37. Whole lotta nothing, weather

Reasons for not posting more frequently in thisahere bloggy thing:

1. Don't got nothing to say.


2. No time lately to compose posts full of nothing (which I'm very good at, normally).


3. Distaste for the vacuous - the internet's too full of people saying they don't have anything to write about and I ain't got time to read all that and I ain't got time to write about it. (Yes, ironical, I know that's really all I do.)


4. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.


5. My (neighbor's) internet done broke on me.


6. Busy eating.


7. ... I guess that's all, I guess just the six reasons.

Normally this time of year I like to write some sort of emotionally wrenching recap of the year gone by but this year I'm not going to because of the above reasons and because I'm finally starting to grow out of my late-blossoming emo stage. (You should be glad because if I had you'd be crying so hard right now.) Instead I will calmly announce that I will soon be dusting off my very first Blogger bloggy thing. Here ensues a short history of me and the internet:

I first started a blog back in the day, ca. 1996, but in those days, kids, they weren't called 'blogs'. They were called nothing, and you had to write the html yourself. In those days, the only thing you could do on the internet was make hyperlinks and blinking text. It was all very awesome.

My first blog thing was hosted by a friend at his university, and then other places, and then UCSB. Then Blogger was born and I decided to use that when I went on a trip to Australia, publishing to my UCSB page. Then UCSB took away my server space because I was a dropout. I still have all those entries (or, rather, Blogger does), but I don't got the server space anymore and will have to have blogspot host. Which means I will have to come up with some sort of descriptive or clever name.blogspot.com, and I have a very hard time doing that, which means it will be some weeks before this thing is unveiled. It will be two weeks. Because, you see, I'm going to Australia again, which means I can't post here. (This blog is strictly for Missoula-related adventures).

Thank you for your rapt attention.

Now, some news from the heart of Missoula:

It's snowing. Barely. Missoula has tiny snow. Missoula never gets snow. The only snow we ever get is in June and September, when no one wants snow. In winter, no. But right now, today, it has snowed enough to make you think that there might be snow. There won't be.

It's pretty quiet in Missoula this week. Sometimes I am able to live too completely in the moment, which is what I'm doing right now, which means I've almost completely forgotten that just a couple weeks ago I was deep in the miserable throes of having three jobs and in just a little over a week I will be deep in the miserable throes of 1. moving out (into nothing), 2. wedding (not mine) and related activities, 3. getting ready to leave the hemisphere. Got lots to do but can't be bothered with any of it. It's this week right now, always has been and always will be.

The next decade, if it happens, will be better than the last, I'm wagering. Better be.

36. Running and the weather, Missoula holiday parties

The only things anyone in Missoula cares about are sports and the weather, which is why that's all I write about here. Today, everyone in Missoula is glad that it's finally snowed, and everyone in Missoula is glad that there's a Lady Griz game tomorrow. Also I think there was a football game this weekend?

I went for a run for the first time in ages today. It had warmed up into the low 20s and was quite nice. This was before the giant enormous winter storm rolled in (so far at my house one inch of the lightest, fluffiest snow ever has fallen, softly and quietly). Last winter after that stupid half marathon I took a month off and when I started running again I felt better than I ever had, so I'm hoping the same thing will happen after this hiatus. I was able to keep up all my numerous and obsessive Sportaktivitäten for most of the semester, but lately they've gone by the wayside - a huge problem, given my piggishness and the approaching holiday season with all its stupid chocolates.

So far I've been to one holiday party and skipped two. This coming week I have four more holiday parties to not go to. One will undoubtedly involve me sitting by myself in a corner eating cookies and getting schnockered, and then going outside to barf. The cookie barf will freeze. Deers and dogs will come by all winter to gnaw on it (there will be a lot).

At the one party I did go to, I found myself at the center of the party universe, talking to a revolving cast of strangers. I am infinitely interesting (being both faculty and staff and etc. etc. - a universal ambassador for everything) and so these revolving strangers had many things to say to me that I didn't care about at all, and I found myself saying stupid things that I didn't even mean, and I was trapped in these weird conversations for hours and hours until I finally was able to make an awkward and desperate getaway.

My jobby job never ended so I had three jobs all semester. I know I shouldn't complain, and I am grateful to have gotten those two careery jobs without having to write a cover letter or anything, and blah blah blah, but I worked pretty much nonstop (when I wasn't working I was making Sport) from the end of August until yesterday and I'm glad it's mostly over. I slept 12 hours last night, woke up this morning feeling and looking like I'd been hit by a bus. I still feel like that. I guess I was tired. I guess I still am. I meant to do some productive things today but didn't (other than running, and making soup). I'm reading a book about preserves and heartbreak. Glad I found it, although I could have used it earlier - it might have made this decade a little easier for me, and I probably would have won mad canning awards at the fair the past few years.

Yeah, so I went for a 4-mile run today, am getting back on track after being derailed for a while. The operative metaphor here is that I am a train.

35.

Did you see that full moon coming up through the canyon? It was bright. And the next full moon will be blue. In Missoula it's cloudy only five times a year, so you can pretty much guarantee that we'll have a nice view of the blue moon.

Been eating a lot of potatoes lately. Here's my tentative Christmas list:

• pajama pants that aren't flannel
• pink (or not) running shoes
• pony

34. too busy for titles

Hey, I found this great band, they're from England, call themselves the Beatles. They're pretty great, tell all your friends.

Never mind about what I said about my jobby job ending, because it hasn't yet. It will someday, maybe in a week or two, I don't really know. Also, even though I was busy enough with just the two jobs, I had to go and get myself another job. Which isn't true, because this new job came and found me. I can't turn down a job that comes and finds me, can I? No. This third job, like jobs 2 and 1, will not extend beyond mid-December, so I will still be 100% unemployed in January and so I am still pretending to plan a trip to Australia. I'm renewing my passport, I'm signing up for WWOOF, I've started telling people about it. I can't tell if I'm lying about it or not; normally I have a pretty good sense of whether I'm actually going to do something, but with this I can't tell. I could. I might. I don't know.

Too busy for writing these days and too busy to even care about that. Too bad, because if I had any time to write I'd have told you about some pretty incredible shit: about how it's puppytime again in Missoula (puppies everywhere!), about Sport (I've decided to capitalize and italicize the word to emphasize that it's the German that I'm using here), about how Butte is trying to win the title of festiest city (whatever!), about how God took fall away because he's pissed at us (probably because of that whole AC thing - oops!), about how I'm normally pretty depressed in the fall because either summer's ended way too early or I've been dumped or both but I'm not this fall because neither happened. Alas. We can only dream about how great those entries would have been. Oh well.

Grappling with issues of life and death today but not finding any answers. Now I'm too hungry to think anymore.

Wash your hands.

33. Bullets re: Missoula, running, THE AC

Words + paragraphs = too hard. Bullets.

• Missoula is fine.
  
  
• To escape the horrors of my life I have turned to Humphrey Bogart. I've watched more movies in the past week than I can count on one hand.
  
