between the rock and the cold, cold sea

Most excellent climbing last night. The Best Climbing Mate left the lead rope in his lab, so we were reduced to toproping only: it made a pleasant change. I climbed a couple of 6As and improved my previous sendings of a couple of 6Bs: did my favourite 6C (the only one I can finish without cheating) without too much screaming, and succeeding in sending, albeit with thrashing, shrieking, flailing, and a bit of cheating, a 6B+ that's been thwarting me since forever, and a 6A+ that I hadn't tried since long before the winter holiday.

Do you know, I think I might almost be getting used to this?

I hope they change the routes soon, though. If it weren't for lead climbing, it would have already become incredibly frustrating, and the day can't be long off when it does become so.

---

Books 2010: 11-16.


non-fiction

11. Petra Pakkanen, Interpreting Early Hellenistic Religion. A study based on the Mystery Cult of Demeter and the Cult of Isis, Finnish Institute at Athens, 1996.

Read for my thesis. It's a useful study, but it lacks something of the internal coherency necessary to make it a pleasant read, and I found myself dubious at some points regarding the general - not the specific, but the general - statements the author occasionally makes.

But that's a hazard of all books on religion, I suppose.


12. Justin Marozzi, Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World, HarperCollins, London, 2004.

Part travelogue, part narrative history, Marozzi writes an accessible if shallow history of Central Asia's greatest conqueror. A little bit more source-criticism and a little more attention paid to elucidating details would have made this, overall, a much better book.


fiction

13. Elizabeth Bear, Chill.

"Divinity may be in the eye of the beholder, Tristen Conn. What percentage of a god has to influence the course of events before one admits to divine intervention? By the way, I do not think these people like you very much."

The sequel to Dust. The generation ship Jacob's Ladder is underway again at last, but the worst of its troubles seem only to be beginning. Still threatened by treachery and rebellion, and by the exigencies needed for the ship to survive, the Conn family must lay aside their differences to fight the monster waiting in the dark.

Or something like that. With talking carnivorous plants and a mammoth, people. How can you not love a book like that?


14. Jim Butcher, First Lord's Fury.

Reasonably satisfying conclusion to Butcher's Codex Alera series. Big battles. Many big battles. Treachery. Reconciliation. The end of the world.

However, comma, an epic concluding battle where none of our heroic point of view characters or members of their families die? Really seriously broke my suspension of disbelief. I did not think Isana was getting out of there alive, and the fact that both she and Amara did made the ending feel too easy.


15. Marcus Sedgwick, My Swordhand Is Singing.

YA. Bought on the strength of a friend's recommendation and the coolness of the title. Vampires, 17th century Eastern Europe. Forests. Snow. It had many great things and failed to live up to its promise.


16. Carrie Vaughn, Kitty's House of Horrors.

Kitty Norville, radio host and werewolf, takes part in a reality tv show that turns out to be a lot more dangerous than advertised. Seventh in the Kitty series. Quite funny.

---

This is going to be a thin year for new books, I suspect. I've already re-read twice as many old books as I have read new ones: P.C. Hodgell, most recently. And the amount of non-fiction slows down fiction reading, of course.

Triumph!

O sweet, O long-awaited triumph.

I climbed tonight. Warmed up on an easy toprope, then I led three routes and half of two others (one of which may become a project, because it is evil and sufficiently just outside my skills while being somewhat encouraging) and then! I sent my project black 6C. Without cheating. Oh, there was slippage, and stoppage, but I did it solid in the end.

Now all I have to do is try it earlier in the session next time to see if I can do it clean(er).

I also improved the new project grey 6C (maybe +), getting a hold higher on its evilness. And that was my night. Wheee!

Books 2010: 9

non-fiction

9. Hippocratic Writings, Penguin Classics, London, 1978. Trans. J. Chadwick, W.N. Mann, I.M. Lonie, and E.T. Witherington.

The ways in which this are informative about Greek medical thought in the fifth and fourth centuries BC are many. Nearly as many as the ways in which this is utterly horrifying. Be glad we live among modern medicine, my friends. Be very glad.

I found the translation somewhat annoying, in that specific medical terminology - such as epistaxis, which means nosebleed - is used without being footnoted or explained. As few students of the classics are well read on topics such as tenesmus, strangury, dysuria, dyspnoea, enteritis and so on, you might think the editor would have included a glossary. Alas not.

---

Good climbing day. Led the 6A on the roof, another 6A, and a 5. Topropped a 6A and a 6A+, and improved my project 6C: another two weeks, and I'll have done it without cheating, I think. (Not without stopping, but without cheating.) So it will have only taken three or four months.

I picked out another project 6C today, in anticipation, since the usual alternate was in use. It is an evil, evil grey route that combines balance, strength, fingerclings, and an evil overhang I have yet to reach.

Also topropped the slab 5, and did the one-handed (left-hand then right-hand) climbs of the 3. So all in all a good day. Although I still feel as though I could have climbed more: I don't feel as though you could wipe the floor with me.

Which is probably good, since I have to get up tomorrow.

Decent day. Not enough work, but such is the way of life.

Ran before climbing - mile in 9:30, 1.25 miles in 14 minutes, total.

Excellent climbing night. I led the 6A on the roof, an easy 5, and half of another 6A - it would have been the whole route, but I overclimbed the clip, ended up falling most of the way down because my belayer had forgotten to either brace himself against the wall or clip in to a weightbag, and decided it wasn't worth climbing all the way back up.

