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This time, the berries are from our own back yard: blackberries. Kim picked the blackberries and we made more jam. We got a different kind of pectin, supposedly more natural that allowed us to use less sugar. I don’t know if it’ll taste as good though. Boiling berries is kind of a weird thing to do, but I guess it works.

Kim and I went to an Aikido class at the dojo near where I work. I can’t remember the name right now, but I’m sure I’ll mention it if I continue to go there. (more…)

I just found out about a new online service called Audioscrobbler that keeps track of what music you listen to. Most music players do this now, but I think it’s much more interesting when you can view the data on the web. (more…)

• Listening To: Mike Doughty

Kim and I just made peanut butter with our new food processor. We made the healthy, needs to be refridgerated kind where you just use peanuts and a tiny bit of salt. You just throw the peanuts and salt into the food processor for about 5 minutes and it turns it to butter. We made it chunky by throwing a handful of peanuts in at the end and then just chopping them a little. Tasty.

Kim, Preston and I drove to an organic farm near Monroe on Sunday to pick berries. We only got a few blueberries, but we got a bunch of marionberries and raspberries, all for $1/lb. When Kim and I got home we made some really good jam. I can’t belive how much sugar is used to make jam.

Jake, Kim and I took off for another weekend adventure near Mount St Helens, this time to go caving. We left early Saturday morning and drove for around 4 hours to get to Ape Caves. There was a tour group leaving as we got there so we joined it. It started out with about 15 boy scouts on the tour but they left almost immediately to do their own thing, thankfully. We first hiked the lower caves section and had to crawl to get to the very end. Then we turned around and headed for the harder upper section hike. There were a lot fewer people doing this section, which was nice, but it still definitely wasn’t secluded. There was some scrambling over rocks and one tall rock wall that was probably the equivalent of a VB gym boulder route. It was fun to hike around three miles underground.

Once we hiked back to the car we drove up a forest service road and found a place to camp. It looks like it was a site that hunters had been using. They had even built their own outhouse out of tarps. We couldn’t get a fire started with all the wet wood, and it was cold for July! It was down in the upper 40′s that night. We fell asleep and heard rumblings from the distance that we were a little worried might be the volcano, but I didn’t see anything in the news about activity. It rained all night and was cold and wet the next morning so we headed back early Sunday.

Fire!

Kim and I went down to Yelm, just a little southeast of Olympia, for the 4th to hang out with Patrick and Arij (spelling?). Arij’s grandparents have a farm there so we had lots of space to light fireworks. We had a water fight, ate good food, and lit of a lot of fireworks with Patrick and Arij and their friends, Ben and Lee, and Todd and Lydia (pronounced Ludia since she’s from Austria). Unfortunately I burned my hand when a firework went off in it. My own stupid fault, but the firework was defective.

http://ncity.net/seokjooseongmi.wmv Who knew Chun-Li and Ryu could dance so well?

Kim, Jake and I drove down to Mount Rainier this Friday to go camping and hiking. We got in a little late and camped at the Ohanepecosh campground, which we found out later you can reserve spot for online. But who really wants to reserve a site before they see it? They don’t post which sites are reserved at the camp site, which is a royal pain. We picked two sites, and both times we went to register and found out they were reserved. Fortunately, the campground is huge, so we went to H loop and finally found a nice spot, isolated but still close to the comfort station (their euphemism, not mine).

Jake’s brother Judd and his girlfriend Sherri met us Saturday morning and got a site next to us. Jake and Judd look and awful lot alike. They brought their two dogs with them, which almost seemed a shame since they’re not allowed on most of the hiking trails. We hiked up the summer land trail, and it was beautiful out. We took our time, enjoyed the trees, flowers, and views of Rainier. On the way down we even saw a black bear a ways off.

Back at camp Sherri and Judd had burrito fixings that seemed gourmet for camping. They were nice enough to share them with us after we used a tent pole with a bungi cord hook to unlock Sherri’s truck, where she thought she had locked her keys (turned out after we broke in that they were in her fanny pack). Jake and I had some opportunities to talk a lot about politics, religion, society, and books, and it was good conversation. Jake is quite a bit more conservative than I am, and it’s rare that I get to talk to anyone politically conservative and still feel that I’m having an intelligent conversation.

Sherri and Judd left Sunday morning, but Jake, Kim and I went and hiked near Paradise. It was a little overcast, but it was still a nice short hike and we saw a marmot like animal and a pretty waterfall. We got back Sunday evening and there were chores to do that I had been putting off, but it was worth it to have a nice weekend outdoors.

After coming home from Kripalu I was reading a magazine on the plane and there was a cool ‘video game’ in an add. It’s called The Journey to Wild Divine, and is played using biofeedback sensors that measure your heart rate variability and skin conductance. It can measure how relaxed or tense you are, so it especially appealed to me after being at Kripalu. I’ve been playing it for a while now and it’s definitely very cool. The plot of the game is a little weird sometimes, but it’s extremely cool to see a video game react to your breathing and stress level. For example, there’s an elevator and if you flex your muscles and shout it goes up, while if you breath deeply and relax it goes down. One of the weirdest parts is a section where two people are involved, each person with a finger in the sensors, and it tells you to hold hands. If you let go of each other’s hands the game recognizes it and tells you. The gameplay is like Myst, with static predrawn scenes that have one or two interactive pieces you can click on. The music is nice and relaxing, but nothing I would listen to on my own. There’s definitely some hard parts too. Some of the challenges require you to be very relaxed, and it definitely takes some practice unless you’re already really good at meditation. Of course, it’s a bit expensive, and they want to sell you all sorts of expansions, but it’s novel enough that I can understand the price. It’s about time video games did something different like this.