  
• My preoccupation with Sport (still said with the German accent) continues. Am now doing track and yoga and pilates etc. Pilates can be like yoga but to a much more dastardly effect.
  
  
• Half marathon yesterday vindicated my training. Or vindicated me. Or vindicated half marathons. Not sure which. I felt good and in control and started thinking, "I love half marathons!" but that was around mile 6 and around mile 9 I was thinking, "When will this stupidness end!" and then I started freaking out at mile 12 but overall it was fine and I broke 1:50.
  
  
• Have started reading conservative blogs. Did you know that BHO might be the AC?!? True story! I'm not saying he is, I'm saying he probably is. Also, did you know that hand-washing is for commies? It's true! Jesus tells us in the Bible not to wash our hands! Only the AC would make us wash our hands on 9/9/9! Not that hand-washing is bad, it's just that, Jesus says kids don't have to wash their hands, and kids are special, and BHO is the AC, and did you know that he was born in a country that didn't even exist yet? Only the AC could manage to be born in a country that doesn't exist yet! Also, my heart bleeds for all the 10 to 15 million people who didn't get to read this entry because they were aborted by BHO. Also, online translation tools are bad because they're destroying the Tower of Babel that God built with his own two hands.
  
  
• Got a record of Disney Just So Stories today and I just realized (I am slow) that they are creation stories and I'm surprised I was allowed to listen to them when I was a kid. Did anyone think Walt Disney was the AC? And if they didn't, why not?
  
  
• My jobby job ends in a month and with it my health insurance and full-time paycheck etc. Come January I will be completely unemployed and sooooooooooooo: I am planning an imaginary trip to Australia! To make it unimaginary I'm thinking of selling my car.
  
  
• I don't want to sell my car (it's a goddamn showpiece) and if I do I know I will regret it for the entire rest of my goddamn life and I will spend the entire rest of my goddamn life talking about it, but maybe we all need tragedy like that in our lives.
  
  
• Bedtime!
  

32. Clarification

The other day someone asked me if I'm a cheerleader. The answer to this question is no.

31. But meanwhile in Missoula

I have a degree in a field that doesn't offer any particular abundance of job opportunities. I happen to be one of the most unindustrious people I know (I have no gumption) and so I've always hoped that one day I'd be walking down the street and an incredible job would present itself to me without any effort on my part. I am also sometimes one of the luckiest people I know (but sometimes not) and so something like that has kind of happened to me. But I am also one of the most self-defeating people I know and so instead of being happy or even feeling a tiny bit pleased I am only stressed out and worried and scared.

I haven't been able to sleep for a month and I've bitten my fingernails down to China. Sometimes I forget to eat dinner, and sometimes I decide that ice cream makes a good meal. (Well, it does.) I lose things and I forget about things, I stink and I scare people. I wreak stress-related havoc everywhere I go.

And instead of behoovementally dealing with reality and getting organized, I'm distracting myself and spending all my time on Sport (said with a German accent). I don't know why but ever since the training group ended I've been going nonstop. I'm even running up mountains, and I hate mountains, specifically running up them - but for some reason I've decided that it's good for me. I'm tired, my body is tired, even my spine is tired. (Saying your spine is tired sounds way more hardcore than just saying your neck is sore.)

And I feel sorry for myself. Poor me, really. Last week I had to - I was forced to - I was coerced into giving a presentation at an academic conference and I was stressed the fuck out about it all goddamn summer. The presentation went fine or whatever but I have decided to retire from the conference presentation circuit forevermore. Too much stress and I'm too dumb. Poor me! Anyway, after the conference, I really just wanted to go home for the weekend to indulge my self-pitying wahwah. It didn't work out - too many fun things to do in this glorious stinking town - but I'm going home this weekend and I want to get food cooked for me and sleep in and swim a lot. It better be sunny and summery or I'll cry.

I realize this blog has taken an alarming turn away from its original purpose of serving as a guide to Missoula for pleasure-seekers and scientists and is now all about me and only me. I will stop writing about myself after this post, probably. Isn't a fear of success really just a monstrous fear of failure?

30. Pretension, concluded pretensiously with a quote from Freud

Missoula MT is a town I made up myself. It existed for a few years in the late '90s and then disappeared until three years ago, when I moved back. I insulated the town, enclosed it in a bubble, and everyone was pretty happy with that. I had a bear and some deers and fishes, I had nice sunsets and some hills to climb up to watch those sunsets. Downtown was a western railroad town with old brick buildings and even a cobblestone street or two. It was pretty nice, I was pretty pleased. I would ride my bicycle around aimlessly, discovering new streets and neighborhoods with every turn. I went wherever I wanted to go, didn't know anyone at all, liked it pretty well. Some things were about the same as I'd left them when I abandoned the place in the year 2000 - the same smell of oak trees on campus, for example, and some of the same scenic faces walking around with the same backpacks on. One time, before I left, I looked up at the green slope of Mount Sentinel and saw the sunset reflected off the golden sides of a herd of grazing deer.

We just got new bike lanes downtown on Higgins. Very comfortable bike lanes - 'comfortable' is the only word to describe them. But now they've covered over the lines with chip seal, erased the lanes, so forget about them - that's all there is to do. South of the river, Higgins is blocked off for a couple blocks. I like it, I really like it. If I had my way Higgins would be blocked off all the time. But probably no one else would approve of that. They can have their street back after the summer.

The river trail has been extended west. I was unaware of this development, but it's happened despite my lack of knowledge or input. There's a creek crossing over there, and you have your choice: plank, pallet, or plywood. Apparently the plywood is the suboptimal solution. There are low-hanging bridges, so you have to watch your head. This was a new part of Missoula that I hadn't run through before. Maybe, if I were still connected to the land, if I hadn't moved south of the river, I would have known about all of this. Instead, I haven't even been to a baseball game this year.

At work I am trapped, all my exits blocked off except two of them, and one of those comes with a warning sign. Perhaps the best way out is a window?

"The unconscious is the true psychic reality; in its inner nature it is just as much unknown to us as the reality of the external world, and it is just as imperfectly communicated to us by the data of consciousness as is the external world by the reports of our sense-organs."
- Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams

29. Summertime and projects, running is dead to me

If you'd like a visual representation of what my race was like, this is perfect (the wan ghostly figure in the foreground is me) - such a contrast to last year (the cheery speed demon in the lower right is me). Obviously cutting off my hair really did me in this year, it really did me in. I cut off my hair and then immediately got sick, stayed sick for a couple months, started falling all over the place, and had a tough race. Exactly like Samson! But will I learn anything from this? No, because I look like a shaggy dog right now and I'm going to get my hair cut again. (This one's funny too. I finished the race and then just stood around for a while being miserable, bewildered, and dumb.)

Addendum to the previous post: It was perhaps a tad self-aggrandizing and scientifically irresponsible to diagnose myself with a heretofore unknown type of cancer just because I got cold during the race. I've talked to a few other people who also got chilled, so, maybe I'm not dying, whatever.

Now, on to other things. I'll probably never write about running ever again.

Okay, so if you didn't know, Missoula is heaven right now. True story. Missoula right now is the kind of place that's so heavenly you're a sucker for not doing everything you should be doing while it's so heavenly, know what I mean?

