Thoughts in Random Patterns

What I Did on my Summer Vacation

Even though I'm not in school, and haven't been for almost 25 years, I still feel like fall is the beginning of a new year.  I'm ready to buy new pencils and tube socks for gym class and spiral notebooks; none of which I need or would ever use.  And it feels like it's time for the de rigueur beginning of school essay about what I did on my summer vacation, even though I wasn't really on vacation. My sister-in-law, Laura's blog, Buckle Button Zip, has a post called Catching Up, which is what I'm going to do here. 

Except for a weekend in Montana, and a week in Boulder, I spent the entire summer at our mountain house in Keystone.  Brad and I are writing a book together in the series of books that he is co-authoring called Startup Revolution.  Our book is called Startup Life: Surviving and Thriving in a Relationship with an Entrepreneur which is available on Amazon for pre-order even though we haven't finished writing yet.  I have a lot of writing to do!  

 An interesting side effect of writing is that I'm probably reading the least I've ever read since I first learned to read before kindergarten.  So I'm not making any additions to my Best Books Read in 2012 list since I really haven't been reading books.  Very weird for me. 

 I did some hiking, watched a bunch of the Olympics, ate sushi every week, and enjoyed the company of lots of terrific friends who came to visit.  The weekend in Montana was for Brad's 22nd marathon.  Missoula is a terrific town, and I look forward to another visit there.  

The week in Boulder was mostly for my Mom's 70th birthday celebration, which was made extra special by the surprise appearance of her 3 grandkids, and the Alaska residing members of the family.  The whole family hadn't been together in years, so that was really nice. 

I had the last of my twice weekly physical therapy appointments for my wrist in Keystone.  It's been almost 6 months since I broke it on March 7th, and it really has been a long road.  I'm not able to do yoga or tennis yet, or pushups; but soon.  Physical therapy is a great place to practice gratitude when there are always people there who are much more injured than I was.  And PT really helped.  A shout out to Jenn at Avalanche Physical Therapy for all of her encouragement and help.     

Now that summer is over, I'm looking at my calendar for this semester and it looks busy.  I have trips currently planned to New York on 9/7 to the US Open tennis and super fancy special dinner at Per Se for my 46th birthday with Warren and Ilana on 9/14 and art and shopping and more eating, then directly on to San Francisco, for my mother-in-law Cecelia Feld's 70th birthday and home on 9/23.  

Then October is just crazy:

• St. George, Utah marathon weekend 
• Cambridge, MA 
• Burlington, Vermont marathon
• Detroit, Michigan marathon
• Wellesley College board meetings
• Kentucky for the National Horse Show

Then November:

• Election Day
• Palm Desert for Ernst and Young Entreneur of the Year Award ceremony
• Palmilla in Cabo san Lucas for Brad's 47th birthday with a gang of friends

We will head back to Keystone in December for winter solstice and the New Year, and I will likely once again not actually want to leave there. 

Current plans for 2013 include trips to Australia, Brazil, Iceland and Alaska.

I'm seriously trying to figure out whether I can have 2014 be a year of no travel.  What would that be like?!?

I hope you had a terrific summer doing whatever you did! 

 

 

Happy Winter Solstice

This year winter doesn't start until 12/22 as the solstice comes on the late side, but I've been celebrating a very un-snowy time in Keystone by hiking.  You can see the snow covered mountains in the background, but the hiking trail is almost entirely dry.  Brooks and I had a lovely time. 

 

 

 

Winter

Since the winter solstice is my seasonal holiday of choice, I suppose that technically my celebration time is over; but I'm still going to Hotchkiss to see my aunts and uncles and cousins to celebrate their winter holiday of choice.  I'll be off email and Twitter and mobile phone and essentially all electronic connection for the next couple of days, which is a real celebration. 

Here's the current weather in Keystone / Dillon.

