Ridiculously Good Quiche

 

I just made a Broccoli-Bacon-Monterey-Jack Quiche, based loosely on the Quiche Lorraine recipe in the Cook’s Illustrated New Best Recipe cookbook, and it is so damn tasty I am having trouble ceasing to devour it.  Thus, I thought I’d post the recipe for others to enjoy, and for myself to find again, after I inevitably forget what I did.  Here y’go!

Ingredients:

• 1 9″ Pie Crust (I used a pre-made one from the grocery store – so, whatever you’ve got)
• 2 large eggs + 2 egg yolks
• 2 cups half & half
• 1 small head of broccoli, cut into little florets (about 1-1.5 cups, in 3/4″ pieces)
• 1 slice of good quality thick-cut bacon, chopped into 1/4″ bits (I used Skagit Valley Farms bacon from my local farmer’s market)
• 1/2 tsp white pepper
• 1/2 tsp salt
• pinch of nutmeg
• 4 oz Monterey Jack cheese, grated (about a cup)

Preheat the oven to 375, and move a rack to the middle position. Fit the pie crust (it should be refrigerated already – if not, refrigerate it in the pan before sticking it in the oven) into a 9″ pie pan, line the inside of it with foil, fill the foil with pie weights (I use a mixture of pinto beans and pennies), and bake for 20 minutes.  

While that’s baking, heat a small frying pan over medium heat.  Add the bacon.  Sauté until the fat starts to render, then add the broccoli.  Continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until the broccoli starts to brown and smells cooked.  Remove to a plate.

Combine the remaining ingredients, except the cheese, in a large bowl, and whisk together thoroughly.

After 20 minutes, remove the foil and weights from the crust.  Based on how cooked it looks, continue to bake 5-10 minutes more.  It should end up lightly golden.

Sprinkle the cheese into the bottom of the crust. Evenly distribute the broccoli and bacon over the cheese.  Set the pan on the oven rack, then pour the egg mixture into the crust – it should come to about 1/2″ from the top of the crust.  If the edges of the crust are already a little brown, cover them loosely with foil so they don’t burn.  Bake 30-35 minutes, or until the filling is just starting to brown on the top, and has more or less set.  Cool on a rack, and serve hot, warm, room-temperature, or freezing cold – it’s all tasty!

Obligatory (or Gratuitous?) Cat Blogging

As many of you probably know, I’ve wanted a cat for a while now (a dog, too, but that’s not really practical right now).  And after getting sick over the holidays, and having my parents’ cats (Harold! Sam!) play nursemaid for a week, my desire only grew. 

My landlady, though, hadn’t been so keen on the idea.  See, she’d just put in new click-together wood flooring in my apartment before I moved in, and when I asked her last summer, she claimed a cat would ruin it.  I thought that was probably crazy, but hey, it’s her building.  So I let it sit.

Then, 6 months later, having just returned from the Madisonian land of cats – in addition to my parents’ nursemaid cats, my brother and sister in law just got kittens too – I was feeling the craving again, with a vengeance.  In order to build up my case for the landlady, I went so far as to contact a floor specialist and ask about the potential cost of repairs and/or the frequency with which cats actually damage floors. (The answers: prohibitive, and extremely rarely, respectively.)  

And then, THAT VERY SAME DAY, I came home from the gym to find a note on my door.  In fact, there was a note on every door (I live in a small building).  Intrigued, I tore it open, and it was a note from the landlady, to all of us.  ”Happy Holidays!” it said! “Thanks for choosing to live here!” And it went on to list the things the landlady was intending to fix in the next six months (including the garden plots and the awful pink paint in the hallway, yay), and attached to it was a $25 gift card to Fred Meyer.  So, totally wacky awesome already, right?  But then I scanned down to the bottom of the note, and there, handwritten, was an addendum: “If you’re still interested in getting a kitten, give me a call.”

Wow! Really? God bless the down economy! I think fear drove my landlady into allowing me to get a cat!  

Giddy, I called her the next day, she told me I’d just need to put in a deposit, and I’d be all set.  And the day after that, I went over to Mud Bay (the local organic sustainable pet store – ah, Seattle) to pick up the absolute essentials, and then to PAWS Cat City (a wonderful, wonderful place, run by a wonderful organization) to scope out the kitties.

