Today was my second foray into bouldering. It started with a trip to the nail salon to get my pink and whites removed. It took over a half hour of chipping and cutting and bleeding before the lady just wrapped my fingers in acetone and tin foil to soften the gel and then sand it off. When it was all over I was about to pay and asked how much it was. "Seven dollars." And I'm all, "No that's ridiculous. Seven freaking dollars for an hours worth of hard labor. No can do." I paid her significantly more than that despite the hour of pain and then drove to the rock gym. My nails look like crap. And now I'm readjusting to typing with the pads of my fingers instead of the tips of my nails. I get a lot more feedback from the keyboard, and it's not as noisy. I was writing an angry email about a week ago to the thieves at APlus.net with my headphones on and someone had to tap me on the shoulder to ask nicely if I could keep the percussion section at bay.

I'm getting better at the climbing thing. Already I felt stronger than before. I was able to do both easy routes I did last time all the way to the top and then I added another which I did perfectly, now I'm working on a fourth route that requires some of the "going up the wall sideways just a little" type climbing. I didn't get to the top on this brown route cause I had to give way to the shakiness that has no pain but signals that your time on the wall is just about done. The pain of course will come tomorrow. One time I was up on the wall and some kid comes over and sits on the crash pad underneath me, just chilling. And I'm calling, "Hey, NOT a good idea. NOT a good idea. oooo God. My arms are not as strong as my desire for you to live." One of the attentive workers, quickly took care of the situation and yelled at the kid on my behalf.  Stupid kid, go play in your  rope and harness swing that I want to play in, but am too afraid to ask lest I fall into an childlike state of just clapping my hands and laughing and hiccupping uncontrollably. I think, though, even in that state, I could still manage to be smart enough to not sit directly beneath some noob chick climbing a wall without a harness. Something gives me the feeling this kid doesn't have a bright future. 

I worked myself to exhaustion. Taking off my shoes and untying the double knots took a good 5 minutes because I was having a hard time moving my fingers. And my forearms did this weird thing where I can feel all the blood in them. I think this is what they call "pumped."

My calluses are coming along quite nicely as well. My upper palms are so raw right now that when I was driving home I was driving with the sides of my hands and the pads of my fingers because the upper palms felt like I had a 2nd degree sunburn.