I had a mower stolen off the back of my truck today. Not good.

There are two things which confound me. One is that people throw trash on the ground, and two is that people take things that don't belong to them. Throwing shit around is wrong, and I should know because I pick it up all day. My sentiments on stealing is that you only seem to feel as though you are getting ahead when you aren't. That "more" you grab won't help. Sometimes I hate this place.

The afternoon commute was punctuated with hail. I know it doesn't look like much, but I had to check for dents when I finally got to the apartment. There were none. The Space Needle was struck by lightning earlier in the day and in that shower I got soaked . I might have even seen the light show but I can't be sure.

We are starting work at 6:30 from now on, or until the owner finds out. He micromanages, so since we have never done this in the past he'll be sure to change it. There are two other shops, one in Bellevue and one down south somewhere, maybe Tukwilla, I'm not sure. Anyways, they make their own schedules and run their shops the way they like, more or less. But not in the north shop. The owner won't or can't let that happen. This may work out to our benefit because we don't want to start at 6:30. Here is to micromanaging cheap owners. Cheers. Gotta go now.

I bought some new shoes yesterday at Road Runner Sports on Greenlake. I hope they fit me right. I'll take them out into the rain today and maybe extend the length of the normal 41-43 minute run. My legs were complaining a little this morning about the three runs I did in the last four days. All in all I'm happy where I am. It is nice to be out and moving again. What I miss are the hikes. I use my time for running instead of the hiking I used to do. I combined the two last year for a training run on Tiger mountain. What a pisser. My heart and lungs were at their maximum capacity/capabilitiy. It is nice not having any tests coming up.

If you have the chance to catch the movie Sideways, go see it. It is worth the (high) price of admission (I don't get out much). Lee and I did last night. I am looking forward to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy due April the 29th. Now I'm off into the rain. Y'all have a good one.

A-, again. Woo hoo!

The course is over and I think I may have done as well as last quarter. I can't believe though that I still get confused about the valves in the heart. Before the test he handed back the last exam and also gave us our total grade up to that point. It was much higher than I had anticipated.

I can start running after work now and once the weather cooperates I can get the bike out. Probably not this weekend. My next academic task is to brush up on my math skills. I found out that I don't have to take the math placement test but I do have to show them before the interview that I can do something in that arena. They'll test us in writing and math. My sentences can get ungainly I know. This endeavor has been good practice. I try to avoid any computations and now I need to close that gap. I got through two semesters of calculus many years ago. I have 15 days.

I didn't see a fireball.

Cool. I learned how to strong arm the blockquote function in the editor so that I can have the font in times new roman, at a certain size and with the heretofore absent paragraph indentations.

We are finally getting some rain. I can hear the water being kicked up by the passing cars and the dull metallic sounds of the water dripping from the roof and into the gutter. It started to rain at the very end of our run this morning. I'm happy that. I think I'm going to start posting more pictures here. I'll try for one a day or one every few days. How does that sound?

My head hurts. I don't usually get headaches but all the turbulence at work today and the reproductive test (why didn't we have a lab for this section?) we just took are both killing me. Boss man sort of freaked out about a property I have a problem parking at. Randy had to almost jump in front of this pushy woman who was determined to get the spot once boss man pulled his truck out. I had to go through it, get all the weeds (which have grown a lot in the last week or two), and make it look nice. That means you can really notice them now. I then had to race to another property I had been telling them about for over a month. Because of a mix-up between iron and a preemergent grass killer, I had to remove some turf today. This wasn't an emergency for weeks but today it is. I didn't get much else done.

And then there was the test; estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, follicle stimulating hormone, luteinizing hormone, prolactin, interstitial cells, cowper's gland, seminal vesicles, granulosa cells...aaggh. I don't think I can start looking at the prior tests tonight. My brain is fried and it isn't even 8:30. Ya know, I keep saying this, but I hope this all works out. I'm not getting much on this. I am tired of doing all this on my own though, that much I can confess. And there is the rub, there is no one to confess to. Boy, I start whining when my head hurts. And trying to piece it together intellectually crosses even more wires. I'll try the trick where I'll open a book at any (random) page to see what it says;

      "The psyche, always in a state of becoming, obviously has no precise boundaries. The existence of one, again, implies the existence of all, and so any one given psyche comes into prominence also because of the existence of the others upon which its reality rides. One television station exists in the same manner, for if one could not be tuned in to, theoretically speaking, none could.

      "These inner communications, then, reach outward in all directions. Each identity has eternal validity within the psyche's greater reality. At one level, then (underlined), any person contacting his or her own psyche can theoretically (underlined) contact any other psyche. Life implies death and death implies life - that is, in the terms of your world. In those terms life is a spoken element, while death is the unspoken but still-present 'beneath,' upon which life rides. Both are equally present.

      "To obtain knowledge consciously other than that usually available, you pay attention to the pauses, to the implied elements in language, to any felt or sensed quality upon which the recognizable experiences of life reside. There are all kinds of information available to you, but it must still be perceived through your own focus or identity.