My style of leading, so far, appears to be climb-and-clip for the first four clips, and clip-and-stop for the last four. Well, apart from the roof 6A: you cannot stop on the roof, really, so it's climb-and-clip for the first four clips, stop, climb-and-clip for the next two, and then clip-and-stop for the last two.

(Of course, when I lead it, I always lead it first. The roof is no fun at all when your arms are tired and weak.)

One day I will lead a whole route without stopping to rest. One day! (Although that day is yet very far distant.)

Toproped, in addition, the same easy 5, a 6B (a pretty easy one: it may really be a 6A+), up the crux (three moves from the top) on an excruciating white 6C: improved my project black 6C and (with some cheating to get past the bleeding crux, after straightforward honesty failed three times in a row) dynoed and got my hand on the last hold. Although I couldn't hold it, but the dyno itself was fun. As always.

(I figured out tonight that I do in fact have to go in earnest for the full dyno there. There's no way I'm making two feet with my left hand on that move if I'm still trying to hang on with my right once I'm underway.)

Also climbed the 5 on the slab, and without stopping, on a bet, did the 3 first using only feet and left hand, and then using only feet and right hand. I did have to cheat a little bit on the latter, though. My right arm doesn't exactly hold me in the greatest esteem right now.

And after the better part of two and a half hours, both The Best Climbing Partner Ever and I were exhausted. And after what, eight, nine routes? I think we might be entitled to our exhaustion.

Books 2010: 8

8. Charles De Lint, Mulengro.

This is so very much an eighties book. So very much an eighties book.

But entertaining, nonetheless.

---

Climbing today. Good day, the sun shining in through the glass windows, and the Best Climbing Partner doing the friendly mocking thing.

I led the 6A on the roof, led half of a new-to-me 6B+ (before that went all kind of pear-shaped: what was I thinking, trying a 6B+ cold), and led one of the easier 6As. Toproped a 5, and a 6A+ (poorly: I forgot how to do the damn thing) and improved on my black 6C project of the tiny reachy balancy holds. Still not up to getting the top without cheating, but closer.

Finished up with the slab: a 5, and then - on a bet - the 3, using only feet and left hand. Which was actually a hell of a lot of fun, and I didn't even fall off.

Tomorrow it's back to class. Ah, well. The sooner I register, the sooner I can starting fretting about the arrival of my teeny government grant.

Good climbing night, despite weakness and the Zombie Cold. Best Climbing Partner was nearly as weak, though, so I don't feel so badly about myself.

Running: discontinuous mile in 9:15. One day, I swear, one day I will make my goal of an eight-minute mile, but that day is still far off.

Too sleepy to work on thesis. Alas.

I am mighty.

Today, I led three routes at the climbing wall. Two of which were 6As, of which one was upon the roof.

Of course, these were attended with much stopping and hanging on the rope, but still, three routes led. I feel almost like a real climber.

(I also toproped six and nine-tenths other routes. One and nine-tenths were 6Bs, and okay, so the nine-tenths had far too much falling in there, and one was a 6A, two were easy routes on the slab, and one was a 5+ that nearly took the skin off my hands, because I was that tired by then. But still, mighty climbing.)

I have never been this tired, though. This term has been too long, and I am stupid with over-exposure to the world. I don't know, but I hope I can steal some time from the thesis to recover myself.

Of course, my lecturer wants our class to read Anthony and Cleopatra for our own edification over the break, too. At least I have an excuse to avoid my family over the holiday period. Not that this is an unmitigated good.

My to-do list, it grows by the day.

After waking up roughly hourly last night, I went to climb today.

It was cathartic. The best climbing partner ever was finally willing to try lead climbing - I was mightily impressed: he led a whole route on his first try, albeit with many pauses - and! I sent my very second 6C. On toprope, of course, and with much screaming and a moment of cheating, but I did it.

(The score for today: one route half-led, because of introducing Best Climbing Partner to that form of entertainment; on toprope, two 6As, one 6B, and one 6C. Also another 6C attempted, and wow, fail. I may not be perfectly energetic during the winter months.)

Afterwards, I wandered around a bookshop coveting poetry, language courses, and the Loeb Classical Library editions of Seneca's Moral Letters, and Herodotos's History. Right now, I'm sitting in my chair by the fire coveting Xboxen on Amazon UK. (I love computer games. But I haven't been able to afford a console in years, and even when my PS2 was current, I could never afford more than a game or two a year.) In conclusion: damn, but I need paying work.

Or I need to learn how to covet less.

Quote of the day: ex nihilo nihil fit.

Tonight, I led a 5, improved the 6A on the roof on lead - I'm over the roof, I just need to be willing to fall in order to reach the next hold - led part of a 4, toproped a 6B and backtoback a 5 and a 3.

Not exactly the world's most productive climbing night, but after a day of writing presentation, and an evening of a seminar on ceramics and the archaeology of food in the Byzantine Mediterranean, I think I did well just to get to the wall.

One day I will write again. Something that is not thesis.

Today, I climbed five routes, two 6Bs, a 6As, and two 6A+s. Also, halfway up a 6C, some improvement on last time - but since I didn't get more than halfway, I suppose it doesn't really count.

This was my last route, a red, reachy 6A+. You don't want to know how long it took me to get up around that corner: I had so little heave left in my forearms, and the move up above is practically a chin-up with smearing.

(It was suggested today I might like to climb in Czech in the summer. Apparently with Ryanair it's cheaper to get there than it is to get to Cork.)