We’re getting a new puppy next Tuesday.  I went and chose him from his litter today.  We’re going to call him Brooks, after the mountain range in Alaska. 

Here are some photos from our first meeting:

See him doing all the things puppies do, especially chewing!

And I’ll properly attribute the title quote to Charles M. Schulz.

I’m a morning person and usually wake up to the birds singing outside a little before 6:00.  This morning I was getting my pajamas on when Kenai starting barking in the fierce way that means he actually sees something outside — and what he saw was a bear!  It took Brad and I a few minutes to get ourselves organized to take photos from the front door, and the bear had already taken the bird feeder down and was having a small morning snack, as you can see.

All that flossing worked for me yesterday when my nice dentist said that my gums looked great.  That’s so nice to hear!  Now all I have to do is keep doing it for the next 60 years or so.

We’ve been having a lot of March winds this month, and apparently are about to have the usual April showers — meaning we’re predicted to get 6-12" of snow on Friday.  And we already have our May flowers…

I’m heading to Boston today, then to Washington DC on Saturday.  The weather in both of those places doesn’t look so good either, but at least I won’t have to plow my driveway.

One of my many New Year’s resolutions was to floss my teeth daily.  It’s one of those things that you know perfectly well you’re supposed to do, and yet I’m pretty certain hardly anyone does it.  Except for Brad, who does floss daily, but doesn’t do it properly even though I’ve been telling him for more than 15 years how to do it.  So I’ve probably been averaging 5 or 6 days a week this year, which is pretty good.  But now I have a dentist appointment for a cleaning next week and you just know I’m going to floss every day until then.

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