Got my belay certification today. So now Brad and I can go climbing anytime the wall's open. And climb we did. We may have only made it an hour and a half, but believe me when I say that being able to move my fingers on the keyboard is quite an accomplishment. Already planning trips to northern GA to camp and do some bouldering. Can't wait until I'm actually good enough at this sport to look like I have a clue what I'm doing. Meanwhile, I'll just have a lot of fun falling.

On a totally unrelated tangent, it's weird the particular neurons that Dave Matthews Band music causes to fire. I mean, I know that certain songs will always remind people of various events. But there's some visceral sort of emotional reaction that happens whenever I hear DMB. There are the specific memories too, like yesterday when I happened to catch the end of Crash on the radio - I'm back in the YMCA in Huntington, standing on the balance beam with Erica yelling at me to turn my awful music down. Or more generally, DMB often reminds me of the boy I had such a tremendous crush on back in ninth grade (he was the reason I started listening to dave in the first place). But what happens everytime, and what I think is interesting, is that I get this overall sense of...comfort...sort of like coming home again. There's plenty of other music out there that I love, but I can't think of any that has the same affect. And I can't really put my finger on why DMB music does it. I mean, I like the band, but I'm not exactly going to try to claim that they're the best thing out there, because that certainly isn't true. Must be some magical combination of notes...