Every surface under the twilight

The swim yesterday was pretty good. I scored a pair of goggles from a buddy that was pissed they kept leaking. Quiet pool. 500 m 9:10. 5 x 100 on 2 between 100 to 105 seconds. 150 m in 150 seconds. Then trying 200 m at the same pace, but ended up 224 seconds rather than 200. Something to work on. I'd sure like to make that my regular pace, which is just under a 17 minute K, when I'm currently swimming a hair over 18 minutes for a fast K.

Yesterday and today were so nice out, I was itching to go for a run, even on melty sidewalks. Finally got out there just before sunset today. The sky was a beautiful gray pastel with some interesting swirls. The footing was, was, interesting.

Runners care a lot about their footing. I'll run in minus WTF temperature with an even colder windchill, but I might bail on a run if there's a thin slick of ice. Today was a bit of everything, as you'd expect as the day shifts from just above zero, to just below.

The footing varied the same way, from bare dry sidewalk, to deep chalky snow that behaved much like sand, and almost everything in between. The worst of it was that it caked up on my shoes and felt odd on the bottom of my feet. Of course, maintaining cadence is hard when your feet are slipping backwards.

I'm full of ideas for the current book! This is very happy making. I've written myself into a place where lots of things can happen, and I just need to decide which of them happen in which order, and how it all ends up. For those who care about such things, my protagonist just survived a poisoning attempt. I'm past 32,000 raw words. Very raw. I just reread one bit and winced. Write first, edit later.

There is a quarterly Business Analyst breakfast meeting I try to attend. It's great for networking and keeping track of where people are. I've missed several of the most recent ones, but back on track now. At the last ones I attended, almost everyone was working in oil and gas, or trying to be. Today, only 1/4 of the people were in my industry. 1/4 were between gigs and not even looking at oil and gas, and the remainder were in a variety of other industries. How things change.

Did you miss the cats holding me prisoner or the first day of my recent vacation, wherein there are cat pics, snowy pics, and something else.