More talkative, but not much else

Workouts as such sucked on the weekend too, but by then I'd given up on the whole idea, and was just trying to recover and feel better.

Saturday I was out for a very nice run with buddies down in Fish Creek. Only 5 K, 42 minutes, taking it very easy on the ice. There were lots of places skates would have been appropriate, but there was usually at least some pavement to run on.

It was a surprisingly windy cold dank day, considering how warm this month has been overall. The main thing for one of the runners was her first 5 K outdoors! Her confidence is boosted enormously for a 5 K race she's entered in later this spring.

Monday I was feeling a bit of trepidation about going back in the pool. It's been almost a week, and I've been having some shoulder and chest muscle pain. It wasn't as bad as I'd feared. I started out with the whole 50 m training pool to myself. All of it! That didn't last, but I kept the whole lane to myself.

1 K, 19:50 long course. I haven't swum it that slow in quite a while. Tried 100 m aiming for strong but not all out, thinking I'd be 95 seconds or so. Not. 105 seconds. I suppose the pace is all of a piece, just feeling slow.

The novel is chugging along. I'm up to a hair under 63 K words. The last couple weekends have been amazing. I'm at a spot where I'm contemplating some choices to see what happens to my protagonist and all her buddies, and her several enemies.

The big non-event of the weekend was updating all my Apple devices. I was several releases behind on operating systems because I was spooked about Photos and iTunes. The latter is still an abomination. There's an album I bought from Apple, it plays on the ipad, but nothing else. Sigh.

I'm embarrassed to say how long it took to figure out how to preview a song from the iTunes store to see if I wanted to buy it. I'm a bit cheesed at all the blandishments to sign up for iCloud and Apple Music, when it's just a fiendish plan to hold your own data hostage and suck you into monthly payments for the rest of your life, and push you into the next data plan bracket. Screw you, Apple! I want MY data on MY devices. That's why I bought the memory.

However, it all ended well. I'm actually liking the new photos because it pulls the date of the photo out of the metadata and sorts the photo by that. I never got that to happen in my old version, and this essentially fixes how my photos got all screwed up in a hard drive crash. So far the photostream thing seems to be working faster and more reliably but I shall see.

This isn't a fast process, though. It took the better part of two days, and I'm just finishing up the back up of the new system. Yes, I backed up everything before the upgrade, and that hard drive is now living at work. One big drive, 3 partitions, with two full bootable backups, one done with Super Duper, and the other done with Carbon Copy Cloner. Every now and then I do a new backup onto the oldest drive. What I'm really doing is backing up photos, since not much else gets done on that computer anymore. The novel is on the laptop, with an automatic backup to Drop Box, and a period manual copy to a USB drive, just in case.

What do you mean, you don't back up your hard drive?

Oh, if you think time capsule is doing it, close iPhoto, or Photos, and then do a backup. Your photos aren't backed up if the program is open. Check the backup. Time Capsule failed me once. Good thing I had all the photos on the iPad.

This is a dressed up photo from my run with Michelle a couple weeks ago. This is along the Bow, not far from the pedestrian bridge to Edworthy park. My buddy Neil Zellor is doing to an intro to your DSLR camera, and I'd love to take it. I looked up the camera he recommended and went GACK at the price, but it's not that so much. It's the time to go do it, and do the post processing. I've lots else on the go. Maybe when I take the next step to retirement. In the meantime, this is the iphone 6 and Snapseed.

Waiting for photos in drobox

The photos ARE coming, and some, only some will be shared. There are many. Some are quite frankly unsuitable for public view. Even private viewing had me covering my eyes. That Ironman Finisher bike jersey is just a bit snug. He said, in an understated sort of way. I should blow up one of them and put it on the fridge.

But first, my coffee moment with Curtis wondering if he wanted to share.

Today was a lovely run up to the South Glenmore boat club. I sang a little ditty to myself as I got there.

There is
a pole
in the aid station,
They call the family jewels
And it's been the ruin of many a guys race
I know
I watched it once.

If you don't know what that is sung to, there is no hope for you. The pole is right in the middle of the bike path, to keep motorized vehicles off the path. It's instantly downstream of where the aid station is. One guy that was trying to open a gel, hold a half full cup, and dodge someone, impaled himself on the pole. Fortunately it's somewhat flexibly mounted, and I think he took the worst of it in his gut, but still. I very carefully ran around it and started towards home.

