the way I wanted to spend my weekend. I wanted to go off to see the fall colors that I've heard are about peak in parts of the eastern Sierras. But since I haven't been able to shake this darn cold of mine Allen sort of made an executive decision in favor of staying home. It's not surprising. I was actually looking at getting a hotel for the night and not camping at all. I'm the girl who takes her tent down into the 20's and loves it. I plan week long trips over Thanksgiving. I really, really enjoy camping. So when Allen hears me start talking about hotels in conjunction with me telling him how tired I am and how I'm not looking forward to the 6-8 drive I'm contemplating......He said maybe we could go next week if there's still any color in the mountains. The eastern side isn't my favorite anyway. It's a lot dryer than the western Sierras albeit more dramatic. I'm really missing our autumns back east. Aspens might be pretty, but they aren't a replacement for seeing all the oaks and maples turning along the creek down at the farm.

So we watch football and think about home. It's a good life out here, but it's still mainly just California. This time of year especially, home is back east.

Happy Birthday to me!

Yep, it's my birthday. Went and gave a lecture on Austen's Pride and Prejudice, bought some yarn, and hung out with a friend at Stanford. Tonight there will be steak and coconut spice cake. It's been a good day.

Also, I am wearing a new (and wonderfully cobalty) plaid shirt I found at Ross. Life is good.

moving forward

Got to talking with what I hope will turn out to be a new friend and discovered that there's a classical Christian school that's hiring for the school year. After calling them I decided not to apply, but I did discover an opportunity to volunteer at the school and hopefully learn something of classical Christian educational methods from the inside. As for why I didn't apply, there were several reasons.

1. They had already found a candidate for they position they liked and for whom they were preparing a job offer. Throwing myself into the mix would only have prolonged the uncertainty right before the school year started and probably unnecessarily so. Which brings me to my next two points.

2. Practically no experience teaching a class. I've tutored and things of that sort, but I've never led a class in my life. Some people would just jump right in and give it a try, and if they hadn't already had a candidate they liked I might have been tempted to myself. However I really do better knowing my boundaries and having a somewhat clear idea of what my limits are. I prefer to grow slowly rather than by constantly flinging myself from one cliff after another to test my wings.

3. The final reason I decided not to apply is because I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to jump immediately into full time employment. Having found out about the position less than 24 hours previously I didn't feel confident of making a decision like that so quickly.

However, the headmaster did send me a volunteer application. This excites me tremendously because I can get some training and insight into how classical education works and hopefully use that knowledge either when we have kids or when I decide to look for a job myself. I'm somewhat passionate about education, but until I learned about classical methods I never found anything I could stomach long enough to get the necessary credentials to teach. Instead of spending a significant amount of money and time getting credentials in a pedagogy that I personally find appalling just so I could try and leverage that into a foundation for the kind of teaching position I would like to have I can (hopefully) volunteer at this school and get the sort of foundation I would need to later teach there or at another school of that type. I've been wondering what my next step needed to be, and I think I just might have found it.

Anyway, I need to go to bed 'cause tomorrow will be a long day. I've got some of Allen's friends coming over for supper, and I decided there would be lots of lovely lemony cake to go around. That means I need to get some sleep tonight, so I don't fall asleep over the lemon curd tomorrow afternoon.

Must read Shakespeare

Have you read Much Ado About Nothing lately? If so you really need to read it. Seriously. Go pick up your old Norton Anthology (or I bet you could even find it on-line) and read it. It's pretty much the best Shakespeare play ever. After you've read it go check out Kenneth Branagh's movie version. Or you could do what I did. Check out the movie from the library. Read Peter Leithart's commentary on the play. Pick up my Norton Anthology and read the play. Watch the movie again and discover that Beatrice and Benedict really do make one of the best love stories of all time. The introduction to my Norton tried to argue that Beatrice and Benedict don't really love each other, but in my opinion that's a whole lot of tosh. That critic has probably never flirted in his or her life - or at least never flirted with half the wit it takes to read a Shakespeare play. There's also a lot of good stuff in there about loyalty, wisdom, love, and honesty. Just compare how Claudio and Benedict behave towards their friends and their sweethearts. Plus, for Shakespeare it's quite readable. Got to love the insults. No one can write a good insult like Shakespeare.

