Today was a great fall day in beautiful Seattle. The forecast on weather.com, when I checked it last night, predicted rain starting at 5 a.m. and no let-up until midday Sunday...so when, instead, it stayed rain-free all day long, I rejoiced - and the sun even made a brief, timid appearance in the early afternoon!
I was actually hoping for a rainy day to justify staying indoors all day long to decorate/organize the new place. But with dry streets, the leaves at their most stunning, some vestiges of warmth still in the autumn air, and the sun poking out here and there...there's simply no excuse to stay inside.
SO instead, I put in a long-overdue run (it had been over a week since my last run - eep! No good, with the Seattle Marathon a month away now!), exploring both some new territory as well as cruising old favorites - the University Bridge, the Burke-Gilman Trail and Ravenna Park. As I stopped to take a drink at a water fountain in Cowan Park, a man at a picnic table asked me for the time. I stared dumbly down at my Garmin Forerunner (for those who don't know - it's a clunky GPS watch that uses satellites to track my location, pace and distance on my runs) and though there's a clock somewhere in the thing, I couldn't find it. I shrugged and said I'd been running about an hour at that point and had left around 12:30, so my best guess was 1:30.
We wound up having an entire conversation for a few minutes while I caught my breath and guzzled water from the fountain. He'd never heard of Garmin (notably, based in Olathe, Kansas - the next suburb over from my hometown!) but had always wanted to hike with some sort of GPS device. As we talked, the man was feeding bits of bread to a huge flock of birds and geese gathered around him. "No way to spend an afternoon like feeding birds at the park!" he told me with a grin.
Elsewhere in the park, a solo saxophonist was jamming hard on his instrument. As a brisk gust of wind stirred up the piles of fiery-hued leaves, I wished the bird man a good rest of his day and took to the trail again. He waved me off as I ran away...to finish up a 13.1 mile run!
Coupled with sampling Seyeon's homemade pumpkin pie and an epic trip to Target for exciting things like bath mats, hand soap, Pyrex containers, baking trays and a dustpan, the run made for a good day.
Soundtrack for the Week (superb bluegrass, a bit of stringed-instrument-incorporating hip-hop, and at least one embarrassingly bad top 40 hit)
The Moon - Flobots
Undone in Sorrow - Crooked Still
Right Now - Fort Minor
Knock You Down - Keri Hilson, Kanye West, and Ne-Yo
Tomorrow is a Long Time - Nickel Creek
Dancing Nancies, Dave Matthews Band (On a sidenote, D.M. came shoe-shopping at REI a couple weeks ago. He wears a size 11...not that it's creepy or anything that I know that now.)
24 - Jem
Running Up That Hill - Placebo
Mexico - CunninLynguists
...and it just began to rain! Woohoo! I love the sound of rain on windows at night...perfect tea-drinking and journal-writing conditions. Good night, World!
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