shame on me

Well today is the last day of January and despite my good intentions to blog regularly I have fallen behind (again!)

I've done quite a bit this month. The first weekend of January was beautiful... sunny and about +5 degrees. Erick and I went to Welsford to do some easy trad climbing and since the sun was shining on the rock all day the rock was warm and it was an awesome day. We did Reindeer Land (5.5-5.6) by Gollum's cave, Mr. Clean (5.6) on the Pyramid wall, and Snake Peel (5.7).
This was my first time seconding trad, and I found it pretty fun, although when climbing harder stuff I can't imagine hanging onto a tiny crimp with one hand and trying to take out a nut with the other! I took lots of pictures, and I will post some of them here soon.

I also got my first shipment of stuff from steep and cheap - salomon trail runners, a mountain hardware softshell, and an arc'teryx sweater. I'm addicted now... This stuff is so warm!

This month I've begun training a bit for the trip to nevada. I've started running, and I'm working my way up to 5K. The plan is to be able to run 5K before I leave for nevada and so far I'm on track. Next week will be training at the wall with a backpack on, and learning how to set up anchors and learning other useful things I'll need to know to do multipitch rope climbs.

I had an interesting thought the other day, brought on by a conversation had with Erick, Mark, and some others I had a few weeks back. You know how some women will tell you "oh, I don't get along with women - I don't really like talking about girly things, I just like hanging out with the boys!" These women usually don't have many female friends, and they might feel a little awkward talking to women they don't know well. Most of their friends are men. Likewise there are women who don't know how to interact with men. These ones have lots of female friends they are perfectly comfortable with, and not so many male friends. Then there are the women who seem perfectly comfortable with people of either gender. The same goes for men. There are men who have more female friends, men who have more man friends, and men who have both. Now you are probably wondering where I am going with this, and you may possibly know where I am going having figured it out for yourselves, but for those of you who don't know and haven't given up reading yet I am approaching my point!

It seems to me that a person's preference in the gender of their friends is directly related to which gender they spent the most time with while growing up... So people tend to choose for their friends people of the same gender as their SIBLINGS! Women with brothers and no sisters will be more comfortable with male friends. Women with sisters and no brothers will have lots of female friends. The key here is not the siblings themselves, but the interaction between them. For example, my sister is 10 years my senior, so we never played together much. My brother and I are closer in age so we played together all the time, and as a result most of my friends are male.

So it would seem for one's children to be optimally socially adapted one would either need to have at least four children (two boys and two girls, and all within the age to play together), or repeatedly put your children into a situation (such as daycare, co-ed summer camps, etc) where they are forced to interact with either sex on a regular basis. I think if I ever have children I will choose the latter option! ;)