Action on the Table

We got action, action on the table! We've got a few votes in, and so far, it's a four way tie between Tenderloins, HeMen, She-Ra, and the Voyeurs. At this point, it's anybody's game, with only four days left to play. Oh, the tension!

I haven't yet voted, and I'm not sure I'm going to. On one hand, I feel like it is the responsibility of the readership to come up with their own moniker. And on the other, I spent the morning at the dentist, and I'm going to spend the next four days with ice packed on my face, rendering me incapable of voting even for the channel on the television. It had been nearly a decade, no joke, since I had last had the plaque chiseled from my gumline. The years of buildup forced Christina, the dental hygienist, to do something called, if I recall correctly, "debraiding". Given the violence, proper recollection is no gimme. Debraiding, or whatever it is called, is dentist speak for "hammer the shit out of the patient's face and make it feel like hot razor blades are massaging his gums" .

FUN!

Now I have to go back in two weeks for another cleaning, although we are presuming that this one will be a bit kinder. This first torture cost an exorbitant extortion fee of $304 American dollars, but on the bright side, I recently opened an HSA, so the entire ransom was tax deductible. Given that I work for John Obourn, Fox News Groupie and Fiscal NeoCon, I've come to be told that this is more important in life than just about any other detail. If the choice had to be made between saving one of his children from being mauled to death by a rabid mongoose, and paying the Feds $3 extra dollars on a 1040ES payment, John might speak at length in deliberation.

My mouth is also saying something. It is saying, ironically through the use of my fingers, that all of you good little boys and girls out there should see your dentist often, or never at all. It's really one or the other.

And speaking of choices between two extreme opposites, I give you the following tale of dichotomy:

I drove to Glenwood this evening through a howling snowstorm. Vail Pass was an abject nightmare, with wind blowing the flakes sideways and my pathetic headlights providing little illumination. What token amount they did provide was reflected directly back into my eyes, as I have to turn the brights on to even see the pavement in front of the bumper. Of all the sad features on my 13 year old automobile with 207K miles on it, the beams are leading the charge. When I pulled into Glenwood, it had snowed the entire 200 mile drive, and I was happy to check into the Hampton Inn, pull up my MacBook, and get to blogging. Tomorrow, I have a meeting for work out in the middle of nowhere, and I need to talk about a road and a fence with a guy from Rock Springs. Then I have got to cruise on to another meeting, and ultimately finish two applications for underground pipelines in order to prepare them for submittal to the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management. That is the yin.

The weather for Indian Creek is looking like high 40's and sun for the end of the week. I talked to my friend Steven who had just spent a couple of weeks climbing in the desert paradise, and he told me that they were climbing in t-shirts and basking in the radiant heat of the sandstone walls. I am going to thrash myself climbing for a few days with Mike Brumbaugh, Mr. 20-pitches-in-a-day-0r-bust, and watch the sun set over the Bridger Jack Towers. My hands are going to be bloody, and my feet exhausted from wearing climbing shoes all day. When I get back to camp, I'll drink cold beer and sit around a campfire telling stories. I am going to sleep on a brand new, ultra plush sleeping pad, and wake up with red sand in my hair. The coffee is going to have grinds in it when I start the morning, and it is going to taste better than any $6 Starbucks ever could, because I am going climbing, and I am going to feel alive. That is the yang.

Nuno says I should post pictures, and I just might. Good night, future nicknames.