Last night, Ariel and I got up twice to check out the lunar eclipse (or, actually, Ariel was kind enough to wake me up, as I was fast asleep). Very cool. At it’s peak it had a bright orange/red glow that was very Bram Stoker. Made me wish that I lived somewhere where I could see more celestial happenings on a regular basis.
Ariel and I had a pretty lazy weekend, doing not much of anything but lazing around and watching a lot of Planet Earth. If you haven’t seen this, it’s amazing. We rented it on DVD which means it’s narrated by David Attenborough as opposed to Sigorney Weaver, who did the American TV version. Ariel and I both have a grampa crush on David Attenborough. Seriously, he would be the coolest grampa ever. Think of all the cool shit his grandchildren must learn from him. And I’m sure they get to tag along sometimes, when he’s stalking some bird that hasn’t been seen or filmed for the last thousand years, yet which will inevitably appear on camera while he’s talking about its migration patterns. I was talking about Planet Earth with my boss at work, who commented that they should just send a copy of the DVD into space, because for any Alien’s who might want to know what our planet is like, it’s pretty much all there. One of the best parts about this series is that at the end of each episode, they have “Planet Earth Diaries” where they go behind the scenes and show you how they got some of the footage. I’m a total junkie for nature films. When I’m an old man and am no longer able to function, please just pop in an ocean documentary for me, OK?
I’ve decided to run the Seattle Marathon this year. My friend Jesse mentioned he was starting to train for it a couple weeks ago, and I’ve been mulling over whether to join him for the last couple weeks. I went out and bought a book about marathon training and scoped out what the training program would look like and now feel like it’s an achievable goal. I’ve wanted to run a marathon since I was a kid, and this seems like a good excuse to carry through on it. I’ll be following the Chicago plan, which alternates hard and easy weeks and gradually increases you top mileage until you do the final 20 mile training run before the marathon. When I look at the distances on the chart, they feel a little daunting at this point. So far, I’ve only done a 6 mile run as my longest, and I was oddly sore after that. Not in my legs, but in my upper back and neck for some reason. I think the jarring motion of running on pavement is the main thing I’ll have to get used to, because while I’m in relatively decent shape, my body still needs to get accustomed to running for that long. We’ll see how this all goes. I’m feeling relatively good about it, but sometimes I wonder why on earth something like this even appeals to me. If I actually end up making it to the finish line, I’m think a nice, long massage will be in order.
This morning on my way to work, a car in the lane to the right of my bus decided that it needed to make a left hand turn, across two lanes of traffic and right in front of us, as we were pulling out of the bus stop. We come screeching to a halt and the driver must have been paying too much attention to the bus to notice that there were still people in the cross walk and she managed to hit both a pedestrian AND a biker. It didn’t look like anybody was seriously hurt, but damn, way to not pay attention to what’s going on around you. I can’t tell you how often I have had to bang on the hoods of cars while on my bike just so they don’t run me over. Then again, at least our traffic is (usually) a little more sane than this.
I have been so lazy at work the last couple of days. Just putting in the bare minimum of effort required. Being sandwiched by our campout and Shambhala has made for a rather unmotivated work week. There is just so much going on outside of work, that I’m having a hard time being here and getting anything done. I also just started thinking about class again this fall. The quarter starts late September which is still far enough away that it’s not looming, but close enough that I have to start thinking about it. Hopefully I’ll be completely moved in to our new place by then, and actually, around that time is when I begin to start dialing back all the summer running around and ratcheting up the fall/winter battening the hatches anyway. Sometimes I suprise myself with actually looking forward to being in class again. It can end up being a lot of work and I can get unneccessarily stressed out about it at times, but I love learning new things and oddly also enjoy the structure that it forces me to take on. Although the grass is always greener and in two months, I’ll be complaining about how little free time I have, so you can that sentiment with a grain of salt.
This past weekend, Ariel and I hosted our annual summer campout at Sacred Groves (which I always want to write as Sacred Grooves for some reason). It was fantastic. This is our 3rd year hosting the campout, and it practically throws itself at this point. Our friend Aron rocked the music end of things, providing not only the soundsystem, but (along with LincolnUp and MonkeyTech) wonderful music as well. People brought decorations, food, amazing skills to showcase, and their beautiful selves. Friday night we simply hung out, getting to know new folks that our friends brought along (all of whom were wonderful) and hanging out around the campfire. Saturday was filled with yoga, more lounging, more food, town runs for coffee, hooping, diabalos, and all sorts of relaxing.
I rented an aerial rig for Saturday night and did a little routine for the first time. It was interesting putting together a little act and learning all the things you have to consider in a routine that you don’t when you are in class. At one point during my performance I realized that I was faced the wrong direction, away from the crowd, something I’ve never thought about paying attention to before. It seemed to go over well though. I think aerial silk is still so unfamiliar to most people that it’s just impressive to see it in action regardless of how polished my routine was. Our friends Lily and Shon put on a fantastic fire performance later in the evening and then we danced and hung out into the night. I have good friends.
Next weekend it’s off to Shambhala for more tribal hippie festivities. My hope is that when we get back, we will have gotten an offer on our house (it just went on the market Friday) and we can be done with it. I’m ready to have real estate stress be gone from my life. The kicker was on Friday morning, after having just signed the final paperwork on our condo, we get a call from our lender informing us that her company is filing chapter 11 and is going out of business at the end of the day. I don’t think it will turn out to be a problem to find somebody else, but that sent us in to a panick for a bit while we tried to figure out what that meant.