I met all of the cats they had, including two adorable little kittens, and though I was briefly tempted by an obese but insanely friendly lumpcat named Delilah, it was pretty clear pretty quick who was actually going home with me: the little gray medium-hair tabby hiding in a box, emerging only to bat briefly at one specific toy, and then retreat.  I mean, oh sure, the other cats were all forward and friendly, rubbing up against me and purring and playing.  But I’ve got a quiet life.  I wanted a quiet cat.  So I adopted the shy boy. Here he is right when I got him home, hiding/lounging under the futon:

 

His name was Theodore at the shelter, but now it’s Henry.  (In case you’re curious, he’s named after Henry McCoy, aka “Beast,” from the X-Men)  And Henry’s still pretty timid and flinchy, but no longer shy (as he sits on my forearms while I type this).  He is still very kitten-like, and plays a ton (he especially likes the various fishing-pole-style toys, his felt mouse, and his glitter balls), but he also makes a great lapcat in the evenings (apart from the fact that he drools when he’s happy, which is almost every time he’s on my lap), and he’s starting to allow me to sleep through the night.

Henry the ferocious beastie

Henry the contented lapcat

Other Henry quirks and traits:

• His favorite thing on earth, as far as I can tell, is a rattan placemat I bought him out of the clearance bin at Crate & Barrel. Man he loves that placemat.
• He doesn’t like wet food. Or treats. Or catnip, much.  How am I supposed to bribe this boy?
• He has severe gingivitis.  I’m hoping it goes away on its own, with some dental care food, because otherwise apparently it can mean he has to have his teeth pulled.
• He hates the neighbors, the garage door, large trucks, and motorcycles.  He growls at all of them whenever he hears them.
• He loooooooves Dewey.  If Dewey is up and about, Henry is sitting on the cage, rapt, like so:

Looks like lunch

So, is that more than you ever wanted to know about my new cat?  At least I’m not bending your ear about it in person – this way it’s your fault for continuing to read!

Unanticipated Technological Sadnesses

Typically, I find the unanticipated – and occasionally perverse – consequences of technological innovation fascinating.  And today, experiencing one of those, I did find it interesting – but my interest in it paled in comparison to how sad it made me.  So, what happened?

I’ve been catching up on email this morning.  One of those emails was to a friend named Marc.  And when I started to type in his name, Mail’s auto-complete suggested another friend of mine named Mark, who as far as I know is still in a coma, having been hit by a drunk driver in October of 2007.  But I can’t bring myself to take him out of my Address Book.  It’d be like admitting he was really gone, and somehow, I’m just not ready to do that.

Now, that happens pretty frequently with Mark – he’s a Facebook friend, we shared obscure musical tastes that I now have trouble indulging, and we have a lot of other friends in common.  So I’m kind of used to seeing his name pop up and feeling that little twinge of sadness that he’s no longer there to poke or talk to or commiserate with.  But then, continuing on with my email, it happened again.

The second time, I was sending an email to my advisor, whose name is Joe.  And I paused for a moment in typing his name, and Mail helpfully offered me the email address of another Joe, my Glacier Climbing classmate who died on Mt. Baker last June.  Now, Joe’s not even in my Address Book, as far as I’m aware; Mail must have just been using a list of previously-used addresses.  And I don’t encounter Joe’s name or countenance often, since we weren’t tremendously close – but his death was nonetheless traumatic for me and many of my friends.  So, again, twinge.

Now, to me, this seems pretty akin to the phenomenon of “MyDeathSpace,” which links to the MySpace profiles of members who have passed away… And just the fact that I could find an open-web link for each of my friends saying what had happened to them seems indicative of…something.  I suppose it just makes me think about the traces we now leave all over the Web – and even on the hard drives of friends and acquaintances – when we ourselves pass away or otherwise cease to be able to participate in society in our own right.  Now, when we aren’t around any longer, those who care about us can be reminded of us in ever more numerous and potentially heartbreaking ways, just by continuing to use the social technologies we used to share with them.  

