Troutmaster

An Omlette Sandwich?

Burger King has unveiled a 730 Calorie omlette breakfast sandwich. The sandwich contains 2 eggs, a sausage patty, three strips of bakin, and two slices of cheese. It costs $3 and has 47 grams of fat. I'm going to be sick just from reading this article. I'll save my social commentary for later.

My First Wild Pig

I got home late last night (12:45 AM) from soccer and when I was walking around to the front door I saw my first wild pig. I had heard about wild pigs in my complex and had seen signs of them, but I was excited to finally get a look at one. It's too bad that hunting and trapping is banned in my complex because I can think of a few recipes.

I Knew This Would Happen

I knew that a judge would overturn the ruling on gay marriage by calling it unconstitutional. I can understand the logic behind that but I also see that the people of California passed a law a few years ago by ballot measure that would ban gay marriage. I think in the long run gay marriage will become legal in all states and I really don't think gay marriage will destroy families any more than hetero marriage or catholic priests. By the way, it's Good Friday.

Skyline-To-The-Sea Trip Posted

I've finally finished my trip page and photos page from my Skyline-To-The-Sea Trail backpacking trip earlier this month. Please let me know if you have any feedback.

REI Mountain 2

We are going to do a trip to climb Mount Whitney in April and as part of preparing for that trip I ordered the REI Mountain 2 Tent from REI. I ordered it online and then had it shipped to the store. I picked it up a few days ago. My first impression is that this tent is pretty bulky and heavy, but it should stand up to a substantial amount of weather.

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

I'm taking a class this week and today we took a self scorable Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test. It was about 93 questions long and rates people across several different factors. Those factors are:
Extraversion ---- Introversion
Sensing ---- iNtuition
Thinking ---- Feeling
Judging ---- Perceiving
After I ran my score my reported type was ENTJ -> Etraversion, Intuition, Thinking, Judging. Here are the characteristics frequently associated with my type:
Frank, Decisive, assume leadership readily. Quickly see illogical and inefficient procedures and policies, develop and implement comprehensive systems to solve organizational problems. Enjoy long-term planning and goal setting. Usually well informed, well read, enjoy expanding their knowledge and passing it on to others. Forceful in presenting their ideas.
If you know me well perhaps you can evaluate whether or not this is an accurate description. One thing about the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is that it can be influenced by outside factors and should not be used by itself.

37 Miles Hiked And I'm Playing Soccer Tonight

The photo included in this entry is of Berry Creek Falls which is a 70 foot waterfall which is one of the highlights of this trip. All the recent rain we've had in the Bay Area contributed to make this waterfall look like it was transplanted from Hawaii. I'm back from the 3 day backpacking trip in which I hiked roughly 37 miles. Luckily I made back in time to go to my soccer game tonight. Who knows how effective I'll be on the field. :-) But it should be fun. I'm working on posting my photos and creating a trip page, so I'll have another entry linking to those later this week. Overall I enjoyed the trip and would highly recommend anyone in the Bay Area do this trip at least once. More details will be posted on my trip page.

Skyline-To-Sea-Trail This Weekend

I'm going to go on a backpacking trip this weekend on the Skyline-To-Sea-Trail. The weather this weekend is going to be perfect. Here's the itenerary:

Day 1 (Saturday, March 12): First, position cars at both ends of the trail. Start at parking lot for Castle Rock State Park. Take trailhead for Saratoga Gap Trail to Castle Rock Trail Camp, and then take Travertine Trail to Waterman Gap Trail Camp. 11.4 miles.

Day 2 (Sunday, March 13) : Continue across Highway 9 (well signed), enter Big Basin Redwoods State Park, then descend from Big Basin Rim to valley floor and to Jay Camp near park headquarters. 9.8 miles.

Day 3 (Monday, March 14): Climb to southern Big Basin Rim, then descend to Berry Creek Falls (a must-do side trip here is up the canyon to see Silver and Golden falls). Cross Waddell Creek and continue to parking. 13.3 miles (16 miles with waterfall side trip). Go back to Castle Rock State Park to get starting car.

