Rolling with it.

Indeed I am rolling with it. Even though my 20-miler last weekend (as in, 8 days ago) went swimmingly and I wasn't sore or anything, I decided to take the day off running yesterday. Just for the heck of it. I ran 5 days last week, only taking Monday and Thursday off, for a total of around 40 miles for the week. That's a lot for me. And then on Saturday night, I had a mini adventure with some friends and found myself thinking, "I don't really feel like running tomorrow." And since my 20-miler had gone so great and I'm feeling pretty ready for this race with about a month to go, I decided to take the lack of enthusiasm as a sign that my body wanted some rest, and I just plum took the day off.

About that mini adventure. My friend John and his girlfriend found this crazy little thing called "Forage SF", which is a group of self-appointed foragers that collect food in the Bay Area. Basically there are so many fruit trees and edible plants here that it truly is a shame to not take advantage of it, so this underground market thing has sprung up to ameliorate the situation. Roger said eating stuff that fell off of trees is pretty much "against everything he stands for"... and it is... so a small group of us went to check it out without him. It was fairly interesting, and quite good, but also fairly expensive and quite packed, so I have no plans to go back. Fun to do once, but not worth the hassle of doing it again.

Anyway, they had this sign there.

It made me picture little kitties in harnesses, pulling a plow or something. But I didn't actually catch a glimpse of any working cats, so I unfortunately can't fill you in on any details there.

We have a working dog, though.

I don't know if you can tell what that is, so I will explain. Roger accidentally broke the dogs' water container the other day, and threw it outside so it didn't soak the whole living room. Rye decided he liked the challenge of working for his water, so he's been lying down and sticking his little tongue in as far as he can to get at the water. He has a new water bottle, mind you, he just likes the challenge, I guess.

And this is one of those pictures that makes me wish I had a better camera with me. The light was so lovely this evening, with the pink fog settling on the hills as the sun went down. It truly, truly feels like fall.

Why am I so tired?? I got a good amount of work done today, so that's good, but I didn't get quite as far as I wanted to on one project, so I've been staring at the computer for several hours now. I recorded stimuli for my qualifying paper experiment today (exciting!) and then I managed to find some scripts that split the words up into lots of individual sound files so I didn't have to do it by hand. Maybe half an hour of fiddling with scripts, but it saved me several hours of labeling and naming by hand, so it was totally and completely worth it. Now I need to edit the files so that they're all the same length and loudness, and that's the part I'm having trouble automating. (And no way am I editing several hundred sound files individually.) I think if I tackle it with fresh eyes tomorrow, it'll be easier.

I took a break to do some cooking this evening, and it was really nice. I made an Italian-style fish and bean stew (friggin' delicious) and some pesto to go with the loaf of bread I baked yesterday. Miss Suzy Homemaker, right here!

Well jeez. I'm pooped. I'm gonna stretch out my legs and go to bed.