I went for a walk/run this morning. The weather has been friggin' gorgeous lately. Clear, sunny... but one can sense that lurking southern summer right around the corner. It's only May and it's already getting Pretty Darn Hot by afternoon. I have a feeling it's going to be a pretty brutal summer. Luckily I will be gone for most of it! hehe

I found out that the dorms that we'll be staying at in Seattle aren't air-conditioned. I heard some advice about ways to help deal with the heat, such as fans etc... You know, we here in the south have a pretty interesting way of dealing with excessive heat. We have this marvelous invention. It's called Air Conditioning. It's incredible. Hot air goes in, and cold air comes out. Totally nifty.

Anyway, I'm gradually getting into better shape. The scale tells me that I've lost 14 pounds. Woo! I'm doing about 3 miles in the mornings, and this morning I ran the last 3/4 of a mile, plus about a mile of the walking was on the beach in sand, which is harder than walking on pavement. I'm going to try and work up to running as much as possible. Yeah, I know--tough on the joints. But you can see results so much more quickly. Tiffany is finishing up her student teaching this week, so she and I are going to go balls-to-the-wall in working out for the 4 weeks before I leave. I want to lose another 10 pounds before I get on the plane.

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I finally got my list of Clarion participants. This is really getting exciting. All of us with email are already writing letters back and forth, sharing fears, anxieties and recipes. (Okay, so no recipes yet...) It looks to be about 50-50 male/female. There're a whole bunch of people from the west coast, a couple of mid-westerners, a couple of east-coasters, one from Texas, one from Germany, one from France, and I seem to be the only representative from the South.

We're all frantically trying to read as much written by our instructors as possible, and I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one who dislikes, or didn't care for some of the books. But then of course, there are some authors with whom I've fallen in love. (Their writing, that is.)

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Sometime this week I have to sit down with my spouse and get everything ready to take to the lawyer. I want all this divorce crap to be over and done with by the time I leave. I'm also planning on moving all of my stuff out of the house before I leave. So, another project for the coming weeks is to buy plywood so that I can put a floor in Tiffany's attic, so I have someplace to put said junk.

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I went to the gym this afternoon to do some non-aerobic type workingout (i.e. lifting weights.) But I almost didn't go because of a lack of support.

Sports bra type support, I mean. See, I haven't worked out much in the past few years, and while I have three sports bras, two of them (as I discovered today) do not fit. (And no, they aren't too big.) So after wrestling my way into and out of two non-fitting sports bras (calories burned: 3,497), I realized that I would have to wear the one I wore this morning.

The one that was sitting in my laundry hamper, still all sweaty. I had showered after this morning's workout, so I was not sweaty.

I reminded myself that I was only going to go get sweaty again, and so I should not be totally grossed out. And thus I wrestled my way into a slightly damp sports bra. (calories burned: 9,375)

I guess I need to go shopping.