so many things to report on...but in the meantime, CLIMB ON!

i know that i have some heavy duty catch-up to do (MOMWOW - I know that I am supposed to give you Mia and Dave wedding details...). In the past week, it seemed like every time I had a snippet of free time to start to write, something would magically come up and need to be taken care of ASAP. *sigh* it's kinda the way the whole summer has been. do the thing that is most critical and then re-evalute. do the next thing that is most critical...and so on and so forth... and then again, there's that whole thing with getting home at night and not wanting to spend what little free time I have typing... ;) yeah. i do have to admit that.

Dave and I went to an outdoor rock climbing/anchor clinic this morning at Split Rock in Tiburon. it was cold. it was windy. but we perservered. i felt much less nervous this time. :) did some fairly tame climbs, some traversing. had some fun, learned some new techniques about anchor set-up and seem to be in pretty good shape to start to do it ourselves, which is pretty crazy. we can tell you all about cams and water knots and overhand knots and equalization and clove hitches and trees as back-ups and blah blah learning blah.

Dave taught me how to make my own guitar cords last night. it ended up being our 'date'. we got supplies from an undisclosed location and came home and set up shop on the living room floor and hall closet (i.e. soldering station). Dave showed me how to use some new tools, strip the cable, trim the ends, unweave fancy cross-hatched wiring and prep these cable ends for the soldering station. We then moved into the closet/soldering station, where he showed me how to clean/tin the iron, tin the cables and connectors, not leave the soldering iron anywhere stupid, prep the cable for connection, reheat the solder points and connect the positive, negative/ground all to the right places, crimp the connector to the cord and finally, I could pull up the protective sleeve and connector housing and screw it all together. et voila! guitar cords. we made three in varying lengths. I am so pleased to report that at band rehearsal today, they did indeed all work. :) sweet. good date. although I hope I did not inhale too much cancer. or get it through my skin.

also had the chance to quick stop by and say bye to Kati Farkas before she and her husband and baby (!) leave for Illinois.... but that will be saved for next entry.