Moonpie in The Sky

I have run outside 8 days in a row now that my treadmill is kaput. That's a record for me. The other day I ran with a stroller in heavy wind. It's been almost a year since I've used the stroller. Yay! It feels easier. Tonight I ran in some chilly gusty wind staring at a really cool full moon. I really don't like running in crazy wind though. I'm certain the last couple of days would've been treadmill days had it been working. Interestingly, I've kind of found some reward in roughing it so to speak. Seeing the moon so large over the mountains was great. Also, I recently read about Geoff Roes running like an animal through knee high blown snow in Colorado. Granted he's a pro and that's extreme, but maybe I should welcome the elements more. It's supposed to rain this weekend. We'll see how that turns out.

The treadmill repair guy called me back today and good news. He can fix my treadmill for 200 bucks cheaper than the first guy I called. Awesome! Order those parts. But it could be ten days before they get here. Going to be a lot more outside runs this month.

Also the other day while I was running with the stroller, a car zipped past me and the passenger screeched at me. Yes, they screeched. Anyway, I startle easy it seems ,and it made me jump which results in a very odd, probably spastic motion while running. At first, I was like you son of a boooop, but then I just laughed at myself. Ok , you got me I thought. I told Liz this and she says, "well at least they didn't throw a moonpie at you!" Indeed, certainly I've already paid for that action.

Many full moons ago, I was in a blue Toyota Corolla. Funny, have I been in two blue Toyota Corollas? Anyway, driving down the street one night, I got nosy and looked in the center console of my friends car and found a melty old moonpie. I took it out of the wrapper and tossed it at a guy walking along the street. This poor innocent guy took a mushy freaky moonpie to the back of the neck traveling at about 40 miles per hour. Again, I'm pretty sure I've paid for that one by now.


and dang it's hard to find a pic of a 85-ish Corolla , let alone the metallic blue kind. I seem to recall this model would run without any oil for a long period of time. hahahaha

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Less Is More, that's what the title of the post says. It's the new slogan for the New Balance Minimus shoe line. Pretty clever. I came across this today reading runningandrambling.com's review of the road shoe. The author says it looks like the shoes are texting him since it's written on the sock liner that replaces the removable sole in the shoe. That cracks me up! I'll be very curious as to how these feel sockless.

Been a while since I posted so I'll just throw some stuff out there.

First off, I turned 40 on Saturday. Yay! I'm almost half way. Was a good birthday. Had a good 15 mile run on Friday and topped off the tanks with plenty of steamed crab legs at Joe's Crab Shack. Liz tried to embarrass me by getting them to do some sorta birthday craziness, but it was not to be! muhuhahahaaa. Thanks to all of you who sent me birthday wishes. I'm not big on birthdays but it was nice to feel the love.

Sunday brought on the low grade sickies which are still hanging around with all of us. It's nothing too serious.

Liz made a soup on Sunday with navy beans, garbanzo beans, kidney beans, and barley! We called it 4B soup. It should really be called "Don't go into public" soup!

Watched some movies. Watched 'Kick Ass' which was a lot of fun. We really liked the young girl (Chloe Moretz) in the movie which prompted us to watch 'Let Me In' starring her as well. 'Let Me In' was a pleasant surprise for me. With all the glam that vampires get these days, it was great to see it done so differently. Who would think that a horror remake would be so good? Not an easy feat imo.

Aww Hit Girl is so cute and innocent!

Brawwwwhh!

Feeding time in Let Me In

And finally, I started reading a new book called Tinkers. I'm enjoying it so far. The author Paul Harding actually had a lot of rejection for this story when he first showed it to publishers. Funny that it recently won the Pulitzer for fiction. I say pretty impressive!

Clopper Lake

I had some good times going around this lake. Walking around it in the winter time was excellent because it was dead quiet with no one ever around. The fall was simply gorgeous with the colors. I think this is where they filmed The Blair Witch Project. That reminds me, I have to find my picture of me in Burkittsville.

Crows and Ravens

I was recently walking near a large power sub station out in the desert, and the wind was simply blasting away. It was so windy, my 50 pound dog was walking in a diagonal with his tail completely pointed to the side. I was having fun spreading my arms and letting my jacket catch the wind which would push me a good bit. Reminds me of those days on the beach when a hurricane was approaching. It would've been a great time to have a sail connected to a skateboard with caterpillar tracks so I could surf the desert!

When I got near the power station, I could hear this eerie high pitched whistling coming from one of those big electrical towers. I love hearing strange and odd sounds , so I just stood there for a bit and listened to the wind play the tower. That's when I heard the gurgle of a chicken like noise nearby.

It was a crow or raven flying overhead. He wasn't flapping his wings, just floating along and slowly riding the wind. He got lower as he neared Finley and I and made another cawrrrh cawrrrh sound. I said "Hey crow!" thinking of all the mystic associations assigned to such birds. He continued to float on past eventually going out of sight. It was a cool moment. I recalled seeing 2 crows about a month earlier flying in the same area. They both did these amazing dives that dropped them down seemingly almost to the ground with a quick movement back up say ten feet and then straight again only to float away after that. I'd never seen a bird fly in a such a rigid angled way before. My thought was that they were following a heat draft.