been thinking some more

I believe my blogging comes in fits and spurts. Sometimes I write down everything. Sometimes I have to chew on things for a long time. There's a mental gestation process as I examine the world around me and seek to discover how I fit into it and where my work should be in it. This past season has been a busy one full of growth and challenges. I've hosted quite a bit of company of both the dinner and house guest varieties. I've planned more than a couple trips for myself and others. I've started to stumble into new routines and new ways of thinking. I have new friends and new goals. I'm loosing weight for pretty much the first time in 4 years. I'm seeking out ministry opportunities in places where I never thought I'd look. In short, I'm constantly picking myself up and catapulting again and again into that insane circus of life.

And now I'm thinking that it's time I started writing again. Today will be busy, but I'm going to try and get a couple thinking posts up by the end of the week. We'll see :)

getting by with some help from vimeo

I've realized that I have to actively pursue mental engagement if I'm ever going to get anything done around this place. It's not enough for me to close the computer and put down the book and put on a rousing round of folk songs, I have to have something to focus my brain on while I'm picking up the living room and such. Sometimes I forget and try to muscle through the fog of refracted thoughts bouncing around inside my head. Doesn't work so well. So I'm off to wrap my head around some exegesis of Romans - good hearty reformed stuff that should pair nicely with a clean living room :)

Snowshoe therapy

Seems like my posting has become more sporadic of late. I went through a depressed spell for a while where I was struggling to get things done. Fortunately life seems to be on an upswing for the moment. Getting out into the woods really helped. This past weekend Allen and I went back up to Yosemite for some snowshoeing. Neither one of us had ever been on snowshoes before, and we ended up having a lot of fun. We got to the campground around 10:30, but setting up took a little longer than we expected. For one thing there was about 6 inches of snow on the ground. Hmmmm. Out came the snowshoes, and we got our first taste of snowshoeing tramping down a smooth place to set up the tent. Second hmmmm. There was still too much snow for the tent stakes to grab well. Since I didn't have any sort of snow anchor I ended up improvising with a pair of stakes. I pounded on in as usual and hooked a second stake to it that would lay horizontally, packed snow all around the stakes, and horizontal surface area was enough to the corners to hold. I admit I have a blast with this sort of mildly creative problem solving while out camping. Later, in our sleeping bags, Allen remarked that it's a lot of fun watching me come alive when we start setting up camp. It's true. All those times I'd tell Allen to fire up the stove while I set up the tent. He'd heat up supper while I was happily (baring the truly unrepentant rock) pounding in tent stakes.

The next morning we woke up, fixed lunch, outfitted our day packs, and headed up for Badger Pass. It had rained that night in the valley, and all the way up we saw great clumps of fresh snow ornamenting the pine trees. Once at the trail head we grabbed our snowshoes and headed out to Dewey Point -seven miles round trip. Looking at pictures of winter trails I used to wonder why no one ever went tramping off trail through all that lovely snow. Now, I know. Unless there's a healthy crust on the stuff, snowshoes or no, you'll still sink in to mid-calf, and breaking trail is hard work. The other thing I didn't realize was just how warm you can get snowshoeing. With memories of playing in the snow at Wolf Pass with my family filling the back of my mind I donned two base layers, a fleece pullover, rain/wind jacket, hat, and gloves. Within minutes I had skinned out of my jacket, and by the time we reached the Dewey Pt trail proper I was down to my base layer top and had stashed my hat and gloves in my pack. I ended up losing my hat somewhere on the trail :( It was new too. Hopefully someone will turn it in. Anyway, even having stashed most of my layers I still got warm whenever we had a pull uphill. As for pants, Allen had found some cheap rain pants that ended up working like a dream for keeping wind and wet snow from getting us cold.

