fine hinesight

as i look back. 

thursday: i ran, worked for 4 hours, went to the temple, went to a movie, bought stuff, made brownies with friends and went to bed late. and this is normal. 

i am not quite sure what i am going to do when i have to get a real job schedule. 

do it just

i am a solo runner and i make no apologies for it. i actually enjoy running. if i could run from place to place i would. i have ran around the world and over again. running keeps everything working right inside.

but there are times when it is simply better to run with others. i was lucky enough to get to run a relay with a couple of these great guys. the rest ran the distant, seperate but together. a each an accomplishment of their own. luckily, friendship doesn't end with races.

Denver Marathon 2009.

nice work Team AIR, winning the race against homelessness and addiction.

check out what they do: http://www.theairfoundation.org/

a long ago poem

Dan the man from the moon

We went climbing

He cooked fish

I laid my head on his lap

We watched acl

I went home

I threw up

It could be love. 

sometimes it's good to post nice memories and silly writings. 

failed hippie

i have a good friend clifford, who refers to me as a neo-hippie. upon hearing the title, i instantly took to it.  i have a deep desire to live in a hut in the middle of nature, i juice vegetables, i hate showering, i sew my own clothes, my deepest fear is that my kid will want to wear abercrombie their whole life, and i have lived in a van for a month. however, i love gadgets, large impressive construction sites, and cool whip.  so neo-hippie works well.

embracing the hippie version, i decided this was the year i was finally going to be able to grow a garden. i went to the nursery, bought everything the guy told me to and went home ready to plant. what i planned to be an efficient, nurturing process with mother nature, turned into the community after-school activity, as a multitude of neighborhood kids descended on me and my helpless saplings like locusts. with my broken spangelish and maria as my translator, myself and 8 neighborhood kids managed to stick all the little plants in the ground. (i stay "stick", because they went in but it was not "planting". it was more like strangle and plunge.)  then i sat and waited. then hail pounded down, the squirrels picked, the yard collected trash, my neighbors tree grew and my garden sunk deeper into its hole of failure every day. now as i come home each day i am forced to look at the graveyard that was once my future garden and curse.

however, one glorious  day i came home and saw it. one lone tomato hidden under a branch. (see picture above) i had to pick it before, either squirrel, flash flood, or noisy neighbor stole it. 

so you are probably asking what i am going to do with this pathetic looking piece of produce. you know what i am going to do, i am going to eat it. i am going to slice it up, sprinkle some salt and relish every last unripe bite. 

failure may not feel good, but doing something out of spite tastes sweet. 

squirrel transitional housing

Squirrel Transitional Housing Unit

Free| Studio Loft | Whitter Historic Neighborhood

Features:

5 metal jump posts

extended iron walkway ramp

large wooden balcony

recycled building materials for those eco-concious folk

artist arched doorway

great view 

plenty of room for food storage

insulated heating

wood floors

close to downtown

i am sure upon reading the title, you thought i was trying to random or funny to attract attention. oh no, brace yourself, it's true this post is in all seriousness about squirrel transitional housing. 

upon brandon and i moving into his recently purchased new home, we realized there were already current tenants. a large, fully functioning squirrel community. our roof rafters were their highway system.  aidan was actually particularly happy to be the welcoming crew and possibly their assassin. he could and does spend whole days, watching and attacking the squirrels. but poor aidan grew up with lazy, timid suburban squirrels. he has now met his match with city squirrels. these squirrels have no fear and least of all boundaries. they will get get 5 feet from aidan, dangle from a branch and squeak.  

now there have been enough factors to fix in the house to distract us from the squirrel issue but as winter approaches it has been decided the problem must be solved. 

a beebee gun is an obvious solution, so is plugging up the entry ways. but brandon, who beat and tortured me up with no mercy as a child, has recently become a squirrel humanitarian/activist. he decided that instead of just kicking them out, he would build them a home, conveniently located a few feet from their current one, so as not to leave the squirrels wondering and displaced around the neighborhood.  so brandon spent a whole afternoon and created the above squirrel transitional housing unit, which coincidentally is not the only transitional housing unit in our neighborhood.

now, stay tune to see my post about the wasp hive. . .

360 degree view

this is how i labor day. 

i cast the first stone

so i have decided to postpone my trip to the land of wonder and exotic (africa) or as my mother refers to it the dark, scary continent in which i will never return from. there are a lot of variables that come into play with a decision. sometimes it is combination of smaller ones and the possibilities of others that seem to play the greatest effect. africa is there and my feelings for it have not changed. so stay tuned to see what happens.