Missoula has an impossible line-up of happenings to celebrate its heavenly status. Way too much to do - so exhausting I usually opt to go to bed instead. Look, there are festivals in Caras Park every single freaking day, there are outdoor movies, there are concerts and films at the Wilma, there are farmer's markets and horsey rides, there are band concerts at local parks, there are block parties, there are races and baseball games and other such sporting events, there's kickball on the Oval, there's porch-reading and deck parties and warm evenings that you need to ride your bike through, etc. etc. etc.

The other day I saw some crazy hooligan swimming in the Clark Fork. He was alone, bobbing around in the middle of the river, just his head sticking up, heading slowly towards the rapids. It really worried me. First of all, my god, the fishes! Didn't the guy know that the river is full of fishes just waiting to rub their fishbodies all over your legs and various appendages? Eek. Second, the unclaimed bodies! People are drowning in the river all the time, their bodies seldom recovered, just waiting for some hapless something-or-other to stumble upon them. (I saw him a few days before the latest body turned up - I don't know the circumstances of that, maybe it was him. Sorry, maybe I should delete this paragraph.)

Now that I don't have a gigantic race to train for I don't know what to do with myself in spite of all the summertime festivities I had enumerated above before this post got all macabre. Since my reading-by-decade project was ruined last week by that jerk Agatha Christie, I haven't had anything to read. A couple months ago a couple people loaned me a couple books, which I haven't read because of the constraints of my 1930s project (I've decided to start calling the various pointless things I do 'projects'), but now that I'm free to read anything under the sun I totally do not want to read those books that I should have read months ago and I'm considering giving them back unread. What I really should be doing, now that my spring running project and its celebratory week are over (in the last week I've gone to more parties than I have all year [3 - so crazy!]), is get ready for the two stressful projects that are coming up very, very quickly. But since I'd rather do anything but prepare myself, I've been engaged in cleaning projects. Very soon my house will be spotless.

Yesterday I went on a hiking project with a friend and we talked about traveling and my wanderlust kicked back on and I might die from it. Maybe, depending on how things go this fall, I'll leave on a big fat traveling project in January, one that requires a passport and sensible shoes quick-drying underwear.

(soundtrack)

28. Running. No gory stories about squirrels.

I might have forgotten on purpose to write that the big race of the year was coming up. That's because I was feeling very pessimistic and out of shape and fat and lazy and I was trying to pretend that the race was still way off in the distance. Instead, it happened yesterday.

Dumb things:
1. I finished the race at a full sprint.
2. I got COLD during the race.
3. I am extremely sore today.

Discussion:
1. You should finish a 5K at a full sprint. You shouldn't finish a half marathon at a full sprint (unless you're winning). But here's why I did: I sped up for the last mile because I was excited that the stinking race was almost over and I knew if I didn't speed up considerably I wouldn't beat my time from last year. I was running on fumes, passing people, wondering if I was going to fall over, and I finally got to the Higgins bridge and I passed a lady. She did not like this so she sped up. I thought she was probably in my age group and I wanted to beat her so I sped up, which she took issue with so she sped up, which I didn't like so I sped up. So by the time we got to the finish line it was a flat-out sprint and I beat her by a split second. Turns out she wasn't even in my age group. I need to be more dignified in life. Sorry, lady.

2. It wasn't cold yesterday. I've been fine running when it was 8 degrees. I've been almost uncomfortably warm when it was 24 degrees. The low yesterday was 55 degrees = not cold. I got cold and was cold for about the whole last half of the race. Maybe it was because I was dehydrated, although I drank plenty of Gatorade and water on Friday and Saturday (although admittedly I am not the best judge of what I actually do imbibe on any given day - example being that I forgot to eat dinner last night even though I was starving). But normal dehydrated people experience an increase in core body temperature and not a decrease (my internet research skills are to the max) and so I am forced to conclude that I was not dehydrated but instead have body temperature regulation cancer.

3. My quads are killing me. I have not been this sore in a very long time. I was sore after the first half marathon I ran - I felt like I had whiplash - but I've gotten better at it since then. But today I can't go up or down stairs without groaning loudly and grimacing like an old man. This might be because I didn't eat enough after the race and messed up my recovery - I was too busy chatting it up with my homedogs to eat. But also I felt pukey and couldn't force myself to eat much. I kind of still feel pukey. Today a coworker gently suggested that I might be getting sick. I might agree with that.

It was a tough race for me. I didn't have a bad race by any means, but I didn't have a great race. Sometimes you run and feel like you could run forever, you feel light and fast and built for running and it's incredible. Yesterday I felt like I was wading through mud and it was not incredible. It was fine, though, and it was fun, and I did get a PR, so I'm happy.

And thus concludes this year's running season, I guess. There's a race in two weeks, and two half marathons in September, but no more running group and no more discipline. And now that this is over I have to start thinking about the things I've been putting off thinking about. What do I do for escapism now?

And the day before the race I discovered to my great dismay that I had been hoodwinked into reading a book written in the 1970s. Totally threw me off!

27. Weather, no more running, no more squirrels + bonus very scary story

Missoula has been experiencing a rash of squirrel-death of late and, despite our healthy population of the little buggers, I wonder if come wintertime there will be any squirrels left. There are squirrels lying dead under trees on campus, squirrel bodies lining every street, squirrel pelts in the middle of the roads getting flatter and flatter with each car that drives over them. The other morning on the side of River Pines Road there was a... like, a, well, it had been raining, so the squirrel was wet, but it also kind of looked like it had been skinned. I'm sure it was very juicy and teeming with fauna. It smelled bad.

Want to hear the grossest story ever? Okay! A couple weeks ago at the mouth of a driveway I saw a squirrel whose back half had been squashed, you know, half of it was pancaked and stuck to the road. But the front part was still okay AND STILL ALIVE. THIS POOR LITTLE SQUIRREL. Still trying to push itself up with its poor little arms, all it could do was sit there in Modified Plank Pose and hope to be rescued by a kind-hearted veterinarian who would give it an ostomy pouching system and some little contraption for it to wheel its flattened half around on. However, unfortunately for the squirrel, there was a crow - THERE WAS A CROW - and the crow had decided to put the poor bastard squirrel out of its misery. The crow was all, "Yum, fresh!" and the squirrel was all, "Oh god." The crow knocked the squirrel's front living half over, the squirrel pushed itself back up. The poor bastard, there was nothing it could do except maybe try to punch the crow with one of its poor little fuzzy mammal arms. I drove on, heartlessly. (Who am I to play god!) It kind of made me want to barf.

