First day of class

 Technically, Tuesday was the first day of class. But I was hiking, so today was the first day of class for me. And really, the first class I've had in a few years that wasn't online. And damn did I feel old. I think the professor was the only person in there older than me and even then it might be close. But whatever, I'm not there to worried about how old I am (as I had to constantly remind myself), I'm there to get through this class so I can eventually hopefully get my degree.

So anyways, there's an online message board everyone in class was supposed to use to post intros about themselves before the second day of class. Something I did do because I read the posted directions of what to do for the first week of class. Like 10 people posted an intro of themselves. So I thought this would be a small class. I was wrong. It's a full class of 30 kids. Well, 29 kids and me. Part of me is thankful for that - the more people, the easier it is to go relatively unnoticed. The other part of me though is less thankful for that. This is a math class. I suck at math. I'm going to need a lot of things explained to me multiple times. There just never seems to be much time for that in large classes.

Aside from that it's just weird being back at the UAA campus. Somewhere in my mind is a voice saying, "WTF? Should've been done with all this years ago." Somewhere else in my mind is that voice that reminds me I can't change the past, I can only work from this moment forward. And somewhere else in my mind is a voice wondering if I really couldn't have just done this class online and avoided all this weird mixed emotion altogether.

But whatever. I went to class and I've got the ball rolling. Hopefully I can keep it going.  

Song of the Day 

Not much to say

I met someone. Or at least I thought I met someone. I mean, I definitely met someone. But I thought there was a romantic chemistry there. And I thought wrong. I guess some things never change. 

Song of the Day 

Return to Reed Lakes

I did not get much sleep last night. But I still made it out for my hike. 

The above picture is about as a good a view as we got the whole hike.

Despite the clouds, the weather wasn't too bad to start. A light rain that was almost like a mist and even thought the sun was well hidden, the view of the valley was still impressive. So much as the weather didn't take a turn for the worse, I felt it would be a great hike.

We made it to the boulder field without any issues. Weather stayed decent enough and my out of state friends seemed to be enjoying all the scenery. The boulder field took a little longer to get through than I originally thought it would, but even with a light rain the boulders were wet and we were being safe (or at least as safe as we could be for people choosing to cross over a bunch of giant rocks in wet weather. 

As the above picture shows, the clouds started getting lower (actually we were getting higher), but the rain was still light. And it was still a beautiful sight, like Alaska was saying, "Look how awesome I am even in grey skies."

I'd say finally we got to lower Reed Lake, but it didn't feel like it took nearly as long as I first thought it would. And the weather was still decent, so we took a few pictures (none of which could truly do the blue of this lake justice) and started heading to upper Reed Lake, which I assured my friends was even more awe inspiring than this one. Heck, just looking to the waterfalls near this lake seemed to be reason enough to continue on. 

I think about halfway toward the upper lake is when I noticed the rain starting to come down a bit harder. And the temperature was noticeable colder. On the plus side, I also feel like this is the most physically demanding part of the hike as far as going uphill goes, so I didn't mind the temperature drop. I absolutely hated the rain though.

This was all we could see of upper Reed Lake. I felt absolutely gutted. I've been talking this hike up for years to anyone that'll listen and now I have some friends from out of state visiting and this is the view they got. And as if to emphasize the point (whatever the point was) the weather stayed miserable the whole way back. The light rain was now a steady drizzle that had all of soaked through before long, even with rain gear. The clouds stayed low blocking most our view on the way back as well. We also went about a quarter mile the wrong way coming back - I think mostly due to constantly looking at the trail since there wasn't much to see while looking up. 

Now that I'm home and I'm dry and I've had some time to unwind - I'm still thankful for today. I can't lie, the hike sucked. But a shitty hike with good friends is still a good day for me. I'm bummed I didn't get to show off Alaska in the way I love to imagine myself being able to do, but at the same time, even in subpar weather my friends seemed pretty impressed with most of what we could see. And, as far as I'm concerned, they now have reason to come visit again so we can try the hike in better weather.