Today I was running out past the gun range on my way back. I was feeling a burst of energy and really trying to just pick up my pace which is much easier with the Cascadia 5s btw. Anyway, I'm running along and I hear the now familiar cawrrhhh cawwrrhhh. I stop and turn around. I see 2 crows and a hawk all floating/flapping off in the distance. Now they were prolly just saying, hey look, there's a human out there. Maybe they were laughing..who could know. I had stopped running and the wind in my ears and rocks crunching under my feet were gone. Then, slowly one crow flew right by me and in the dead silence of the desert, I could hear his wings going whooosh- whoosh- whoosh-whoosh. I could tell he was looking right at me. I smiled, put my hand up and said "Hey Crow!" I was hoping he would cawrrh back. He just kept flying slowly away though catching up with his companions.

Maybe these days, I'm more open to putting a spiritual spin on these experiences, but I found these two events to be very heart warming and refreshing. I don't think they are harbingers or omens of death, but perhaps rather God's way of letting me know he's watching me.

Treadmill Is Broke

Aye Carumba!!!!!!!!! Talking to the treadmill guy on the phone sounds like my belt is worn out.

I had some soup tonight. It had beef stock, garbanzo beans, red and orange peppers, and tofu cubes. Sounds kinda gross I bet, but it was pretty good actually. The meal was definitely not lacking in the fiber department. Whew!

And finally tonight, for real, two loud gun shots in my neighborhood. There were two hooded guys walking down the street very quickly right after the shots too. No cop cars or helicopters though. Gets the heart rate up just a little bit.

Happy Birthday Finley

I have no idea where Finley was born. Cold doesn't seem to bother him much, so I've always envisioned him being born outside a decrepit barn or drainage ditch in the late winter in the hills of West Virginia. I picture him being a scared and confused puppy sitting in a cold box in a cold truck bed. Along comes a woman who volunteers to help rescue dogs. She can only take so many dogs with her to the adoption center. I can not even fathom such a job. What characteristics does she look for in choosing? How often does her heart and gut override practicality. I was told by this woman that Finley was the last dog chosen that day. That there was just something about him. I'd already adopted him at this point, so it seemed genuine, almost as if she wanted to tell me more things that were too sad to say.

I was completely deflated in the days before we decided to drive 30 miles into Virginia for a dog adoption. Liz and I had spent weeks on deciding and looking for a dog. Then we found one at a shelter in northern Maryland. He looked like your typical golden retriever. But like many adoptions, we just clicked from the start. There seemed to be something special about him, about this dog named Max. All we had to do was get an 'ok' from the apartment complex manager. The shelter gave us his paperwork and that's when it fell apart. Whoever dropped this dog off said he was a Pit Bull Lab Mix. I argued that there was no way in hell this dog had pit bull in him. They insisted that legally they could not alter it.

Our complex saw 'Pit Bull' and said NO! We pleaded with them, showed them several pictures of the dog, paid a professional dog trainer to test the dog for his temperament and write a letter of her findings for the complex. Evil Melinda, the iron fisted ruler of the complex, would not budge. I was so frustrated with all of that. I hope Max found a good owner. I'm certain he did.

So I really didn't want to go to an adoption center a week later, but we went. We found Finley pretty quickly. A little girl said if I adopt him, I should name him Super Precious Fluffy Princess or something similar. And to think I wanted to name him Little Corn Sausage!

Liz must have carried Finley around for about an hour straight since we didn't want to put him down for fear someone else would scoop him up in the frenzy. Then a week or so later he was brought to our apartment at age roughly 12 weeks. So I just counted back, and it ended up on this date Feb 5th. And so it's his birthday.

Liz was making a soup base today with a ham hock and so we saved some savory parts for him as well as a small bone. This was his birthday dinner and he even gave us his rare, always cool, gro-dle ( a half growl half yodle) after eating his meal.

Here's a silly pic that my daughter took with her camera. She managed to get her elmo hat to stay on him. Funny. Btw he's 6 now.

Wheres the slot canyon?

It's easy to forget how much of the country is struggling with cold weather right now. Here in da Vegas, things are nice weather wise. Weather station said 44 degrees out today. Maybe I'm still wearing a thick hide from Nebraska, but today felt like 60 to me. I was outside in short sleeves and it felt great. I'll prolly take advantage of the weather and get in a good long trail run tomorrow. Where I'm not sure.

A couple of weeks ago I had a blah kinda run while looking for a slot canyon trail. I ended up on a long series of 4 wheeler trails. I found a bright green bandana. I'm always finding clothing accessories! Is it gross that I blew my nose in it? Anyway, the views were pretty spacious out here so I took some pics.




This hill was a lot easier coming back on that I thought it would be




There were a lot of birds in these shrubs.

A friendly cactus!