Hey, anyway. The running season is practically over, basically. Oh sure there's still the big race and stuff, but the biggest training run is done and it's all downhill from here. On Sunday we did 15 miles, but it turned out to actually be 15.35 miles, which can and should be rounded up to 15.4 miles, which, after a feat of clever mathematics, is pretty much 20, which is just a 10K shy of a full marathon. It was fine. The training has been pretty easy for me this year except for those two months of being sick and all that falling. I mean that the training has been easy for me structurally. My feet just started hurting a couple weeks ago - last year they hurt the whole time - and on Sunday my left hip started hurting. My left hip has never hurt before so that's pretty exciting. Also my right shin/ankle started hurting on Sunday, and today my calves are still sore. But other than this, I've been fine this year. Oh, also I have a black toenail again. Last year, in addition to the black toenail, I was limping around for a month or two, my right hip hurt so bad it was audible, I had achilles tendonitis for a few weeks at the beginning of the season, and I felt tired and beat up all the time. This year is better because I've turned to performance enhancing drugs.

Weather: It is now the summertime. Yesterday was very cold, very very cold. I wished I had gloves when I rode my bike to work, and I wished I had gloves when I rode home after work. I walked to the drug store in the evening for more performance enhancements and the sun came out and shone hotly upon the land and I got all sweaty, even my legs were sweaty. Then I went to Dairy Queen for a nut whip and got really cold. Whenever I order a nut whip they look at me funny. Hey, I didn't make up the name, it's not my fault.

LATE-BREAKING NEWS: So I'm at lunch today, right? And there's this crow flying high overhead cawwing its head off and being annoying, right? And there are these crows having a cawfest in a tree, right? And so I get done with lunch and I'm walking on an innocent sidewalk and the cawfest gets louder and louder and suddenly this crow drops out of the tree and lands in a rumpled splat on the ground right next to the sidewalk. Scares the crap out of me. The crow stands up and looks around, mouth agape. I stop and stare to see if it's going to die or attack me or what. It hopped away. Hopped away to die under a bush? Freaky.

P.S. Speaking of the beasts, and myself, you know how I got a bunch of scars because I kept falling this spring? And you know how there have been so many mosquitoes in Missoula? Well the mosquitoes apparently like scar tissue. I don't know why, they're morons.

26. Mysteries, running, weather

HOT DAYS, COOL READING

For many months all I've been reading is books from the 1930s. It started with a Perry Mason book, and then a very bad murder mystery from England, and then some P.G. Wodehouses, and then Agatha Christie. Someday I will venture forth to another decade but not yet. Last week I went to the library and checked out more 1930s books - Agatha Christies and another Perry Mason. It wasn't all that easy to stay within my preferred decade - there are many from the '50s and that won't do at all. I don't know why I'm reading 1930s books but I am and I like it. I went to a thrift store the other day and got Brave New World so that's on the list for when I get sick of murder and jewel theft. (I also got a math textbook from 1907 and it's fascinating and promises hours packed with fun. There's a page of subtraction problems and it says to try to finish them all under 13 minutes - that's actually why I bought the book. I ran home and did them in 14.5 minutes but I'll get down to 13, I will. I learned about greatest common denominators last night. Hours of fun!)

However! Now that I'm finally enjoying my secular life, reading fun books and having not a care in the world, the following horrible things have thrust themselves upon me: 1. I will be presenting at an academic conference in August. 2. I will be teaching a class Fall Semester. This means I will be stressed out from now until December and I will only be able to read boring horrible academic crap. 1930s, goodbye. It is flummoxing and heart-wrenching for me, as I'd thought I retired from academia two years ago. There is a very real chance that 1. I get rejected for the conference, and 2. the contract for the teaching job doesn't go through - we can only hope. If either happens, or both, I will feel sad/embarrassed for a second but will then happily go back to my book to find out who kidnapped the prime minister and why they're taking such pains to keep him alive. And so, also, I'm "looking" for a part-time job, which means I'm not really looking.

DETECTIVE

Last week my Griz Card and my coffee card and my extra house key all mysteriously vanished one night under highly suspicious circumstances. I, as you now know, have been reading copious detective novels, and I have learned quite a few tricks, quite a few tricks indeed. Obviously the three items had been thieved from my room that night, and they were either still together or had been sold individually. I was gathering clues when, a few days later, I found my extra key hidden under an envelope in the place where I keep my extra key. So I deduced that the key had not been part of the purloining. Then, one morning, I put on my pants and found in the right-hand pocket, along with some hair clips, my Griz Card. And so the thief had been after my coffee card all along, had stolen the Griz Card to deflect suspicion, and had then returned it to throw me off. I am not so easily duped, of course, and was getting very close to solving the mystery when I found my coffee card in a pile of very important papers. The thief had been frightened by my sleuthing, obviously, and had been unsuccessful at selling my coffee card on the black market.

MISSOULA HOODS

South Central, where I live (actually North Ave West), is full of concrete, urbanity, yard-tending neighbors, and mosquitoes. I don't know where the mosquitoes have come from because there's no water anywhere, but they've come and they've come in swarms. I went out to look at my tomatoes last night and the mosquitoes swarmed me so badly (I could hear them yelling to each other, "She's over here, very juicy!") I had to run back inside after two minutes. This is very sad, because these are the longest days of the year and I'm forced to spend them indoors.

LONGEST DAYS OF THE YEAR

Tomorrow will be 9 seconds longer than today - remember when each day was like 3 minutes longer than the previous? That was great. It's light until very late at night now. How late? I have no idea, because I'm always in bed by then. I don't know why, but I've been going to bed at 9:30 lately. I wake up at 5, which is annoying, blah blah.

ALL ABOUT THE RUN ON SUNDAY

We went up the Rattlesnake and it was beautiful (no mosquitoes of course - the Rattlesnake is heaven). I just deleted some sentences detailing our training plan because it was too boring. Anyway, things are going well and I'm on track to totally win the race, or, barring that, do better than last year.

ALL ABOUT THE RUN YESTERDAY

7:40 pace, avg. It had stopped raining, mostly, and everything smelled good.

COMPUTING

Do you have the Sims 3 yet? I don't either! I'm going to have to buy more memory first. Memory is cheap.

WHAT TO DO FOR THE FOURTH OF JULY

I haven't decided yet, but the Missoula Outdoor Cinema season starts the night before, and the Big Sky Film Series has a film that night too, and it's totally possible to do both, and you know how I'm a sucker for a film series. But there's no place better than Sandpoint for the Fourth of July. One year I stayed in Seattle instead of going home and I did laundry that day and it was so unpatriotic and depressing I'm sure I cried all day. Who does laundry on the Fourth of July? Only libs and commies, that's who. And concrete-dwellers! ('concrete-dweller' is the hot new insult in Missoula.) In my hometown there's a parade and fireworks and horses clipclopping past my window in the morning, not to mention a lake and mountains and food and watermelon - so much better than Missoula. But no outdoor movie. While I was typing this I decided what to do. Thanks for listening.

25. Q&A about weather, running

Q: What's been going on?
A: Lots, but nothing.

Q: How's the weather in Missoula?
A: Pretty great.

Q: How's the knees?
A: I haven't fallen in weeks.

Q: Where's the best place to run in Missoula?
A: Not east on the Kim Williams Trail.

Q: I saw your name in the paper!
A: Yeah, so I've heard.

Q: What books did you check out at the library the other day?
A: Some Agatha Christie and Perry Mason, and also a book about writing short stories from 1898.

Q: What's your problem?
A: I don't know.