Song of the Day 

Of all the days the pacific northwest had to pacific northwest

I'm supposed to go hiking tomorrow. To a hike I haven't done in a long time - Reed Lakes. As of now, the weather looks to be rainy and cool and pretty much the opposite of what one would want the weather to be for a hike as beautiful as Reed Lakes. Like I tell everyone I know asking for a good hike in Alaska that Reed Lakes is one of the best. And now, some out of state friends are here and they want to do it and want me to go with them. And of course I'm going to go. But damn do I feel like they're going to be getting cheated out of some of the greatest scenery to be found. 

Also, I need to be waking up in like eight hours to get ready to head out for this hike. And, as it often goes, despite waking up early and being tired all day, as soon as it's time for me to actually lay in bed I suddenly feel wide awake. I've even done as much as I can for the morning to allow myself to sleep in just a little more, but it doesn't help relieve the anxiety about tomorrow being kinda miserable. And really, so much as no one gets injured, I can't really call it that miserable of a day. I'll get to hang out with friends I get to see like once every couple years and that's always awesome. But it really sucks when I brag about how awesome a place is and then when the chance comes to show it off, it ends up being the kind of weather that sucks out a lot of the awesomeness.  

Oh well. There's a reason no one talks about the great desert state of Alaska.  

Song of the Day 

I still haven't even gone new clothes shopping! Ahhh!!!

Tomorrow a new school semester starts. And while I'm only taking two classes this semester, even just two classes often somehow has me feeling overwhelmed. In fact, historically, when I usually take two (or more) classes, I end up dropping one of them. It's almost always the same, I start of the semester excited and for the first couple weeks I'm on top of things. Then there's some sort of slipup and I find myself playing catch up in one (or both) of the classes, but I never really feel like I'm catching up and then at the last minute I withdraw from one of the classes. 

I thought when I quit drinking, I'd break this cycle. But so far that hasn't proven to be true. Honestly, I think the best way for me to break the cycle would be with meds. I say that because that's what multiple health professionals have told me. Unfortunately, the current top leadership in the military seems very against said meds and I think it's only a matter of time before they start med-boarding people out for taking those meds. So much as I can do my job to a degree that my supervision is happy with, then I'll have to keep avoiding said meds. And hoping for the best in school.

The funny thing (again, not ha-ha funny) about it all is how I feel like an absolute failure for still working on a degree I started over fifteen years ago, but how I'd tell anyone else in my position they're anything but a failure so much as they're still trying. I've watched people start their schooling after me and finish graduate degrees in the time it's taking me to get a bachelor's. And some of those people are absolute idiots, yet they were able to focus enough to do the work and get the degree. It's disheartening. Yet if a friend came to me in my position, I'd tell them the only failing is when you stop moving forward. The moment you're in is just one point in your life and you only fail when you stay in that point; keep moving and you'll at least get somewhere. 

But whatever, when I try to tell myself those same words, I just feel like and idiot talking to himself. 

Anyways, class one if the Art of Math. Essentially a math class made to take math out of math so people not good at math can get their math general education requirements. This will be my second time attempting this class, the other time being last summer when I tried it online and couldn't follow along with anything. So this time I'm taking it in person. I suck at math. I need an adult to be able to talk to face-to-face when I begin to struggle. Hopefully this does the trick and I can never take a math class again. (Especially since if I don't pass this one this time, I'll have to retake the remedial math class before I can take a math class that counts again).

The other class is Historiography. Essentially the study of studying history. This will be my third attempt and in a reverse from my normal, this one will be online while the other two attempts were in person. I'm my own worst enemy for this class. The last two times (and so I imagine this time) there was one big paper due at the end of the semester requiring a lot of research. I had grand ideas for these papers and spent a lot of time daydreaming writing a really great paper. But I never really got to the studying and would just end up dropping the class. I'm not actually happy to do this class online, but I'm hoping to just get it done.

If all goes well and I break my self-imposed curse I should only need three more classes to graduate. At the most. Of course, with UAA, that's subject to change as I think my degree plan is based on an old catalog and I wouldn't be surprised if they say I have to change it to match something more recent, but that's a future worry and I need to focus on the present.  

Song of the Day

Return to Black Tail Rocks

 

The jagged edge center-right was today's goal and in what would be one of the most technical hikes I've done in a long time, we made it to the furthest part of that edge. 

