Visual updates from the last few months…

So, it’s been a little while, huh?

Hi there!

So, as it turns out, boarding school life is always a bit more hectic than I ever anticipate. Oh well. As a result, I’ve been less than consistent with my posts here than I would have hoped, but let me update you all on what I’ve been up to these past months.

October ended up being a month for baking. I baked bread, cookies, and more bread. I’ll actually be running a week long intensive bread baking workshop for the kids in February, so I was inspired to test out a few recipes. My favorite FOR SURE has been a wonderful recipe that my friend Anna gave me this summer. It’s unbelievably easy and ridiculously tasty….check it out:

White Flour Recipe:

3 cups (15 ounces) all purpose or bread flour

1/4 tsp. instant or rapid-rise yeast (NOT dry active)

1 1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 cup plus 2 Tbs. (3 ounces) mild flavored lager

1 Tbs. white vinegar

Enough water at room temp. to bring liquid up to 1 5/8 cups.

 

Whole Wheat Recipe:

2 cups (10 ounces) all purpose or bread flour

1 cup (5 ounces) whole wheat flour

1/4 tsp. instant or rapid-rise yeast (NOT dry active)

1 1/2 tsp. salt

2 Tbs. honey (or 2 Tbs. raw sugar)

1/4 cup plus 2 Tbs. (3 ounces) mild flavored lager

1 Tbs. white vinegar

Enough water at room temp to bring liquid up to 1 5/8 cups

 

Note: The beer can be non-alcoholic.

Also, regarding the use of sugar and the ratio of white to whole wheat flour in the ‘Whole Wheat’ recipe, see the post from Beatrix below. She used 2 cups of whole wheat flour and 1 of white and it still came out light.

 

Mix dry ingredients together in a big bowl. Add all liquid, and mix together with your hands until dough is shaggy and just comes together. Cover and let stand for 12-16 hours in a warm place (room temp is fine). The dough will expand, have bubbles throughout it, and will be very sticky. Lightly flour a working surface and dump dough onto it. Sprinkle the dough with more flour so it doesn’t stick to your hands. Flatten dough into a big rectangle. Fold dough into thirds in one direction (North/South, Top/Bottom, Length-wise–whatever makes sense) And then fold into thirds in the other direction. Put dough into a bowl with a well-floured cotton cloth seam-side down and then leave covered for an hour or 2.

 

In the meantime, preheat your oven to 500 degrees and put your Dutch Oven or Cloche inside to heat up for about 1/2 hour. Reduce temperature to 425 and bake your bread in the pot covered for 25 or 30 minutes. This will steam the outside of the bread to make a nice crispy crust. Then remove the bread from the pot and bake straight on the oven rack for an additional 15 minutes or so or until the bread sounds hollow when you tap the bottom of it. Let the bread sit and cool for about an hour once you take it out to let it set.

SO GOOD.

This photo comes from this summer when Anna taught me how to make it. The pink fingernails are all part of it, too.

 

November has been a crazy month as well. I took Jess up on the challenge to write a novel (that’s right, a NOVEL) in 30 days. It was painful. It was fun. I seriously worried that I was writing complete drivel. Still, I had moments of relative excitement….

Overall, the plan with National Novel Writing Month (which is November, of course) is simply to write 1,667 words a day. Surprisingly, that’s actually not all that bad. The trouble begins when you don’t make your word count for a day. It gets worse when you miss a day. As it turned out for me, it’s December 5 and I’m still writing.

The 1,667 words gets you to 50,000 words in 30 days, but as I write, I’m starting to feel that I’ve got quite a bit more than 50,000 to write to do the story justice. I’ll keep plugging away on that one.

So far, December is looking like a combination of things for me. First and foremost, I’d like to finish that novel. However, there’s another thing I’m going to do this month.

I’m going to call, email, or write (yes, with stamps and everything) everyone I’ve been out of touch with lately. That’s a lot of people. It just seems that for the most part, my days are pretty busy, but there’s no excuse for not staying in touch with the people I care about. A good friend of mine, Courtney, writes a letter to a friend every week. The thing is, it doesn’t take that much time to stay in touch with people, and let’s be honest, Facebook doesn’t count.

So, if you’d like a letter, send me your address!

 

And now for some participation…..

September is rapidly coming to a close and we need your input. What should the next challenge be?

The last month has been a physical challenge, so perhaps we ought to switch it up and try something more intellectual or skill based. The handstands were a solitary challenge, so maybe the next challenge should involve other people….perhaps like this:

…or maybe not. I’m not sure if I’m ready for an athletic challenge of that magnitude.

Another option would be to hone a skill we already possess. For example, Matt is pretty awesome on a scooter, but he could aspire to this:

Use of fisheye lens duly noted.

Anyways, we’d love to hear from you all, our beloved readers! What’s next? Horse whispering? Free soloing? Training Banksy to open beers?