Q: When does summer start?
A: Summer started on Wednesday. I made the official declaration while riding my bike downtown.

Q: Is that why it's gotten so cold suddenly?
A: That's ridiculous, you superstitious fool.

Q: Are you still saying you got sick this spring because you cut off your hair?
A: That's true, though.

Q: Found a new job yet?
A: No but am looking.

Q: How long till you find out whether your incredible receiver is irrevocably damaged or not?
A: A few days. I don't have high hopes.

Q: What's the best thing to get at Dairy Queen?
A: Chocolate nut whip.

Q: Is that real?
A: I don't know, but it's delicious.

24. Collisions/illness, travel.

Internet, hi. I haven't written anything at you in a while because I haven't had anything to say. I'd thought maybe I could write about the wolves (or "wooves", as my dad says) or the SWINE FLU PANDEMIC, but I don't want to. I could write about the weather, but there's really not much to say about it (it is spring, the weather remains variable). I could write about running (I've been doing a bit of that), but blehhhh. No, instead, I am here today to tell you all about my health problems.

First of all, lately I've been having problems with gravity ("eating shit"). In the last month I have fallen, twice. My plan, after the first fall, was to stop falling, but that didn't work out as I'd hoped - the best-laid plans of mice and men, as they say, you know. The wounds from my first collision with the ground were just starting to heal (although my ankle was still swollen) when I collided with it again and reinjured all the same injuries, with a few new ones thrown in for balance. Today my knees are all scraped up and my palms are bruised and my ankle is still swollen, although falling again didn't rehurt my ankle - instead I was running around the yard yesterday trying to make a kite fly and that's kind of what rehurt it. (Kites need wind, I found.) I'm getting good use out of my knees and palms because I'm sure they're there in order to catch us when we fall. Which hurts. Especially falling into pavement at high speeds (very high speeds - do you know how fast I'm running these days?). I'm glad I was wearing shorts both times I fell because if I'd been wearing my (expensive and fabulous) running pants they would have torn and that would have made me mad/sad. Being constantly injured with wounds takes a great deal of mental energy and I have been exhausted. I have used up all my bandaids.


Second, before I ever fell I got sick. I know! It surprised me too! I never get sick! And it wasn't like I got sick and then got better, nooooooo. I got sick and then stayed sick for weeks and weeks and weeks. And during that time I was signed up for not one or two or three etc. races, but six. Six! Races! Sick! It was terrible. And then on top of all that, as if running while sick weren't bad enough, in the first of the six races, I fell [see previous paragraph]. (I received medical attention from firefighters, it was very patriotic.) Oh it's been so miserable around here. Maybe you don't empathize enough, so let me tell you more about it: First my lungs turned to mush and I got coughy. Then I felt feverish (98.9 degrees fahrenheit!), and I rolled around and moaned for a while. My throat was engulfed in flames. Then I thought I was getting better, but then I kept on coughing, and then I started feeling feverish again. My eyes were weirdly glassy and people were scared of me. My voice became weak and feeble and then people felt sorry for me while maintaining their distance. My head, including my ears, filled up with a thick, frothy snot, and I couldn't hear for the next three and a half weeks. I went to lunch with someone and could not hear anything she said. (I smiled politely and said "Mmmhmm" at various intervals, trying to fake it.) I felt very disconnected from humanity. The snot in my throat was made of silica gel and I was awake all night every night unable to breathe or swallow or anything. My cough turned into the kind you can chew up and eat, the kind that rumbles through canyons and disturbs flocks of birds, the kind that can fertilize gardens. I couldn't taste and I couldn't smell, and I had no appetite for a few weeks (awesome). Then my cough turned into a thin, persistent, pointless, uncontrollable cough, and my ears remained plugged and my voice remained weak. Sometimes I'd cough so hard I'd nearly barf. I felt like I had straw in my throat, or a furball. Then finally I thought I was getting better when one day my throat started hurting bad, it felt like I was swallowing hot razorblades. But that turned into nothing.

I have had the good fortune to have done some interstate traveling the last couple weekends, giving me the opportunity to spread my illness far and wide. As everyone knows, the only way to get over an illness is to give it to someone else, so with any luck I've infected the populations of three states. I'm fine now, thanks.

I am not technically a fan of the early morning but I was out and about one morning at 4:30 and it was really very pleasant. I was at the 50,000 SILVER $$ bar very early on a Sunday morning and it was a strange mixture of people who were still having a Saturday night and other people who were having a Sunday morning. (For me it was Sunday morning.) It was exciting, in an Americana kind of way. I didn't buy anything.

23. Montana, stardom, running. (Too long, sorry - no self control.) (Weather is good.)

Montana news

The plague of fires burning up Montana downtowns seems to have subsided. Also, in Missoula, we've stopped robbing and murdering for the moment (dude, we're too busy slacklining). Instead, what we're dealing with now, every single day, all over Montana (in addition to MTV film crews), is airplanes coming out of the sky and landing on the ground very unelegantly. Occasionally the occupants of these airplanes survive but usually they do not. It just keeps happening, man. Over the last few years I have been getting over my theoretical fear of flying, but I think now I might be just as afraid of flying as ever, theoretically.

News about me/running

My ever-increasing fame continues to increase ever so much. I recently discovered that I have made a cameo appearance in a short-form documentaryish film/clip about a race I did last month. In my most dramatic theatrical performance to date, I appear two-thirds of the way through the clip walking very quickly through the Oval. Those five seconds are perhaps not the highlight of the film, but it's a special moment nevertheless. Also, I or my feet were probably on the news last week, along with the 200 other people or 400 other feet in my running group. (We are a large group.) I don't have a teevee so I don't really know, but it may or may not have been on KPAX. (If you would like to request a copy of my autograph, please contact me through one of the various ways I can be contacted.)

(Soundtrack to the entry)

For the first time in maybe forever I don't have a race this weekend. That means I could sleep in on Saturday morning if I wanted to, and I do want to. I won't be able to, I'll wake up at 6:00 like I always do, but I will lie in bed for hours and hours after that pretending to be asleep.

The running season is going very well and somehow I'm much faster than last year. For months I have been writing an essay in my head for the running club newsletter about how I'm getting so fast I will probably become invisible very soon (or blurry at the very least), but this essay is having a very hard time getting from my head into a computer. I think I'd like to write it but apparently I just can't be bothered to. Anyway, I may or may not in the near to distant future buy a pair of Reeboks.

Please skip this paragraph if you are not interested in my dreams. This morning I had a stressful dream about the half marathon in July. I was planning to run the race with a sister or two, and we arrived at the race not early, and the starting line was in an airport, and in order to check your gear bag you had to get a head x-ray on a waterbed, and it was 5 minutes to race time and they messed up my first x-ray so they had to do it again, and my sister was saving my place in line for the bathroom but when I went to find her she wasn't in line anymore because she and some of my running friends had used this special bathroom operated by this wily brown guy. He charged people to use his special bathroom but didn't charge my running friends because. I don't know, they made friends with him or something. And so I went into this bathroom, and there were lines of toilet stalls with glass walls. (A recurring dream theme of mine is bathrooms with privacy issues.) Each toilet had a special show it put on before you used it - a magic trick or something. It was a very special bathroom. 50 seconds to race time, I hoped they'd start late. Then I remembered there were timing chips, but I realized I didn't have a timing chip. I picked a stall in the corner. There was this urinaly thing, and, like, a plant in it or something, and the special toilet performance or magic trick started and then my alarm went off and woke me up. What happened? Did I make it to the race? Did the wily guy get mad that I hadn't paid and didn't know him? Did I ever get my timing chip? We'll never know.

