Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

When the rain decided to take a break on Tuesday last week, my friend Nicole suggested we go letterboxing.  What is letterboxing you might ask?  That's a great question because I didn't really know either.

A little bit like geocaching, how letterboxing works is someone hides a little box somewhere out in the world and they leave clues online of how to find said box.  Inside the box is usually a stamp along with a booklet of paper.  When you find the box, you stamp the booklet with your personal stamp you brought along and then if you're really into it, you can stamp your own book with the box's stamp.  Apparently the hardcore people make their own stamps but we used a generic Christmas one I found lying around the house.

Inside one of the boxes

Nature

There's a nature park close to our houses and we found a series of clues around the area so we spent a few hours walking around the forest looking for boxes.  Most of the boxes were fairly easy to find with the exception of two.  I'm pretty sure someone decided to ruin the fun and removed those two boxes.

Nicole found one!

In other news, my sister Amanda came down from Seattle to visit for a few days.  That's always fun!

Also, Planet Granite officially opens a week from today!  Although it's probably going to be crazy busy, I'm really excited!  If anyone is interested, we are doing free day passes, gear rental, and classes for opening weekend if you want to do some climbing and learn how to belay for free.  I finally got to climb a bit at the gym and it's amazing! 

Hope all you Portland people are surviving the wind!

That's all for now.  Bye.

Thriller (Part 1/2)

I love horror movies.  My issues with horror movies are that most scary movies are not scary, they have terrible writing and/or acting, they rely way too heavily on gore, the endings ruin what was a decent movie, and the list goes on.  However, I always get a kick out of them no matter how horribly bad they are.

Earlier in the week I decided I wanted to watch a horror movie everyday for the month of October to get in the Halloween mood.   The only problem was we were already almost two weeks into the month so I had some serious catching up to do.  Besides going through the painfully slow process of fixing my Europe blog after all of the pictures decided to erase themselves, I've been watching movies pretty much back to back to get on track (although it was fun to reread those Europe posts).

In no particular order, here are the first 15:

1. *Sinister- An author who writes about unsolved crimes moves into a murder house, unbeknownst to his family, and starts to see a connection between a series of murders.  I really enjoyed this one.   
2. Eden Lake-  Set in Britain, a couple goes away for a weekend only to be continuously harassed by a group of local teens.  Apparently this caused some controversy in the UK over class prejudice against the working class.  It was alright, nothing too special.  The ending was unsettling.
3. The Mist- Based on the Stephen King book, a group of people are trapped in a grocery store when the town becomes engulfed in a mysterious and deadly mist.  I like Stephen King but this got boring real fast.  It does show an interesting conflict of religion vs. rationalism in a crisis.
4. *1408- Another Stephen King inspired film, a skeptic author who writes about haunted locations stays in room 1408 at the Dolphin Hotel where no one has ever survived more than an hour.  I liked it.  I felt like the back story with the family took away from the suspense and the ending was sub par but overall, I recommend.
5. Signs- After mysterious crop circles appear around the world, a farm living family must deal with the strange occurrences happening outside their door.  I had seen this one before.  It has some really dull parts and relies a little too much on religion for my liking but it does build good suspense.
6. World War Z- A worldwide zombie-like virus outbreak forces an ex UN investigator to help figure out a cure.  Good action throughout with a great last scene.  I don't like zombie movies that much but I enjoyed this one.
7. Willow Creek- A couple makes a documentary trying to seek out the legendary Bigfoot.  A bit slow to start but the tension builds quickly towards the end.  A decent and entertaining found footage film.
8. Missionary- A Mormon missionary becomes obsessed with a separated mom trying to reconnect with her husband.  I still don't know how I feel about this one.  It was alright.
9. The Sacrament- With a few changes, this is pretty much the story of the Jonestown massacre.  It's a found footage setup and is quite disturbing seeing as most of what they act out in the movie actually happened.
10. *The Tunnel- Set in Sydney, a reporter and crew go into underground tunnels to figure out why the government suddenly stopped plans to use the tunnels to help with a water shortage.  Another found footage deal but it's made like a documentary.  The documentary style makes it seem more real although you will know from the start who survives due to the interviews.  Good stuff.
11. You're Next- A black comedy/slasher, a family reunion leads to people being picked off one by one by mysterious killers.  Really over the top but if dark humor is your thing, you should like it.  Make sure to pay attention to the dialogue during the chaotic scenes.
12. Wolf Creek- Set in the Northern Territory of Australia, an Aussie and two British friends road trip up north and find themselves stuck in the Outback after their car mysteriously breaks down.  This was pretty terrible.  Very predictable and the girls were incredibly annoying.  Supposedly based loosely on a true story.
13. The House of the Devil- Desperately needing money, a college girl accepts an odd babysitting job and soon finds out it's not what she signed up for.  Made in 2009, this is a great throwback to 80's style horror films.  Although fairly predictable, it was still entertaining and kept my interest.
14. Home Movie- Found footage tapes show the home movies of a couple (pastor and psychiatrist) and their twin children who are displaying disturbing behavior.  I want to like this but there are some major plot holes and the couple wins the award for dumbest/most obnoxious people of all time.  I found myself rooting for the "bad guys" half the time just to hopefully get the parents off screen.  There are some interesting plot elements though, most notably the debate between if the kids are possessed or if they have a mental disorder.
15. The Abandoned- An adopted woman goes back to Russia to learn more about her dead parents' past.  This took me two sittings to get through and I think I fell asleep a few times.  Some people on IMDB loved it but I thought it was beyond boring.