Let us know.

Halfway through!

Is it really the middle of the month?

With the school year now in full swing, it’s been a little more difficult to find the time to post, but we have been working on our monthly goals. My handstands are a little bit sub-par, to be sure (Russian gymnasts watch out, I’ve still got two weeks of training) but I’m moving in a better direction.

Unfortunately, Matt’s hand has not improved by much. Although the gaping wound is now closed, he’s got some super gnarly blisters on the same hand. On top of that, his old climbing injury in the other hand hasn’t really improved much. It looks like this month sort of will be a waiting sort of month for him. The good news is that he finally was able to go climbing last night. He did have to wrap all his fingers in tape (mitten approach) but it was great to see him climbing again. As a side note, it turns out climbing is an awesome way to get better at handstands. Not only does it improve your balance and strength, but it seems that body awareness really improves with the longer you spend on the wall. And that’s pretty neat.

As a side note, this is pretty neat too:

The big accomplishment for me has been that I’m not terrified to practice indoors now. Usually, the thought of doing handstands in my apartment seemed like a terrible idea. I was certain I would either a)crush Banksy, my cat b)break art c) break myself d) all of the above in one massive thrashing mess. However, now that I’m no longer hucking myself forward to do handstands, I feel a little bit more in control and I’ve only hit the walls a couple of times.

So, here are some handstand pictures from wilderness, as promised:

Slack line video to come…as soon as I find my camera charger.

Month One, Day One

And so it begins….

Today marks the first day of our year long monthly challenges, and it couldn’t have come at a busier time. Today was also the first day of school, and Matt and I have only recently come off of Wilderness so things are a little hectic.

To add another wrinkle to the challenge, while on Wilderness, Matt sliced his hand open on a rock. It was a pretty extreme injury, sustained while partaking in the manliest of sports–skipping stones. Actually, the cut is pretty gnarly (photos below) and it is the most inconvenient injury he could have for the start of the school year. That being said, Matt is pretty optimistic about it healing quickly and is taking his new limitations in stride. He’s most upset that the slack-line over the kayak pond is now off-limits to him due to the risk of infection from dirty water. (More on slack-lines later). Matt is currently brainstorming another challenge for this month that doesn’t involve his right hand. One handed handstands sounded a little too epic. Maybe next month?

Yikes. And this is the cut five days out…

ANYWAYS. We got a little bit of a head start on this one in late August and I’ve got some great photos from Wilderness of handstands in exciting places. I’m still far from consistent, and I’ve got a lot of work to do in the coming month.

Helmet=very necessary

More photos to come tomorrow….for now I’m off to do some conditioning (pull-ups, push-ups, etc) to get ready to do perfect handstands.

Here we go.

September: Preliminary research

Standing on two feet is boring.

Standing on two hands is baller.

During September, we’ll be trying to master a skill that has eluded us for years and years due to a lack of commitment, balance, and overly exuberant flailing. We’re going to learn how to do a handstand. We’re not talking about a 3 second upside-down thrash fest, but rather the tight, precise handstand that would make Russian gymnasts weep (or something close at least, because we hear their tear ducts were removed in the early stages of training).

To start, we went straight to the source: Youtube. There are too many handstand videos to watch, mostly involving 8-year-old girls kicking up into perfectly pointed, soul-crushing handstands with little difficulty. Suddenly, we started feeling inadequate.

Apparently wrist stretching is important. Really important.

Here’s a tutorial filmed at the set of “Legends of the Hidden Temple.”

We’re probably going to look a lot more like this:

Wish us luck. Video documentation to come in September.

The Challenge

Life after college seems to accelerate. Suddenly, it’s the second September after graduation and I’m not so sure how we got here so quickly. After an eventful first year of employment, Matt and I made the trek west back to Colorado to start teaching high school together. We’ve returned to paradise, but as far as we know, this will only be for a year. Considering how fast last year passed, we decided to try to make the most of this one, to really make each day memorable. Of course, this might sound a bit contrived, idealized, or maybe even cliched, but we’re trying to slow things down.

So, here’s the plan:

Each month, we’re going to set a goal. The main premise of these challenges will be that we have to accomplish something each day, which will, ultimately, help us reach that goal. These won’t be completely life changing in scope (no, I will not start going to bed at 8 pm and getting up at 5 am, nor will I promise to run 15 miles every day) but rather they will help us try out new hobbies or gain new skills. Some will be more physical. Others will be more mentally challenging. We’ll cap each challenge to a month in order to keep things fresh and manageable, and we’ll document the progress along the way. Some months Matt and I will be doing the same thing, and during others we might have our own projects, but we’ll be sure to put in our own perspective on the experience (the good, the bad, and the ugly).

The Monthly Life Goal Challenge begins in September. We’ll keep you posted.