I have been learning a lot of life lessons through song lyrics recently.

Animals of Missoula (cats and dogs)

The other day on my way home a white and tan cat ran up to me on the sidewalk. It was a very friendly cat. I petted it for a while and then said goodbye, but the cat wanted to continue the acquaintance and decided to walk with me. We went a few blocks, the cat meowing and being friendly and walking right beside me all the way. We crossed Arthur. It became apparent that the cat was lost and had decided to adopt me. I decided to put my new cat in my garage while I went to my running group, give it water and tuna, call the animal shelter in a feeble and insincere attempt to find its previous home, and then keep it forever and ever. But then my new cat found a sympathetic yard and decided to stay there. I don't know where it really came from but I hope it's okay.

On Sunday I opened my back door and there was a very large gray cat sunning itself on my back stoop. The cat lives in my basement (which is not mine).

Yesterday I saw a little dog escape from its yard. The other little dogs in its yard were yelping at it. I don't care about little dogs, nor do I trust them, otherwise I would have saved it. The little escaped dog knew it was being bad and it was hard to tell if it was enjoying being on the lam or if it was not enjoying it. It ran across the street, ran back to its yard, then ran back across the street. Later, boys were playing basketball in the driveway in front of the little dog's yard. I don't know if the little dog went home or not and I don't care. I doubt anyone does, other than its owners.

I saw a greyhound in the mall last weekend.

22. Weather and BIRD MURDER, hot topics (poo/fire), nothing about running (even though that's all I do now)

After my last post in this here blahg I was able to unjinx the weather, but whoever jinxed us must be a great wizard - my skillful and powerful writing fixed things for only a short time, and we soon lapsed back into coldness: snow! wind!

Here's what happened earlier this week: One day as I was walking home innocently enjoying the springiness and studying the neighborhood sidewalks (I am becoming kind of a huge expert on Missoula sidewalks ca. 1910s-1950s, and I may or may not in the near to distant future publish a pretty great coffee table book on the subject), suddenly in front of me a tiny black and red bird flew with a magpie in hot pursuit. The two birds experienced a midair collision orchestrated by the magpie. The tiny bird flew to a tree and the magpie followed. And then the tiny bird flew to flee and the magpie flew to strike. The tiny bird landed in a driveway and the magpie landed next to it and with its baneful beak struck a fatal blow to the neck of the tiny black and red bird. I thought maybe the tiny bird was playing dead or being submissive - the strike was so quick and seemed so innocuous. I started walking towards them to break it up, to scare the magpie away, but the tiny black and red bird was dead and the murderous magpie, Pica pica canibalis (or P. pica horribilis), took the tiny black and red bird's body in its beak and flew up to a rooftop to gloat and squawk. The incident was weird, kind of upsetting, and clearly meant more than you might think it meant. The murderous P. pica/winter dealt a death-blow to the tiny black and red bird/spring, and we have suffered ever since.

Lately I've been kind of downtrodden and/or extremely frustrated and I'm going to project that onto all of Missoula now. We Missoulians are kind of downtrodden and/or extremely frustrated these days and I think it's because of all the dog poo. There's dog poo everywhere - we don't know what to do. It's because of the dogs. We have so many dogs, and our dogs need to run and they need to poo, it's what dogs do. So what are we to do? Clean up after them? No! Keep our dogs on a leash? No! How will our dogs run really fast then, huh? But some people want our dogs kept on leashes so they won't eat other dogs or get in fights with deers or attack runners or poo all over. We are at loggerheads, we are very mad at each other, we post messages online calling each other bad names. I, for one, walk around kicking rocks and wishing I'd bought some freeking chocolate the last time I went to the store, which I never do (sometimes).

Furthermore, despite our best efforts, towns all across Montana keep burning up, and there seems to be no end to it. It's spreading like the flu. I guess it's only a matter of days before Missoula catches it. Maybe the only remedy to all this fighting and destruction and winter is to get revenge by killing some magpies so it will finally get warm, our towns will stop catching on fire, and the frozen dogpoo will get tracked around and dispersed.

Maybe we all need to take a vacation, get out of town. I don't want to take a vacation, though, I want to travel. The differences between vacationing and traveling are: duration, cleanliness, aesthetics, and notebook size. I want: long, dirty, ugly, and large. Blah blah.

I will probably plant basil soon.

21. Weather, running, consumption

Things are pretty tough in Missoula these days, let me tell you. There we were, enjoying a nice springy winter, getting excited about Dairy Queen and outdoor cinema and running around with no clothes on and all that, and then some jackass goes and jinxes the springtime and ruins everything. What a jerk! Whoever did it probably feels pretty stupid right now, pretty stupid and pretty cold. It was 10 degrees in my mailbox this morning, on Monday morning the windchill was seven below when I walked to work.

So instead of watching outdoor movies like I ought to be, I'm still going to indoor movie festivals. Dude, I've seen so many movies lately, dude. And films. The best one was about woodpeckers, but I missed the beginning and the end of that one. What I did see of it was super good and sometimes I dream about it (or so I'd like to have you believe). I've also seen movies and/or films about: twisting, easy riding, Wilco (♥), Italian virgins, animatronic restaurant bands, late '50s degenerate youth and the dangers of weak fathers and driving cars off cliffs, a house in Seattle, Frankenstein's monster's love life (so bad), and a barbershop.

In other news, I just discovered that I'm practically famous. True story! I'm in the slideshow of photos from 2008 on the Missoula Marathon website. I'm not the lady running across the Higgins Street bridge, I'm not the dude with the beard, I'm not the skinny guy winning the marathon, I'm not the people in the dark, I'm not the girl running by the river, I'm not running at all, actually. It's funny that I didn't discover this until eight months later - for two weeks after the race it was all I could think about and I kept going to the website and looking at the results, looking at pictures, writing about the race, talking about the race, thinking about the race, surreptitiously saving other people's photos onto my hard drive, etc. etc. etc. I saved the splits in my watch until, um, January, actually, when I had to clear the memory to make room for keeping track of all the dozens of laps I was doing in the rec center.

The training group has started! There are hundreds of us, it's fun. Problem: I can't breathe. I don't know what's going to happen.

QUARTERLY UPDATE, RESOLUTIONS (a few weeks early): Well done, I must say. For transparency I will report that I have imbibed of the drip coffee at work three (3) times, but those instances were minor, justified, and as follows: twice a small amount in my hot chocolate, and once a small amount to dilute my horrible horrible instant Cafe Au Crap (corn syrup solids so offend my delicate palate they make me want to brush my teeth, die, and barf).

