The mist is often like this in the hills.

Blurry, but more green than I’ve formerly gotten in these kind of shots.

Looking back: Mt. Baldy is to the right, Spencer’s Butte to the left, and Eugene is straight ahead. You can kind of see the city buildings if you imagine hard enough.

Lichen covers a lot of trees. And look how big the trees are compared to the road! There are huge trees out here.

This is now on the way home. That big hump is Mt. Baldy, you can see the little sign with the trail marked on it in the left third of the picture. The mountain doesn’t look very high in pictures! But you need to consider that I’ve been walking uphill on the road for a good two miles, so this is just the very tip of it.

Looking back. You can see the sign that was in the picture before this one. And look at all the lichen!

The trail was verrry muddy.

The path once you get into the trees.

Something to scare hungry wildlife away

Looking out from the path.

The bench at the top, looking out over Eugene. I think all the downed branches are from a windstorm we had a while back.

The walking-only path is the one I’m on, to the right is one that allows mountain bikes. This hill makes me feel wonderful. Toward the end of summer it was a warm golden field against a vivid blue sky. Ahh.

Prints of something. Probably a dog.

Look at how big those trees are! This is at the bottom of the path that leads up to the Mt Baldy trailhead.

I found a nice little bridge on a second part of the trail that I’d never taken before.

The bridge was over a stream with lots of green around.

I don’t always wear this hat! It is a favorite, though

A small spiderweb I found in the dirt. The water droplets were so neat to look at. It’s amazing that the web strands will support that much.

That’s how small it was.

Me looking out over the valley. It’s so beautiful. Meh, I seem to take the same kinds of pictures to blog

There is so much moss in the woods like this. It never comes out the same green in pictures!

No color enhancement. It makes me wonder why it doesn’t capture green in the woods!

Like a little forest.

The lichen.

The view over the house I work at.

The cat at that house It’s so friendly and purrs almost all the time. It wouldn’t stay still, which is part of the reasons this picture is so blurry.

A sunset we watched from the top of Skinner’s Butte. It is not something you can capture on camera. It was surreal to be watching it. A sunset comes close to being ecstasy. If you can experience it in more than the senses, it is something close to what heaven would be like, I would imagine.

Kind of blurry, but that’s one of the main streets of Eugene in the left third of the picture. Spencer’s Butte (yet to be climbed by us, but someday soon hopefully!) is the peak right above it.

The hat I bought at a yardsale. I guess it looks kind of funny from the side in a picture, but it feels so cute. Hehe. I wore it to church a few weeks ago.

I’m on the verge of being sick. Sometimes I have a sore throat, sometimes I feel fine, most of the time I’m a little congested. When I get enough sleep I seem to be fine. I’m making broth right now with the chicken backs and necks that I bought yesterday. Yum yum! It was so cool to see the soup I made last time get all gelatinous when it was chilled in the fridge. I have a client who regularly makes broths and their chicken broth, when chilled, is like very stiff gelatin. You could make chicken flavored gummy bears! (Ew!)

I love my writing class. Although right now I’m putting off working on my second essay, I really enjoy it once I get into it. I’m thrilled to have gotten positive feedback from the professor, even though I haven’t gotten my first paper back with a grade yet.  I also like math class, but we’re going just a little too fast right now and I’m having trouble understanding concepts. Basically I take notes and then come home to study. But I’m putting that off because I’m just afraid of it! I don’t know why. Every time I put myself to it, I learn it. But there’s just that feeling. Ugh. We had a test a few days ago. The professor said if we get A’s on the two midterm tests, we don’t have to take the final and we get an A! I am *so* hoping it’s an A on this one.

I don’t know why I don’t blog regularly anymore. I just don’t feel like it most of the time.

By the time I left it was dark outside. I really don’t like biking in the dark on certain roads. The shoulder on this particular one isn’t very wide, and my lights aren’t very powerful. I started on a downhill portion of the ride and realized that a heavy fog had moved in. It was starting to rain. The problem with my headlamp is that when it shines through the fog, all I can see is lit up fog. I couldn’t really see the road anymore. I figured I could stay on the road if I kept my light on the yellow line, so I adjusted it to shine in the middle of the road, but then I was riding in the middle of the road. And I had to slow to a crawl when cars came up the hill, because I couldn’t see *anything* with headlights in my eyes. When I was almost at the end, I nearly got sandwiched between cars coming down the hill and cars coming up the hill. Better in the ditch than dead! I didn’t actually get in the ditch, but I was pretty close to it. Very unnerving. I was so glad to reach the end of the road and get to the bus stop.

But anyway! It’s FRIDAY! And my work schedule now allows for weekends off Very happy about that.

In other news, I quit my retail job (at Harbor Freight Tools).

I’m on a new fitness kick.

Last month I was considering joining a gym since there are several within walking/biking distance. After looking at prices, though, I decided I could afford to buy a kettlebell after all. A kettlebell is basically a canonball with a handle on it. Sometimes they’re welded, but mine is cast that way.