* mark my top 3, once again, in no order

There's a good list to get you started if you want to watch some horror this month (and here is part 2).  Maybe sleep with the lights on tonight.

Going into a creepy attic to take this after watching a bunch of horror movies was not the best idea

That's all for now.  Bye.

ABC 123

Every time I log onto Facebook, I would say 1/4 of the posts in my news feed are quizzes people took telling them something about their life.  Although I never post the results, I almost always take the tests, mainly to see how ridiculous they are.  I decided to record all of my quiz results over the last week and put together my personal profile, according to the Internet.  Unfortunately I had the results in a word document that I did not save and my computer froze, thus erasing the results so the list is much shorter than it was originally.

I've linked the quizzes in each descriptor if you want to take it yourself.

• First and foremost, despite missing a question, I have all the knowledge in the world
• As a profession, I am an interior designer
• However, when I grow up, I will be a pop star
• I should play the trumpet as a musical instrument
• I'm not very "New York"
• My favorite fast food is burgers
• I have a west coast American accent
• My new nickname should be "dog hands" (yes, this one confused me too)
• If I was in the movie Clue (which is one of the greatest movies of all time), I would be Wadsworth
• And lastly if I was a cocktail, I would be a Bloody Mary

I would say 2 out of those 10 are actually true.  Sorry Internet but you need to up your game a bit.

That's all for now.  Bye.

Prime Time

Last week I wrote I don't have much desire to be on TV.  Although this is true, I have appeared on the small screen a few times now.  My debut was in second grade when I gave a very moving and eloquent interview to the local news station about how we should save the bunnies living in a future demolition zone.  I believe the speech went something like, "We should save the bunnies because they were there first."  Very moving, I know.  

My second time was in fifth grade (possible forth-they mix together in my head) when our class went on public access television to give speeches for our Toastmasters class.  My monologue was on what my three wishes would be.  

There were a few other times, mainly for jump rope team and band (yes, I'm aware of how cool I was), where I appeared on the news during parades.

Back in 2011, I worked off and on for a nonprofit called Adventures Without Limits (AWL).  The company specializes in taking people of all abilities and backgrounds outdoors.  Two of my coworkers at my other job were also employees there and asked me if I wanted to help out in filming an episode of a TV show.  I was initially fairly confused but found out that, in short, this guy Zach Anner got his own reality show by winning another show on Oprah Winfrey's TV network, OWN.  Zach had cerebral palsy and was wheelchair bound, having no use of his legs and limited use of this arms.  The show was him traveling around the US and proving that even though we was in a wheelchair, he could still partake in things everyone else could do.  It sounded like a fun experience so I was all for it.

For the episode we would be involved in, Zach was coming to Portland.  The theme for Portland was putting him outside his comfort zone.  For him, in one of the segments, he wanted to rock climb.  For us, that meant figuring out how to get someone with very limited mobility up a cliff.  Coworker Nolan did almost all of the logistical planning so props to him.

View from French's

On the morning of the shoot, the AWL crew headed over to French's Dome, a fairly small crag near Mt. Hood.  After a team brief, we started to set up a complex system of ropes and pulleys before the film crew got there.  My job for the day was to hang at the top of the route, managing ropes, giving Zach a backup belay, and making sure one of the cameraman who was on a ledge halfway up the wall didn't die.  This would involve a lot of time in my harness.  If you haven't spent much time in a harness, they are not the most comfortable things in the world to be in for hours on end.  I can't remember the total time I was putting weight on mine but my legs were not very happy by the end of the day. 

When the crew arrived and finished their setup, filming began.

I headed back up the face and waited for Zach to get down to the rock.  It took a lot longer than I was expecting but once everyone made their way down and Zach was hooked up, he started to climb.  There was a point where Zach was feeling lots of pain, most likely from the positioning of his harness, so we let him down.  At this point I was thinking to myself "oh great we just spent all this time setting up and he may not be able to do it."  After a pep talk and some readjustments, he was able to finish the climb.  It was one of the most inspiring things I have ever seen.  Almost all of the AWL crew and production got a little teary eyed. 

After 14 hours from the start of the day until finish, we headed home.  It was an exhausting day but fascinating to watch the production side of filming a show.    

The biggest questions people ask are:
1) Did you meet Oprah?
2) Was it scripted?
3) How did the show compare to what actually happened?

My answers:
1) No
2) It was not scripted at all.  However, production would tell people to say something again, possibly in a different way.  They would also have people move to certain places for certain shots.  This was the most annoying part for me.  Being at the top of the wall anchored into the rock does not make moving around easy.  With climbing, when you try and take a picture or video of someone up the wall from below, the point of focus may not be the most appealing thing for an audience.  Understandably, the producers wanted to see my face.  I was able to adjust a bit but you can see in the final cut that it wasn't always possible.  Production wasn't as important as safety. 
3) What was seen in the episode was pretty much exactly what happened.  The only thing that was fibbed a bit was at the end when the audience sees the shot of Mt. Hood.  You can't actually see the mountain from the climb we were on so production had one of the AWL staff put on a GoPro and climb another route to get the shot.  The other crazy thing was of a 14 hour day, it got condensed to only a 5 minute segment.  That's a lot of cutting.

Unfortunately, the episode is fairly hard to find online.  I know it's out there if you know where to look.  I have a copy but I don't want Oprah to sue me by posting it on here.  I can show it to you sometime if you want to see it.

That's all for now.  Bye.