10 K, 1:10:45, running easy, except for kilometers 6, 7, and 8. I struggled there a bit, falling off the pace. Pulled it together for 9 and 10 though. After all the heat it was lovely running in the sun with a cool breeze. Lots of other runners out. I discovered this graph in iSmoothrun, which I had never seen before. I think it makes things much clearer, though you can't see the altitude part very well, but I'm not sure how much I trust it anyways. It's clear I need to work on maintaining cadence.

My feet felt pretty good throughout, though I think I need to get new shoes. There doesn't seem to be much squish under the ball of my right foot anymore.

After that I sat in the back patio, drinking fruit juice, nibbling a cookie or two (or three) and doing a bit of writing. It's a lovely relaxing way to spend some time.

Michelle and I have been conspiring on photos. Let's see if I can find a couple for you that aren't too bad. These need to be cropped. Here is me desperate to keep up as Michelle pulls away.

Michelle pedaling like mad desperate to pass, me coasting. I am faster downhill, she is faster going up.

Remember the bikes on the fence shot from yesterday? We practiced transitions, so here is the action shot. In a note to self moment, Michelle realized how long it takes to tie shoes, and why triathletes pay for speed laces.

And lastly lunch being a left over bison burger with cheese.

Tough love from the lane ropes

I suppose they're not really ropes anymore. These are hard plastic disks to break up waves, mounted on a wire, strung between the ends of the pool. The idea is to mark out lanes so we can swim in an orderly fashion. At least I didn't leave any blood behind in the water, but I think it was a near thing.

Monday swim was good. 250 or 300 m warmup, then 10 x 100 on 2 min, all in 1:50 or so, (long course). Then 3 x 100 hard, aiming for 90 seconds, and not quite making it, but with a bit more rest. Some cool down.

Today I watched fast Ed in the next lane. Zoom. I started good, and then settled into a struggle to keep form. The water feel kept coming and going over the first 1500 m, and was totally gone for the last 500 m. Barely did it under 40 min, long course. At first I was dodging a breast stroker, but there was lots of room to pass.

The hard part was I kept drifting into the lane rope, and my wrist was getting bashed up. Of course this interrupted my stroke, but I can't solely blame the lane marker. My swim felt clunky and weak. At one point my kick just stopped for no apparent reason.

The ultimate privation was having to make do with the small hot tub because they were cleaning the big one. The swim team was pretty cranky about that. It is very interesting listening to kids in high school talk about their lives. One of them was talking about transitioning his grandparents from cable to getting TV over the internet. It was a bit of a shock when he mentioned their ages (barely older than me) and being totally clueless about technology. They asked, he said, and I'm not sure I believe him, to hook up their old VCR so they could record stuff and watch it later.

Tonight I was all geared up to go for a run as I left work. Somewhere during the drive home the desire just ebbed out of me. By the time we got home I wanted a nap. I think I'm going to read a bit and go to bed.

Here's the white peony opened up a bit more, with the image tweaked in Snapseed. Photos of flowers is one of the times I wish I had a real camera with a good lens.

Sorry, no clever title today. But cats!

If you're late and missed the party, you can catch up here, where I get all ranty on one particular famous Canadian.

But back to everyday stuff. The Wednesday swim was 2K 38:10, working hard. Today was 2K, 37:20! I'd hoped for 37, and the first K was on track at 18:30, but I lost my focus a bit during the second half. The main difference was a bit more discipline in my kick (for much of the swim), and a stronger flip turn. It's funny to say that I was feeling strong, but relaxed for almost all of it.

My inner shark showed up briefly and cruised along, telling me the news about a conference he's been to. The sharks have statistics showing they're getting a bad rap. Cows kill far more people than sharks, but do people fear them? No! They want to work up a PR campaign to set the story straight. So far the smiling for the camera isn't working so well.

Afterward we watched the divers warming up for the provincial championships. I've jumped off the 10 m tower once, and dived off once. Never again. Being so short sighted, I don't really see the water.  The pool is 5 m deep. That means I'm looking down almost 17 m, or about 55 feet straight down. That's a long way. These kids ran up the stairs, took their turns with no lolly-gagging, up to the end and off! Flipping and turning and twisting to end with a neat splash. Then up and again. Holy cow. I am impressed!

