I’ve decided that I’m tired of being slothful, especially now that the sun is shining.  Saturday I watched the first four episodes of Prison Break, which sounds slothful — except that I was walking on my treadmill the entire time and managed to cover 9.31 miles in the 160 minutes, which is an average pace of 17.11 minutes per mile.  And I could even still walk on Sunday, which was good news, and did another 3.66 miles at a 17:45 minute per mile pace. 

Do I seem a little bit data obsessed? 

I absolutely am, and Brad knows this about me, and actually encourages it.  He showed me a great website where I can track every single minute I spend exercising, including yoga and tennis, and anything else I want to track.  It has fields for all kinds of data, and then has reports, too!  How great is that??!  So far this year I’ve gone 50.8 miles, which isn’t much.  I’m going to massively increase my time and distance metrics in the next few weeks.  I might even go outside once in awhile..

I got lucky today.  I had a meeting that was supposed to last from 1:00 to 4:00, or one full parking meter worth of time — but the meeting ran about 10 minutes long.  As I walked toward my car I could see the meter enforcement agent man standing behind my Rover entering my license plate into his infernal hand held device.  I was all friendly and nice as I said that it must not be my lucky day and he said that maybe it was since he hadn’t entered the ticket yet, and then he didn’t give me a ticket after all.  Wowza.  That never happens.  I guess all those random quarters I’ve put into the meters of cars parked next to me finally paid off.  Or maybe it was this guy’s first day on the job and he doesn’t know any better yet.  On a cold snowy wintry day it was really nice to have something good happen.  Thanks, Mr. Parking Enforcement Agent Man.

It’s never dull living here in the foothills of the Rockies.  After a lovely dinner with a friend last night, I drove home in the dark with a light rain falling.  I drove through the park and came to the last stretch of single lane dirt road before the gate into our neighborhood and the road was blocked by a rock slide.  Oops.  I backed down, turned around, and left Brad’s rocketship parked at the visitor’s center.  I hiked up a trail in the dark to our road and walked home.  It’s very dark and quiet at night here.  I’m sure I heard several mountain lions and hungry bears coming out of hibernation.  At least the rain had stopped, so I could hear better.  I did get home safely and uneaten.  I called a bunch of neighbors to let them know the road was impassable, and this morning several of them took pickaxes and shovels and cleared the road.  Neighborly. 

It’s been a long ugly winter, but I think spring is finally here and I’m ready to come out of hiding.  Brad and I had a great vacation last week, full of tennis and first novels and together time and crazy amounts of sleep and the restorative beauty of the Pacific ocean.  I’m starting to get into a springtime rhythm of yoga and walks and writing at my Spruce Street office and connecting with friends, all of which are good. 

The way we are living,
timorous or bold,
will have been our life.

Seamus Heaney, Elegy for Robert Lowell

My dog died.  I’ve been sad.  This winter has sucked.  Brad said that if our first winter in Boulder was like this one, we would have moved to the Bay Area.  I’ve been living in my pajamas and eating lots of macaroni and cheese, and hiding out from polite society — not in a Ted Kaczynski way, but in an Emily Dickinson way.  I’m sure I’ll come out of hiding when the sun shines again.

I had a busy November, and also had good intentions to blog about what I was doing and thinking.  I started about a dozen draft posts, and then didn’t finish them — but I figure it’s not too late to finish and post them in December.  My mother-in-law created a piece of art titled "The wall of good intentions," which I’m vaulting over right now.  Outdated / backdated posts to follow..

I love snow, which is good since we got maybe 18 inches of it in this recent storm.

Denali loves snow, too.