I mean, honestly: when Mail suggests that maybe I’d like to send my email to Mark, I can’t help but think, Yes, yes I would love to send my email to Mark. I would love to write to Mark and hear from Mark and have Mark still be a part of my social world.  And I would love to have had the opportunity to get to be better friends with Joe, who seemed wonderful.  Who knows, perhaps if things had been different, I would indeed be addressing emails to him now.  As it is, though, it just makes me well up a little, thinking about what’s not there any longer.

…And I’m sorry for the depressing post.  I’m not, like, actually depressed, or anything.  The sadness of technology’s insensitivity to changing social worlds just really struck me this morning.

De Facto Resolutions

I’m not a resolution-maker.  Not at all.  I can’t recall that I’ve ever made one, and this year is no different.  

That said, since I returned – both to Seattle from Madison and to health from sickness (I had severe, hospital-necessitating food poisoning over Christmas) – I have noticed that I have changed how I’m living in a number of ways.  So maybe, somewhere in my brain, a resolution switch got flipped without any conscious effort on my part… Or maybe having been sicker than I had ever previously been in my entire life subconsciously made me want to change some things about that life.

So, without further ado, here are the things I’ve found myself changing in 2009:

1. I’m keeping my apartment cleaner.  Like, WAY cleaner.  Like, super-scrubbing my char-encrusted dutch oven, cleaning out all the closets, catching up on my three-foot stack of backed-up filing, getting rid of furniture kind of clean.  It’s beautiful to look at, and it makes me want to keep it that way.
2. I’m making my apartment nicer. I got a new, rectangular dining room table, replacing both my desk and my old, semicircular dining room table. It has changed my life.  I sit at it all day long, whereas I never used either of the deposed pieces of furniture.  I’m also finally getting around to putting a curtain up on my bedroom window (currently a very bland, severe rectangle with icky mini blinds).  Plus, I got a flat-screen TV for Christmas, which makes the whole place look better – and makes it easier to manage my higgeldy-piggeldy entertainment infrastructure.
3. I’m dressing better on a daily basis. Jackets instead of hoodies. The occasional skirt or dress. Fewer t-shirts. More creative accessories. …Interestingly, this has not required me to buy much more clothing – just to reconfigure what I already had, and decommission a few old scrungy favorites.
4. I’m making more of an effort to live my principles – especially environmentalism, localism, and support for good corporate citizenship. I’m phasing out all my non-bio-friendly cleaning supplies. I’ve swapped out my last few non-CF light bulbs. I’m keeping the heat lower.  I’m trying to buy more local and/or organic foods.  I’m focusing even more than I did before on buying the greatest possible percentage of my day-to-day needs (and wants) at local, independent businesses.  And most radically, I am no longer using international banks for my deposit accounts. By the end of the month, I will have completely withdrawn from both Citibank and WaMu Chase, in favor of my local credit union (amusingly, BECU, the Boeing Employees Credit Union).

Of course, it’s only January 13th – I wonder how many of these things will stick…

So, my three readers, have you made any resolutions – or accidentally stumbled into any?

99 Things: 53 done, 17 I’d like to

Via Walt Crawford… I don’t usually do these things, but this one struck my fancy.  Plus, I’m home for break, and feeling nostalgic – so I was in the mood…

THE 99 THINGS MEME

Things you’ve already done: bold

Things you want to do: italicize

Things you haven’t done and don’t want to – leave in plain font

1. Started your own blog.

I think I’m up to like five or six at this point. Plus the one I started for work.

2. Slept under the stars.

Not without a tent, I don’t think.

3. Played in a band.

So uncool, though – it was my middle-school band. I played trumpet.

4. Visited Hawaii.

5. Watched a meteor shower.

6. Given more than you can afford to charity.

After all, what the heck can a perpetual graduate student afford?

7. Been to Disneyland/world.

Disney World, once, when I was 8. I recall that I loved it, but I think it would profoundly disturb me now.

8. Climbed a mountain.

Can I, like, triple-bold that?  I climbed Mt. Rainier this year.  I also made it up to 10,700 ft on Mt. Adams, and I’m probably going to do Mt. Baker next year. (Who would’ve predicted that hobby? Certainly not me.)