Did I mention it snowed last night, just a little? Enough for us to cover the plants. Once I got home it was nice enough to have to think about what to wear for a run. Shorts yes, but long sleeved top or short? Decisions decisions. In the end I went with long and that was probably right.

I headed out thinking I'd maybe do 4 or 5 K, nice and easy. Then I missed the various iSmoothrun announcements because of traffic, up till 5 K. I was a bit surprised when I heard that one; I thought I was at 4 K or so. Ran to bring it up to 6 K, 39:22 or a 6:34 pace. This is a really good run for me! My feet felt light, and my legs felt strong. I didn't have to think about my pace at all, though I didn't get another chapter in my book written. Other things are distracting me at the moment.

Running has been really good lately. Going about 5 K has been a good distance, and without really pushing hard I've been going at a good pace. For a long time running much faster than a 7 minute K would mean trouble later, as would going much over 10 K. My plan is to sneak up on 10 K this time. I think I'll do some easy and relaxed runs around the 5 to 7 K distance for a while, and see how that feels. My run buddy would keep me honest and on pace. Sigh.

I haven't been on the bike since the fit, but I'm hoping the weather is nice enough tomorrow. It sounds funny, but even the little spin I did during the fit felt good, and it's like some of the muscles in my right thigh have reset themselves. I can feel the run a bit, even after a stretch, but it's not the normal thing. This is more of a balanced feeling of tiredness, than one muscle ready to give up.

Here I am, trying to write, with the cats being terminally cute. Such a distraction.

Even with uncooperative weather Linda is making excellent progress on the garden. Probably just as well it's been raining, or she'd work herself into a puddle of exhaustion. Here's one of her supervisors.

Ahoy! The white wine! The white wine! Off the starboard bow! No, wait, wrong genre. I boiled up some Sparkolloid and added that. I was beginning to thing this wine was never going to clear. But 24 hours after, it looks like this. Still not clear enough to bottle, but I'm at least hopeful again it will get there. I've had a couple other whites that took a long time to settle, but at least with them you could see progress.

Oh and I almost forgot. The pace graph from today's run. I'm too lazy to put it up with the rest of the run stuff. So sue me. I figured out what the drop in cadence is. It happens when I take the phone out of my pocket. I was trying to keep a higher cadence, and it worked pretty well for the first half of the run.

Note to self, and to other guys

First of all, what about that sunset the other night! This is unretouched. You can hardly see the moon, but to my eyes it was huge.

Monday, swimming in the big pool! This is the first time swimming long course since I tweaked my stroke. I had no idea how that would turn out. I'm often about a minute slower per 1000 m in the 50 m pool. I didn't want to go all out or anything, just wanted to see where I was.

I was feeling a little clunky at first, but settled in, working on various parts of my stroke. It took about 700 m to feel warmed up. I ended up swimming the K in 19 minutes almost exactly, nice and relaxed. In the short course pool I'm 18:30 nice and relaxed for that distance. Make of it what you will.

5x 100 m on 2 minutes, all were done in about 100 to 102 seconds. Those felt pretty good. Cool down.

Tuesday I was feeling a bit of hip niggles throughout the day, but I still headed out for a short run. 3K 22 minutes. Started feeling clunky and out of breath. The clunk went away, mostly, but a 7:15 pace should be chatchatchat, and it wasn't. I wasn't gasping, but I was breathing harder than I should. Good walk and stretch after.

The note to self comes in while getting ready. I was putting on a pair of tights, ones I hadn't worn since last fall at least, and maybe even last spring some time.

These are the only tights I own where the cord is actually a loop. They came that way. At first I thought it was a great idea. I've had to go digging into the waistband to retrieve a cord that disappeared. Tonight I revised that opinion. The tights are a bit small, and I was yanking up firmly. I failed to consider exactly where the loop was during the firm yanking process. Let's just say I'm glad some nerve circuits are still working and leave it at that, shall we?

A couple more photos for you, just because. Anybody want to guess what this is?

I took this on a whim, to show a buddy what sunglasses that fit over prescription lenses look like. She was very complimentary. A buddy at work said I had to put it on my blog. The things I do for my readers.

Re-wrote the first chapter of Bone, based on a chunk I had set aside. It doesn't have quite the same creepy atmosphere of the current opening, but it introduces the main character right off, and sets the stage for her better than the current opening.

