the girly who shall end all girls

the other thing that happened yesterday (after finding a vax appt for C) was that the new tent arrived.

we masked up and carried it downstairs to the common area where there was enough room to try pitching it and take notes and pictures. it was everything i hoped it would be and more.

the trend in tents has been to make 50% or more of the body out of no-see-um mesh. this makes sense for cutting weight for backpacking, but for being in a base camp as far as i'm concerned it sucks. there's no privacy without the fly (and don't get me started on the existence of rain flys that don't cover the entire tent). we live in a place where it's wet most of the year, i want a tent to protect me from rain. it's more likely to be cool than blistering hot, i want actual walls with the option to open windows and vents as needed. and we've been talking about doing more early/late season camping, so again, mesh walls don't cut it.

so: the new tent is a dome with six sides. the sides alternate between a large double-layer window/door and triangular double layer vent windows, plus more little double layer vent windows up near the peak. the fly has zipper openings for all the window/doors with one main vestibule that has its own pole support, and pop up openings for the vent windows (there are little props to tent them up so you can have air circulation but not rain). it's smaller than the previous tent but still just tall enough for us to stand up inside (we're both under 6'). all the stakes are stainless steel so we can hammer them into hard ground. it came with a waterproof footprint even though it wasn't listed in the specs. everything involved in the setup is color-coded. all the external lines and loops have reflective elements. the bag it comes in has compression straps. it's commensurately heavy but i didn't buy it to pack farther than a national park "walk in". i suppose i wish that there wasn't any gray in the color scheme, but i'll live :)

complete with napping and forgetting to shower. we've been watching Edwardian Farm all day.

the major accomplishment is the purchase of a new car camping tent. our funky old tent had plastic "windows" in the fly (more like skylights) and one of them just fell out one day. we tried gluing it back in, but that failed and we had to resort to duct tape. we knew we wanted a new one for this season, and the REI member sale is on, so this weekend was the time. (ultimately the new tent is coming from somewhere else, but they also had a 20% off thing going on.) we're excited about the new one since C's backpacking tent from the same manufacturer is old enough to rent a car and still going strong. this one ticks all the boxes for us and then some, being both bombproof and tall enough for us to stand in. fingers crossed, really excited to get outside again.

our annual group camping trip ended up just being me and C this year (we even boarded Leela). ( covid risk/mitigation talk )

it was a lovely time. i read at least one book a day and as many comics collections as the library would let me check out. i worked on a mindless knitting project. we cooked over the fire, and hiked, and sat by the lake, and did a sightseeing drive up route 20. i broke down and bought an air mattress* so there was extra-comfy lounging and cuddling and napping. i had not one, but two hobbies fail me: we couldn't get a big enough car to hold my kayak,** and i had battery failures for the Nikon *and* the GoPro...so i explored being that person who takes pictures with an iPad. not having the dog in camp meant that there were chipmunks literally underfoot and fewer squirrel lasers.

the creek near the north campground has a tendency to wander due to trees falling down the mountain during storm season. the old bed has been dry for over 10 years now, and it's no longer a barren strip of rocks:


i think the new bed is well on its way to undercutting the campground loop road in a year or two.
( the creek trying to take out the road )

for some reason we never drove eastward before this year. there are a ton of scenic viewpoints up the mountain and trailheads we hadn't tried before. so there were pictures of the lake from above and a hike by a creek where there used to be prospecting for garnets and gold.
( views of Diablo Lake )

we made a lot of great food; i especially loved the night we made steak over the fire and roasted beets. there's something really satisfying about just slipping the skin off of a fork-tender beet. the grocery randomly had heritage eggs so we had blue-shelled eggs with vivid yolks for our breakfasts. C also figured out on this trip that he could use potato chips instead of graham crackers for gluten-free s'mores. (salty chips are delicious with the marshmallow and chocolate. i'm looking forward to perfecting this with Pringles and never buying graham crackers again.)
( roasted beets )
( hash with heritage eggs )