9. Held a praying mantis.

10. Sang a solo.

Ooo, no.

11. Bungee jumped.

I second W. Crawford’s response: “I won’t say ‘there isn’t enough money in the world,’ but that’s close.”

12. Visited Paris.

Yep – loved the Musée Rodin, but in general, the timing was bad for me, and had a terrible time.  Should probably give it a second chance.

13. Watched a lightning storm at sea.

14. Taught yourself an art from scratch.

Drawing, certainly.  Though I had help.  And in fact, I would challenge the idea that *anyone* can truly teach themselves an art from scratch, unless they actually invent an art form…

15. Adopted a child.

16. Had food poisoning.

17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty.

18. Grown your own vegetables.

I almost wonder if my parents might still have some of the millions of pickles I made from those cucumbers in the basement.

19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France.

20. Slept on an overnight train.

Not that I had a berth or anything.  On the way to Chicago from Albany, I commandeered two seats; on the way back, I woke up leaning against a very polite young man from just north of NYC.

21. Had a pillow fight.

I was a teenage girl once, after all.

22. Hitch hiked.

Oooh, no.  Seems like such a bad idea.

23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill.

Heh. Not more than once or twice, though.

24. Built a snow fort.

Dude, I grew up in Wisconsin. How can you not build snow forts when you’re 8 and there’s three feet of snow on the ground?

25. Held a lamb.

Sounds nice.

26. Gone skinny dipping.

Oh, high school.

27. Run a marathon.

Wouldn’t rule it out, but probably won’t ever be able to.

28. Ridden a gondola in Venice.

Just have to get there before it all sinks into the sea.

29. Seen a total eclipse.

I remember watching one through a pinhole with my trumpet tutor, Mr. Salzman.  Of all things.

30. Watched a sunrise or sunset.

I feel very, very sorry for anyone who can’t say they’ve done this one.

31. Hit a home run.

32. Been on a cruise.

33. Seen Niagara Falls in person.

34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors.

Uh, maybe? I’m not totally sure where it would be.  

35. Seen an Amish community.

36. Taught yourself a new language.

I didn’t teach myself…

37.Had enough money to be truly satisfied.

Yeah, pretty much my whole life.  I’m a lucky person.

38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person.

39. Gone rock climbing.

Does scrambling count? (Hint: the answer is no.)

40. Seen Michelangelo’s David in person.

And it was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen.

41. Sung Karaoke.

42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt.

I like Steamboat better.

43. Bought a stranger a meal in a restaurant.

44. Visited Africa.

Wanna, wanna, wanna. So bad.

45. Walked on a beach by moonlight.

Most recently, in Mexico. It was amazing, there was no need for artificial light at all.

46. Been transported in an ambulance.

Yeah, so there was this time I got hit by a car… It’s a decent story. But most of you have probably heard it.

47. Had your portrait painted.

I’m going to count the very artistic caricature of myself I had done at the Madison Art Fair on the Square in high school.  It’s still on the wall of my childhood bedroom.  And frighteningly, it still looks like me.

48. Gone deep sea fishing.

49. Seen the Sistine chapel in person.

I’m sensing an Italy/France bias in this list.

50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

Again with the Italy/France bias.

51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling.

Yup, first time was in Costa Rica, but the best time was in Mexico, at Akumal.

52. Kissed in the rain.

53. Played in the mud.

54. Gone to a drive-in theater.

I’m too young, I think.  I’m not sure I’ve even ever seen one.

55. Been in a movie.

56. Visited the Great Wall of China.

At Mutianyu.  It’s amazing how many stairs there are on the top of that thing.  In fact, it’s pretty much nothing but stairs along the top.

57. Started a business.

58. Taken a martial arts class

59. Visited Russia.

60. Served at a soup kitchen.

61. Sold Girl Scout cookies.

Lots of ‘em.  This seems like an awfully unfair question if there are men filling this out, though – maybe one could substitute Boy Scout Popcorn?

62. Gone whale watching.

Not yet, but I’m sure I will.  I live in Seattle, for heaven’s sake.

63. Gotten flowers for no reason.

I’m just that cool.

