i can’t decide if i just wasn’t in the mood to race last weekend or if i chickened out. leaning toward the latter. i can tell myself that it was because i didn’t know the course and showing up to an 18-mile race without knowing the elevation gain/loss is a recipe for disaster and that i didn’t feel like getting in the car to drive to run and that i was in no mood to be around people, but i think i just went chicken. i hope that this doesn’t set a bad precedent.

instead of racing, i put in 18 miles around seattle, which was pretty nice. 2:07 of quality alone time. i ran ok. legs were fine, not great. probably better that i didn’t race.

side note: two posts in a row about chicken. i’ll try not to make it three.

the art just keeps on coming. a few weeks ago, i donated to joe alterio’s robots and monsters marathon fund. basically, he’s running a marathon and needs to raise n dollars. you give him three words and some cash and you get a robot or a monster drawing in return. i’m into the one he drew for me.

long bitter chicken

last week i took a piece of my small advance check from the future me book and bought myself some art. it arrived today. this is the first piece of art i’ve ever purchased. the artist’s name is mimi lipson. i’m super-into her work.

here it is (ignore my filthy windows and my filthy space needle):

both matt and i have significant others who are out of town this weekend, so we went looking for some adventure today in the form of a hike. our original trail choice called for some river fording, but one toe in the heavy-snow waist-high rushing runoff and we set out looking for plan b. we found it in estes butte.

two miles into the hike, we stopped to take pictures at a small overlook and to adjust our clothing to the conditions, at which point we heard a bear. i think it was telling us to move along in its best throaty growl. we obliged. bears are throaty. and big.

12 miles, a fair amount of gain over three summits (one of which was done twice), some bear tracks, and some bear growling (but luckily no bear sightings). and after the initial climb on a bunch of switchbacks (3 miles), it turned into a ridge trail for the next six, before we headed back down.

the hike, represented in elevation (garmin finally released software for osx).

matt saw this frog on the way back. unclear how. the lasik surgery must have worked better than expected and now matt is bionic.

my pictures from today are shit, but here’s a view from the higher peak (6000 feet).

the other night i once again mentioned wanting to get an iphone. mia’s remarks about it included, ‘what do you need an iphone for? you never go out — you’re either running, sleeping, or watching westerns on the couch with the cat.’ ouch. also, 100% accurate. the cat and i do love us some westerns, and the seattle public library seems to have a never-ending supply of them.

i have never loved a library like i love the seattle public — reserve online, get an email when your shit comes in, rock the self-checkout, go home, burn away. the other night i picked up the still-amazing-after-all-these-years master of puppets. i know that this is probably overstating the obvious, but not paying for metallica albums is the sweetest of all forbidden fruits.

yesterday was the company all-(jazz)-hands at the paramount theater. it was fine. we’re making money. whee. at noon, when the meeting was over, i got on the bus to go back to work with our new intern. we sat on the always quiet electric bus, in seats near these two hippie kids who were fully tripping balls. how do i know they were tripping balls? they told me:

ball tripper [looking me in the eye]: MUSHROOMS!
jay p.: uh-huh.
bt: I LOVE WEED!
jp: word up.
bt: ACID! actually, wait. you should eat ’shrooms!
jp: sure b, whatever.
bt: 4:20!
jp: actually, it’s closer to 12:10.
bt [laughing]: haha! i LOVE this guy! can i give you a hug?
jp: fuck no.

at this point, the ball trippers came to their stop and got off the articulating bus, went outside and played with the bus’s soft, articulating middle. not surprisingly, it sounded like a stick being dragged along an impossibly-supple picket fence.

i went to work and decided that they were definitely having a better day than i was.