plan activation

I activated my Walking Plan today. (note to self: need catchier name.)  It's been in the works for a while, but sometimes (most times) I have to work things out in my head first. Basically the plan comes down to this: for 21 days from the first day (TODAY), I have to get outside and walk every single day. On days I'm working, it can be shorter, but I still have to do it. I even built in two days where I can skip without guilt if it's absolutely necessary, but my hope is that I can get through it without using either of them. I used to walk almost every day without fail - not only did my jeans fit better, but I felt better all around.  The 21 days part is just to get myself accustomed to doing it again - once I get going I want to do it so here's hoping it goes to plan.

THINGS I LEARNED while out on my walk today:

1) I will have to re-toughen my feet!

2) I need to freshen my ipod, make new playlist, something something something. I've got a lot of great music, I just need to get it where I can get to it.

3) I missed seeing the dogs! Now I don't have to miss seeing them anymore.

4) The Garden Gnome ran by me today and it was fine, not weird. It was weird for a while when I'd see him in the library for two reasons: one was because I don't like people to know more about me than I tell them, and two because I felt so guilty about not walking.  Now neither one are an issue since he knows what he knows (which isn't much) and I'm not not walking anymore.

5) Crows, man. There was a whole flock, no wait - MURDER - of crows at the park today. They were hanging around the horseshoe pit like a gang of surly bad seed teens, but flew up into a tree when I walked by (squawking all the while).

6) the crocus are starting to come through the mud - just the leaves so far, but the purple won't be far behind. Camellias are also getting ready. Woo!

miscellaneous pictures already

dude, this posting every day thing is hard! Not that I thought it would be easy, but I didn't think I'd be whining about it on DAY FIVE. ha ha ha!

One of my plans for winter is to start taking pictures again and getting my flickr stuff sorted out a little better. I was an early flickr user, I have a LOT of pictures and have gone through phases where tagging and organizing was, uh, not the highest priority. Of course that makes it so easy to find things later on! (and it's ridiculous that I haven't done it, because flickr makes it so simple. But I digress...)

In anticipation of Getting My Shit In Order, I was poking around and found these Five Random Photos:



Busby, who even at his most sleek summer fur levels is not a small cat, essentially doubles in size in the winter. (all fur.) the colder it is, the bigger he gets. This photo was from a couple of years ago. It makes me laugh because it looks like he has no legs at all, just tiny feet sticking out from this crazy ball of fur.



This photo also makes me laugh, although I was obviously not amused when it was taken, oh so many years ago. I'm not sure if it was my birthday or my sister's birthday, but my mom used to love to get us matching smocked dresses for holidays and special occasions. Dig the braids!



From my hospital stay last year. Both the view and the morphine were lovely. I did a tag search on "windows" and found that I have named a lot of pictures "out the window" -- I could do a whole mosaic of them and maybe I will! (but I promise not to post it until January is over.)



This was just a random out the window shot on the way home from Multnomah Falls, I think. That's the Columbia river, looking across to the Washington side. The everyday scenery in this part of the world is really beautiful.



... and here is one of my early flickr pictures. I only ever joined flickr so I'd have a place to host pictures for my (practically abandoned) garden blog. Maybe I'll revive that this year too.