I've been chugging cold water all morning at the rate of a liter every 45 minutes, which is doing a reasonably good job of keeping me awake. Poor little spoiled me is hurting after averaging only six or so hours a night for the past few nights.

Catalyst? Elizabeth, a friend from Denver whom I first met through ultimate during winter quarter. Her aunt and uncle built a house out of huge, ultra-compressed paper bales about four years ago in Fraser, Colorado. It saved 35 tons of trash (mostly coated cardboard such as that found in laundry detergent boxes, etc., which is really difficult to recycle) from the landfill, has excellent heat retention because of its better-than-average insulating properties and sheer thermal mass, and, with stucco over everything, looks almost indistinguishable from a polished, regular home.

Anyway, they're gathering momentum for building a second such home and, as part of that gathering, came out to do a presentation/demonstration at Solfest, a "green living" festival held in a land of hicks and hippies called Hopland about 90 miles north of San Francisco, and E came out with them to help. The plan was for me to take a midmorning bus to the SF Caltrain station, where Molly would pick me up and we'd drive north.

The sleep deprivation started when I was about to check my email and head to bed so that I could get an early start the next morning, but got roped into a super late dinner with a housemate up in the city. Fun, as all Dire Wolf adventures are, especially a dessert of warm cinnamon apple crisp with vanilla ice cream. Plus, I was all warm and fuzzy on the inside from a single glass of wine—the justification being that dinner at a restaurant punnily named First Crush almost demands that one partake in the oneological interpretation of this name if not the giddy romantic kind. We didn't get back 'til almost two, though, so I set my alarm and went straight to bed.

I woke up ready for a nap. This I had on the way to the city, along with an impossible Sunday Times crossword which I'd brought along for its assuredly protracted entertainment factor. Molly and I stopped at Gordo's for lunch, and then got super psyched for the drive up to Hopland because we'd be passing—dun dun dun—the rock shop. She'd built up such an incredibly nostalgic spiel of her days on the road with her high school basketball (or was it volleyball?) team during our Lost Coast trip, and then when we finally passed it, Neil refused to stop gunning it at 90mph to take a look, and which point we vowed to revisit it during this trip—and did. Lots of... rocks. We bought a rock for E, too. (Addendum: I later heard that it was a head shop in disguise. Ah, childhood memories gone up in smoke.) (This previous comment wittily made by Tory in a situation to be described later.)

Even though Elizabeth had already told me about it and sent me a copy of the magazine Natural Home in which it was featured, seeing her uncle smack rebar through the bales was really awesome, as were the rest of the displays (and music) at the festival. We then made the drive back to Dire Wolf and cooked enchiladas, whose component garlic unplugged some really stories of a fellow fresh(wo)man, gnarly to the point of hilarity... yeah, I'll leave it at that.

Monday, to work as usual. As stubbornly as I relish my summer independence, one thing I haven't yet brought myself to do is to go to movies by myself. Logically, it makes a lot of sense, right? I could see anything I want, at the time I want, and could tear or laugh or comment snidely all I wanted to. But I guess certain rules in The System have been too deeply ingrained in my vain, self-conscious mind, which is why I got really excited when E mentioned that she'd seen Blue Crush, raved about it being mediocre in the plot but awesome in the adrenaline rush (and, as a competitive freestyle skier in high school, I think she's pretty intimate with the term "adrenaline rush"), and, when I offhandedly lamented that I'd wanted to see it, offered to watch it again.

The trip there was, well, eventful. Being carless—a situation soon to be remedied; see below—, we took the Caltrain to Redwood City, whose station Mapquest told us was just a mile and a half from the theater. What Mapquest didn't tell us was that the last half mile crossed the on and off ramps to 101. Honestly, somebody'd get lots of hits from me if they wrote a Mapquest plugin for cyclists that avoided ramps and freeways—and, given the outrageous proportion of folks on saddles in this area (c'mon, it's the only geographic area for which craigslist has devoted a special bike section!), it's even remotely possible.

Anyway, back to Blue Crush. Given its trailers and billboards, one might expect nothing beyond chicks in bikinis dishing out sex appeal, and indeed a lot of their clothing looks a little inadequate to be comfortable. But, especially at the beginning and the end, there were so many breathtaking moments. The cinematographers, of course, deserve lots of credit for choosing only the best and working with it to make their shots even more so... but, really, the water is what's overwhelming and amazing and captivating and and and too many cliché adjectives for me to keep spewing. In essence, that feeling of pure, in-the-moment happiness because you're concentrating so hard and so eagerly on making your body do something awesome was very well conveyed.

Got back without too much incident other than needing to kill fifty minutes in Safeway because we'd just missed the previous train. Then to bed.

Yesterday, I emerged at the bottom of the Meyer stairs with a grin on my face and announced, "We have a plan." It was Elizabeth's twentieth birthday, and we'd made vague agreements with Molly to be in the city that night to celebrate. All we told her was to dress warmly, and that we were doing nothing illegal, evil, or physically dangerous. Molly and I had been emailing back and forth, and settled on Ocean Beach at the far western end of Golden Gate Park as our destination. She and Tory picked us up at the Caltrain Station, where our night of laughs got off to a fast start when they pulled up just as I was trying to put a long-sleeved shirt on under my short-sleeved one while keeping the latter on the entire time. Yeah, not so slick.

There were hot dogs and beans and Tabasco mashed potatoes and s'mores and Martinelli's and root beer and all sorts of other happy beachy Wonder-bread-and-red-gingham-tablecloth foods. Plus, we had a [legal!] beach fire courtesy of Molly's old treehouse tree (hence Tory's lament)... there's something magical in a beach fire for me. Perhaps it's the juxtaposition of the fire and so, so much water.

I got to see the stars and the waves and the moonrise and was happy. When the fire had almost burned itself out, we gathered the remains of the day and headed back to the car. E and I took the midnight Caltrain home walked back to Dire Wolf zombie-ishly, whereupon I should have gone straight to bed but instead drooled mindlessly over laptops online 'til about four in the morning. Less than four hours later, we got up to walk back to the Caltrain station so that she could get to SFO and I, to work.

Lastly: I almost flew to Colorado for the weekend to visit Denver and Vail and then drive back with E as she heads back here for SoCo, but wavered a little too long on committing to the Labor-Day-inflated one-way plane ticket, during which time her mom reluctantly decided to do it with her. Kind of a bummer since that would have been really fun, but I'm glad I'll get to rest and catch up with myself and, via phone, the homebeans.