What kind of blogger are you?

I've had some new readers on my blog just lately. All are welcome, please make yourselves comfortable and don't be afraid to comment or check the little feedback boxes at the bottom of each posting. I moderate, but I only remove spam and trolls. Contrary opinions with supporting reasoning are more than welcome! I admit to some surprise that while my most recent post got lots of readers, there are no comments. Maybe nobody actually read down the wall o'text to get to the comment form.

There are bloggers that concentrate on one topic. There are mommy/daddy bloggers, food bloggers, fitness bloggers, gadget bloggers, movie bloggers, book bloggers, well, you get the idea. They wanted to know what slot I fit into.

I'm sorry (no I'm not!) but I refuse to limit myself like that. Except for the first, since I'm not a parent, I've touched on all of those, some more than others. My blog started as a fitness blog. Between you and me the first several weeks, and even mostly the first few months are pretty dull. The first one that isn't dull happened about a month into all this. You can find out about the attack of the yogurt container here. Don't be drinking anything.

Even though all the advice says to stick to one topic, pump your readership, and monetize your blog, I won't do that. I write what I want to write, on a wide variety of topics. My readers can read or not as they please. I'm almost certain some of them look at the title and say "He's on about THAT again? Don't need to go there." But then they come back for a Curtis photo, or something else they like. (Everybody likes photos of Curtis or Celina. Scroll down.)

I've come to think of myself as an essayist rather than a blogger. Yes, there is often fitness stuff that gets mentioned, or the current status of my various projects. But more and more I have an opinion on a topic, and I use the blog to share it. It could be anything from indecision in a doorway to macro political economics.

I don't try to be funny, exactly, but I do try to be witty, and there's a big difference between them. If I can make a reader smile at how I've presented an idea, that's a win for me. Spraying coffee through the nose all over the computer is a bonus. What you will get is almost always reasonably well written and organized. Mostly blog posts get done to second draft status. I could certainly clean up almost all of them, but there are time limits.

I have induced potentially window shattering screams as one particular reader floundered around with eyes closed trying to find the tiny little x to close the photo window. She knows who she is, and I did warn people first. If you want to see what induced the internal scream, you'll have to search for it yourself using "graphic followup" as the search term in the little box at the top of the page.

The first real essay, though I thought of it as a rant at the time, was about the Olympics. It just boiled out of me and needed very little rewriting. I've just read it again now, and I'm still pretty pleased with it. You can read it here.

Since then there have been a variety of rants on a variety of subjects. People seem to like them, at least so far. The impact on my blood pressure is wonderful! But a buddy of mine was looking over my blog because he was about to start one, and he pointed out that my labels are not as well chosen as they could be. I have to agree.

When I started I didn't include many photos, so a label for photos was useful. Except now it says there are 455 posts with photos, and I know I've missed some. "But photos of what?" my buddy asked. Good question. I can't tell, and neither can you.

I was thinking of going through all 1800+ posts and redoing the labels, after creating a criteria for them. Would that make any difference? Do you decide what to read based on the labels (right up there below the title)? Umm, have you even noticed the labels? Maybe I don't want to know the answer there.

Some bloggers post on a regular schedule. I'm not that organized. Over the life of the blog new posts arrive every day and a half. Sometimes that means every day for a month or two, other times it means several days between. It all depends on life, the universe, and everything.

If you don't want to miss a post there's a couple ways to keep track. You can follow me on Twitter, right now that's in my blog roll just under the labels. You can follow by email, that's down near the bottom of the blog roll. Just above that there's the Member's thing, but I don't know if that still works. You can subscribe in a reader, though to be honest I don't know if that's working. Twitter is the best bet. I'm not in Blog Loving, or Feedly or any of the others.

Swam a clunky swim on Friday. No water feel at all. Hip and core feeling cranky again. For complicated scheduling reasons (we are too cheap to buy a second car) I walked from the pool to my office. It took 12 minutes. I'm reasonably sure that's faster than driving. I'll have to time it next time to be sure.

Swam a nice swim on Sunday, lots of technique work and drills. Stretching at home after produced a very nice hip thunk again.