64. Donated blood.

65. Gone sky diving.

66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp.

67. Bounced a check.

So dumb.  

68. Flown in a helicopter.

And I really don’t want to. For me, a helicopter ride would probably mean that I or one of my companions had just had a particularly bad mountaineering accident.

69. Saved a favorite childhood toy.

70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial.

71. Eaten Caviar.

Love it.

72. Pieced a quilt.

It was a small quilt, and I’m not fully certain it ever got sewn together.  But I pieced it!

73. Stood in Times Square.

Lots of times – I worked just a few blocks up from there one summer, at the SSRC.

74. Toured the Everglades.

Same trip as Disney World.  I dug the alligators and the green herons.

75. Been fired from a job.

76. Seen the Changing of the Guard in London.

77. Broken a bone.

Another reason I’m happy to have grown up in America’s Dairyland…

78. Been on a speeding motorcycle.

I wasn’t driving, but I would bet the driver was speeding at least occasionally.

79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person.

80. Published a book.

81. Visited the Vatican.

82. Bought a brand new car.

Never bought a car at all, actually. But one day, when I am faculty, I shall have a lovely little fuel-efficient automotive.

83. Walked in Jerusalem.

84. Had your picture in the newspaper.

85. Read the entire Bible.

86. Visited the White House.

87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating.

Only fish.

88. Had chickenpox.

89. Saved someone’s life.

90. Sat on a jury.

91. Met someone famous.

Basically just pseudo-famous or nerd-famous, but famous nonetheless.  Folks like Lessig (nerd-famous) and the oldest kid from Home Improvement (pseudo-famous).

92. Joined a book club.

93. Lost a loved one.

Sigh. Both friends and relatives.

94. Had a baby.

95. Seen the Alamo in person.

96. Swum in the Great Salt Lake.

Swum, no; waded, yes.  It was a little nasty.

97. Been involved in a law suit.

Remember how I said I got hit by a car? Yeah, that guy sued me for damage to his car. (I was 13.) God bless America!

98. Owned a cell phone.

Considering I don’t have a landline anymore…

99. Been stung by a bee.

Surprisingly, only once (and technically, only by a wasp).  The circumstances: I was climbing up onto my grandmother’s second-floor balcony, because she’d locked her keys inside.  There was a wasp’s nest built all throughout the inside of the metal railing. They swarmed; I fell.

In-Groups, Out-Groups, In-n-Out Groups

I don’t have anything in particular to say about the actual topic of this Slog post, which has to do with arts criticism, but the author’s first comment about why it’s bunk to say that critics are unqualified to comment on art because they’re not artists struck me:

(1) It’s a provincial and solipsistic argument that assumes one needs to be a member of a group to say anything intelligent about that group. Which, to pick three random examples, would mean that Alexis de Tocqueville had nothing intelligent to say about Americans, Dan Savage has nothing intelligent to say about hetero sex, and all historians are wasting their time.

I think this is well put, and expresses an annoyance that I’ve experienced several times in my life – not with respect to art criticism, but with respect to various social subgroupings and activist communities. You see, I am a privileged, white, hetero female. So what could I possibly have to add to a conversation about class, race, or alternative sexual preferences? I’d better just shut up and leave these topics to those who actually understand, right?

To take an example from my more active activist days, I recall having an experience like this at an IPPN conference I attended as a freshman in college.  IPPN, for those unaware, is the Independent Progressive Politics Network.  The conference was taking place in my liberal/progressive hometown of Madison, WI when I was home on break, and a friend of mine (P., a lesbian of color, which becomes relevant later) encouraged me to attend with her.  So I did.

Now, I admit, I don’t remember too much about the conference in general (it was almost 10 years ago, after all). I remember it was interesting, and that I had some fascinating conversations with individual people at the breaks between sessions.

But I do remember one session. Toward the end of the conference, I sat down with P. at a roundtable on racial issues (in what context, I can’t even remember), and I was the only white person at the table – and some of the participants vocally protested my being there.

In fact, their protests were so forceful that the table ended up having to take a vote on whether I would be allowed to stay.