The one I bought weighs 26 pounds (12 kg, or .75 “pood”). I got a kick out of the fact that it shipped in a flat rate priority mail box. It was almost busting out of the box when it arrived, and the mailman mentioned how heavy it was.

So what does one do with a hunk of metal with handles on it? To begin with, not much. I’m planning on performing swings and Turkish get ups this month.  That’s it. In fact, I might just do swings to begin with. Two days ago I did 50 swings (in about 2 minutes, tops)  and I am very sore in my posterior region. Swinging a big hunk of metal is incredible exercise I’m expecting to be able to wear myself out in a short amount of time and be able to get enough exercise that way. I’m tired of being tired, and I’m very much looking forward to being able to have more arm power when scrubbing showers

I’ve just been so busy I hardly have time to update it. If I was being good, and sleeping now, as I should be, then I wouldn’t be checking my mail at all today, let alone blog! But I’m up, so I am online for a few minutes.

Egan Warming Centers have opened in town. They are locations that are set up temporarily so homeless people can sleep indoors when the temperature drops below 28 – which is has been for the past few nights, and is expected to be for the next few nights. The one that Porter and I have been volunteering at (Porter has been a lot more than I have) is the youth site, and is the same as Hosea’s site, which feeds kids three nights a week regularly no matter what the weather.

So, anyway. I’m very glad they have made these sites. On mornings when I wake up and it’s freezing outside, I think about all of the guys who undoubtedly have spent their night in the park, facing a cold day – whereas I have spent a nice warm night in bed and am headed to work in a warm environment.

I worked all day today, which was very tiring for some reason, and very boring! Usually I don’t have such a hard time keeping entertained, but I was just so tired I couldn’t think about anything interesting, and I got a headache in the afternoon. Housekeeping is definitely a more satisfying job than running a cash register, but the cash register is a little easier as far as physical stamina goes. Had I gotten a headache and felt that exhausted at a housekeeping job, I might have just told them I was going to sit down for a while and try to recover. (And I would have asked for Tylenol, which reminds me that I ought to always make sure I have some on hand when I’m away from the house.) 

The other night I was frustrated with something while Porter was gone and I started crying, and I just didn’t know what to do with what I was feeling. So I put on running clothes and ran across a particular part of the river in town, which is about one and half miles from here. It was incredibly satisfying. About 2 minutes into the run I accidentally did something in my mouth that caused my toothache to kick in, which usually lasts for a few minutes. It was so painful! But I kept saying to myself “The pain will not kill you. And “A toothache will not kill you.” And eventually the pain was gone, but it was so bad for a few minutes. And I wondered what pain most of the street people have felt – the ones who sleep right in the park I was running by.  

I thought this afternoon at work, while I had a headache, that Paul actually dealt with things just like I was dealing with – I mean, physical symptoms. And he suffered much worse, of course! But I was thinking in particular that he was sleepless and hungry, and tired, and if he didn’t drink enough water, he probably got a headache. And those feelings were not some kind of weird, old fashioned things. The wear and tear on his body would have been the same as wear and tear on ours. So I will face my little trials and tribulations in trying to do God’s work with courage! It is not unnatural to suffer in loving.

On the running front again, I feel I have to return to it again for more thoughts. It is amazing when you just decide that no matter what, you’re going to keep going. Not because you get amazing things done, necessarily, but because it just feels empowering. It doesn’t matter if you end up crawling, you’re going to keep going as much as you can. Of course, I didn’t, because I walked some on the way home when I certainly could have been running. But every point at which you feel like quitting and keep going is an amazing little feeling. You can punch the air and say “Dang it!I’m going to keep going!”

I am about to finish a movie with Porter called Holiday, with Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. We started it last night but it got so late!

I haven’t worked for the past four days. Amazing! Amazing to think that it used to be the norm. It has been wonderful to take a break

This seems to be just a bunch of little updates from me.

We’re both still sick with sore throats

Still coughing! And drinking tea. And some eggnog.

We went to see Amelia tonight. It was a good movie. I would love to learn more about Amelia Earhart now. It’s a very interesting story.

I’ve been practicing on my bike on my way to and from work Except my sore throat is pretty bad, so my voice tires quickly.

In other news, I’m definitely over the stomach part of the sickness. The sore throat, as I mentioned, is pretty bad. It feels like there’s a dry lump in my throat. Terrible! I’ve been drinking tea and coughing.

I’m so exhausted. I’m just beat. Thursday and Friday were the only days I worked this week and they really whupped me after being sick. I feel like sleeping all day tomorrow, but then I’ll miss my day off! If tomorrow follows the pattern of the days previous, I’ll wake up at 4-5am with my sore throat and then make tea, and go back to bed after 20 minutes or so. But the difference tomorrow is that I can just go back to sleep and not worry about waking up at a specific time! Yay I used to take sleeping in so much for granted. I should be overjoyed that I don’t have a 70-hour workweek and not take what I have for granted! I actually have a day off