20. Ice cream, insanity, illness and runners (not me)

Hello and welcome. The big news around Missoula these days is that the Dairy Queen on Higgins is open again. It closes for the winter, it is very quaint and ridiculous. They put a sign in the window that's all "Sorry suckas! No ice cream 'til mid-February!" Mid-February is normally pretty wintery/crappy - I thought the sign was a bluff, or a relic they never bothered to change, left over from the '60s when winter didn't last as long as it does now. But mid-February was true! Last week they put a sandwich board in front of the store with a cryptic countdown, it was very exciting. Everyone would drive by, see the sign, perhaps crash their cars or run over pedestrians because they were so excited.



It's barely in time. Missoulians have been experiencing a dangerous calcium deficiency since the Dairy Queen has been closed, and it's driven us to robbery, vandalism, vigilantism, and, occasionally, murder (we prefer stabbing). Some might be concerned that frequenting the Dairy Queen now will make us fat and Missoula will lose its status as Fittest City Ever (which we won last year from some magazine) but did you know that Dairy Queen doesn't even serve ice cream? They serve ice milk! Because the fat content is so low! They don't advertise that fact, because who wants to eat ice milk? Gross, no one does, so they call it something lame, like 'frozen treat' or whatever. But it's ice milk - milk, not cream. If they tried calling it cream, angry Dairy Farmers of America or whoever would come raid them (so the sign in the window actually read 'No ice milk 'til mid-February!', or it would have if that's what it actually said, but I was paraphrasing).

Since the Dairy Queen reopened, there have been unending lines of people standing outside it, all day long, even late into the night. I live right by the Dairy Queen, a few blocks away. I've spent the past many days walking by the Dairy Queen and I've stopped three times since it opened, I've been unable to resist. Yesterday I got a vanilla cone. It was fine. I got a malt once, that was fine. I got a Blizzard once, a Choco-Cherry Mega-Blasto XXXtreem Dream, which is not as good as Cherry Garcia and I can't recommend it - however, I haven't killed anyone or robbed anything since then, and I also haven't been run over, so, you know. Caveat emptor.

The reopening of the Dairy Queen gives credence to my premature call for the end of winter. And only two days after the Dairy Queen reopened, I saw my first shirtless jogger/moron of the year. I've been pushing the idea of spring since December, but this guy just... he was all pinkish, not because he was hot but because he was cold. Just because it got over 40 degrees doesn't mean you should take your clothes off and run around. Also I saw a lady running in a tank top. Temperatures in the low 40s warrant short sleeves, maybe even shorts if the sun is out and you're doing speed work, but that's it. Come on, people - no wonder half of Missoula is sick. (Half of Missoula is sick.)

19. Cursing, jinxing, running, weather

I have recently developed a special interest in the sh- word. It has turned out to be the most useful and appropriate word for many situations. This is surprising to me - traditionally, the sh- word seemed very weak to me, but now it seems pretty fantastic. I had always thought the f- word was the best and most versatile word in the language. Perhaps my embrace of the f- word led to overuse, which led to a weakening of its powers, which has led to it becoming fairly passe.

And now, at the risk of jinxing everything, I'm going to say that the winter has gone by very quickly and pleasantly. I know it's only the beginning of February and there could still be many terrible months ahead, but really, man - the sun shines merrily every other day and I've been wearing my spring and autumn jacket for a month. Last winter I was wearing polar bear hides from October until June. (That's not true, that would be gross.)

Sidebars:

1. A couple Novembers ago I saw some guy on campus scantily clad in deer furs, and he was barefoot.

2. Although I'm very superstitious about jinxing things, I don't think it happens. For years I've been trying to jinx myself into getting sick by saying that I never get sick, but it doesn't work. I never get sick and I won't get sick even though I'm saying that right now. Try and get me, germs, good luck. So even though I'm kind of worried that I'm setting us up for another long cold wintery spring by saying that the winter went by quickly, I don't really think I am.

3. It's been so nice and springy and last weekend was so lovely I changed my bedding to my springtime bedding on Sunday night - I was sweating all winter under my down comforter and finally I was like, "Well, shit, man" (a couple months ago I would have said, "Aww f*@k it, dawwwg" - you can see how elegant and expressive the sh- word is, and now you understand why my curse of choice has shifted) and so I changed my blankets, as I said, to my springtime bedding and it's been really comfortable and nice. So that was Sunday night, I say, and guess what! I opened my door Monday morning and there was like an inch of new snow on the ground. Which means I jinxed the springtime.

4. You know I got that membership to the rec center so I could go running inside when it was dark and terrible outside, and ever since then it's been light and warm and springlike outside, which means I jinxed the winter.

5. A month ago, when it was very cold, I lost a glove on the way to work, because it was actually not very cold and I was dressed too warmly and had to take off my gloves and hat, and when I got to work I realized to my dismay that at some point on my walk one of my gloves had silently slipped from my grasp. I worried about it all day but then found the glove on my way home, which I took as further confirmation that the Fates are back on my side. And I hadn't lost anything else this winter and I was very pleased by my ability to hang onto my wintery clothing items, and I bragged about that to my boss just yesterday. And then! Last night I forgot my hat and gloves at the movie theater and they are gone. Clearly, I jinxed myself with my braggery. Oh, such hubris.

6. I've been getting very bored lately. Also, I've lost my power bill.

7. The "preferred" spelling is actually wintry, but that's dumb.

8. I'm reading pulp.

End of sidebars.

Nothing else to say - I just wanted to get the word out that the winter has been relatively painless and I'm using the sh- word all the time now.

LATEBREAKING UPDATE: After much to-do, I have recovered my hat and gloves. Clearly, by writing about how I had jinxed myself, I unjinxed myself.

18. Running, weather, potential and realized calamities, wide-angle lens

A. Dog On The Run

This morning as I hobbled to work (in the light! today was 2 minutes and 42 seconds longer than yesterday!) I saw a loose dog, always a worrying sight. Loose dogs always run like they know where they're going, but they really don't know where they're going and they often end up changing course and veering out into the road with no warning. Last year I apprehended two loose dogs and returned them to their owners - one of them was my favorite dog in the neighborhood who never barked and always jumped up on the fence for me to pet him when I walked by. He was running towards the interstate on-ramp. The other dog was some wandering retriever I found running towards the river. I don't know what happened to that dog renegade this morning - it was black and fuzzy and running with its head down and determined, heading south on the sidewalk on Higgins. I hope it didn't run onto the street. Higgins is stupid busy - why do so many people drive?

B. Hobble and malarkey

I was hobbling because I have a blister the size of the Great Lakes, if my foot is America. Because I am a lady I will not discuss how I have had to repeatedly lance this very large blister, and I will not discuss the surprising amount of fluid that seeps out every time I lance it - such details should remain the purview of people like my dad who look back with fondness on halcyon days of working as medics in the Navy and participating in surgeries on hemorrhoids and popped-out eyeballs. Ladies such as myself do not mention unmentionables like this. Instead of all the horrid details - so horrid you would squirm - suffice it to say, I have a blister on the bottom of my foot, and I limp.