P. spoke up for me, saying I was an ally and didn’t they need those too?

Others argued that they needed a “safe space,” separate from representatives of the majority (i.e., me) in which to discuss their issues.

In the end, I was allowed to stay – as long as I didn’t say much.

At the time, I was shocked and saddened to be treated this way – and at a progressive politics conference, no less. But really, it was just a particularly explicit instance of a recurring theme that has run throughout my work as a community servant and activist, involved with various pushes for different sorts of human equality. And I’m still torn about it.

On the one hand, no, obviously I cannot truly feel what it is like to be black or gay – or, for that matter, homeless or a prostitute. And I do think that “safe spaces,” away from the judgements of the majority group, might well be conducive to the psychological and social well-being of individuals belonging to these kinds of groups.

On the other hand, though, I wonder if it really serves the interests of equality and acceptance to exclude non-judgemental majority voices from the conversation. After all, majority-group status does not keep a person from being sympathetic to the trials that come with belonging to non-majority groups. And note, sympathy is distinct from pity: in the one, a person can intellectually understand another’s feelings; in the other, a person simply feels sad for another’s misfortunes. But sympathy is also different from empathy, wherein a person can truly feel what another is feeling. So no, I may not be able to empathize with those in out-groups I do not belong to. But dammit, I can sympathize.

Which I suppose brings me back to the Slog quote that sparked this whole thing. It seems to me that liberals often get so caught up in their sensitivity to out-groups that they come to truly believe that if you’re not a part of it, you have no right to even talk about it. Never mind the obvious benefits of having a more enfranchised face speaking for an out-group’s interests to those in power; never mind the fact that excluding members of majority groups just reverses the inequality; never mind that in order to achieve equality, by definition, the majority groups have to be on board too. If you’re not in the group, you couldn’t possibly understand; you have no right to comment. And I’m a majority, through-and-through, so I should just shut up about promoting equality, right?

But that’s ridiculous.

Isn’t it?

…

Isn’t it?

Dewey’s Excellent Adventure

Some of my readers might remember a few years back, when I got into bed and had a bat fly out from behind it (this was in my old basement apartment in Ann Arbor).

Well, last night, I thought I might be having a replay – or maybe even worse, an intruder.  I woke up at about 2:15 am, to some little, but distinct, scritchy-scratchy noises. I think, sleepily, “wtf?” but am soon wide awake, as the noises continue at irregular intervals.  Do I have mice? Is someone trying to break in through my balcony door? Do I need to go search my apartment wielding my giant red Mag-Lite?

I turn on the light next to the bed. I hear a few more noises. I look behind the bed (since, y’know, that’s where bats come from). And then I look into the corner of the room near the door.

And there’s my damned hamster, looking up at me, as innocent as can be.

Seems he’d managed to jimmy open the door on his cage (the one shown in the picture below), drop about 4 feet to the floor, and scurry around for a while before I woke up and caught him. (I’m all but entirely certain that I closed the door after feeding him last night, as usual.)

And those scritchy-scratchy noises? Those would be him chewing through the baggies on my hiking snacks, which I keep in the hall closet.

I swear, this hamster is just too much for me – he does monkey bars, two-pawed, across the ceiling of his cage; he comes upstairs (to the upper level of his cage) when I call him; he takes his dinner handed to him directly, one pellet at a time; and now, apparently, he has learned how to operate his own cage door.

One of these days, I will wake up to find that he’s recruited a tiny rodent army, and taken me prisoner, Gulliver’s Travels style.

Till then, though, the little genius is still pretty damn cute:

Work/Life Balance…

…at least in my blogging life.

I’ve taken all the posts I’ve put up here that relate to my research interests, and copied them over to a new blog, where I’ll be posting about that stuff from now on. This one will probably go on much as it has for a while, full of stuff about my personal extracurricular activities.

The URL is [my first name][my last name].wordpress.com (replacing the bracketed portions with the data they describe). Any confusion? Pop me an email, notlizz [at] gmail [dot] com.

The Google Settlement: For My Own Future Reference and That of Others

I’ve been at the ASIS&T conference in Columbus all this week – hence the colon in the posting title. Every title must have a colon. Didn’t you know?

