A beautiful day, without a cloud

"Some try to paint away
All the colours of the rainbow.
Your smile lights up the way
Wake up, it's a beautiful day..."



Walking and biking to work has given me a great way to reset my morning. Take days like today: where I slept in, burnt part of my breakfast and generally started off on the wrong foot...but then, quick breakfast and I'm out the door, crossing the river and watching the mist on the surface of it. I walk along the riverbank path watching the sun rise over a field of wheat, with each grain head lighting up like a beacon as the light hits it. This morning the orange faded over the field and the clear blue sky brightened up, making the jet streams streak and gleam overhead in a cloudless sky.
As I walk I meet the "regulars"...all the others out on the path every morning with me. I smile and say good morning with genuine good wishes to the man with the happy dog (and of course happy dog), the old Austrian man with the white combover and thick accent, the man I call Pauley (he looks like like Pauley from the Sopranos, track suit and all), and the two older ladies who are often out watching the geese at the weir. Other joggers puff by...and slowly I calm down.
I count pelicans.
I watch gophers and critters scamper about...and suddenly I'm happy...it sneaks up on me and I'm singing along to whatever I'm listening to on my iPod and grinning.

This is my daily reboot.
I will greatly miss it when it gets too cold to do this. It really makes my day start off right...

Music to walk to work to: Orb - The Dream

The turkey bird is the smartest bird

I'm so full of turkey I could explode.
Spent the weekend at the lake with family eating food, drinking beer and scotch and getting cigar smoke on my clothes from hanging out with the guys (much more interesting than sipping tea and talking recipes in the kitchen). Had a nice relaxing time, spending an evening staring at the milky way and helping my Dad build stuff in the shop. Even went for a run down to the narrows and back (~5K). It was a beautiful day on sunday so J and I went for a 4 hour hike (well OK half of it was spent talking in the woods eating snacks) and just enjoyed not having to do anything we didn't want to. Then we returned to a feast - my folks had everyone around over for a giant turkey feast and we all drank entirely too much wine and had a great evening talking and ranting about this and that.

Nice weekend really.

Decompression begins..........now.

I'm excited and happy.
I just dropped off all my pledges for the Breast Cancer Run. I managed to raise just shy of $400! AND it turns out we got our team shirts made up after all...AND they aren't pink. Woot!
We run tomorrow at 10AM...and then J is taking me out for a victory breakfast...there will be taters involved. I likes me taters.

So today I am preparing with a vigourous regimen of vegging out, drinking coffee and Kahlua and starting on mapping out the plans for my Dad's stained glass window. Best of all - I 'm NOT at the radio station.
YEAH!
It was good to volunteer...they needed our help and we raised just over $50,000 over the 2 weeks, which was good enough to keep them on the air yet again, but man - I am *done* with 2 jobs. That was enough for me I think. Both J and I were on the raggedy edge by the end.

And tonight I actually ahve time to cook something elaborate and tasty (maybe tofu parmesean) and listen to some CDs I picked up over the pledge drive as prizes, like the new Delerium CD and a CD of remixed Billy Holiday tunes - looking forward to that a lot.

Ah! I'm relaxing already.
Cheers!