Dear Diary,
I am four days late, so I'm adding four extras.
13. Fresh on the heels of saying I won't be traveling much this next year, Sweet Baboo's name was picked in the lottery for the Western States 100-miler. Himself told me some time back that if he was ever picked he would attemp the Grand Slam. In ultrarunning the Grand Slam is Vermont, Leadville, Western States, and Wasatch.
12. Vermont is a state I don't have in my Marathon+ distance medal collection. It turns out that at the same time as the Vermon 100-miler is the Vermont 100k. So--you guessed it--I'm now registered for the fun run.
11. Both himsef and I have obtained apps to track our points. We will be following training plans modified from the Training Plan generator at the Santa Clarita runners club website. We will also be incorporating a high degree of strength training. I will be using Power 90 and eventually P90x. Not sure what Himself is using.
10. I started watching "Breaking Bad" on streaming Netflix. Which, by the way, is DA BOMB. Netflix is. It was jarring to see the high school where I used to teach featured in a movie. Oh, and that credit union in the first episode? That's the Rio Rancho library.
The first few episodes, I told Himself, I'm not sure what is worse about this guy's life...his new circumstances, his cancer, or the fact that he drives an Aztec.
9. Back in black. When I went running Sunday for my first "long" run since the San Antonio marathon, I was pretty fearful. I took off most of November from training. I was a sloth (although, I was a pretty sloth with nice skin and nails.) I am fortunate to live in a nice part of town where I can run on a paved path that is almost completely protected from car traffic, or on the dirt next to that, or through some pretty quiet neighborhoods, or up into the foothills of the Sandia Mountains. All of these options imvolve hills. I figured I would suffer. Instead, I had a great 11 miles of running, including some hill running that I didn't know I had in me.
8. Mundane story from my life. On my run on Sunday I came upon a guy standing by a pickup full of chopped and split cedar, with a wife and two young children inside. This is a common sight near where we live...they pull far off the road and sell wood. Once a year year, we buy a truckload. I stopped and talked money, and then called Sweet Baboo, and told him where the guy was parked. Baboo advised that he would head for the ATM and then meet the guy and lead the truck to our house. I told the guy to hold out for about 20 minutes and then took off running through a neighbood, still bearing north.
While I was crusing, Albuquerque's finest men in blue showed up to chase this young family away and THANK GOD THE POLICE ARE KEEPING US SAFE FROM GUYS SUPPORTING THEIR FAMILIES HONESTLY but somehow, he still managed to track me down.
7. What makes this worthy of a post is this: "tracking me down" involved getting my attention as I was running along the trail that runs next to the boulevard. Then he pulled over, and chased me on foot, up a street into a neighborhood. I don't respond to whistles, ever, and couldn't hear him yelling since I had my headphones on. Kind of a funny story. Or not. Anyway, that type of persistance definitely deserves rewarding, so I hopped in the pickup along with the wife and babies and steered him to our house. We got our our wood, and he got his money. Win, win.
6. When we went out later, we saw a mass of flashing lights down the road. Guess they found some more guys selling wood to save us from SWARM! SWARM! SWARM!
5. I have a secret santa thing at work. The person whose name I chose likes 49ers, kit kat bars, strawberry mint gum, and skulls. Skulls? Where the hell do you buy holiday skulls?
4. This weekend, I put on 18 trail miles. They hurt. I have lost a lot of base. I have to get that back. It was cold out there.
3. And then Monday, it snowed again. For the third Monday in a row. Goddamn it. I moved to the desert for a reason. Cut that shit out.
2. Did I say Netflix is the bomb? I did. Well, it is. We watched all the "Breaking Bad" episodes. Now we're working on "Parks and Recreation".
1. Blind kitty has turned into a slightly less cute and slightly more feral moving cactus. On the advice of Dread Pirate, aka "the cat lady" (who is saved, albeit just barely, from the label "crazy cat lady" by the unfortunate loss of her fourth kitty last month) i just wrap the little blind bastard up in a towel and make a little kitten burrito when I have to do eye drops. Yes, she's adorable. Yes, she makes holes on my hands. But then she climbs up on me, purring, and slumps against me, a limp, liquid purring wad of cute.
0. I am lazy, lazy. I would have published this Thursday, because I normally do that at work. Then a transformer next to my office building blew. I'm told it was spactacular and I am SO PISSED that I missed it. i heard it, though. A loud hum/roar and then...nothing. No lights, no phone, nothing. Oh, did I mention that the door locks in our facility are electric? Um, yeah. Luckily, only one kid made a run for it. Now, all employees in our facility are hands off the kids unless a kid is a danger to self or others, and then they arer specially trined in safe, non-injurious restraint. Running toward a busy street qualifies as danger to self, soooo, 6 point restraint, on the ground, in the front, the kid is screaming, GETTHEFUCKOFFMEIMCALLINGTHCOPS!!AAAAAHHHHHHGGGG!!GETTHRFUCKOFFME!!!!
oh, and by the way, this is a generally residential neighborhood, with curious onlookers walking by. While adults hold a kid down and, eventually, the kid gets a shot in the ass by a nurse.
-1. The next day, we had no internet. Al day.
-2. I am fat, fat, fat. I need to swallow a balloon or something.
-3. I have the winter exercise room of my dreams, thanks to Sweet Baboo, who spoils me rotten. Flat screen, mounted on the wall, the treadmill, a nIce thick rug, and it's nearly empty otherwise. There is a computer attached to the flat screen and it has my Esther E. yoga vidoes, as well as my Power 90 and p90x videos on it. There's also apple tv in there. Yeah. I'd hate me too. But remember, can't have him. He's taken. Did I mention the upper body work he's doing? Hubba, hubba. Pictures soon. Of the room.
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