Anyway, several lovely people emailed me about the Google Books lawsuit settlement yesterday, and today, as I sit in an airport waiting area for several hours, I thought I’d take the opportunity to gather up all the stuff that I’ve found on the topic on my blogs and other regular sources of novel information, and post some links.

Oh, and in case you’re curious, I haven’t had time to read through the whole thing yet, but so far it looks like a pretty decent deal – particularly the Book Rights Registry. Still, it’ll be interesting to see if any of the concerns I’ve had about the project to date (posted previously or not) have been addressed in the agreement, when I have a chance to read it more closely.

Without further ado:

Parties to the Suit

• Settlement Agreement Website
• Google
• Author’s Guild
• Association of American Publishers

MSM

• Chronicle of Higher Education
• Wired
• “The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog”
• Information Week
• National Journal, “Tech Daily Dose”
• San Francisco Chronicle
• CNET
• ZDNET
• AP

Blogs

• Paul Courant, “Au Courant”
• Siva Vaidhyanathan, “Googlization of Everything”
• Richard Esguerra, EFF “Deeplinks”
• ALA Washington Office, “District Dispatch”
• David Weinberger, “Everything is Miscellaneous”
• Harry Lewis, “Blown to Bits”
• Neil Netanel, “Balkinization”
• Philipp Lenssen, “Google Blogoscoped”
• Adam Thierer, “Technology Liberation Front”
• Sherwin Siy, “Public Knowledge Policy Blog”
• Ken Varnum, “RSS4lib”

[Update 10/30/08 - More!

• Lawrence Lessig, "Lessig Blog"
• Mike Madison, "Madisonian"
• Harry Lewis, "Blown to Bits" (second installment)
• David Sohn, "PolicyBeta"
• Tim Wu, "What's New With Wu" ]

Rainier Part 2: Paradise to Muir (Day 1)

OK, OK, I’ve been remiss.  It’s been about 2 months since I put up my last post, promising more, and I haven’t.  BTW, thanks for the guilt trip, Medrawt. (And on a semi-related personal note: I am happy you are not dying. )

So, Rainier. I think I let it sit too long.  It is beginning to blur into a haze of sky and snow and rock and assorted pointy tools.  But I’ll try.

Day 1: Saturday, August 16

The objective for the first day was to hike up to Camp Muir, which sits at about 10,200 feet (Paradise, the starting point, is around 5400). We had gone over our gear with one of the guides the day before, and headed out from the IMG office not *too* early, but still in the morning. Then we loaded up and put our boots on in the mosquito-infested Paradise parking lot (seriously, I had about six bites in the span of five minutes, including one on my FACE), and headed out mid-morning.

By that point, I should mention, it was HOT. Like, over 90. And we were all carrying packs that weighed about 50 lbs, which will make you work up a sweat even when it’s cold out. I did the entire first day in shorts and a t-shirt, and it was rough, especially for the first few miles, hiking in plastic boots on paved, snow-free trail (or worse, stairs). I felt very dehydrated early on, and ended up having to adjust my water ration, such that I had nearly run out by the time we reached snow — but then, reaching snow meant that one of the guides was able to help me melt some more water out of the white stuff.  So that worked out.

Plus, the picture-taking was great:

At this point, it was extremely hard to believe that I was going to end up on top of that thing. In fact, it’s still hard to believe, and it happened…

Off in the distance is Mt. Adams, which is where I climbed (and fell) a few weeks before.  An update on my injury: turns out, it wasn’t just a flesh wound – it’s also sprained.  In fact, it’s still sprained, more than 2 months later. I’m doing physical therapy for it now.

These boots were frigging amazing. After shredding my feet on Adams, I went on a search for rental boots, all over the city (there are a surprising number of places to rent plastic boots in Seattle), and ended up with exactly the same boots I’d been wearing, but half a size up. That, combined with a different lacing technique, kept me all comfy cozy all the way up and down. No blisters at all (unheard of, really), just a little shin-bang.

