Thursday Thoughts: The Good, The Bad, and the Smelly

Long time, no blog. It's been almost two weeks! I've been spending the evenings, normally my waste-time-on-the-computer time, burning all of the stages of the Tour de France to DVDs for my dad, who is an avid cyclist but is without cable. I'm editing out all of the ads (the TDF broadcast is infested with them) because for all the magical and wonderful powers of TiVo, it has not yet figured out how to not record commercials. In doing so I can easily cut over an hour from the program time which is composed of nothing but ads. It's kind of appalling.

My reappearance after 13 days should do wonders to soothe some people's angst (expressed privately) at not having any of my sage words to read. Are you happy now? ;)

The good:

As a friend of mine likes to say to express amazement and excitement, "holy WAH." I have no idea what that means, but it neatly encapsulates what has happened since I began the FIRST program on June 29. After three weeks, the cumulative effects of this speed-heavy program have suddenly and spectacularly made themselves known. As in, "oh, I think I'll just go out for a nice and easy four-mile run" and the next thing I know I've done it at an 8:10 pace and was able to carry on a relaxed conversation the entire time.

Monday morning I visited my local Circle of Doom (aka the high school track) for a taxing interval workout: 12 x 400m with a 90 second rest. Emboldened by my weekend of quality running, I attacked the track with a vengeance and hit my target time (1:40 +/- 2 seconds) on 11 of my 12 laps. I did the whole thing, including warm-up and cool-down, in under an hour and made it to work on time. For the record, my legs were complaining A LOT Tuersday and Wednesday after that, which may have contributed to the EPIC FAIL which was my tempo run on Wednesday morning. The less said about that the better.

Last night I attended a concert by one of my favorite artists, Neko Case. It was fabulous! In a couple of weeks I am going to see Fleet Foxes. At the end of August I will hear Great Lake Swimmers, and then at the end ofSeptember I will be able to see Grizzly Bear! As exciting as this lineup is, it pales in comparison to THE BIG ONE, the concert of the year (for me, anyway): DEPECHE MODE. AUGUST 12. OMG. OMG!

The bad:

I smashed my hand into a door as I was carrying a chair from one room to another. I thought to myself when I picked it up: "I need to be careful, because I could easily bang into a door." Um...yeah. The impact also planed a little curl of skin off the back of my hand. I now have a lovely bruise to remind me of how clumsy I can be sometimes.

Today's weather is the mortal enemy of my hair: warm, drizzly, and very humid (89% at the moment). You want to see the 'fro at its angriest, just make me go outside for five minutes today. Then stand back, because I'm not responsible for what happens if anyone gets too close to my hair. It's wild and dangerous, I tell you. Luckily it can be tamed (almost) with the strategic deployment of a hair elastic, a vital piece of grooming equipment which is never far from my reach. iPhone in one hand, elastic in the other, that's all I need to feel secure.

My aforementioned tempo run from Wednesday. Bah.

The smelly:

I realized something foul was afoot last Saturday morning when I got up to go running. L'eau de skunk was rather pungent. When I got home from my run, I knew something was really wrong because my house...ugh. And then I opened the basement door. OH MY GOD. The smell, it was very bad. I immediately called Critter Control. They were here that afternoon to set a trap. By 9:15 pm Saturday night there was a skunk in the trap. But wait, there's more! There was more than one skunk lurking in the crawlspace under my kitchen floor! I could hear them scratching around, fumbling against the heating duct, making squeaking noises. The cats were terribly intrigued and spent long periods of time staring at the baseboards and sniffing at the heating vent (which I had closed, because, you never know).

Critter Control returned Sunday afternoon to remove the trapped skunk, who responded to being moved by releasing a small but fierce blast of odor into the air. It was highly unpleasant. Let me repeat that: IT WAS HIGHLY UNPLEASANT. Two more traps were baited and set by the hole, but since then, nothing else has happened. I haven't heard any more noises, and my house does not stink any more (aside from the smell of sweaty running clothes, an odor which is normally kept quarantined in my Closet Command Center). The traps remain empty morning after morning. I am hoping the other members of the skunk family packed up and left town on their own.

Tomorrow I have something very exciting to do after work. More on that later!