We ate our midday snack in a pretty meadow maybe a third of the way in on the Dewey Point trail before pressing on towards the point. Seeing everyone coming back towards up from the point we wondered if we were just a little bit crazy going on as we were, but when we got to the point....You come out on top of the south rim of Yosemite Valley just opposite El Capitan with a perfect view of Half Dome partially shrouded with feathery clouds that gravely danced in and out of the valley. Looking west you could see the outlines of tents perched on the shoulder on a hill with what must have been unbelievable views of the sunset reflected of Half Dome and the following moonrise over the cliffs. We sat on our blue foam pads contemplating the view and eating our sandwiches. I saw someone appear on the edge of the hill as if having emerged from one of the tents. Maybe next year I could think of a trip like that. For now I had to be content with watching the sky changing colors above the fringe of evergreens that grew up along the meadows we passed through on our way back down the trail. We hit the main trail back down the mountain just before sunset and spent a few minutes appreciating the modern convenience located close to the trail head. Getting back on the trail we realized just how close we'd come to hiking the last half mile in ever deepening twilight. Here on the main trail, which was really a summer roadbed groomed for skiing we'd have no difficulty navigating downhill to the car. Out in the woods we'd have been following tracks back, and that's never my favorite way to travel a new trail at night. We got back to the car an hour after sunset with only a little aid from Allen's new headlamp. Overall a very successful trip.

The next day we drove around the valley, walked the short trail to Yosemite Falls for a third time (saw deer tracks), wrote postcards, and took lots of pictures. Then we broke camp, showered at Curry, and headed back towards home after taking a short detour to the swinging bridge in Wawona. That's where my knee started acting up. I think I must have turned my foot wrong or something when went off trail. Somehow I strained the side of my knee. At least I was persuaded we should head home instead of hiking more. Including a stop for bbq we got home around 10pm, so we really didn't need to linger any longer however much the glow of lowering sun on snow tempted me.

I can't wait to go back there again. I'm hoping to get in another couple of trips before the snow melts. Then one more trip in the spring, and afterward I'll probably be turning my attention to less popular parks until fall arrives. There are so many lovely places to go, and I'm blessed to live this close to so many of them.

lovely technology

I was thinking the other day about all the things I can do more easily with a computer and internet plus access to netflix and iTunes. I can read books on-line through Project Gutenberg , listen to lectures on Christian history or Old English through iTunes, watch movies on netflix, get recipes and workout videos for free all over the place. This all on top of e-mail and blogging and shopping on-line. I must admit that my recent infatuation with the internet comes from my new work out resolution. I can get resistance training routine on-line, yoga and pilates on netflix, and even more yoga video podcasts on iTunes. Don't got to go the gym. Don't got to buy a dvd and hope it's good. Don't got to go the library and then remember to take it back to the library and be stuck doing serially different routines every week. I've basically got those whole archive of fitness routines I can access at will. It's pretty awesome. Also, the lectures. Oh, my soul, the lectures. I've been listening Reformed Theological Seminary's series on the history of the Puritans, and it's been quite interesting. I've been needing to get my head and my body out of the ruts I've fallen into, and I'm just thrilled I can do both without spending any more money.

Anyway, that's my panegyric on internet access. Thank you lovely people who make it all work.

Happy New Years with a box of tissues

Hi folks! Sorry I haven't been posting for a while, but Christmas got extremely busy, and what with all the seasonal germs getting together with the seasonal pie eating I've come down with a cold. So I'm holed up on my mother-in-law's couch drinking tea and postponing packing as long as possible. Tomorrow we start the grand road trip to Dallas to visit Allen's great-grandmother, and I'm really hoping that I'll feel a bit more human by tomorrow morning. With seven people in a seven passenger van for ten hours this is not the time to be hacking up your lungs onto someone else's neck. Anyway, we've had a lovely but busy Christmas and are once again looking forward to being back home.

Hope everyone enjoys their New Year's celebrations!

