Blog Updates – Am I Horrible, or What?

Apologies if you’ve been tuning in for regularly scheduled updates, as recently, I’ve been quite horrible about writing in this. Let’s see if I cannot itemize some recent occurrences, and perhaps that will get the juices flowing on this accord.

Running on Wednesday evening, I was up in the Foothills for a nine-miler. I love running the foothills of Boise, which are just a mile North of my place. In short, I run down my hill, then up 8th Street. That brings me to Hull’s Gulch, which is this terrific Gulch running many miles further than I take it. Nevertheless, there is a nice footpath along the stream that rolls down the Gulch.

Running this time was a buzzing noise I heard, this being a few nights ago. I stopped running, hitting “Stop” on my Garmin. As I did so, I looked down at the left side of the path, and there it was, a rattler. The rattler was coiled up, and there it was, quite scared of me. I knew better than to run past it closely. As the snake was in close proximity to the path, I stood there for a moment contemplating what to do. I looked for a rock, and found one partially immersed in the dirt. I kicked at it, until it came free. I picked it up, and lobbed it over, and hit the snake. It paused for a moment; then it recoiled. I waited a moment, and then I watched it slither down across the path, into the bottom of the gulch. I then ran onward to finish my nine miles.

I am heading to Yellowstone today, to see Jon, Lizzie, and Mr. and Mrs. Rice! I am quite excited for it, and will be heading out of the office in the near term. For that I am excited! I am going to run my 14 miles tomorrow morning, but beyond that, the whole weekend is devoted to the Rice’s! I cannot wait to see such dear and lovely friends, all of whom will be returning to the UK within the next month. Of course, for Jon’s parents, they’ll go back sooner, but it’s Jon and Lizzie’s departure that will affect me the most.

It’s quite funny how this move to Boise has been much different than that to Memphis. Because Memphis was in driving distance to Champaign, Chicago, and the Quad Cities, I saw friends a lot more often than I do out here in the West. I’ve not seen Jon or Lizzie since around Christmas, and our communication has fallen off, like it does when one moves ~1500 miles from where they once lived. Seeing them this weekend is of great importance, as they were there and true friends during such a horrible time. The next time I’ll see them after this weekend will probably not be until I make a trip to the UK. I am starting to fantasize about the London Marathon. I don’t know. It’s quite funny thinking about running 42.2 rather than “26.2”. Of course, that is solely the conversion from miles to kilometers, but you already knew that, didn’t you?

Other than that, things are humming along here in Boise. No new updates in the love life. I have the same steady stream of limited prospects. They are there, to an extent, but not in great numbers. Of course, Boise is not a big place, which means one has to change their expectations. Any time I find myself missing the plethora of young single women or ethnic restaurants, I simply remind myself that it takes me no longer to get to work than ten minutes. Oh yeah, and I can ski in the mountains and the climate rocks… These are things we take in strides!