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tomorrow i start my grand september adventure: portugal. i’ve never been to the country, nor do i know anything about it. these two factors make me at once excited and a bit nervous. thankfully, i’ve been learning trying to learn portuguese this summer, so i’ll feel a little more confident in the unfamiliar environment. not that i’ll be out on the streets needing to use my language skills anyway–my home away from home will be the carlton palace hotel, a designated national monument and 5-star accomodation. within the hotel and its grounds are gardens, restaurants, workout rooms, an indoor track, 2 indoor swimming pools, hot tubs, saunas, sweat rooms, and, of course, a gymnasium (for the dogeball, i’m assuming). with all this and the free in-room nintendo system, i don’t think i’ll ever need to leave the place. ...

and now, part 3 of the DiscMagnet™ saga: coordinated assault i knew that the cunning of the evil monster holding my 3 discs captive was too great to be overcome by myself alone, so on thursday i recruited a team of hardcore disc-rescue veterans to help with the cause. the members of this newly-formed counter-discnapping force were as follows: team leader: jonathan lipps callsign: throwmaster flex skills: insane speed, tactical genius, looking dark and cool in a trench coat job: strategy, execution coordination, primary munitions expenditure ...

…..and i’m off home. it was a great summer…i’m extremely glad i stayed and worked at stanford. now time for a little r&r before the affectionately pre-dubbed “hell quarter” kicks in. coming soon: part 3 of the DiscMagnet™ saga.

last friday at around 4pm dan, dave and i loaded up dave’s ford previa van with all of our hiking gear and set out north. we stopped at rei san carlos to pick up some important details, and then we were off to a very slow drive to yosemite. normally a 4-hour drive, we didn’t get to the valley till 11pm. still, it was worth it–my first glimpse of yosemite was of el capitan in the moonlight, faintly glowing as the light grey of the granite reflected the ghostly rays. i wasn’t particularly prepared for the immensity and grandeur of the rock, and we stood on the side of the road and watched for a few minutes before driving the last few miles to curry village, near the base of half-dome, where we parked. ...

i wish i could continue with part 3 of the DiscMagnet™ saga. unfortunately, i am going out of town for the weekend. dan and dave evans and i are leaving today for yosemite. we aim to get to the park and find a campground by around 8pm, then rest for a few hours before our ascent hike up half dome. it’s a full moon (or just about), so as long as we stay clear of bears it should be a beautiful and surreal experience. we aim to have breakfast on the summit as the sun comes up over the valley, and then take the rest of saturday to hike back, relax, and maybe do some climbing if we can find a good spot. ...

i took some time yesterday and followed through with my earlier plan (see the 19th’s post) to do some reconnaissance and strategizing. 1200 hours found me sneaking around the top floor of the durand engineering building looking for roof access. i found one in the corner of an odd little atrium, and scaled it with my kodak Information-Gathering Super-Device™, or IGSD for short. after pushing aside the heavy trap door to the roof, i found myself standing amidst a rather alarming collection of satellite receivers, radar arrays, and other obviously nefarious pieces of pointy metal and wires. ...

there are four objects. three of them are frisbees that belong to me. one stanford women’s ultimate, and two stanford men’s ultimate discs. discraft ultrastar 175g – a beautifully overpriced and addicting piece of molded plastic. the fourth object is the Stanford DiscMagnet™, located in the engineering quad and better known as the 11th hole of the stanford disc golf course (or one of the courses). it has the mysterious property of attracting plastic discs ( my discs in particular) in the same way as a physics class magnet attracts iron filings, and has ruthlessly stolen the three aforementioned discs from me while playing the 11th hole. ...

not spiraling up or down | corkscrewing | planar | pose in front of the mirror | 2-dimensional moebius strip | mediocrity’s whore | banality at its finest | don’t ask for help | smiling vignettes of meaninglessness | incomprehensible failure | what is grace without repentance | nothing in excess | everything in moderation | even evil | the death of greatness | particulars destroy universals | diminished by will | faux-excellence in naivete | paradox of innocence | wisdom or knowledge | knowledge or carnality | love?innerspace:outerlimits | existence?hope:despair | post-existential apathy | vanity in the flesh | fitter | happier | more productive

it is late but i’m happy. i just did something i’ve been meaning to do for a long time: play guitar in the middle of the quad at midnight. dan and dave evans and i had a legitimate 2-hour jam session…rock, blues, jazz-funk – we played it all, with the help of a few electric guitars and a very long extension cord. and, you won’t believe this, there was a ninja practicing his moves in the quad while we were rocking out. i tried to give him my guitar so he could wail on it, because everyone knows ninjas wail on guitars, but he obviously wasn’t a real ninja because he declined. but still he had some cool ninja moves.

it occurred to me just now, as i was talking to god in halting and simplified spanish, that it was a remarkable metaphor for my life as a whole. it seems as if everything i do is confused and hesitant, a class of things that roll unfamiliarly from the tongue and awkwardly from clumsy hands. my actions show that i am still less than fluent in language, and i’ve realized what it is: ...