Gretch-a-sketch (old)

Oh man, the fact that I'm just now getting around to writing about my adventure last Friday is enough to indicate how busy I've been.

I went rock climbing. Climbing up a rock. Like, physically going up a wall of rock. Ohhhh yeah.

I was pretty excited because I love a good adventure and I'm willing to try most anything once. My co-worker Carla, her husband Matt, and brother-in-law Josh were all there and it was intense (not unlike camping). We hiked up to the top of the rock and figured out the ropes, both figuratively and literally. The idea was to rappel down and then climb back up. Since they're all seasoned pros, they were asking me stuff like, "So are you afraid of heights?" Followed, of course, by nervous laughter and "Um, not too afraid, I guess." In reality I was thinking, You want me to go down that? With just a rope and a harness? Whoa, let's not get ahead of ourselves. The cars down there are practically the size of the plastic cars from The Game of Life. I haven't passed the marriage space or bought a log cabin or cured the common cold or had twins yet! What about the twins?! I believe Joey from Full House summed it up best when he said, "Cut. It. Out!"

But I'm no quitter, so down the cliff I went. There was a minor freak-out of WHERE DO I PUT MY FEET, but I bravely overcame. Consensus: Rappelling rocks. (Pun.) Once you get the rhythm down, it's so much fun. I imagine it looked something like this:


Then came the real challenge--getting back to the top. Carla let me borrow her shoes. Très kind! I only made it about halfway up and stayed there hugging the cliff in a manner that church leaders tell us young Mormon kids to never, ever do to the opposite sex. But for my first attempt at rock climbing, I felt extremely good about myself.

Also, I learned tons of new jargon. Did you know that "leading" is when you climb up and attach your rope to the bolts as you go? Because people need to make scaling large slabs of rock even more dangerous.


But wait! There's more! The best part of the evening was when we decorated paper maché heads of one another, à la Michael Scott in the Halloween episode of The Office. (Pictures shamelessly taken from Carla.)

Honest, I do not look this fake-baked EVER. We ran out of white, so there was improvisation involved.

In case you can't tell, Josh's eyes have glitter in them. I thought it was a nice touch. He also looked more like a Muppet than I intended.

The pre-maché materials. Rather genius, don't you think?

As they say in the rock business, "Once you go slack, you never go back!" Or maybe I just made that up. Whatever. It was a blast and I'm determined to make it to the top at some point in my life. Young Gretchen would have never tried climbing and rappelling, but Fancy New Gretchen is all over that stuff.

You choose the option: "If you think Xinni should lower her guard and trust Jax's word..." from here. Start from the beginning of the Choose Your Own Blogventure: Sci-fi Edtion here. Finally, read the other choice you could have made here.

Xinni lifted her blaster from its holster and used it to tip up the head of the humanoid. She inspected the creature quickly, but effectively. The gun was pocketed and she harrumphed. “Jax, if this were anyone but you…”

Jax drew a breath. “Alright. We’ve got to get these guys out of here. Here’s the game plan—there are about fifty total further back in the cave, so we’ll each take half. I’ll go up and out the top and you can take yours the way you came. Copy?”

“And after?”

“I suppose we’ll convene at the base of the Tam River and go from there. Xinni, we’re a long way off from peace, but it’s a start. Thank you.” He placed a hand on her shoulder.

She stared at Jax in mild disbelief. This was more earnest than she expected, but she shook off his hand anyway. With that action, the sudden rush of emotion left.

The educated man walked up to the pair. “Xinni, I’m Joshua Kearns, one of the original Artlifes.” His old-fashioned name was a nod to the one of the creators of the computer system used in the human/robot hybrid. “I’ve seen things in this government that most humans wouldn’t dare to imagine. I shall fill you in later, as that’s neither here nor there. As of this instant, I’m concerned they’ve sent a ThreeBot after us. We are down to a matter of minutes.”

Xinni nodded and readied her blaster. Jax summoned the other humanoids from the dank crevice and split them up. “You lot, follow Xinni. Joshua, please keep an eye on her? She can be a handful.” Jax winked at the girl.

Her bundle of nerves from earlier had turned into a full-fledged knot. She led her crew down the green tunnel, hoping they were stealthy enough. A rumble echoed through the hall and Joshua pulled her back.

“We must retreat and follow Jax,” he commanded.