And I have a race tomorrow morning. Will I be able to run? Will my archrival be at this race? Can you hobble and run at the same time? What if my enormous blister pops during the race and swamps my shoe with ooze? If I get a slow time, and I probably will, can I blame it on the blister? Will people be sympathetic to that? These are all questions I will have answers for before 10:30 tomorrow morning.

C. Weather

Here's how the winter's been in Missoula: it was warm, and then it was very cold, and then it was warm, and then it was cold again, and now it's warm again. I'm kind of done with winter. It's not wintery anymore and I don't care about it. My house is warm, my heating bill is low, each day is longer than yesterday. Last winter seemed really long and dark and horrible - I started my job in January and it seemed like I walked to and from work in thick darkness for months and months. But this winter, here it is still January and I walk to work in blazing pre-sunrise daylight and see sunsets after work. Is it because I've moved to a more southerly location? It's a different climate on the south side of the river, for sure, but I didn't know daylight hours would be so different. Well gee.

D. Calendrical forecast

Unless I am wrong, and I am never wrong, I will be spending the next few weeks in darkened theaters watching movies. When I emerge at the end of February it will almost officially be springtime. In addition to the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, there is a series showing on campus that will be very enjoyable. I always go to these campus film serieses thinking they'll be good and they end up being not good - a French film series, for example - you'd think a French film series would be enjoyable, wouldn't you? But no, it wasn't at all, and one of the films was so bad it gave me a two-day headache. A Japanese film series - that would be interesting, right? But no, it wasn't. So bad. So disappointing. I nearly despaired of ever seeing a good film series again. But this upcoming series is a classic film series and it will be rad. I will buy candy, maybe popcorn.

E. Desires

All I want is a wide-angle lens, for my Canon or my Argus. Is that too much to ask? I want other things too, but there are too many to list here.

17. Weather, running, senselessness.

In Missoula this month for no reason at all it's incredibly springlike. There is still snow on the ground and ice on the streets but my dad says he saw robins last week. Yes that was in Idaho and not in Missoula but same difference. My point is, it's unseasonably warm. I am unseasonably warm. Every night I wake up at 3 a.m. sweating. I wear extra clothes to work out of habit and every afternoon at 3 I'm sweating. It gets up to 80 degrees in my office, for no reason at all.

This month's unseasonable springishness is startling because last month was cold, unseasonably cold - colder, they were saying, than it's ever been anywhere. Ever. One day I walked to work and it was so many degrees below zero every single thermometer in the state had broken. It was so cold ducks were freezing and falling out of the sky with nary a quack. Do you know why our tears are salty? It's so our eyeballs don't freeze. I made that up but I'm sure it's true.

I have gotten a membership at the campus rec center for no reason at all. Or, rather, I had one reason - the weather/darkness/general terribleness of outside - which became moot when it turned so springlike, is what I'm saying. Know what I'm saying?

What I'm saying is, I've started running again, inside, on a tiny track. You have to go around 10 times to go a mile. It's almost dizzying, or would be if I went any faster. It's hard to keep track of the number of laps. I use the chron on my watch, it's what it was born to do. Running on a tiny indoor track is boring and almost claustrophobic, and there are too many people, but at least it's something, right? Am I right?

For no reason at all, I went to a talk last night about the marathon. I've done it, or, I've done the half, every single year the Missoula Marathon has been in existence (two), and so I totally already know everything there is to know about it, and about running in general. And I was already excited about the beginning of another running season, so there was no reason for me to go to the talk last night, no reason at all. But the talk made me so excited I went home and wrote in my journal (a.k.a. diary) and underlined words and used multitudinous exclamation points.

The training group starts at the beginning of March. Last year I also did the Snow Joke Half Marathon training group, which started in January and led right into the Missoula Marathon training group in March. The Snow Joke training is what is not happening this year, as expounded upon previously, and so I am footloose and fancy-free until March.

The training program last spring was tough but it was great, and the results were so great that now I don't even think about how tough it was, I just think about how great it was. Here, you see, I had just finished the big race in July and was walking over to Anders, our coach, who was right there cheering everyone on, who gave me a hug even though I was slightly sweaty (only slightly, because I am a lady). And not to be weird or pathetic but that was one of the high points in my life, those few seconds right around when that picture was taken. I almost asked for a copy of that photo for Christmas because it still makes me kind of giddy to look at. Instead, I asked for a copy of this incredible photo (please note the water droplets suspended in mid-air awesomeness).

So, like, totally looking forward to formal training again. Etc.

In other news, tomorrow on my radio show I'm going to play bands that start with V. Benjamin Franklin, that son of a bitch, is still in England. Length of day tomorrow will be 1 minute and 53 seconds longer than today.

16. Status and progress report, 1-8 January 2009

Resolution Area #1: Have not had drip coffee in two (2) weeks. Ostensibly, progress on this front is significant and commendable. However, the unstated intention of this resolution was to drink significantly less coffee, and while that is technically true, I have been going to the market for lattes like three times a week (during four-day work weeks), which is silly and is a trend that cannot be continued, although, to be fair to myself and everyone involved, last week there was a guy working at the market who was nice, new, and bored, who gave me multiple stamps on my card multiple times, so it would have been stupid and improvident not to be getting lattes, know what I'm saying? I got my free one on Tuesday (because Monday I was out sick!)! I really needed a free latte on Tuesday because I was terribly moony and lattes combat moonishness. By 'moony' I mean I looked like the moon, and my head was all... moony. 'moony' is a real word.

Resolution Area #2: Very good progress made, good job.

Resolution Area #3: Nothing to report.

Running: Miles logged so far this year: 0. Running group? Not happening! I am devastated! My friend June and I are going to do our own running group but it's not the same! After the half marathon in December I decided I wasn't going to do any runs longer than 3 miles for the rest of the month, and I stuck with that decision so well I ended up not doing any runs longer than 0 miles for the rest of the month. I feel fine.

Weather: It's spring! Tomorrow will be 1 minute and 33 seconds longer than today! Missoula is full of water and ice, tiny lakes at the four corners of every intersection. Take care while walking and driving.

Food: I have been getting incredible deals at Safeway. Everyone is invited to my house for dinner, or for tea, whichever you'd prefer. (Please choose tea, I don't cook.)

Deers: What are they doing? They're all over the place, even in my new front yard. Don't they know it's dangerous? Morons!

2009 Year In Review (in progress): I have been sleeping with the light on. I have started reading The Poisonwood Bible, which my sister loaned me three years ago in Costa Rica. It flew back to Seattle with me, unread, it moved to Missoula with me, unread, a few days ago my hand picked it up to put in the to-be-donated box, but then my head changed its mind. In truth, I'm only reading it to avoid that prolific bastard Benjamin Franklin, whose phantasmagorically boring biography I've been reading since 2002. Today I made the alarming discovery that what I think of as a tuba is actually a sousaphone! Descended from the helicon! I think I'll make lasagna on Sunday.

And now, please to enjoy song I've been listening unceasingly now two weeks.