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Every year, I feel so blessed to have a bunch of good friends and family to celebrate my birthday with. There are the ones who were here to celebrate my birthday every single year in the past, the ones I got closer with this year and hopefully will be here for the years to come, and those who can't make it but I know they still care... I'm amazed at how many things has changed in 365 days and I know the best is yet to come.

Thank you for all the love and birthday cakes!

@Laloux

@La Muse

@Toque

Almost, part 2

The greatest word
in the whole wide world
is the word almost.
We almost never met.
She almost gave up.
He almost never tried.
They almost failed.
We're almost there!

Almost, part 1

The saddest word
in the whole wide world
is the word almost.
He was almost in love.
She was almost good for him.
He almost stopped her.
She almost waited.
He almost lived.
They almost made it.

-Tiny stories

Adams

Weekends always seem so short, maybe because they are not exciting enough.

I wanted to do this little excursion for a while, and the weather finally got slightly warmer so I decided to bring some friends into the White Mountains of New Hampshire to explore Mount Adams. The White Mountains are known for the most volatile and dangerous weather in America, but luckily for us, we had great weather with minimal wind.

On day one, we woke up very early to drive to New Hampshire and made it to the trail head around 11:30AM. We took the Airline Trail towards the summit. There were still a lot of ice and snow hanging at higher elevations, but we all had microspikes of course. When we got above treeline and hiked along the ridge of the King Ravine, we met some people going down and apparently, the top was an hour and a half away. We decided it would be safer to hike to the campsite on Valley Way and continue our ascent tomorrow instead. I'm glad we made that decision because it would've been hard to scramble through that field of unstable rocks at the top with our heavy backpacks.

We were able to start a fire with wet woods after numerous tries, and cooked dinner. We chatted around the fire, had long debates on moose among other random things. One of my friend even brought rum with him! We then slept in the uncomfortable cold, and I had dreams of animals outside my tent...heard some weird noises, but it was probably my friends snoring, haha.

The next day, we left most of our gear in the campsite to hike to the top. The view was amazing. The sky was clear and blue. Adams is the second highest peak in the North East, second to Mount Washington that we hiked last summer. However, Adams is mostly undeveloped and quiet. Hiking into the alpine zone of Adams was purely magical! It was definitely not an easy hike, especially with our heavy backpacks, but it was all worth it.

After the hike, we had dinner at a restaurant is a small village called Lyndonville, and I had my coconut birthday cake there and the restaurant staff sang happy birthday to me. My friends are so sweet. Most of them have never hiked/camped in the wild, and I'm so happy they came with me on this little crazy adventure!

Bouldering addiction

I just realized that I'm kind of afraid of falling...and I fall 90% of the time. I get bloody fingers and coarse hands too...but I'm pretty much addicted now. Seriously.

Tête-à-tête with Jackie: Love at first sight

"Do you believe in love at first sight?"

"Yeah of course, the chances are very slim...but it definitely can happen. Depending on how long it lasts, it can be called infatuation. There's also attraction at first sight, hate at first sight, etc...I guess, too many people don't know the difference."

"Me too...but so many people say it's not possible if you don't know a person. The thing is, nobody knows anything important about anybody in reality. What do you think about people saying that love at first sight is an insult to people who have worked hard to build something together for years?"

"That's not love...it's more like attachment, comfort, friendship, mutual need fulfillment, empathy, partnership, or whatever it is...but love is not logical like that, you don't check off a list of criteria, it doesn't matter if you know them. Those people definitely are innocent of true passion. Sure, you can take years to develop a relationship with someone and love them very much...but can you really say you're in love?"

"I completely agree. Love comes before societal norms, facts, real life experience and lessons. I'm not saying that's how it works in real life...but when it happens, you just know. It just doesn't happen very often nowadays...we just have so much going on in our minds as we grow older."

"I'm so happy that someone agree!"

"You're the only one who understand!"

":)"

"In reality, we're the only two dumb asses, haha"