*we've always slept on thermarests like Serious Campers, not an air mattress like Wusses or Old People. i'm accepting my cronehood now, i guess.
**there were lots of day users getting in and out of the lake, and i think my corona paranoia would have made assembling and disassembling my folding boat near people nerve-wracking, so even though there were a couple of perfect paddling days i probably had a more relaxing trip without it.

links that aren't exactly shiny objects, let me show you them. (also, credit for these is lost in the mists of time. thanks for the inspiration, circle.)

scans of Steve Trevor in bondage, and a few pages of a classic story where he's enslaved

the fish offal in your beer


the best description of working on software that i have ever read: "...Fred made a good case for walkways and they're going to add to the bridge's appeal. Of course, they'll have to be built without railings, because there's a strict no railings rule enforced by Phil, who's not an engineer..."


Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and ending the cycle of abuse (spoilers)


a good starting point if you wanted to knit Jughead's hat from Riverdale


a condensed version of the big MetaFilter thread on Emotional Labor. long, tough, important.


a discussion of what dogs can taste


the drone-spearing incident is immortalized in a rune stone

traffic and displacement, mass transit helps with both

interesting discussion of "homevoter" vs "NIMBY"

parable of the polygons: an fascinating game about segregation

how the current US economy resembles a developing nation


you cannot do all the things. really.


how rock climbers poop on a long climb


again, BMI isn't that great a measure


Ron Moore on the record: they just thought "they have a plan" sounded cool


study showing how being lucky creates a feeling of entitlement

originally C was supposed to be home for two weeks. but the treatment schedule opened up a bit, so we pushed his flight out a week - which meant that we could get in some camping.

prior to the whole cancer thing, our plan for the summer was to go camping as much as we could and get Leela used to the idea (or determine that it was never going to work) before our annual trip in July.

( realizations and a change of plans )

on Saturday we got up, went out for coffee, and once C's breakfast had settled, he was willing and we were off. Leela doesn't love the car. i had given her some benadryl to make her a little drowsy, and rode in the back seat with her. she proceeded to drool copiously in a way i had never seen. like, soaking my pants copiously. i spread my flannel on my lap to help sop it up, which was good, since it caught the vomit :/

after puking, Leela felt much better and lay down for the rest of the ride. fortunately, dog vomit is basically scentless, so i just had to keep from spilling until we arrived. after that, pretty much everything was fine.

Dash Point feels surprisingly isolated for being on the edge of Federal Way and under a flight path to SeaTac. the park has a salmon stream and a pleasant hiking trail along it through a second growth forest, from the campground to its outlet on a Puget Sound beach. we saw rabbits, and ate the occasional salmonberry, and Leela splashed in the stream. the sound, well, that was a step too far. (we didn't go down early enough for the minus tide.) there were wee six or eight inch waves. Leela could see that other dogs were playing in the water, and she would run up to the edge, but then THE WATER MOVED and that was not okay. i guess if the waves came up past my knees i would be a bit wary too.

we made steaks and baked potatoes with the campfire, and generally chilled out. between the tree cover and being relatively close to the shore we had steady cool breezes and as long as we stayed out of the sun the temperature was great. Leela slept pretty well in the tent, although she did alert a couple times during the night. (placid Molly did that too, so i feel pretty okay about that.) the important thing is that she didn't flip out every time someone walked by the campsite. she didn't mind being on a run (we attach an elastic lead to climbing cord run between a couple trees; leashes are the law). she totally loved walking in the woods, and picked up on the campsite being "home" immediately.

C did okay too. it was definitely not-NH.

the campground was busy, mostly families. i was delighted that it was only maybe 50 or 60 percent white people, and not all of those white people were speaking English. ditto the day use side of the park with the beach. parks are for everyone <3 <3 <3

the only problem heading home was that when we parked the car, Leela didn't really want to get out. eventually i had to pick her up, which is hysterical because she sticks all four legs out as far as she can, like some kind of deformed starfish. still, it was pretty easy. we can do this again.

*there was filming going on a few tables over, seemed to be people in the music business telling anecdotes. didn't recognize anyone, wasn't going to get in their way to find out. we live in a city, motherfuckers.