January 1:
Cardinal Points:
First Thing Water:
10 Minutes of Mindfulness:
(moving meditation, nature therapy)
Dance / Yoga:
(Quiet Room)
Gratitude:
Group of Seven:
hands & wrists:
(
Wrist Pain)
calf raises:
(Total Body Strength, some extra one-legged)
plank:
(Iron Core, Plank Hero, Total Body Strength)
feathered peacock:
(60 sec. dolphin)
hip flexors:
(Standing Abs, Fit December)
hip abductors:
(Fit December)
glutes:
(Fit December, Total Body Strength, Glutes of Steel)
Programs & Challenges:
Push & Pull: push-ups (done in Total Body Strength)
Iron Core: Day 21
Glutes of Steel: Day 21
Fit December: Day 21
Total Body Strength: Day 1*
Standing Abs: Day 1
Plank Hero: Day 1
* Did TBS on Level 1 due to the push-ups. But I did 12 for each set. So pretty good for me. (Especially coming in to these right after plank rotations!) First set was 12 straight. Second set had a mini down-dog break after rep 10. Third set had a longer down-dog break after rep 6 and another mini one after rep 10. Held the plank throughout the last three exercises on each set (well, except for the down dogs!). Took the full 2 minutes rest between sets.
Mileage:
running:
hiking: 13.8 km
Tried the TVP North again this day. The river is still very high. But the main trail was passable. There was no sign of the Gizzard Shad. (What had been a trickling stream coming down from the storm sewers to feed the cove they were congregating in is now a gushing river.) Saw a Bald Eagle and two Red-tailed Hawks on our outward bound journey. The hawks were circling very close together and vocalizing. Which is how I first knew they were hawks. The eagle was soaring high above them, and the hawks, being much closer to me, appeared the same size as the eagle. From a distance I thought I might be looking at one adult and two juvenile eagles. But then the hawks started talking, and well, Bald Eagles are just not that loud!
We were not able to take our usual riverside foot path coming home. (It was still underwater.) When I turned us back to backtrack to the paved path, however, Miss Shelby decided this was an opportunity to explore farther north. So she took us north past the university. Then she turned into the parking lot of an apartment building. She was hot to trot! Definitely had a plan about where she wanted to go (although we were by this point on a route we have never taken before). I let her lead for a bit. Until her route took us out to a main road with heavy traffic, which Shelby wanted to cross. I suggested we could instead turn south and walk along the sidewalk. Shelby agreed to this. She then led us back to the university. From there a little gentle suggesting on my part got us back to the TVP and our southbound route home.
On the way home we saw three Bald Eagles circling around together at the forks. Other than this, it was mostly the usual suspects: Mallards, Canada Geese, and Herring Gulls. Saw the Pekin on land, wandering around with a flock of Canada Geese. Pekin ducks are taxonomically still considered to be Mallards. But this one is huge compared to the wild Mallards. It is almost as big as the geese! Also saw a Norther Cardinal, heard but did not see a Belted Kingfisher, and heard a few Black-capped Chickadees. (Likely "saw" these too. But this is a guess based on seeing small birds in areas where chickadees were calling. I did not get a good enough look to identify any of the smalls by sight.)
We met up with three other birders on this hike. One, a woman alone with a camera. I asked her what she'd seen that day.
"Nothing," she told me. "Everyone's hiding."
Later we met a couple out together, a man with a camera, and a woman with binoculars. The man was photographing something across the river, which I suspected was Mallards.
After he'd taken his shot I approached and asked him if he was photographing the ducks.
"Ducks, geese, trees. Anything alive," he told me. "Some things not alive too." This couple were out there to enjoy nature and didn't care if the nature they saw that day was common things we get here everyday or not.
I encounter both of these very distinct attitudes often when out hiking in nature. Some people are happy to experience whatever nature brings to them that day. Others have a very definite agenda that they want to see something special, and a narrow definition of what that is.
We met another couple out on the trail, hiking with a young girl. When I first spotted them, the parents were both standing still with their faces turned up to the sky. They were very intent on whatever they were looking at, but I could not see what it was as they were staring pretty much right at the sun. When I got near I asked them what they saw up there.
"Nothing," the man told me. "We're recharging our solar batteries." (They'd had their eyes closed and their faces turned to the sun just to enjoy the warmth of an all-too-rare winter sun on their faces.)
Writing:
worked on a new short story
new fiction words: ? - writing was by hand
fiction YTD: 161,295 + ? (still have some hand-written stuff to type up)
story-a-week challenge: 50 of 52 completed
54 stories in my 54th year challenge: 50 of 54 completed
writing days this week: 1/5
French:
Fluenz
Scheduling Habits:
GOBOT:
SOOT:
GBOT:
GR:
Cumulative Habit Scores:
Gaming Rules: 85
SOOT: 71
GBOT: 75
Streaks:
Consecutive days of working out: 115
Consecutive days of French study: 1507
from
This is why I’m so careful about making judgements. I didn’t know your situation. I’m really sorry about everything you’ve been going through and I hope things work out much better for you this year.
