musings from dave: Germination!

We were out of town over the weekend, so I missed the Exact Moment this happened, but I think I still caught it pretty darn early: The First Germination of the Basil I started last weekend.

Shock and awe!

Even better – the pot on the deck into which we stuffed about three times as many mesclun mix and arugula seeds than is wise is just FULL of little babies. Some have just two eensy leaves, and some have four. If I had a, shall we say, “non-vintage” camera, I could show you in crisp detail the utter cuteness of them. The seedling genocide, in which I thin them out a bit, is yet to come. For now, I’m cheering them all on.

GO! GO! GO!

Really, I’m relieved that something germinated. This tells you something about my gardening self-esteem, or lack thereof.

(And by the way, I managed to delete all my camera-phone pictures from our weekend out of town – not only multiple exceedingly adorable nieces-and-nephews pictures, but a picture of a Seaside boardwalk place advertising “Fried Elvis” sandwiches. Oh, the heartbreak!)

Back to our program: speaking of cheering things on, show me some lovin’: I ran 8.67 miles today. The actual plan was to run eight, and to do it outside, it being May and all. But it started to rain on me, and blegh, I headed back up the driveway and started on the treadmill. Yes, I’m a wuss. Yes, I used to run in 3 degree (that’s Fahrenheit) snowstorms.

I did a slow-ish half hour (5.8 mph…five minutes on, one minute walking, as per my guru), and by then it had cleared up. The trees waved their branches invitingly. So I went back outside and did my five mile loop. But, since I started from the house, instead of from my normal place – and since I finished at the mailboxes…instead of my normal place…I did six miles. Hence, the 8.67 miles.

By the time I was done I was seriously tired. I didn’t yet appreciate that I’d exceeded my goal – I thought I might have only gone a smidgeon over 7.5 miles in all. There I was, on the edge of the abyss labeled “Oh No, I Won’t Be Able To Do This Half Marathon.” And that was when I logged onto mapmyrun.com, plotted out my route, and realized I’d actually well exceeded my goal. And just like that, my my attitude got a fast adjustment - “I am SUCH a stud – is there any leftover pizza?”

But seriously, I’m at the point where I just have to surrender to the training plan and trust that it will work. I mean honestly: I’m only running three miles, twice a week, and then an ever-increasing long run once a week. That’s actually going to do the trick? It’s working so far…but wow, a half-marathon still feels pretty... huge… from here. As to whether or not I’d ever do a full marathon – that does not sound appealing at all, or at least, not these days. But, Dave recently told me about a metric century (that’s a 62 mile bike ride) in Connecticut in September that sounds intriguing. I’ve done a half century before (50 miles). Running is actually – to my way of thinking – harder than biking because you still have to run the downhills, and you can’t coast. OK, slow down, Sarah, let’s get through this half marathon first.

In other news, we have prepped the batcave for its new floor, by removing all the furniture from the room.

Those are the newly-stained pieces of baseboard on the floor, along with the roll of under-layment stuff. Our Hero Michael’s coming tomorrow to install the flooring.