USE YOUR WORDS: You run and you go get busy bee!

The last few weeks have hit like a tornado of awesome. I was in the Bay Area for work during last week of March and had lots of amazing adventures there (riparian bike tours! secret hot tubbing! fancy dinners! seal hospitals!) Then I was out in the DC 'burbs dogsitting for a week, which was less obviously eventful but did involve a lot of dogtime and a walloping commute. Easter and Passover happened somewhere in there, kind of, in the sense that I ate a lot of really good semi-traditional foods in the company of really good, semi-traditional family. And then this week has been kind of nonstop, between two concerts, a (grating, 3.5 hour) play, and dinner/drinks with friends. The rest of April is filling up with other awesome events - book club, bowling league (high score on my team last week thankyouverymuch), food and drink events, some minor volunteering and who knows what else.

Harbor Seal pup at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, CA

Well that doesn't look like very good water management, Oakland. Who's that sexy bike in the background?

I really liked this painting in the lobby of the Palace Hotel in SF. (Warren G. Harding and the King of Hawaii died there!)

I'm really enjoying myself during this spurt of activity, though I know that I will need some downtime in there somewhere just to unpack and read books and finish that damned Chuck Close puzzle already. Also bake, watch Gregory Peck movies and do some yoga. Maybe get down to under 100 on my Google Reader, just to watch it bounce back up to 300 the next day. You know, important stuff.

In case anyone was thinking, man, I really feel the need to BUY a BOOK for SOMEONE, may I suggest that someone be me, and that the book be this one.

Chuck Close, WE OWN YOUR FACE.

I've also gotten into my April project, which has turned out to be running, somewhat to my surprise. Coming off the 30 Day Shred (perhaps to be discussed in more depth another time) I wanted to keep the exercise momentum going and a couch-to-5k program seemed to fit the bill. I'm on week 3 of the "Ease into a 5K" app on my iPhone except I'm cheating and running more than I'm supposed to each time. And I signed up for my first ever 5K in mid-May, which is way scary for someone who feels perpetually like an exercise imposter, but it's a great cause which helped me make the decision.

I had kind of hoped I could have a different April project, actually, because I'm afraid that making running a month-project will make me less likely to continue with it after April is over, but I'll have to run at least until mid-May and we'll see what happens after that. I wanted to make April about writing, which I am crap at doing these days, whether in journal, blog or creative form. Maybe May will get my words flowing. Maybe not. No TV month will be coming up soon, possibly in June (when do the good TV shows go away for the summer?) so maybe writing can take TV's place. I actually haven't been watching very much TV at all though recently, and when I do it's documentaries about the Columbia River Basin on PBS or Antiques Road Show, so maybe that won't be a supertough transition anyway. Who knows. Facebook will be harder to quit for a month, I'm pretty sure of that.

Anyway I guess I don't really have a point but I have to go get dressed for concert #2 of the week so here are some more pictures of things.