I am having no luck working on my books. I'm stuck on something at the moment, but the bigger problem is the cats. For some reason I'm the lap of choice lately. If I'm sitting, they want my lap. If I try to write, this is what I get. Does anyone have any doubt what Curtis is thinking?

So (as the saying goes), that's enough of me talking about myself. What do you think of me? (badumdah!)

What kind of a blogger are you?

Good thing I didn't run, I think

So you know how some people post nothing but rainbows and unicorn poop? Here's some honesty tonight. I'm a bit cranky. Just a bit.

Let's start with a small rainbow. Monday's swim was really good. About 1.25 K or so, not sure exactly. A few intervals, and a bit of water running. Even though the water was cold, it was all good.

I am normally a knows where he's going kind of guy, and normally like to walk a straight line at a brisk pace to get there. Just lately it seems like people are getting in my way. They come out of nowhere, or stand around taking up the entire frigging sidewalk in front of the Palliser like half-slaughtered sheep. Then I have to maneuver around them, trying to restrain the urge to just trample over them. That isn't well thought of.

Normally I like the +15 system, but perhaps using it after a 12 hour fast isn't the best idea in the world. Yes, lab tests time. So there I was having to put in a couple hours of work on a complicated query, not just before coffee, but before breakfast. So to say I was eager to get into the lab to do the bleed and pees thing is a bit of an understatement. You'd think some of the people around me were deliberately trying to be obstacles, and not just to me either.

But I was channeling the time in Torino, going into the train station. I was tired, cranky, and wanted to be on the train. There was a longish walk to the doors, and a flood of people coming out. I was wearing a bright yellow coat (If sir will wear a coat of that colour out in public, he will find nothing of interest to him in this store.) and decided I simply wasn't in the mood. I locked eyes on the door, and walked an absolutely straight line toward the door. I was looking over people, paying them no attention at all, projecting the complete willingness to walk through them. The crowds parted around me. Linda was hanging onto the back of my jacket trying to keep up.

Then there was the guy this evening, tailgating me under 9th ave on 4th St SE. Turning right onto 11th Ave he goes wide trying to get around on the left, but I'd already signaled and was sliding over. He tried for the right, but someone was coming out of a parking spot. Just past the construction, as I had my signal on to go left, he cut through the end of the construction zone, and zoomed past me in the far left lane. I'm in the next to left, with two more over to my right. Then he zooms across in front of me to get over in the second to the right lane. We exchanged glares at the light. Then I nearly peed myself laughing as another idiot blocks the intersection on him.

Tonight, paying bills. Now, keep in mind I remember when you had to pay bills by mailing a piece of paper to each company, or visit their office in person, and wait in line. This was before paying bills at the bank. Now I can sit at a desk for a few minutes and shuffle money around. It's wonderful.

Except when you lose an envelop in the clutter on the desk. Oops. At least it was only the phone bill for the number we give to people we don't want to talk to. Then it was one of those times when everything seems to struggle. Unable to separate pieces of paper. Opening an envelop, using a tool designed for the purpose, that I've used only a zillion times in the past, was suddenly a difficult task. I checked all the math twice.

I signed up for some of my bills on e-post, and I'm seriously considering going back to paper. I have to remember to look at the bill, since only the mobile phone bill comes as an email, and even then I have to go looking for it. This time Direct Energy sent some bafflegab about account changes, but the bill finally arrived so I could pay it. No changes. Just late.

Tonight was to be a run night, but after a little bit of dithering I decided not not. My hip, quads, and hams are feeling just a bit tight, as if just the right stretch would click them and all would be good. I was feeling rushed and cranky, and decided that rest is better for me than the run. If my bike had been set up on the trainer, I might have done a short ride, but no. Getting that done isn't hard, but it isn't a task to be done when feeling cranky and tired. Even with the heat gun trainer tire trick.

And while it isn't quite singing you out with a rainbow, here's another nice sunset. This is actually looking south.

Run and yard, with lots of photos

Let's get exercise out of the way first. Swam Thursday, very nice. 1 K swim 19:15 nice and easy, another 20 minutes of water running.

Real running on Sunday! Two of my running buddies, (these ones!)

totally showed up, all matchy matchy without advance planning and dragged me out for a nice run in Fish Creek. We did a bit of a trail run from bridge two scramble up the hill and through the nice meadow, then back down and around to the bottom of 24 st where we started. Just near the beginning we met up with a huge, gigantic, enormous 11 month old great dane. It could probably have eaten our heads it was so big. It had to reach down to sniff my crotch. Troll Michelle's blog, she got some photos of it, and may post them. Along the way there was a nice photo of Fish Creek, calm and quiet.