See, I've done Black Tail a few times now, but I've never made it all the way to the final peak. Usually I do this hike earlier in the year and there's always been too much snow left between the last peak and the next-to-last peak for me to go all the way. I really wanted to change that and today I did. 

As you can see, the weather wasn't exactly amazing hiking weather. But considering how quickly I tend to feel I'm overheating, I was a bit thankful for it. As soon as we started going up Baldy (the route most people use to get to Black Tail, though I have read about another way I'm thinking I should check out next summer) I was sweating. And not just a little bit. 

It took way longer than it felt like it should have to get to the final peak, but I blame them on the hike being more technical than I remembered and the weather. Wet rocks make for slow going when one is trying to keep from injuring themselves.  

Thankfully (and probably obviously), no one was injured and we made it back OK. Got to deal with some passing clouds, but that's just one of the joys of being in the mountains. And with a path as well worn as Black Tail, there wasn't much chance of getting lost even in cloud cover.

Overall, a great hike and one of my top ten for the area. However, you may notice there's no pictures of Hamlet in this one. That's because the couple times before when I tried to take him on this hike, something about the rocks here always tears his paw pads up. I don't know what it is, some other hiker once told me the peaks are made of shale as opposed to the granite further down and that's what's doing it. But I've seeing other dogs up there without any noticeable issues. Regardless, I have to leave Hamlet home when I do this hike and for that reason I don't do it as often as I'd like. 

Song of the Day 

Magic: The Gathering: The Hobbit, a set review. By a subpar player.

Pretty sure I said it before, but if not, this was the set I was most excited for in Magic's 2026 lineup. And now that we've had a couple weeks with the set, I think I can safely say this set was my biggest disappointment in 2026. Now to be fair, I didn't have much hope for the TMNT set or the Marvel Superheroes set, so those two couldn't really disappoint me. And I also don't have any hope for the coming Star Trek set, so that's not likely to disappoint me. The only other set left to come out this year will be Reality Fracture and while I don't expect much from it, it would still have a lot of work to do to disappoint me the way The Hobbit has.

I know a lot of players say this set shouldn't be compared to the Lord of the Rings expansion as they were released during different eras of Magic and intended for play in different formats. But my disappointment is less from card design (though there is some of that) and more from the treatment of the source material. LotR felt like it was really paying homage to the books; The Hobbit feels more like it's just taking ideas from the book. The best way to explain the what I mean in that difference is looking at the movies from the respective titles. The LotR movies felt like true adaptions of the books trying to capture them in all their epic glory while The Hobbit movies felt like a pathetic cash grab. That's how these two sets feel different from each other to me and I'm just thankful WotC didn't try to make The Hobbit set into three separate sets. 

Don't get me wrong, there's some good cards in the set and I'm sure some of them will eventually see regular play in formats outside of commander. But overall the set is just meh. How the set continues to sell is beyond me. I mean, I get that the collector product is selling - that's just the world of collectable card games these days and the scalpers and speculators that dominate the higher end of the market. But even the cheaper product is being bought up, seemingly by people hoping to open one or two cards that're worth the cost of a pack. Or maybe it's just a lot of people that don't know better and they're buying it up thinking they can use play product to get into scalping cards themselves, but if they're buying play product after the set has officially released, they're behind the curve. Which is fortunate for retailers as there seem to be a lot of these fools about. But I digress.

Anyways, I'm bummed to be bummed about this set, but happy to not feel the need to buy up a whole bunch of it.  

Song of the Day

Random bedtime thoughts

 Need to sleep. Got things to do in the morning. Lots to do over the next week and a half. Not sure when I'll get a good night's rest again. 

Thought about buying a ticket to see Nick Offerman at the state fair. Then I saw the price and decided against it. For that kind of money, I can get a lot of Magic cards I'll likely never play with. I definitely need to see more live stand-up comedy though. But I'm already seeing Modest Mouse at the fair; no need to see two shows there. Especially at those prices.

The weather has been shitty lately. And I don't know if it's that causing me to be in a sour mood these past few days or something else. Something deeper. Or maybe it's just me turning into an old man that likes to be mad at the world cause I don't know what else to be. I hope that doesn't mean I'm turning back into a republican.  

I don't feel like I've wasted this summer, but damn it still feels like it's coming to a close too fast and there was so much more I was hoping to do.  

Song of the Day