And yet another bout o' this and that

Shhh... listen. Do you hear it? **crickets chirping** Yep. Nothing. Silence. I'm ALONE! Mwahahahahahahah! The Kid's gone to school and then to a friend's after school to play until at least supper time and Dick's gone to work, and then to table tennis and a card game and won't be home until late. The house is mine and I have very little on my agenda. Again I say mwahahahahahahah!

I've got some association stuff to do, which is no biggie. I need to leave the association cell phone on for 2 hours this morning, but nobody ever calls and the association stuff I have to do I can spend all day doing in front of the computer, so that's not exactly a big deal, since I'll probably spend all day in front of the computer anyway. I can just work on downloading songs to my MP3 player while I update their database. Tough work, And I get paid to do it. How rough is that!?!?

Ru/alked yesterday morning. A nice gentle one, only 40 minutes, but that's ok since I've been about as motivated as a lump of play-dough. Lucy's got something wrong with her paw. She's licked a spot completely clean of fur. I *think* she'd maybe sprained it a bit doing power turns in the rec-room a couple of days ago and had started licking it then and now it's become a habit. I've been taking it easy wit her on the ru/alk department because I don't want her to sprain it again/anymore, but she's getting bored. It's just bare skin, it's not red or inflamed or raw. There's no sign of any injury like a scratch or a bite or sting or splinter... I'll keep an eye on it and if it gets worse I'll take her to the vet since right now, aside from the licking habit it doesn't seem to be bothering her.

On top of the Ru/alk I started my second term of swimming lessons. I LOVE MY INSTRUCTOR! She's just a kid, only 18, and has these big funky earrings (the kind that stretches the holes in your ears), black fingernails and a watch with a skull on it. Not your typical swim coach, I'm thinking. But she's AWESOME! There are three of us in my group and she started by making us all swim for her one by one to show us our strokes. The first two went and she gave them some tips about what they were doing wrong. Then I went and she said my strokes were pretty much perfect and asked if I'd ever swam competitively. How's THAT for a compliment! I told her no, but that my goal was to be able to swim at the master's level (at least ten laps) and right now I have a hard time doing two. She said she figured she'd have me doing 40 by the time this session was over. YAY! The Master's program swam right after our class was finished and afterwards she introduced me to the chickie who runs the program. The chickie invited me to come swim with them next Tuesday to see if I liked it. She said it didn't matter if I couldn't do 10 laps that everybody had their own speed and I'd just be in the slow lane to start with. She pointed out one woman in the slow lane that stopped after every lap. Apparently the 10 lap minimum must only be something to scare people off. Nice! So I'm going to give that a try too. I'll stay with the lessons because the instructor plans on giving me some pretty personal coaching. She said that next week she was going to make up sets and ***insert technical sounding stuff that she plans on having me do to increase my endurance but the names of which I've already forgotten** and stuff. I figure it would be kind of cool to have one swim day be personal instruction and one swim day be laps with the master's group.

The weather's getting cooler. I can still run in the evening with just shorts and a T shirt, but it's not nearly as warm as it was. Right now that's ok, but I am dreading February when it's -15 and icy. Right now I'm running 3x a week, sailing 1x, swimming 1x (maybe 2x?)... but sailing's done in a month and it's gonna get icy. Getting into swimming more might not be a bad thing. The Master's program runs 4 or 5 times a week. The worst of all this is... I STILL HAVEN'T DROPPED ON FREEKIN' OUNCE!! Goddamned body... goddamned metabolism... goddamned nachos with jalepanos and sour cream.

Speaking of sailing, Ophelia (which has been downgraded to a tropical storm, but none the less...) is scheduled to hit Nova Scotia this weekend. Anybody remember what Saturday is? Yep. Race Day. Depending on where you look they're calling for anything between 30-50 knots of wind. How much do you want to bet we get out there and the race is called off because there's no wind?

Praise be to Just Us Fair Trade Organic Coffee which only comes out on special mornings like this morning where I can sit back and enjoy it and won't have Dick in my ear saying "This Coffee's Too Strong!"

Otay. That's about it. Coffee cup's empty so I must get more. And the shower's calling my name.