I did not know Arizona had elevations over 12k ft. Maybe i shouldn't be too surprised considering the first time I drove through Flagstaff I was shocked that it was at 8k ft.

cool video! climbing mountains with your dad, really great.

Awesome toast. I love Arizona. I thought atakdog was atakdad for a moment.

you need to shave

Substantive responses and further thoughts when I get back to Chicago. Though I will say this: I appreciate both advice and good wishes; on the other hand, hearing that I wouldn't have liked being a lawyer anyway is ... well, it's fine to say it but it's not helpful to me and also probably not correct. (I know many lawyers pretty well, and know lots about what's wrong with the profession.)

That I will be following a different path does not mean I need to pretend that that one would have been wrong for me.

Indeed. It's something we've done occasionally since back before most POGgers were bortn. He's in great shape (not just for his age, but over all), and in general can leave me in the dust, but today got to him for some reason; anyway, it was a good hike.


(I think?)

I'd have shown the Grand Canyon in the toast but nothing in the background seemed to be coming out very well. The wildfires seem to have contributed a lot of haze, but you could still see a couple hundred miles in most directions.


And apparently if I'm going to have to (ugh) interview for (plusugh) jobs, I will.

That is an awesome awesome toast!

How difficult is the hike to the top of Humphries?

Not, if you're in decent shape. Five miles each way, 3500 foot gain, starting at a bit over 9K, so it'll get you breathing, but the trail is fine (albeit hard to spot in some spots in the tundra zone — it's barely marked, and you're supposed to stay on it because there's a rare endemic plant, lives nowhere but the tundra zone [the only spot in AZ] on that peak) — no rock scrambling at all. This time of year there's still a moderate amount of snow, so most of the advice you'll see is to wait until June, but it was no problem.

Definitely recommended. On a really clear day I'll bet you could see 200 miles in most directions — yesterday there was some haze from the fires but I still think we could see five states.

That's a non-trival hike imo. Esp done as a day trip.

Stumbled across this thread and just read most of it - good read.

Atak you are a cool guy and have always been nice and fun to play and interact with in my experience. I was sorry - and surprised - to read about some of your struggles, although they're balanced in this thread with enough brags (thinly veiled and otherwise). GL w/ all your endeavors and please spare me if you ever push the depopulation button.

This is actually an extremely insightful post imo.

I glanced at pub and saw that post which is what made me want to search this for this well.

Often I do feel that I'm gaining a hell of a lot of insight and wisdom, much of it from my various tribulations. Unfortunately that's not quite enough to live on.

Bumping for news!

Lol, you got here before me.

OK, I'll tell. Give me a bit to type it up.

As you may gather from popcorn.gif, I have news.

I am engaged. Yes, to be married. Yes, to an actual, flesh and blood human woman. And it's actually even more than just that — I think it ties into just about every extensively-discussed theme in this well.

The strangest part, on a superficial level: I just met her. Like, now. This week. Initial contact was on Match.com. (Yes, I'm on there — I think I discussed this elsewhere in the well.)

A bit about my experience on Match: It's extensive. I dated a VP of the Match company, way back when the company was small. I've met several girlfriends on there over the ~ten years. So I know how these communications go; I can be a sensible evaluator, I think, of what's real and what's not. I know that all is not necessarily as it seems, and you have to meet in person before you know anything.

So with that as background...

My profile had been down since April — I hadn't been able to get my head on straight after the law school debacle. But I was so lonely, as much as ever, and something like ten days ago I rewrote it all, and put it back up. The rewritten version was frank and candid, about all the negative stuff (of which we know there's lots) — it says in there that I failed to graduate from law school, that I cant' hodl a job, and that I have no ****ing idea what's next. Good stuff too, but I didn't try to sell myself to everyone. Just to the one who would recognize that I was rrght for her — if she existed.

On Thursday of last week, I glanced at my phone as I was waiting for time to saddle up the horses — I'd done a couple hours of stable work at that point. And I saw the e-mail from [I need to decide to refer to her — let me work on that] ... and was stunned. I can write; I think y'all know that by now. But on reading this note from her I realized immediately that I was going to be hard-pressed to stay on level ground. In that e-mail she conveyed brilliance and wit and thoughtfulness and ... well, let's say I was impressed and leave it there, but yeah, more than that.

We exchanged three emails each, I think, that day; by the end of the day it was clear, somehow (notwithstanding all the caveats a couple paragraphs above) that we had to meet, that this could well be something amazing. Thursday we switched to text messages and I expected it to calm a bit — and it turns out that she does hesitate to compose brilliant missives or even poetry by text message. And it wasn't just articulate and smart, it was connected. We talked on the phone that night, and it was more of the same.

Saturday I pulled my profile down. It will never go up again.

Monday our first date — and I got hugely lucky. A friend of the family had offered to let me come sailing with him (he has a ~24 foot sailboat, not a racer but very well set up; he's an expert sailor who crossed the Atlantic earlier this summer). I invited [name] to come along, and 'pup too — by this time I knew that they needed to meet.

[continued next post]

Backtracking a bit:

I teach physics. I am so firmly convinced that there is nothing supernatural anywhere in the universe that I think bothering to consider the possibility very long is silly. I think all that there is are molecules, that emotions are hormones and the brain stem altering the conditions under which cerebral neurons fire. It's not exactly mystical — nothing is. This is a big portion of the core of my view of the world.

Back to the story.

She stepped out of the car, and ... that whole paragraph above just went up in smoke. I will testify under pain of torture that magic exists, because I have felt it. There, then, with her.

And she will testify to the same thing.

We were out on Boston harbor for six hours. About halfway through,, she said she'd happily fly to Chicago every weekend to see me, but if it were possible, could I please not go back at all. By the end of the day, it was unspoken but clear that each of us was done looking. I'm not sure exactly when it got formalized — some time that night, I guess. My child, and at least one of hers, has been told that we are to be married. It's real, somehow.

[more]

congrats!

dog
pup
AtakB----

it's only logical

I only read the first like four sentences and had to come post "holy ****" before I finished reading.

that **** cray.

you sound like a giddy schoolgirl tbh