Counting down the miles

Pretty soon Allen and I will scrunched up in economy class trying to catch a couple hours of sleep as we count down the miles to Christmas at home. Finally, mercifully, it's all starting to come together. The box of gifts has been sent off -possibly too late for the family gathering on Saturday but in plenty of time for Christmas, but that's not a total disaster since I've got a few more goodies tucked into my suitcase. The living room is lived in clean, by which I mean there's a plate here and some strayed kitchen towels there. Again, nothing disastrous. Similar could be said for most of the apartment with the exception of the back bedroom which has been the staging area for numerous Christmas intrigues and looks the worse for it.

For Advent we have eaten steak and pumpkin pie and homemade soup and leftover turkey sandwiches with lovely wines to smooth out the edges. I've decorated my tree, strung lights, lit candles, and decorated gingerbread cookies. All this and it's still a week before Christmas. It's easy for me to think about the lovely things I'd love to do for Christmas -more handcrafting for instance - and lose sight of the things I have done. A year ago I couldn't have imagined that I would celebrate the holidays with such a relatively low amount of stress. Life, breathing, is coming easier to me. Some of that has unfolded in the Christmas decorations around me and the presents wrapped and under the tree waiting for Epiphany when Allen and I, returned again to this new land, will finish the Christmas season together with all the abundance that overflowed our boxes and suitcases. I've done pretty well for a girl who started the year with as much overwhelming guilt and unredeemed pain as I did. And now I'm sitting here counting down the hours until a friend from church picks us up and takes us to the airport so we can go home for Christmas. It's been an amazing journey.

To everyone else out there seeking beauty, grace, and rest -Merry Christmas.

Advent

The past week has been simultaneously very busy, very good, and very disconcerting. As for the very busy and very good parts I've found that I've had a lot more energy lately. I'm getting up earlier and getting more stuff done. My bedroom is so neat it almost feels like a hotel room, and we put together our 15ft bookcase in the living room. On top of that I've put up the tree, cooked, gone Christmas shopping, and in general gotten more work done in one week than I used to get done in a single month during some of my bad spells. I'm doing really well, and there is a part of me that finds this very disconcerting. I'm finding myself scrambling for the guilt and angst that have been my environment for the past only God knows how many years. True rest eludes me as my mind casts itself back and forth seeking its old companions. I know that I'm doing vastly better than ever before -I'm feeling better, doing more, and in general more comfortable with myself as an autonomous individual. I know all this, but I'm heaving and gasping like a flatlander in the Alps. I've breathed the air of guilt and insufficiency for so long that don't know what to do now that I'm breathing purer air. That's really what it feels like. I know that everything is going well and that I should be resting and enjoying my labors, but I feel so restless. Allen says I'm learning new habits and won't feel so lost for long, but I never expected that getting better would feel like wandering over some unmarked border where suddenly everyone speaks a different language. It's rather disconcerting.

and right into advent

We appear to have slid ride down the Thanksgiving Day slide only to land in the ball pit of Advent. There's no reprieve this year from all the festive food slinging -no week to spend stretching your belts and digging out your loose fitting pants. It's a turkey sandwich in one hand and gingerbread men in the other. Merciful heavens I don't know how exactly this is going to work. I spend so much time getting ready for Thanksgiving, and now I'm already behind on Christmas. It feels that way anyway. So instead of spending a leisurely day tomorrow running the laundry and in general recovering from the Thanksgiving rush I'm going to be rearranging my living room so that we can go get a tree to put up Tuesday. Since I also wanted to have my new bookcase put together by Christmas I'm going to be clearing out room in the living room tomorrow so that when we come home tomorrow with our Christmas tree we can start on that. SO! This week I'm going to put together a bookcase, decorate my Christmas tree, clean up the apartment, finish shopping for Christmas presents, and try to do at least one Christmas-y thing for myself. Oof. I need a nap.