Panda Express

I tried Panda Express for the first time today. I was going to try it about a year ago but when I got in line and actually saw the food set out buffet style (looked like it had been sitting out for a while) it looked very unappealing all of a sudden. As a result of my sudden revulsion I got out of line and left. I have never eaten at Mr. Chow's by the way. But today I figured I would give it another shot around lunch time and I hoped the food would look slightly fresher. I was correct in that the food looked better and I got steamed rice with orange chicken and garlic eggplant. It definitely was not authentic Chinese food, it was something I like to call "white people" Chinese food. "White people" Chinese food is Chinese food served at restaraunts where nearly all the customers are white. I generally try to go to Chinese restaraunts where most of the people are Chinese, which tells me that the food is probably fairly authentic and pretty good. At any rate the food wasn't all that bad but I'll probably stick to my usual Chinese restaraunts.

Build Your Own Falafel

Timber and I ran a lot of errands this past weekend, and one of our errands took us to Whole Foods. I had never been there before but I had heard a lot about it. Overall I got a good impression from the store and I would go back again, but the funniest thing was they had a falafel bar where you can build your own falafel. I think it is funny because I've seen salad bars and soup bars, and I would understand it if I were in a persian or middle eastern grocery store, but this was none of those. At any rate I got a good impression from Whole Foods and I'll go back to check things out more closely later.

Table Topics Winner

My toastmasters club had a table topics contest and I ended up winning it. Toastmasters is an international speaking organization that helps people work on their public speaking skills. Table topics is where you pick people at random and ask them a question and they have to go up and answer the question with no time to prepare for it. It gives people a chance to practice thinking on their feet and verbalizing those thoughts in a public forum. It can be quite fun sometimes. We had 8 contestants yesterday and we were all asked the same topic. The topic was war, and we could go anywhere we wanted with it. We were limited to 1 to 2 minutes for our speech.

In Between Dreams

I got Jack Johnson's new album, "In Between Dreams" this morning. Here's my review of each song:
Better Together - This is a typical JJ song that is mostly accoustic guitar with uplifting lyrics about how things are always better when we're together. Overall this is a good song to listen to if you want to relax and chill.
Never Know - This song has a little more drums to it that go along with JJ's accoustic guitar. This song is about bible thumpers that go around trying to convert people. The message here is that they put all this work into their religion yet they don't know for sure that they are right.
Banana Pancakes - More along the lines of Better Together where you just have the accoustic guitar and some infromal way to keep a beat. This song is about taking it easy and not getting up and rushing out to do things. Instead of doing that, wake up nice and slow. What's the rush?
Good People - "we've got heaps and heaps of what we sow" and other lines go on talking about reality tv shows and how they are desensitizing the nation. this sone is more like "Never Know" in that it uses the full ensemble of instruments.
No Other Way - I'm beggining to see a pattern here. Accoustic by itself, full ensemble, accoustic, ensemble, etc... This one is mostly accoustic and talks about a relationship and sleep being the fix.
Sitting, Waiting, Wishing - This is the flagship song of this album. And if of course has the full ensemble. Overall it has a pretty catchy tune and talks about waiting for feelings about someone to be recipricated.
Staple It Together - This song breaks with the pattern, and I'm not exactly sure what this is about. It is something about a guy that makes bad decisions.
Situations - Mostly accoustic, not really about anything.
Crying Shame - This is probably the second song to "Sitting, Waiting, Wishing". This song is about war.
If I Could - "One goes out, one comes in", it is about new life coming in and losing life. Mostly accoustic.
Breakdown - This is a song about wanting things to slow down a bit in order to get a look around town.
Belle - Just a really short song that starts out in French basically talking about beauty and then saying that JJ doesn't understand French.
Do You Remember - This is an accoustic song about JJ's wife.
Constellations - Another simple and relaxing song. This is probably one of the three best songs on the album.
Constellations (Demo from the Mango Tree) - iTunes exclusive song. This is pretty much like the previous song.
Overall::
Overall I thought this album was pretty good. I think this is the type of album that will grow on a person the more they listen to it, but you don't really have to force yourself to play it. It is relaxing and good music to chill to. This is a good album to listen to if I want to remind myself to slow down and not rush so much in doing things.