We had a beautiful run with a bit of a scramble in one place. Nice and easy pace, all of us getting our legs back after "racing" last weekend. It was more important for us to get outside, hang with buddies, chat, and get our legs used to moving again. I used the term advisedly, since while we were in a race, none of us were actually racing. Subtle distinction. It ended up being about 4.5 K, and I only know that because I overheard Michelle's phone talking to her about it.

We came back home to find Linda had made these wonderful chocolate chip cookies, and you'd never know they were gluten free. Then we drank lots of coffee, sat in the lodge, ate cookies, and chatted. I can't think of a better way off had to spend a morning.

Saturday I was scrubbing rocks, trying to get the gator dust off them. The rocks are black, but the polymer in the gator dust makes them look sort of whitish. I was using a putty knife to clean off the bits of the dust clumped onto the rocks. Then I was hauling the organic mulch to the back, while Linda spread it around.

On Sunday after the run, I was put to semi-hard labour, toting cedar mulch back to the big flower bed. At least it's light.

Here is planting in progress from last week.

Planting and mulching done! Yay us!

Along the way I was watering the bed underneath the back bay window, and startled Curtis from sleep. He was watching the hose with deep fascination. You have to look a little to see him in the shot. These big orange cats you know, masters of disguise.

Here's the two beds on either side of the steps at the back of the house.

All in all it's been a busy, wonderful weekend that disappeared in a blur of work and happy times with buddies. How was your weekend? Is your garden whipped into shape? Are you all recovered from races and training going well?

Do you . . . roller?

The snow is mostly gone. Oh, there's still lots of white around, but at least it's not several inches deep anymore. Wednesday they say will be nice. Our backyard landscaper is already worried about being a couple days behind, and the season has hardly started. They're still working on remediation projects from last year's flooding.

Trying to write instead of working in the back yard was interesting. Earlier you saw how Celina tried to 'help'. Well, yesterday I had supervision. Mega-supervision. Curtis loves this posed. He reminds me of a 50's era punk, with the pack of cigarettes rolled into a T shirt sleeve, driving with his arm out the window hanging onto the roof.

And I was distracted by cat antics. I suppose someone that knows the camera quality specs for an iPhone 4 could figure out how fast the paws have to be moving to blur the photo like these.

Then later they ganged up on me. No room for a laptop in that lap.

Still, it wasn't a total loss. Some actual writing got done, 850 words. Most drivel as I write myself into the scene, but that's ok. If I didn't write some drivel there'd be nothing to edit later, and we can't have that, can we?

The Saturday run felt really good. Then Sunday I was sitting most of the day, and I could feel it in my low back a bit. Then swimming on Monday, and I could feel the tug in my low back during flip turns. Water ran with Katie for 20 minutes, then 20 minute swim. She is such a champ. Most people would be prostrate if they were feeling that bad, but there she was, churning away hard at the training. Then sitting in my chair at work. So first thing when I got home I marched downstairs and did some stretching, and feel much better.

I started rolling The Stick lightly on the inside of my thigh starting at the knee and rolling up and down. My whole quad started to tingle, all over, all at once. Generally I start with light rolling up and down fairly quickly, then gradually slow down and start putting some effort into the sore spots. The ball and the drier ball thingie for my feet. I find I don't use the big foam roller much anymore, other than to support my knee when using The Stick on my legs. Oh, I use it to support my hips for feet in the air. I don't have a wall, so this is the best I can do. I should do some core stuff too, but supper was calling.

I've seen pictures of a big orange roller with whacking great huge spikes on it. Does that work? What rolling do you do, and using which tools? How long for each muscle? Stretch before or after the rolling? Tell me all about it!

The cat photo backlog

Another week with my head mostly in a complicated pipeline database. It's very tiring.  But what's really been burning at me is the cat photo backlog. I know some of my readers yearn for cat photos. Blogs with cat photos in them seem to get higher readership. So am I pimping out the cats here?

Mostly they get along. They aren't actually asleep here. Celina has her paws in Curtis's throat, and is licking him firmly.