satisfactory resolution

Yesterday I had the curtains of doom, and today I had the phone call of despair. Fortunately both situations resolved themselves, but I had a good little time of it until they did. First, the curtains of doom. A while back I bought some lovely cream colored gauzy material to make sheers for the bedroom. Since we live on the ground floor with people walking by during the day it's can feel a bit exposed with the blinds open. It's also dark if you leave the blinds closed. Hence the sheers. Well I finally decided I was going to go ahead and get my bedroom curtains up. So first I sat down and very carefully trimmed the fuzzy edges off the selvage. Then I ran a line of fray check down the side just to make sure. Then I thought about how on earth I was going to get that gauzy stuff to lay flat and square for me to measure it out. Then I thought about trying to roll any sort of hem before the edges unraveled under my fingers. Fortunately I wanted my curtains to pool on the floor just a bit. You serious seamstresses may cringe here, but I plopped my fabric on the ironing board and eyeballed a strip of fusing right across it, trimmed the excess, turned the edge under, and ironed. I measured my length from the hem, ran another strip across to fasten the bottom of the sleeve, then measured again and ran another length across the top to turn the raw edge under. I trimmed and turned the top raw edge, ironed it down, then brought the turned edge down the fusing to make a sleeve. I ran off four panels this way before adjourning to my sewing machine to run a straight stitch down each of my "seams" to hold them in place. Normally I think the fusing would hold the fabric, but the weave on this stuff was so loose it wouldn't hold the fusing very well. Fairly straightforward to tell, but it took me at good 30min per curtain just to get all the ironing and trimming done. However, now I have nice, soft, full, draping sheers in my bedroom. They filter the light beautifully and are a soft, almost delicate counterbalance to all the sturdy wood furniture in there. I'm glad I went to the trouble, but I'm not so sure I would do it again in a hurry.

To my next bit of perplexity - I wrote a while back that Allen and I had made reservations up in redwood country for Thanksgiving weekend. Well today I got a phone call saying that California had decided to close that park for the season or something like that. I can't say I understand myself why they don't just raise their prices and/or run their parks more efficiently. I really don't believe that California's budget problems are due to someone leaving the faucet on at their local campground. Anyway, I got that call this morning. Hours of searching for a suitable campground for naught -and the week before Thanksgiving too when all the parks are either closed for the winter or bang full up with reservations. I was perturbed. To put it mildly. With a tent I'm a little less ambivalent about trying to get a site on busy weekends than I would be with an RV. At least with an RV you can always have pretty good odds of boondocking for the night if you can't get a site. It's harder to do that with a tent. Thank the Lord though when I was searching I came across a private campground in that same area that wasn't full, took reservations, and was close to all the areas we wanted to see. I had a bad hour or two of it wondering if we'd be scrapping our Thanksgiving plans, but it looks like we won't have to now. Thank the Lord.

taking the lazy river of indecision

Yesterday the counselor said I need to start basically being more conscious about how I live my day ie not letting facebook happen all day but deciding what I want to be doing at any particular moment. Result? It's a quarter after one, and I've only had a small piece of cheese to eat. And yes I'm hungry. MAKING DECISIONS IS CRAZY SCARY CRAP! Even though he told me I could decide to do whatever I wanted to do I had to actually decide. If I was on FB I needed to decide to be on FB for half and hour or something and then make a new decision after that time was up (even if I decided to stay on FB). Somehow that added up to me not even being able to decide to get something to eat. Yeah. Paralyzed of making wrong decisions? Even when there aren't supposes to be any wrong decisions? YES!!! My problem is that I don't want to decide to do dumb stuff like read on-line comics for hours at a time. I want to decide to do good stuff -like scrub the entire apartment :D But I don't want to scrub the apartment. I want to make a (very belated) smoothie and work on my bedroom. And yet because that means deciding not to worry about the dishes that need doing and the laundry that needs folding and the bathroom that needs scrubbing I find myself unable to decide to do anything. And since I'm not doing anything I might as well read internet comics while I'm just sitting here. Yeah, come live inside this head for a while. You'd be a bit kooky too ;)

Ok, enough ranting. I'm going to give this at least one shot today. The counselor said this was going to be pretty emotionally exhausting, and I think I believe him. I already warned Allen that emotional exhaustion was probably going to translate into frozen food from Trader Joe's.

Ok, for real, going to get up and do something. I think. Damn, this is scary. And it looks so easy when other people do it.

