Happy Halloween!

Today, I'm dressed like this:

I was pretty much always a witch for Halloween growing up. If I wasn't a witch, I would be a bunny or a dog or something cute. Never something super girly. Witches really embody Halloween for me.

I'm not sure when Halloween became one of my favorite holidays, and I don't go ALL out getting dressed up or going out to parties, but there's just something about it that I love. I love decorating my house with witches and ghosts and creepy things. I love watching "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!" I love going to the pumpkin patch, through corn mazes and haunted houses and to harvest festivals. I love PUMPKINS. Eating them and carving them.

My office had a pumpkin carving competition. I was bummed that not too many people participated, but that did allow Mr. Snailey here to clench the top spot in the "best decorated" category.

We made him last night! I took care of the butternut squash part, while Aaron actually carved the pumpkin. Tonight I'm planning on getting home early to wait for any trick-or-treaters we might have. This is our first year in a real house with a front door and everything, so I hope we get at least a couple kids coming by! I think we'll also roast our pumpkin seeds and bake some muffins.

The muffins aren't very Halloween-y, but Aaron has a potluck tomorrow at work, so ya know.

How are you celebrating?!

October at Smith

We were lucky to spend two weekends at Smith Rock State Park this month! I hadn't been out there in months and months before that, which I think turned out to be a good thing. Smith Rock does strange things to my mental game in terms of climbing.

I let the crowds bother me. And the heat (even in the crispness of the central Oregon fall, the sun on those rocks is sweltering, still). But the past two trips have been really great, and I've made progress (and yes, sends)!

And I've been such a terrible blogger, I haven't even written about the new addition to our family that came in September: Charlie!!!

Charlie is a seven-month-old pitbull/lab mix. Here he is with Boone, cuddled up in the shade:

I almost can't handle how adorable they are. Charlie has a very sweet, calm disposition. He's sort of slow and lumbering. Much more thoughtful and accepting than Boone. They balance each other out well. They're both learning things form each other, and I love watching them interact.

We're hanging out at the Morning Glory wall and the Dihedrals mostly. Aaron's working a 12b called Latest Rage! Here's me this past weekend, after my send of Nine Gallon Buckets and before working my project, Cool Ranch Flavor. I was on Cool Ranch when we started feeling a few raindrops, which turned into a bit of a downpour and mass evacuation from the park. Eek!

I'll leave you with Ryan Palo, a guy who can climb much, much harder than me. Here he is aiding his way up Scar Face to set up a giant top rope SWING at the top. You stand, tied in, on top of a nearby boulder and let your belayer pull you off so you can swing back and forth a few times. It looks like a blast!

Smith Rock IS a beautiful place. I'm too hard on it sometimes.

Fito, I quit you!

I have a confession to make. For the past.... year? (I don't even know how long), I've been an obsessed "Fitocrat". For those that don't know, I'm talking about the social networking/fitness tracking site, Fitocracy.

And after this weekend, I quit. Why this weekend? Well, because I'm SO close to leveling up, and if my projections are correct, it will happen sometime Friday or Saturday and.... look! I already sound like a crazy person.

Here's my profile page for the site:

Below this, my daily workouts are tracked and displayed for all to see. But not just my workouts. I've gotten to the point where I track every time I walk up stairs. Every walk I take to a different part of campus during work. Every bike commute (a little more legit, but whatever).

I feel obsessed. In a bad way.

I started "working out" when we moved to Alabama in November, 2012. There wasn't much to do there. We didn't know many people, and my job offered a discounted YMCA membership. I went to the gym a couple times a week and started running. I quickly got up to half marathon distances. We also ventured to the Birmingham bouldering gym on Thursday evenings and tried to climb outside as often as we could. And I felt AMAZING, and I wanted to keep going!

To ensure I got my daily workout in, I used a calendar and wrote a G, Y, R or C near the date to designate a day I'd gone to the gym, yoga studio, for a run or climbing. And then I discovered Fitocracy.

I love the internet. And my new love for fitness fit in perfectly with Fitocracy's goal, so I started tracking. On Fitocracy, you're awarded "points" for your workout.

For example, A recent, slow 8-mile run on light hills was worth 1028 points. That's a lot.

Two hours of climbing inside is always worth 777 points.

An hour of yoga? 234 points.

The more I used the site and the more I leveled up, the more I became more obsessed with logging points. I set a personal goal to get to 1000 points every day, which lead to the aforementioned logging of stair-walking. I worked out (with a rest day or two thrown in every week). But, on days where I went to a one-hour hot yoga class, I only earned 200-something points? And that didn't seem fair!

The points awarded for yoga is a highly disputed subject by my fellow yogis on the site. The Fitocracy Gods have decided that yoga is not as strenuous as lifting (which is the preferred Fitocracy workout ...Do you even lift, Bro?!).

The point is that it's all so arbitrary. I have been in yoga classes that probably burned thousands of calories, and I have been the typical "girl on the elliptical" burning maybe a couple hundred calories in half an hour ....but I still got the points!

The other thing about the site is that the longer you use it, the longer it takes you to "level up" because there are more points between each level. I'm finishing up 60,000 points to get to level 38 at the moment. Ugh.

Then there are the groups. Oh, the groups. In the climbing community, there is something we call "spray" ...which many Fitocracy climbers seem to have no concept of. It's bad form to talk about what grades you're climbing, but this is common place in the Fitocracy forums.

It's also common to post yourself in crazy Yoga poses. Bragging! I can't take the bragging! Yoga, especially is NOT about ego.

