Thursday Faff

* Monday night, I saw How the Grinch Stole Christmas (the animated version, as if another one were ever made) on the teevee, and I marveled at how phenomenally gorgeous it was in HD. Then, last night, I saw the Rankin-Bass Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and it blew my freaking mind, mang. I hadn't seen it since I was 8 or 9 (always managed to miss it somehow) and my childhood memories of the show stem from watching it on a TV with rabbit ears and not-so-great signal because we lived so far away from the city. To see it in HD glory was just unbelievably cool. I can't wait to see what Charlie Brown looks like.

* It snowed here today, a real snow, and it continues to snow and be very cold (the high today was predicted to be 20F) It was the tiny, powdery snow that happens when it's really cold outside, and it muffled everything as I walked to work this morning wearing my new coat which I would mary if bigamy were legal. Snow makes everything prettier, makes everything quiet and still, until you get to the big downtown intersections and then it's just dirty mush in the street.

* Last Monday before we headed out to California on the aeroplane, Dan and I went for a run. Now, to those of you who don't know us IRL, this may not sound like a big deal. But Dan and I trained for a marathon together a few years ago and we ran together all the time, but after it was over we pretty much stopped the practice. I somehow got away from running for the most part, while Dan continues to do so nearly every day (he runs anywhere between 3 and 6 miles, 5 days a week). I haven't run with him in ages, and I hadn't run at all since before I hurt my leg back in May. I wasn't sure how the leg would do and I was really concerned about holding him back, but it did just fine. I managed to run a mile and a half without stopping. Cardiovascularly, I'm in good enough shape that I should probably be able to run 5 or 10 with no problems, but I didn't want to push my leg too hard. And it didn't bother me once during the run. I think it was the walking around for 6 hours in San Francisco the next day that was the problem, because Wednesday it hurt like a mofo. I decided to wait a little while and try again, so today at the gym I ran for 10 minutes in between a 15 minute walk (5 walk 5 run 5 walk 5 run 5 walk). It felt pretty good. I wanted to run more. Maybe I will this weekend.

* And without futher ado, some of the photos I took in CA. These were all in my mom's yard; I was playing with the macro setting on my camera for some of them.


(hee)


My mom has had this plant for longer than I've been alive.






I took a bunch of photos of this moss-growing rope swing; I liked this one best.