Day 304

The upload problems are with our service provider and should be fixed by tomorrow.  So it is just the words again, I'm afraid. 

I ran the 5km in two sessions, so to speak.  I don't want to take Molly into the grassy meadow where all the ticks lurk right now, so doing the bottom circuit 5 times gives her a good workout (except she doesn't do hills0 and then she goes home.  Then I do 5 circuits of the meadow, which gives me my 5km, which I ran, apparently, at a pace of 7.32 minutes per km today. 

Dark-eyed juncos played "chicken" with one another on 4 occasions as I ran up Heartbreak Hill.  They love the rich grass-seed on the ground, and flew up into the trees next to me, flapping noisily across the path a few meters in front of me, the first time I went past their hideout. 

The next time I passed them they flew out, one after the other, at the very last moment, flying into the same tree but now right past my nose, as though they had tried so hard to stay, but just weren't brave enough, when the first one chickened out the others all felt obliged to follow.  And one more time they did exactly the same thing, and I acknowledged them with a smile.

My favourite, the common milkweed, has seeds in abundance flying about today.  And everywhere I run, the little white gossamers are lying on the ground.  They are so beautiful, in each stage of their development, milkweed, compared with goldenrod, which just turns greyer and greyer and gets a few little fluffy light grey edges which are the seeds.  They seem to be as successful as one another, but I love the more beautiful procreation devised by the milkweed.

At the end of my 5km, when I reached the dead tree lying in the road which blocks one circuit from the other, this time I leapt over it, which I have not done before.  As I was going over I wondered if I would make it, and was pleasantly surprised when I did, otherwise I would have fallen on my face!  I laughed out loud, in fact, at the feat I had accomplished.

Writing this blog I acknowledge that I have a certain persona, a "blog persona", as one of my friends has said.  It is interesting, thinking about this persona.  It is a part of me but not me entirely, there is a strong element of self-censorship.  There are things I do not share, cannot share and will not share, for a wide variety of reasons.  I am not like Samuel Pepys, who wrote compulsively about absolutely everything he did, including his bowel movements and his extramarital sexual relations, in great detail.

No, this blog was purely a New Year's resolution, to run every day, and muse about it, and to create a portrait every day. I have done that now for 304 days.  Perhaps tomorrow the pictures can again be uploaded.