Everything on Fitocracy seems to be about ego. And points. And I'm just....tired of it.

I'm tired of doing those few extra pushups or situps just for the points. Not that they weren't good for me, but.... It's just been too often that I've done an extra set that I didn't really need to do!

I'd love to find a free tool (besides myfitnesspal, which I'm not a fan of), that more accurately tracks health and fitness levels. But I'm done with Fitocracy. After I level up. *cries*

100 books so far

Remember when I read 100 books last year? Remember how crazy I thought that was, and decided not to shoot for a crazy reading goal this year, but to read more poetry?

I've read some poetry, yes. Go me.

But I've also read 100 books. As of last night when I finished The Aftermath by Rhidian Brook, which was pretty damn good to be honest.

I don't know how this happened. Except for a lot of time spent in the car this year (2 cross-country trips & a lot of weekenders), bus commuting for five months and my shiny new library card to a library that actually stocks books I read (Looking (displeased) at you, Central Arkansas Library System).

I've upped my Goodreads reading goal a few times this year when I got ridiculously ahead of whichever goal I had. With 100 books, I'm currently 11 books (9 percent) ahead of my current goal of 120. I'm projecting I'll end up reading 130 books this year?

Geez….

I just love reading, guys. It's something I get lost in. And since I'm currently unable to travel too far from home, it's something I do to get away.

Here are some favorites of the year so far in no particular order. I'll write an official top 10 list in December, which is coming up so, so quickly! These are YA, adult fiction, nonfiction, short stories…all over the board:

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw
Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins
Neither Here nor There by Bill Bryson
Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys
The Cuckoo's Calling by J.K. Rowling as Robert Galbraith
The Across the Universe series by Beth Revis
The Whispering Muse by Sjon
A spot of Bother by Mark Haddon
Between Two Worlds by Roxana Saberi
The Flouder by Gunter Grass (liked it more than the Tin Drum!)
….and everything I read by Alice Munro

Fire

"Fire operates at a number of different scales. The smallest is that of a campfire, where you're just mixing fuel and oxygen and a heat source and theoretically, it perpetuates itself in time." --- Dr. John Bailey, Oregon State University

I've been working on a story about fire and fire science for work. Thus, thinking a lot about it, and about all the wonderful campfires Aaron has built for us. :)

Anyway... I've also just been plugging along. Working. Cleaning. Last weekend was nice if not a little rainy. We spent Sunday in Portland enjoying IKEA, Foster burger, shopping in the Pearl and seeing Dr. Dog play with The Lumineers.

I've also been drinking more tea and wearing more boots and scarves. More of that to come, I'm sure.

Rogue Farms

We spent the day at the Rogue Farms Hopyard in Independence! Aaron had to take one photo for work, and since we were up there, we decided to make a day of it and show ourselves around!

Most of our Rogue experiences has been at their headquarters in Newport, which is just an hour away from us! The Hopyard is closer, and it so much fun! They were hosting a harvest festival today. They have a lot of events! I would love to go back up for a cider-making workshop or pumpkin festival!

This swing was the scene of the crime for the photo. The actual subjects were not upside down, but I always think I make a great stand-in!

The two pigs were my favorite. The brother-sister pair are named Voo and Doo, and they're old and arthritic and adorable. I'm glad they've had such a happy life on the farm!

I had the new barley wine. You should probably get some!

Bonus photo. I just liked how this one turned out! All of these photos were taken by my talented husband, of course. Mine can be found on Instagram. =P

"The Three Sisters"

I am having a very nice Saturday morning. I baked carrot-apple-zucchini muffins (with cinnamon & orange zest - I highly recommend baking anything with this combination when it starts to feel like fall wherever you are) for us, and I have the first of two loaves of zucchini bread in the oven for our coworkers next week.

I have tea. I have candles burning. I really have no desire to leave my freshly-cleaned house, but I will in just a bit for a little run before I continue on with the rest of the day: shopping for bike fenders and attending our first OSU football game tonight!

As good as this morning is, though, I'm not sure it tops one a few months back when we stopped in Eugene on the way to go climbing and had brunch at Morning Glory Cafe downtown.

I had something they call The Three Sisters. The menu says: A mountain of herbed glory potatoes, broccoli, mushrooms, zucchini, tomatoes and onions. Topped with your choice of mozzarella cheese, nutritional yeast sauce, herbed tofu sour cream, or tantric mushroom gravy. Served with your choice of homemade bread. Half portion: $6.75 Add organic baked tofu, organic grilled tempeh slices, or soysage patties: $2.75

I've been dreaming about this and craving it ever since, so, since I had the list of ingredients in front of me, I decided to attempt it.

I know it doesn't look pretty, but I thought it turned out pretty well! Here's what I used:

a good amount of yukon gold potatoes
1 head of broccoli
1 cup of mushrooms
2 cups of zucchini (because we have a lot of zucchini still)
3 small/medium tomatoes
1 small yellow onion
1 batch vegan mushroom gravy

I covered my yukon golds and broccoli with oil, salt and pepper and roasted them at 425 while I started on my mushroom gravy (I used this Whole Foods recipe, which did the job!). Once my gravy was nice and thick, I kept it warm on low while I caramalized my onions in butter and then threw in my zucchini, mushrooms and tomatoes in that order. When everything was done, I decided to just combine it in the big bowl you see in the photo. We still have a ton left, and it's kept nicely in the fridge. Craving satisfied.

By the way. This meal was completely vegan at Morning Glory, but since I'm not a vegan, I happily used some butter for frying purposes. :)