Porcupine

This morning started off quite early and in a new and exciting way, with Brad coming in around 5:30 and saying that the dogs had gotten porcupined.  A new verb:  to porcupine.  And indeed they had.  Kenai only had about 10 quills right at the end of his nose, but Brooks had many more.  I pulled 3 or 4 out of Kenai, but he was struggling and at 95 pounds is too big for me to wrestle.  And I knew that Brooks wouldn't go for this at all at a very squirmy 55 pounds.  So Brad found the 24 hour emergency veterinarian in Silverthorne and we loaded the dogs up and took them in.  The vet, Dr. Mark Cowan, was  terrific, and sedation is terrific, too.  He had both dogs under, quills removed, and back with their eyes open in no time at all. 

Stopped at Starbucks for coffee, and Brad headed to his busy work day in Boulder and I'm back at the Keystone house to pack everything up.  The dogs are sleeping peacefully, and maybe won't be so curious the next time they see a porcupine.

Stormy Weather

After a terrific long weekend of hiking and reading and sleeping and playing with friends, I had planned to drive home Tuesday afternoon -- but this is what the weather looked like. 

We had thunder and lightning and hail.

This is the neighbor's roof covered in hail.

So I decided to stay in Keystone since Brad was gone to San Diego and San Francisco and Portland anyway. 

And then overnight we had some snow, which makes everything glow in the sunshine.  It's so beautiful, but a bit surreal for the end of May.

Altitude makes all the difference here.  Entering the Eisenhower - Johnson Tunnel  at almost 12,000 feet, the outside temperature was 38 degrees.  At home in Eldorado Canyon at 6,250 feet the temperature was 63.  It's good to be back where the flowers are blooming.

Bears Everywhere

I was just outside chatting with my neighbor from across the street and she told me that they had a bear in their garage last night about 1:30 going through their trash.  They didn't realize they'd left the garage door open and the bear was having a grand time.  The sheriff came and set off a couple of firecrackers to scare the bear away.  Of course Kenai, my savage guard dog, and I slept through the entire event.  Maybe I won't go hiking today after all.

Snowing

It's snowing here this morning, as predicted, which will make it much easier to stay inside and do my work.  We're supposed to get 2-4 inches of snow at this altitude above 9,000 feet, but it's not sticking yet.  While waiting for Kenai to stop chasing squirrels and come inside for his breakfast, I saw a red fox cross the driveway about 2 feet away from me, and saw a red-tailed hawk fly across the meadow, and heard a red-shafted northern flicker call, although I didn't actually see it.  It must be red-named animal day here.

Hilly Walking

I'm up in Keystone through the Memorial Day holiday since Brad is away until Thursday.  I thought a week of peace and quiet might give me half a chance to catch up.  You know you're behind when your inbox is a laundry basket.  I have managed to wrestle my email inbox into submission, mainly by sorting into subfolders (which I'll never look at?).  I think I'm going to have to start scheduling email correspondence time or it just never happens, especially up here where it's so beautiful that mostly I just want to be outside.

I went for long walks yesterday and today, which I think in this terrain is called hiking.  The snow has mostly melted along the trails near our house, but there are many places that are pretty wet.  I had to tiptoe across what I would call tussocks and hummocks and muskeg if I were walking in Alaska.  The good thing about the melt is that there is plenty of water for Kenai to stay hydrated and cool and come home completely muddy.  Yesterday I did have a lot more bear thoughts than usual, but today my mind was emptier.  Friday I met only one couple with 2 dogs and today I met a mountain man or maybe Old Father Time also with 2 dogs.  It's so restorative to be out in the mountain woods just moving the body along.  I really love hiking by myself.  Even after therapy and ongoing meditation, I still worry when I'm with other people whether my pace is too slow or fast and I don't like walking behind a taller person because then I can't see the view and I'm always thinking about the other people instead of just being in the moment.  I'll keep working on caring less about what other people think, probably for the rest of my life -- but in the meantime I like hiking alone.

I have a fun step counting device (thanks, Brad) which reports that yesterday I did 146 minutes of aerobic steps and more than 15,000 steps for a day step total of 18,657.  Today I did 17,499 aerobic steps in 167 minutes for a day total of 20,193 steps.  I've finally remembered to charge my Garmin Forerunner (thanks again, Brad) and will wear it for even more data gathering on my next hike.

Tomorrow I'm going to read the Sunday NY Times and rest my sore toes.