After the licking comes the snoozing. The snores were very loud. They approve of the new furniture.

On the weekend I was graced with Curtis. I'd just finished combing his belly. He likes that.

Here's the front view. Gotta love a camera so small and light you can hold it at arms length and still get a good shot.

Most of the time Curtis is very sensitive about his front paws. Touch them, and he'll draw them back. But I was gently checking his claws and pads. Very impressive, and he kept on snoring throughout.

When I let go of his paw, he just flopped. I wish I could relax and snooze like this.

Today was the day! We had a few more days of spring. Or maybe this is summer. Sometimes in Calgary it's hard to tell. But I guess it's not summer till it stops snowing and it's supposed to snow this weekend. 

Which is one reason I was hoping to get a run done during the week, and Michelle suggested I run home with her, along a route I hadn't done. It's pretty direct, though I have to go a few blocks west to her office to start.

Without even trying we settle into a nice chat chat pace and carry on without one of us having to push or the other waiting. Those splits are pretty consistent considering a few waits for lights, a couple breaks for photos, and one walk break near the end as my legs started complaining.

It was the perfect temperature, maybe not quite 20 C, very light wind, somewhat cloudy but not gloomy. I loved running along looking at streets I've either never been on, or haven't been on in many years. All part of my getting out more often initiative.

We felt so virtuous crossing over Glenmore. So many people in cars stuck in traffic, and us running along enjoying the fresh air. There were a ton of other people out on the path running and biking. I didn't see any skaters though. As is often the case for photos of me, I look a little stuffed, I'm leaning to one side, and I've got a drink in my band. You'll notice the logo from Tri it Multisport.

A few minutes later as we were running past the hospital we asked someone sitting on a bench there to take a photo of us. The ice is a beautiful green colour in the sun.

Not much to speak of for the rest of the week. Wed was a good massage, working on my quads and such. Tight, but they loosened up. Then a very nice yoga session.

Transplant Trot

I know a few people that have been transplant recipients or donors. One of the most remarkable stories I know of is my buddy Sophia. It turns out that when she needed a kidney, her husband was an eligible donor. Imagine the odds! That was 8 years ago now. Her life has changed in so many ways I can barely enumerate them, but they start with life itself. She might not still be here without that transplant.

Today was the first run event for transplants, and since she took up running a while ago, it's no surprise she wanted to take part. So what if it was snowing? There she is in the middle of the pack.

Here is my cheering partner today. There were bells. There were matching pom-poms. To say nothing of coffee and cameras. Go here to see the matching one of me and many others, should you be so inclined. 

Here is Sophia booking it to the finish. If the camera had fired a fraction of a second sooner, she would have both feet off the ground for sure. Michelle has video, not sure where it's been posted. Maybe later.

It was a wet and soggy day out there. One girl came in with the entire back half of her pants covered in mud. Sophia just had a tasteful amount of splashing. I didn't get a photo, but many people had a cute little patch of snow on their hats or hair just at the centre of their forehead.

You can't really see how muddy her shoes are. As we were driving home we could see where some of the run path was, and I'm glad I wasn't there.

We sat and chatted after the race, having a wonderful time! At one point Michelle was talking about the various issues with cameras, and that one of them wouldn't even turn on. There they are laid out, and just as I gook the picture the one camera turned on and pushed up the lens after having sat there quite some time.

 I've signed some paperwork in my wallet about organ donation, but that doesn't seem to be good enough anymore. The Alberta government has a new website up to register. I took a quick look, and plan to go back and get properly registered. I urge you to consider it as well.

Which leads to another thought. I fail to understand why we need the registry in the first place. It ought to be the standard practice upon death to use whatever material can be salvaged. After all, they're dead and don't need it anymore. If you don't want that to happen, then you should be the one going through the hoops to prevent it. A living registry makes sense, I guess, in that it's a way to match up a willing donor to someone in need.

In other news I'm feeling much better. My cold is gone, yay! Sophia wants to run 18 K with me after the Police half tomorrow, but I don't know. My quad and knee are still feeling a bit funny after some of the furniture moving on Wednesday. I think I'll head downstairs to do some stretching.

Yes, it's a spring snowstorm out there, which is kind of typical here. Lots of people complain, but I don't really mind. It's all moisture into the ground, and Alberta tends to be a dry place. When it isn't flooding.