“Fine,” she spat, annoyed at being bossed around by a computer. They backed into the chamber and caught up with the rest of the group. Seemingly from nowhere, a laser beam glanced off the rock next to the corridor they were hustling through.

“What the…?” Jax exclaimed.

The ThreeBot entered the cavern—the deadliest piece of machinery ever produced.

“Anyone with a blaster stay with me!” Xinni yelled. “The rest of you get to safety!”

That left…Jax and Xinni. Long story short, they used their weapons to scorch a weak corner of the gleaming walls. The enclosure collapsed on itself, which effectively rendered the ThreeBot useless.

Jax reached out his hand to help Xinni up the passageway. She accepted.

“As if our enemies didn’t hate us enough, we had to go and eliminate their dangerous and ridiculously expensive ThreeBot,” Jax chortled once they were outside.

“Too true. You know what, Jax? We may not always get along, but we should be partners more often.”

He paused for a moment. “Yeah, I agree.”

And with that, she leaned in and kissed him.

Fin.

I'm crashing over at All The Wine's place today geeking out about webcomics. You can read my guest post titled "Hey Pete, you want to see a comic book with pregnant zombie nuns?" here and if that's not enough to get you interested, I don't know what else to do. Come say hi!

(Some of these are just sad… On a brighter note, two weeks until comedy night is done right once again!)

1. Awkwardness around people…especially those of the male persuasion. The following exchange is so something I would do.

Random Guy: (flirting) Hey, is this seat taken?
Liz: (irritaed) Ugh! Really, dude? I have to move my coat?! There are, like, four empty seats over there. Can't you just be cool?!

I’m not even going to touch the bit where she wonders if he would’ve bought her mozzarella sticks, because I’m pretty sure I’ve thought that before.

2. Geek girl love for stuff like Star Wars and Harry Potter. This next Halloween, I am so dressing up as Princess Leia…and probably for the next four Halloweens after that. Someday, I want a man who will understand when I complain that my eyes look like Admiral Ackbar’s.

3. Liz is married to her work and right now I’m married to school. Really, those twelve hour days on campus can take a toll on a girl.

4. Eating habits. Yesterday, I had a hot dog from the Dollar Dogs stand for lunch and dinner didn’t really happen, because there were doughnuts at the psych society. Um, Mom, pretend like you didn’t read that last part.

5. In the NBC Christmas special, Jack described her as a “weird writer lady.” Hey, me too!

I didn’t even mention the obvious ones like our unconventional sense of humor or the fact we totally look alike or the eerily similar family situation (except my brother’s still got a few years to go before he loses his memory in a senior class skiing trip).

It’s official. I’m going to be Liz Lemon when I grow up.

Also, if you like 30 Rock, please check out Pregnant Cornbread, a new 30 Rock fansite! It has the potential to be what Officetally is to The Office.

1. Chew Eclipse Gum--Yeah, this one is kind of obvious-town. Plus, Orbit is better and you still get the whole "outer space" feel.

2. Read Stephenie Meyer's Eclipse--Can we take a second to admire the beautifully cast Cullen family? Yum. But the real question at hand is: Edward or Jacob? Discuss.

3. Listening to Bonnie Tyler--Total eclipse of the moon? Try Total Eclipse of the Heart! Turn around, bright eyes--it's the ideal song for belting and provided one of the most memorable scenes in Bandits. Once upon a time, I was falling in love, now I'm only falling apart...

1) It says chicken of the sea. So is it chicken or fish?
Pam chickens out--there
Are other fish in the sea
Have you tried tuna?

2) Hai-coup
Crentist sure can’t help
Dwight replace his princely crown
Michael’s throne is safe

3) FEAR
Fight for Dwight's friendship?
I'd put my money on Mose
Yeah, he's a schur thing

(A/N: These were all written in the fall of 2006, hence the S3 emphasis.)

You remember how in The Magic Schoolbus, Arnold's catchphrase was, "I knew I should have stayed home today!" Well, I knew I should have stayed home today. Not for any specific school reason, but if Ms. Frizzle happened to be a professor, we certainly would have ended up inside a snowflake or something. It is a flipping blizzard right now and I'd post a picture if it weren't so dark outside. But this is a pretty decent representation:

Walking home, I wished for a taun taun I could use for warmth. Anyhow, I a) hate snow, b) wish I could entirely skip February, and c) seriously don't know what I was thinking coming up here in the winter.

(A/N Edit: Clearly Jamie and I were on the same snow blogging wavelength today. Great minds think alike, eh?)