Journal Entry

Yesterday I got home from work and found T-- and AB out in the back yard. Not a big surprise, since those two are always playing outdoors (yeah, I don't get it either), but T-- has also been talking a lot about gardening lately, and I found yesterday that she'd taken the first step.

When we bought the house, it had clearly had some landscaping work done. There were shrubs along the front walk, and out back the back of the house and a large area along the back fence were divided from the yard with some concrete landscaping, with rose bushes growing against the house and trees and shrubs growing along the fence.

Unfortunately, most of the rose bushes had been choked out by tall grass and climbing weeds, and 2/3 of the trees and shrubs were evergreens, which we hate.

On that note....

T-- got a handsaw yesterday and started clearing out the evergreens. I don't know how she did it. She said it only took a couple hours, but it must have been exhausting. Anyway, half of that area is cleaned out now, and it looks so much better than it ever has. She's going to put a garden in there when it's all cleared out, but just getting the old dead spruce out of there makes a huge difference.

I finally talked her into coming back inside (after pushing AB in her swing for ten minutes), and we called D-- to see if he wanted to come by for dinner. I also had an invitation from my sister to go watch a movie premiere with them downtown, but T-- was busy and I stayed home to help her out. D-- didn't end up coming over either, so it was another quiet night at home. We watched three episodes of Lost (and I redesigned the DetailsFrame for my game), and then we went to bed.

I had a better night than the one before, but I still found myself awake at 2:30, 4:00, 5:00, and 6:00.

And, yeah, my alarm was set for 5:00, so clearly I didn't make my jog. That was a conscious decision, though. E-- provided me a link a couple days ago to a site with a program for new runners, and it sounds like a really good one. I'm going to start following it, and one of their big recommendations is leaving a couple days off between jogs to let yourself heal up.

I need that. My calves and quads have been achy for five days now. I was thinking I needed to push through the pain, or something silly like that, but I realized I'm already doing three days of exercise a week at the gym (including half an hour of cardio), so there's no pressing reason for me to try to get in 5-7 days a week jogging in the morning. It's a nice goal, and I might make it by the end of the summer, but starting out too aggressively could keep me from accomplishing anything.

So, I'm planning to go to the gym Monday, Thursday, Saturday (as I've been doing), and make my jogs Tuesday, Friday, Sunday. That keeps me active all week, and still gives me some time to rest individual muscle groups. It should be good.

Oh! We've had one person look at the house so far, and her realtor reported that she didn't like the neighborhood because of all the foundation issues. Fair enough. Given the age of the neighborhood, every house out there has foundation issues. I found it encouraging that her concern was general (for the neighborhood) and not specifically aimed at our house, though.