      "I have said that all events occur at once - a difficult statement to understand. All identities occur at once also. Each event changes every other. Present ones alter past ones. Any one event implies the existence of probable events which do not 'emerge,' which are not 'spoken.'Physical world events therefore rest upon the existence of implied probable events. Different languages use sounds in their own peculiar manners, with their own rhythms, one emphasizing what the other ignores. Other probabilities, therefore, emphasize events that are only implied (as pauses) in your reality, so that your physical events become the implied probable ones upon which other worlds reside."

-Jane Roberts and Seth, The Nature of the Psyche, pp.112-113.

I reread that last post and the way I had tried to explain it, it sounded like Lee thought 'Vester was a skunk even after she had taken him in. I think Lee knows the difference between a cat and a skunk.

The instructor tried to explain the differences between the sexes last night by telling us what the effects testosterone has on the developing ebryonic and fetal brain. Physiologically, testosterone makes the male and female brains operate somewhat differently. He then proceeded to take a big step and explained that if you have a cat, you wouldn't expect it to act like a dog and visa versa, the analogy being that each sex has their strengths and weaknesses. Maybe I didn't understand him completely, but he then said that you can't treat them the same because they are inherently different. That sounds too harsh, maybe he was talking about expectations. I think the man took a large step out of his medical field and into sociology/anthropology. Leave that to us buddy boy.

News on the cats who graced this page a little while ago. Sylvester, the black and white kitty on the left in this post had to be put to sleep last week. He had hyperthyroidism, was losing weight, had a hard time breathing and was about 15 years old. Lee lured him in as a stray when she lived at her ranch in California. At first she thought he was a skunk from his hair and his markings. It took a while for him to let himself to be domesticated, but in true cat fashion he did very well for himself. Captain misses his friend, even though 'Vester was the boss.

I found out too late that I can't show up the morning of the St. Patrick's Day Dash and enter the race. I ran on my own this afternoon after putting in hours studying for the next exam (last chapter exam). I spent most of yesterday reading the chapters. I need better than an 86 on this one. It is a wonder we procreate at all with all the glands, hormones, genetics and anatomy variables to be taken into account. There is one more week of school left. The final test is on Monday the 21st. My life is that simple right now. I go to work and then school and stress about them both at times. The consolation here is that the weather has been beautiful. It has been so nice that the governor called a drought emergency already. This summer might just suck. We'll see. Happy trails!

I've spent most of the day inside studying the kidney (out of the book). Kinda hard to ponder something when it is trapped in the body. We have the best weather in the country right now. Not too many days left...

I still don't like the blogger comment section. I'll turn it off soon. We got the last test back this evening. I was right about all the extra credit we had on the exam. It saved my ass. I ended up with an 85 when I should have gotten, at best, a 70. I don't go to work tomorrow but instead travel to the fair city of Everett to watch the radiation therapists there ply their trade. In the afternoon I get to see the spiffy hospital at Totem Lake for more of the same.

After speaking with the folks at school who run the program, I did my own sort of check-in with myself to gauge where I was and maybe portend some of my future. What I got was very mundane I thought. This wasn't IT. It will be more of the same. Not nearly as dangerous, but sort of like Rummie's long hard slog. I'm sure this path is a good one, especially considering the alternative: nothing. Nothing means more of the same with me being older. This is definitely a good idea. I'm sure of this, but it isn't IT. That is what I got. Somehow I want to think that this will turn into some sort of fantasy science fiction story when in actuality I will continue to dislike getting up in the morning, will have to force my body to move in space, will have to study and learn and repeat and pass. I'll then have a job where I'll have to fit in within a micrometer's variance. Granted it will be better in many ways to what I do now, but I will still be slogging my way through. Twenty years later and it's all like, "welcome to the working world." Maybe it was the future me (the one typing this now) who influenced the university me (of twenty years ago) to study Marx and his peers.

I don't get much, save fragments of old dreams that drove me from sleep, about what the IT is. My niece's e-mail reminded me that as I make time for running I also need to make time for creative endeavors such as this entry. I haven't felt too inspired for school or studying lately. Gladly, work is going along at an even keel right now. I don't need any challenges there. My virtual friend over at The Derby seems to channel her creative energy quite well. I spent some time reading a very well written and entertaining blog. Go read about the gulf between eastern and western Washington and the breakdown of cyclists. He is part of noematic creative gestalt also. A March 2nd resolution? I generally dislike the idea of resolutions. If you want to do something different or differently, then do it now and then on the next day and then for the rest of the time you are sucking air into and out of your lungs here on this planet. So IT isn't clear. But there is a silver lining; that because there was a feeling that this isn't IT, that there must conversely be one. Those Marxist dialectics did come in handy afterall. Or is that logic? Nevermind. Goodnight.

I'm still wasting my time and not studying enough. This quarter ends in about three weeks. I passed the school application in yesterday on the last day it was due. I got some great editing feedback from Tonya, but I had sent it to her at the last minute so the feedback was late. I had to tell them why I want to study in that field. My version may just work. The temperatures are getting milder. As soon as this course is over I'll get the bike out. Until then it is anatomy and physiology...every day.