Out and about

Took our bikes off to the library today and came home with panniers full. Kind of interesting when you go run your errands on a bike. Walked out of the store with this huge duffle bag we bought to replace the one we lost around Moab and for a moment we weren't sure if we could get both it and the library books home. However, bike bungie cord cargo rack doohicky to the rescue! Got all the books, the duffle bag (yuppy plaid, but hey it's what they had), cookies, the water bottles, and tomorrow's sausage home all in one piece.

stuffed feelings don't shout in your face

The past few weeks have really been a time of very intense processing for me. I've realized that in the past I've had trouble voicing my feelings, desires, and hurts. So many times when I thought I was expressing my feelings (like on this blog) I was either making intellectual statements (ie "I think") or making excuses for other people (ie "they didn't realize"). So rarely do I ever say simply "this hurts." If you put a huge pile of guilt and perfectionism on top of that you sort of have my everyday life. Pretty exhausting. And it plays out in the strangest ways. For instance, lately I've been thinking it would be all kinds of fun to try backpacking for a few nights. Allen says he's up for it, so away I go researching lightweight sleeping pads, wind/rain shells, water filtration systems..... the whole kit and caboodle. At first it's fun. "Hey look, REI has their BA insulated air core pads on sale right now -let's sit down and have a talk about how we see ourselves camping in the future." In a way research kind of appeals to me. But then I find myself spending five or more hours a day (yes I said a day) trying to find the perfect wind/rain jacket that's breathable, lightweight, inexpensive, etc. I need to get this right. Things will be very wrong if I don't get this right. Because of various influences I can be highly tempted to point of being absolutely compelled to sit down at the computer and painstakingly research water filters or vacation destinations while dishes and laundry pile up around me. By the time I tear myself away I'm stuck feeling lethargic and guilty with a huge pile of work that I am now mentally ill-quipped to handle. It's no fun. And now that I'm trying to express my feelings and really work though some of this junk I feel sort of like a roller coaster that's lost it's brakes. For instance, I often feel very apologetic about stuff like having a bad day or wanting to do something, and I hate feeling the need to compulsively apologize for stupid things. I really, really hate it. Lately I've found myself apologizing for stupid things and then feeling resentful about it. And if my counselor is right about anger often masking unhealed wounds then I' guessing this will only stop once we've gotten to the festering, bleeding core of things. I thought I had gotten the anger out of my system a long time ago, and here it is coming back. It's like picking at a scab that won't quite heal. I don't like feeling this way. Of course this is where my counselor would be asking "feeling what way?" Anger and resentment are pretty ugly emotions. I suppose I would say that I don't want to be feeling my feelings. And then we get back to where I was when I started going to counseling. It seems like I have to feel the feelings to get through all this and become the stronger Natalie that I hope to be one day. It's just that this stretch of the road is kind of bumpy right now.

Happy birthday to me

More later - Allen is just back with the candles, and it's now birthday cake time!

getting out of hand

Looks like the camping obsession is getting out of hand. Yeah I don't know what I'm talking about either since we haven't been camping since we went to Yosemite over a month ago. But lately it seems like I can't get away from looking at camping gear and planning what gear to get next. I just ordered a couple of mummy bags to replace/upgrade the super huge two person sleeping bag we've been dragging around with in an effort to assemble gear that we could conceivably take on a one or two night backpacking trip. Anyway I was really excited to have found some good sleeping bags on sale. I had bought my gear for the month. Wasn't looking for more. Then I got an e-mail sale flyer from Campmor (same place I bought the sleeping bags). Now I've got just over two hundred dollars of gear in my wishlist -all on sale and all of it pretty basic essentials that I'm sure we'll want. And I'm out of mad money for the month. The annoying thing is that everything I have on my wishlist I can justify pretty easily. If we're going to be camping in the mountains this fall/winter we're probably going to want at least a warm bottom base layer and probably a water/windproof shell. Fleece jackets would be a good addition to all the cotton we've got in our wardrobes. AND DID I MENTION IT'S ALL ON SALE! Jeesh. /shakes head. Of course none of this includes getting a bike rack for our car, and since we've got a spare tire I'm afraid we won't be able to get by with a fifty dollar trunk rack. It is way too easy to spend money. Way too easy.