…

Apart from the heat, the first day wasn’t so bad. Tough, certainly, but just a hike, with some snow, and a lot of weight. No glaciers, so no ropes, and no need for crampons. (On the other hand, that means we were carrying all the rest of our gear – crampons are damned heavy!) The Muir Snowfield was getting pretty icy (just kind of that time of the season), and there were a lot of contenders for the Darwin Awards slip-sliding down in jeans, some actually sledding on pieces of cardboard or something. Lunatics, I tell you.

At Muir, IMG has a Weatherport, where the guides sleep and cook our meals (yes, we got cooked meals – burritos the first night, cheesy broccoli chicken the second night), and also a reserved space in one of the shelters, which they share with Alpine Ascents. Muir’s really kind of a strange place, in a cool way.  It’s like this little village of shacks, some put up by guide services, some by NPS, surrounding a helipad, and then over the ridge, there’s a tent city of self-guided climbing groups and the guide service weatherports. We got to sleep in one of the shacks, on hard wooden bunks three levels high. I was lucky enough to get a bunk near the sole window – it got pretty hot in there at night – but I felt somewhat less lucky when I got rained on through said window.  Oh well – it’s not like any of us were sleeping really well that night anyway.

Which reminds me, I skipped a part. The plan for our trip was:

Day 1: Hike up to Muir.
Day 2: Wake up relatively late, eat breakfast, practice with our crampons and ice axes, and then hike up to Ingraham Flats, a short 2-hour hike over Cathedral Gap, at about 11,100 feet, then relax for the rest of the day in preparation for summit day.
Day 3: Do an alpine start (get up at about 1 am), summit the mountain and go all the way back down to Paradise.

Yeah, that was the plan. The weather didn’t really cooperate though. After a summer of totally bluebird weekends – no weather concerns at all for months – we happened to go up in the face of a storm system.  So after dinner on Saturday, our lead guide, Eric, gathered us for a chat. After evaluating the options, the guides were recommending that we make our summit attempt on Sunday instead of Monday – the next day, at that point. All of our jaws dropped a little, but he went on. It seemed like Sunday would bring rain, and maybe thunderstorms, but Monday would have all that plus 50 mph winds. Sunday sounds better, right? Nodding all around. So we had a new plan:

Day 2: Get up at about 7. Eat breakfast, do the roping/arrest training. Hike up to Ingraham Flats by 11 or 12. Rest an hour in the tents (which were pre-set up there), and drop overnight gear. Set out to make the attempt on the summit as a “sunset climb” – kind of a beautiful thing where you get the whole upper mountain to yourself (everyone else climbs in the morning) and you get to see the sunset from 12,000 feet. Return to Ingraham Flats around nightfall (about 9 or 9:30 pm at that time of year), stay the night there.
Day 3: Get up at about 7 again. Eat breakfast. Load up, hike out to Paradise.

As startling as it was to have the plan changed in mid-climb, this honestly sounded pretty good to all of us – for one thing, we never had to do an alpine start! No climbing Disappointment Cleaver in the dark!

Still, it did make it spectacularly hard to sleep that night. Soooo many nerves, combined with adrenaline, altitude, and a very hard pallet… I think I was among the best sleepers (as in, I got some), but it was touch and go.

Also, I should mention: my uncle, who got me into this whole thing, was a frigging rock star. 60 years old, lives in a region with no mountains, hardly trained at all, and he just plowed right on up the mountain – and carrying a practically antique external-frame pack, no less!  I know he felt the challenge, but he was much less wussy about it than I was, particularly on the way up. In fact, it became kind of a group joke that he always had his pack on before anyone else at the end of each break – the guides would all be like, “[Uncle's name]! Sit down! No pack until I’ve got mine on!” This (of all things!) was the first thing he and I had ever done together with just the two of us (he’s married-in, to my mother’s sister), and it was really great to get to share it with him.

…

So, any bets on when – or whether – I’ll post Day 2? 

I’m giving myself license to post some other stuff between.  A lot has actually been going on in my life, particularly since the quarter started… and none of it has to do with mountains at all!

For now, I’ll leave you with a few shots from the first night, at Camp Muir:

The tent city. The public shelter is off to the right, behind the three shacks that are most visible.

Our shelter was right behind the one with the yellow thing on top of it from here. This picture was taken near the IMG Weatherport, looking back toward Paradise.