Weekend Update

[sinanju]

Good Evening.  I'm Sinanju and you're not!  And in other new, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead....

Cool Running: Week Seven
I did my third of three weekly runs this morning, 25 minutes without stopping or slowing.  Go, me!  It's the eighth week for me, since I repeated one week but otherwise I'm on track.  As I reported earlier, sometimes it's fun and sometimes it's a chore, but in either case it's nice knowing that I can do it, which I couldn't have even begun to do when I started the program two months ago.  On Friday I did the second weekly run and it wasn't until I was changing out of my running clothes that I realized I'd worn the wrong shoes.

I have two pairs of sneakers.  One very old pair that wore out for serious running purposes many years ago but which I've kept around as utility shoes, and another pair of running shoes I bought a year or two ago and mostly left in the closet when that earlier attempt at getting back into running fell thru.  Friday I grabbed the old, worn out pair by mistake and ran in them.  I didn't notice at the time--but the last couple of days I found that my lower legs--in particular my achilles tendons--took a lot more pounding than usual.  They were definitely feeling the effects of running in shoes that have no support left to give.  I was careful this morning to wear the right shoes.

Push Da Mowah!
I cut the grass Saturday morning using the brand spaking new Scotts Classic Reel Mower.  I'd have cut it Thursday evening after work, in fact I was just getting ready to do so, when my lovely and talented wife arrived home.  I told her my plans and she said I needn't bother.  She'd called the guy who's been cutting our grass for the last couple of years to tell him that his services would no longer be required and he said he'd be around on Friday to cut it one last time and leave us the bill for June.

He didn't show.  This would be why she waited until the end of the month to cancel; lawnmower men are notoriously flakey.  We've had guys who did a good job who would just vanish without a word, never to be seen again, or who would finish up for the year and then never reappear to the next spring to solicit our business again.  At least one told my wife (she's the one who took care of hiring them) that he was saving to move to Hawaii.  And apparently, once he got the money together, he took off without a backward glance.

So anyhow, I cut the grass.  It took a little less than an hour, and will probably take a little less time in the future because a) I'll get faster with practice, and b) I won't let the grass get as long before mowing.  Reel mowers don't work well when trying to cut long grass--you're well advised to keep it trimmed consistently.  So I expect that in addition to running three times a week, I'll be getting my exercise by cutting the grass twice a week as well.

I'll be bursting with health!  It'll be oozing out of my pores!  (Oh, wait.  snippy informs me that that's just sweat, not health.  Darn.)

Rearranging Deck Chairs
snippy and I also spend some enjoyable time working on reorganizing our lair.  We moved some shelving from the front room into her den, moved a desk out of it and into storage, and measured and discussed and planned some other shuffling of shelves and bookcases.  We also discussed options for painting various rooms.  It wasn't how I'd planned to spend a few hours, but it was actually more interesting and entertaining than sitting at my computer surfing the net in hopes of finding something new and interesting to read.

Fourth of July
Tomorrow we'll be heading out to spend the day at a local amusement park/picnic area.  We can get all-day ride bracelets for the various rides, we'll be staking out a picnic table piled high with tasty foods and beverages, bringing along books and other amusements for when we want to just sit and rest, and generally spending the day in the great outdoors.  And after dark, fireworks!  (That's the real motivation for this outing.  snippy hasn't attended a real, professional fireworks show* in a long time and she wants to see one.  So we discovered that this park puts one on, and we're gonna be there to see it.)

*For the last couple of years, we've just walked out to the park behind our house and watched various  scofflaws public-spirited citizens do impromptu shows with highly illegal fireworks**--and we're talking hundreds of dollars worth of high-flying, exploding, colorful fireworks too.

**This being Oregon, anything resembling real fireworks (anything that flies or explodes or, well, does anything interesting at all) is completely verboten.