You know you wanna

Hobble hobble

Our kitchenette hasn't done much in the way of encouraging healthy eating habits here, but I think we haven't actually been doing too badly. Last night we lost all control, though, and not only drove out to dinner but drove seven miles away to a Popeye's. In our defense, the base is surrounded by old housing projects and some really suspect "businesses." Seven miles was more of a safety precaution. As for why Popeye's, well, I have no excuse.

But it was good... and I had a leftover butter-saturated biscuit for breakfast. Feeling remorseful, I ran for another hour this afternoon through this (sadly poor picture quality, but hey, it's a cell phone after all):

With this as my soundtrack:

The chicken and biscuits were definitely worth it!

Ouch

The Beast was hit by a car yesterday evening. She's fine, I promise, but hearing those words were awful. Amazingly enough, she only has some bruises and road rash after full xrays and thorough checks from the parents and vet. My parents say she's been walking around with her tail half mast, but the limp is gone and she even chased after the ball.

Erica said it right. This dog has nine lives! Good Lord, Gazza, haven't we gone through enough??

My mom sent this picture this afternoon. She was watching a train go by.

Distractibility

So there's a problem at the church we've been visiting back home. Actually, it's my problem, but it's a tough one.

Twice now we've randomly sat a few pews behind a man and his wife. I couldn't tell you what he looks like, but I'd recognize the back of his head a mile away. You see, he has a bald spot exactly the shape of a pair of lungs- complete with the curve on the left side into which the heart fits nicely.

I cannot concentrate on anything else. I keep thinking about how the thinning hairs near the trachea would be like cilia. Help.

Run

My relationship with running is ambivalent at best. My earliest memories of organized running, if you can call it that, are ones that included feeling sick (and a few cases of throwing up afterwards). Not exactly inspiring. But I still remembered how good it felt to run as a kid- stretching my limbs and moving fast. I figured there was still some merit to it all and periodically got into running clubs or ran with friends. Not surprisingly I was never very good. Then, after seven knee and a minor heart surgery,* I had more reasons not to enjoy running. Quite frankly, I was scared of it by that point.

It's been over the last three years that I've entertained the idea again. Rarely timing myself (heart rate is more important after all), I've tried to set aside my own harsh self-judgements and competition to concentrate on enjoying it. That's right, I want to be one of those smiling runners. So I vigilantly monitor my legs impacting the ground for wobbles and pain. I slow down when my heart rate is uncomfortably high. I refuse to huff and puff so hard that it's no fun. And those are the times that my peripheral vision blurs and I begin to enjoy the ride.

There was a sermon the other day at church about angels. I'd never really heard much about angels in any sort of biblical study before. The pastor talked about how seraphim are actually a class of angels who exist only to praise God. Immediately I thought of how I've imagined hiking with God just walkin' along with a pack beside me and how cool that would be. So to think of wandering around with a herd of angels wasn't that much of a stretch.

As I ran along a pretty stretch of road at home one evening, I imagined them running alongside of me. We were all taking in the stunning sunset over the Gulf of Mexico and pretty white sand beaches. Yesterday evening, they were back again with me on a dirt road through the golf course admiring the pastel sunset** over the hazy woods and settling dusk. A cardinal flashed by, reminding me of Indiana, and a small rabbit hopped along a few feet next to me. It reminded me of desperately trying to pack in the fun on waning summer nights with neighbors. A squirrel seemed to be watching the swollen river run by us, now safely tucked in between its wooded banks (temporary ponds still dot the golf course and threaten the roads after all of the rain, but most of the roads themselves are out from under the flood). Some hawk was calling from the sky. It reminded me of the ones that call out to the canyons in the Southwest.

An hour of running later, transient bilateral knee pain, one heart palpitation, and African dust gritty in my tennis shoes, we sprinted home, thanking God for such a gift.

*An EP study with ablation isn't open heart surgery. In fact, it's a procedure in which you're only moderately sedated and they access your heart through large veins in your groin and neck. However, tell the person lying on the operating table with multiple wires threaded into their beating heart and the possibility of a permanent pacemaker that it's "minor."

** Alabama has no shortage of these. In my opinion, they've been rivaling Arizona's.

Questions that keep me up at night

What is it about bananas that makes them so difficult to correctly simulate the taste? Conversely, what is it about pears that makes it so easy?

still breathing

It's the same old thing- when there's nothing big to talk about, you find yourself with lots to say of minimal importance. When things get busy, there's too much to say of note so it ends up coming out like a five year old's rendition: an'nen we did this an'nen we did that an'nen we tried to do somefing an'nen we went to sleep!

So at the risk of being that five year old, here's the skinny:

After enjoying Peleke's early return and quiet time in Michigan, we had two days together back home to enjoy biking, eating sushi, and generally being our socially avoidant selves. In short, it was awesome. Then he took off again for the great state of Alabama, and I joined him here until mid-December.

Alabama isn't as bad as I'd been led to believe. Now, that's not to say it's a thrilling place to be either, but the weather has been mostly pleasant, the base is pretty, and our room is nice. I'm determined not to take those things for granted (dearth of social opportunities and a job notwithstanding). Most of all, it's still really great to be close to Peleke again. Poor guy is swamped between his training and his other schoolwork, but it's only for a few more weeks.

We've been doing a lot of driving with no slowing down in the near future. On the drive up, the speed limit creeping up from 50 mph to 70 mph, I found myself feeling pretty anxious. I realized that while I had driven on Beaver Island and then around home for a week, I haven't driven much and definitely not very fast. The thought of 50 being speedy is comical, I know, but it felt uncomfortably so. I'm still getting reacquainted with my hunk of metal.

As Peleke does homework, I've been doing more driving than usual for our road trips (read: more than ten minutes). He's learned first hand of my aversion to crunching Corn Nuts (only to be used in dire stay-awake situations!) and was a good sport to the Pat Green, Jeff Black, and John Denver ballads streaming steadily from the radio. I know, he's a saint. I won't lie, though-I won't miss all this time in the car.

In other news, I'm finding this place interesting. For the sake of blogging, I've deemed it RAFB (Random Air Force Base). More on it later. Right now I'm going to raid our dorm style fridge and attempt a walk without getting trampled by the random hoards of running airmen in blue and orange that have taken over the campus today...