rocks are the skin of the earth: if i said my heart was beating loud

When I haven't been busy writing 9 page emo/angry papers about why hasty unnecessary cesarean sections are an aberration to the human species, I have been getting up to the mountains some. Yesterday I got all motivated and decided I was going to hike down the switchbacks that begin at Echo Lake and hike up to the reservoir. Then I was going to run down from the reservoir and up the switchbacks all the way to the car. I waited until the weather looked kind of shitty so as to have extra motivation to get up the switchbacks - fast. Well running downhill is easy enough, and I may have even danced to Lady Gaga a bit and spun in circles; however, after running up the first switchback I couldn't run any further. My lungs were burning. I don't really know what I was expecting. I told my friend Kris my plan before I went and she said, "wait... I have never heard of you running anywhere voluntarily." I thought, hence the bad weather Kris...when I hear thunder I will HAVE to run. Well, it didn't thunder and I did run the 8th switchback and across the little ridge there and all the way to the car. I am sore today too, so I must have done something right.

here is a photo of Echo Lake (Steve and Katie if you ever came to Colorado you could see this lake)

On the way down from the mountains I stopped near Evergreen to take some photos of the clouds. Well that didn't work out so well and I became overwhelmed by the flowers on the ground so I began to take photos of them instead. I am pretty sure this is how ADHD works. So I spent an hour or so taking flower photos. I didn't know Colorado had so many fun flowers.

As a result of being so stupidly busy with school, I rarely get to climb these days. The other day I realized I have 5 weeks to get in shape for a potential climbing trip because I have one week off of school. I drove to the Spot to climb for a few hours and as I was warming up I hurt myself. The problem with not climbing and then going to the gym is this...I see a 3 spot and I am like..oh that is easy. Well in my head I can easily climb the problem, yet my body wholeheartedly disagreed with me. Pretty soon I had a throbbing deltoid and shoulder. Using all of my logic, ignored this and kept climbing until it was unbearable. I had been there for only 45 minutes and I was injured. I was tempted to ask for my money back. Below is a picture of me warming up on a vertical wall.

We have been having some crazy afternoon storms here in Denver. I am pretty sure I have an anxiety disorder when it comes to lightning now, as a result of being traumatized last summer at Lincoln Lake. Every time I hear thunder I feel very unsafe no matter where I am. The building we live in has a lightning rod so I don't think it gets much safer than that, but I am still inconsolably terrified. I think I get more worried than the dog, and that says a lot. This particular storm was super loud and scary. I took these photos from the balcony.

I mixed in my flower photos with the lightning photos so my blog isn't too scary.

These little yellow guys were at different stages of birthing themselves.

This one was all milky and sticky and this poor fly was stuck to it by its wing

oh so scary

This is a random building downtown

Help me Tom Cruise!

Jeff's friend Mandy made some jelly and kindly sent us some in the mail. To honor the jelly I made biscuits as a vessel to eat the jelly with melty butter. So delicious.